Quantcast tracks all WordPress.com blog stats

Published February 8, 2010 media 1 Comment

I’ve rather belatedly discovered Quantcast – which tracks a good chunk of the web, but is very US-centric. One thing it does do though is track every WordPress.com hosted blog, including, for what it is worth, mine:

There is plenty more there – have a look around and try your favorite site. There are plenty of other bloggers that use WordPress.com – such as Rowan, dimpost, Poneke,  Open Parachute, and home paddock. I confess to not reading any of these aside from Rowan’s – I got them from a list of top NZ blog sites compiled by Tumeke, of which more later.

Puffin signals doom for jetpack

Published February 8, 2010 Air Travel Leave a Comment

NASA seem to have cracked the three crucial problems with jetpacks with their Puffin personal flying machine.
The kiwi jetpack is obnoxiously loud, and it, well it doesn’t really fly. It’s also only suitable for smaller folk.

The Puffin approach puts the pilot between two stubby wings, is powered by quiet electrical fans and will be able to almost reach the cruising altitude of a jumbo.

Will. That’s an interesting and all too common word in the world of jetpacks. But NASA say it will fly later this year.

Obviously this is aimed at military applications first – but I want one.

Techday joins the spammers

Published February 7, 2010 Internet Business , NZ Business 5 Comments

I received this on Friday from techday.co.nz:

I didn’t know I had a relationship with Techday and neither was there an address of the sender included. So I clicked the Unsubscribe link and arrived here:

It’s a website that I have never been to before, and I certainly don’t want to login or register.

Now I did get a registration at Netguide a number of years ago (you needed to do so in order to vote for the Netguide awards – my user name was “whyregister”) but I certainly did not recall giving permission to receive spam from Techday, who seem to own Netguide now. Nor do I feel it is right that my login has moved across to the Techday sites. I’ve searched through my old email and see nothing explaining all this.

So  I suggest that the folks there read this and familiarise themselves with the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act of 2007.

Incredibly fantastic and great

Published February 3, 2010 NZ Business 1 Comment
Tags: , , ,

Missed Steve Jobs and the iPad introduction? Rest assured thanks to Neil Curtis you can catch up on all of the adjectives in under 3 minutes. Found via TUAW, and yes the website of Neil is a bit different.

It’s all about the story – launch progress

Published February 3, 2010 Internet Business , media 5 Comments

Things are going well at AllAboutTheStory.com – the site that matches the material from professional writers with editors who buy their material. While it is still very early days, we are pleased to have over 130 members and about 100 vetted pieces of content.

You never know which direction sites will go – and we were pleasantly surprised to see several cartoonists sign up early to syndicate their content. Cartoonists you see each day, including Garrick Tremain and Malcolm Evans. We added a cartoon section and expanded the size of pictures just for them.

Our next challenge for us to to get the sales moving. The content on the site is looking pretty good and we are encouraging editors to take a look around and start buying from now.

An open letter to Vodafone Group from New Zealand

Published February 2, 2010 Internet Business , media 15 Comments
Tags: , , , ,

Dear Vodafone Group

We don’t yet have the Kindle available in New Zealand, and I suspect that you are the folks to talk to.

You see I’m pretty sure the folks at Vodafone New Zealand would love us to have the Kindle down here – after all we surely rank ahead of East Timor and Zimbabwe in market size and ease of doing business.

However they are being unusually evasive about why we don’t have it yet. @VodafoneNZ is generally really responsive to our tweets, blog posts and media, but this time something is going on. Here’s a recent twitter stream, which follows a rambling blog post I wrote a few days back:

Me: Why is Kindle not in NZ? – question made Dave Farber’s IP list. http://tinyurl.com/y9xxfj5 answers so far: @vodafonenz’s fault.

NBR: RT @lancewiggs: Why is Kindle not in NZ? . Are @vodafonenz’s hands tied by @Vodafone_Group trying to do a worldwide deal? [NBR is the FT of New Zealand]

Me: Why is Kindle not in NZ? – are @vodafonenz’s hands tied by @Vodafone_Group trying to do a worldwide deal? Please stop screwing NZ

@vodafoneNZ @lancewiggs @TheNBR now you’re messing with my head. No news for You!

Me: Someone is blocking this – the question is who and why. How can Zimbabwe have the Kindle and not NZ?

@SteveBiddle: Somebody somewhere knows why we don’t have the Kindle. It would be nice to know the proper reason!

@vodafonenz: Someone knows. Locked him in the basement. No-one can hear him scream (although he does have reading material).

me: @vodafonenz that’s an evasion if I have ever heard one. So it must be your bosses in NZ or London

@vodafonenz: it’s a no comment.

I’m escalating this to Vodafone Group as I am guessing that Vodafone New Zealand is not in control here – that they do not have the power to settle with Amazon directly. It’s probably not because they are too small – after all Turks and Cacos got the Kindle – so my guess that the buck stops with Vodafone Group.

I understand that Kindle access in New Zealand is such a trivial amount of revenue for Vodafone Group, and that having the Kindle in Rwanda and not New Zealand is a remote issue for you. In fact I’m even struggling to get anybody to care about it in New Zealand – I guess we are all content to wait until Apple’s iPad comes out in June.

But the situation is a bit ridiculous – it has been months. My guess is that somewhere someone is slowing things up. It is probably way down the list of their priorities. Perhaps they are playing hardball with Amazon, or perhaps they are playing ball on annual leave? All I know is that we do not have an interim solution in New Zealand, and you are beginning to collectively look like fools.

So please Vodafone, please do this for us:

1: Sign an interim at least deal with Amazon to allow NZ to sell the Kindle. Make it happen within a week. Worry about a larger deal after that.

Thanks.

Oh – and while I have your attention, or in the vain and vague hope that someone from Vodafone Group HQ manages to read this – here is a suggested list of actions that you can take to rapidly improve your profitability. Really. Take the leap.

2: Reduce your international roaming charges for data to zero for roaming on the Vodafone network. Make the data charges the same as home charges and we will keep using data when we travel. We’d switch to Vodafone as all other carriers including you right now charge $10,000 to $30,000 per Gb. The effect will be like when you turned text on between networks – there is all this demand just waiting to be unleashed. You are the only company that can do this quickly and globally – just think of the competitive advantage you will have. But remember – when you implement this make it automatic – don’t screw your customers by making them sign up beforehand.

3: Fix the global roaming problem – so that we and people that call us get charged at our local rates for texts and calls, no matter where we are. Simply put – work out how to quickly give us the ability to get a local number on our existing account from our home country so that local friends can call us at local rates. That will stop the sim card shuffle, and get you a lot more of those high spending global travellers.

Note for both of these I mean to every country not just the EU, larger industrial countries or those affiliates you own 100%. We should be able to use our phones as if we are home in the UK, South Africa, France, USA, Mozambique and Chile.

4: Make sure we never get penalised for doing too much – Mandate charging at the same pro-rata rate (rather than penal rates) when we go over our limits for voice, data and texts. You want us to use as much of your services as possible, so make it easy for us.

5: Suck up to Apple – like it our not their iPhone and iPad are the future. Cut really great deals with them and make sure you back it up with excellent service. You are making a killing here in NZ despite a lousy 3G network for the iPhone in the rural areas.

6: Simplify your plans – Your plans, like everyone else’s, are complicated and we don’t understand them. That’s pretty deliberate I know, but why not make it easy? I think 3 plans is enough – don’t you?

7: Transform international calling - It’s over – Skype and the other VOIP players are offering close to free international calls. Join the club and charge us trivial amounts for international calls – to or from our phone. We’d all switch in a real hurry.

8: Fix your websites and billing systems - I’d start again really – it’s that bad. Make it easy for me to pay you as a first step.

9: Stop selling branded phones - Separate the phone and the plans in all countries – and give kickbacks for signing contracts in cash or monthly discounts rather than phones. Stop tweaking and crippling phones, and sell untouched phones that allow customers to download apps. You’ll save plenty of money in sourcing all of those phones and the suppliers will be able to sell more of each model.

10: Abandon all of your own mobile web sites – the idea is well out of date and you risk looking like AOL did clinging to a useless walled garden. They take time to set up and manage and ultimately you are offering a crippled service for unreasonable prices.

I guess that you have already thought of all of these, and I guess that people that work for you would love to see them as well. What we are looking for is leadership. Leadership within Vodafone and leadership for Vodafone to forge the path for the industry. We love using our phones – just help us do it even more.

thanks again

Lance

P.S. Some folks may like to add their comments below – please read them as well.

P.P.S. I suspect that some of the book and newspaper publishers are not that unhappy that the Kindle isn’t here. Well – books and newspapers are going digital and it’s better to join the party than be left with the legacy costs of printing.

It seems BNZ’s Xero personal will allow importing

Published February 1, 2010 Internet Business , NZ Business 2 Comments

From this screenshot over on Xero’s blog we see a National Bank account is reported in amongst the BNZ ones in a beta test of Zero Personal:

Actually the logo is for Kiwibank, while the text refers to National Bank. Either way Xero and BNZ are telling us that they’d like for external acccounts to be able to linked to Xero Personal inside BNZ – and that is good.

BNZ will call it MoneyMap, which is better than Kiwibank’s “Heaps” I suppose.

<update @teamXero says via Twitter: “Yes indeed, you can import data from any bank account but auto-bank feed from BNZ only to start with.”>

Expensive love

Published February 1, 2010 Life 4 Comments
Tags: ,

I received several copies of this email from Apple, and clearly there is a disconnect between my idea of appropriate Valentines day gifting behaviour and Apple’s:

I understand flowers, I understand dinner, and even a small gift, but isn’t a $349 iPod Touch raising the bar just a little too far?

It’s also not going to do a lot for your romantic life to see your partner buried in an iPod touch downloading and playing apps.

Is this is another sign that the Apple team need to get a few more women involved in their branding and advertising processes?

But then – what would I know – I’ve nobody to give one of these to this year anyway.

Up the river

Published January 31, 2010 NZ Business 3 Comments
Tags: , ,

Rowan’s put a few photos up as well – we spent a great day on the Whanganui river yesterday. I’ve enjoyed the river road for years, but this was the first time on the river itself. For me one it is now one of the iconic New Zealand destinations.

Click on the pictures for larger versions.

On the Whanganui River road

Looking towards Jerusalem

Looking towards Jerusalem

Rowan taking in the view

Rowan taking in the view

down a dark alleyway

down a dark alleyway

looking back

looking back

Relax - he's been doing it since he was 5

Relax - he's been doing it since he was 5

the bridge to (and in) nowhere

The bridge to (and in) nowhere

Plenty of people were enjoying the river

Plenty of people were enjoying the river

Looking forward

Looking forward

Oh Telecom XT – you were doing so well

Published January 29, 2010 Internet Business 5 Comments
Tags:

Pathetic.

It’s time for an update to the Telecom XT network map. From the communications I can glean that the latest map looks something like this:

Spotty means you can’t guarantee that you’ll be able to hold on to a call for very long, or that your phone will even work. <update – Chris Quin tells business users that they are getting 90% to mid nineties success in calls being made and mid nineties in calls being retained until hang-up. That’s not that great – 1/10 calls fails to go through and a bit less than 1/10 calls fails during the call.>

No coverage – well don’t even try.

Telecom CEO Paul Reynolds has called for an independent inquiry into what went wrong.

3 suggestions for that inquiry

1: Independent means get someone who is “outside of Telecom or any of its suppliers” to lead the team. The only inside person that would make sense is a direct report to the CEO that is not in a responsible department. Chris Quin, head of Gen-i, may be a starter. <update @chriskeall asked Chris Quin Who will be engaged to do the independent review – and the response was an international professional company that is as yet unnamed is being retained>

2: Focus on identifying what the systemic failures were, and not on a blame game. What were the cultural, system, design, technical, individual and other issues that caused this to happen?

3: Fix the problem, and more importantly, fix the underlying causes. e.g. If one answer is redundancy, then over do it and triple up – you cannot afford to ever have this happen again. There will be a number of underlying causes, and you need to fix them all, starting with the culture that allowed this mediocrity to happen, and having very very good look at the way technology competence has been outsourced and managed. <I asked a question to Chris Quin “Will the independent inquiry cover structure and cultural issues as well as technical issues” and he replied to my question – “Yes” – the review will cover structural and cultural issues. He said that the cultural side has been amazing to watch, that people internally are passionate about making it world class. They will need to look at processes, technology, discipline.>

<update: a new version of the map:>

Is there a point to NZEdge?

Published January 29, 2010 Internet Business , media 5 Comments
Tags: ,

I struggle with NZEdge. They mean well for New Zealand, but I often feel they are disconnected from reality.

It’s owned/run by Brian Sweeney and Kevin Roberts, but it seems to be operated as a one man band by Brian. Both Brian and Kevin are in the advertising and communications game, and this effort is a very poor advertisement for their services.

The NZEdge emails are unreadable – basically a long list of stuff we either already know or don’t care about. It’s a late laundry list of news that we all follow online or offline, and it is formatted soo poorly that it is painful to read or parse.

I forget how I ever subscribed, but I just unsubscribed (and easily – thanks).

Actually I wanted to link through to the email on the website, but all I got when clicking the “Having trouble reading this email? click here” link was this:

So the emails are sent using some sort of marketing tool (constant contact), and the unsubscribe page allows to to subscribe or unsubscribe to both the NZEdge and some newsletter from Kevin Roberts.

Let’s turn to the website. Turn your volume down before clicking that link – there is a very loud loop track “Come to the place you know is home” that does not appear to have any off button. That’s poor etiquette and pretty much going to make sure I never return. I guess it does encourage to to click on something, anything, to stop the music, but that something is going to be whatever it is you need to close the window.

Then there is the explanation about what NZEdge Aims to do. It’s clearly not aimed at geeks:

  • Introduce metaphors and contemporary frameworks for NZers to articulate who we are (positively hammer some boundary poles of the self into the whenua).
  • Articulate and leverage our difference through the edge proposal (landscape, location, attitude, history, Maori, Pacific, character, fringe innovation).
  • Increase the prosperity of the country, in spirit and in pocket, by spreading the edge DNA thickly over the culture.
  • ..

Whatever. There is plenty more of that sort of guff on their about page, under the headings of, wait for it, Story Telling Compatriation (sic), and Index.

There’s a blog – but it’s over at blogspot and not integrated into the site.

The last update was on the 4th of December, the previous one a month before and the text of the posts is identical to that of the emails. So why does the link to “Having trouble viewing this email? Click here” not point to the blog? Well – the last post in fact is several weeks before the last email – so they are not even in sync. So basically the blog is not a blog, but an out of date repository for the old emails. Of course there are no comments on the blog.

They advertise a Twitter account on the blog – “Follow the nzedge.com headlines twice a day on Twitter. Register for updates at http://twitter.com/nzedge” but the last update was on December 28th and the writer is not following people back and engaging in conversations.

No comments on the blog, a handful (relatively) of Twitter followers and no facebook presence. There is no community associated with NZEdge – it is just an email list, and I would guess that very very few people actually read those emails.

Overall

NZEdge feels dead – an initiative started by a couple of guys with a “good idea” back in the day, but one that never moved beyond basic marketing sloganism and email spam. There is zero evidence of community involvement, and it is all one way traffic.

I would even question whether it is having a positive or negative effect on New Zealand.

But that’s me – what do you think? Does anyone find NZEdge useful? Is there a point?

My take on the Apple iPad

Published January 29, 2010 Internet Business 3 Comments
Tags: ,

Everybody seems to have written about the iPad. So here is my take:

1: I will get one.

2: I’m not sure whether to get the wifi model when it comes out in March in the USA or to wait for the 3G model. Or both.

3: I have an iPhone, and iPod touch, a MacBook Air and a Kindle. The iPad fits in there somewhere – it will be very interesting to see how I use it and what other devices suffer as a result.

and that’t it.

Oh – and yes – this was an important release. Apple transformed the music industry with iTunes, the application and telephony industries with the iPhone, and with this device and its successors and derivatives they will transform the software, OS, movie, written media and book industries.

Locking in customers with Xero and Heaps

Published January 29, 2010 Internet Business , NZ Business 1 Comment
Tags: , , , ,

It seems to be an emerging meme – comments in the post about Kiwibank’s Heaps and BNZ’s Xero Personal are worried that banks will create lock-in using personal financial management products. This comment is typical:

Ben Lilley January 28, 2010 at 1:50 pm

I really hope banks aren’t going to start using tools like Xero Personal to lock us in, because I can already see we’re heading down that route with Kiwibank and ASB offering their own.

Let’s get this straight – banks would be foolish to do anything else. The reason to offer these products is to increase the value proposition to the customer and to reduce churn. It’s a lot cheaper than acquiring new customers.

But with that said, there are at least three options for banks to consider:

1: Offer the enhanced services using internal client transactions details only. Charge either nothing or very little for this. I am guessing that some banks will try to charge for it, either at launch or down the track. They will learn about adoption rates, whether paid or unpaid, and make a decision one way or the other. I am picking that while some people will want this service regardless of cost, that providing personal financial management tools will rapidly become a price to play and be free.

2: Offer the enhanced services allowing you to draw in records from other financial institutions. There are three interesting impacts of this:

- Privacy – do you really trust your bank with all of your financial information? Are you comfortable with your bank knowing just how much debt you have?

- Price – banks could feel that they are able to charge for this service, and so price discriminate between those customers willing to pay and those who are not. That will help fund development for the entire suite of tools.

- Information – the reverse of privacy - banks can use the information contained in your other accounts to make better assessments of your risk profile and to offer you tailored products or services. Imagine getting an email “transfer your $1000 loan with Y Bank to us and lower your interest rate costs.” The downside of this is that for some the bank may decide to not offer your products and services, and even degrade the ones you have given their enhanced understanding of your risk profile.

While privacy advocates are noisily defending our rights (and I support them), when it comes down to it we will surrender those rights if it is in our benefit.

3: Offer to upgrade to an external provider that aggregates data from several financial institutions. Thus I start using Xero Personal in BNZ, and I have the option of upgrading to XeroPersonal.com -which is independent of  BNZ. This gives confidence that customers will maintain privacy when getting records from other institutions, and also allows Xero (or whomever) to charge for the service. Xero for business fees are pretty high, but hopefully retail prices will be accessible to the masses – say $20-40 per year.

No cheques sorry L V Martin

Published January 29, 2010 NZ Business 2 Comments

Dear L V Martin & Sons

Hi
I’d really like to pay your invoice. Unfortunately I don’t have a cheque book – not for years now. Please put on your invoice at least one alternative method of payment.
Many thanks

Frustrated of Wellington

P.S. It would have been better if you’d actually fixed my dish drawer in one of your two visits.

New BNZ banking system is coming

Published January 27, 2010 NZ Business 5 Comments


Internet Banking Login, originally uploaded by LanceWiggs.

It looks like BNZ is creaking forward into the modern era with a new banking homepage.

Of interest is not so much the re-skin, but the “We’ll be adding great new features to internet banking”. That would be Xero personal I hope.

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