At Equip Design Integration we like using Festo as a benchmark company. They make pneumatic equipment – beautiful pneumatic equipment:
Do check out the Festo US website for more, but for now enjoy the flying penguins.
<update – now beneath the fold because the video starts automatically> Continue reading “The amazing Festo”
Webstock seem to do so much so well.
Here’s the simple screen I saw after completing a feedback survey on Monday’s workshop with Eric Ries.
The workshop was excellent, and the thank you note was just another item in the long list that made me feel good about the whole affair. Well done.
What do your “success” screens look like? Are they as good as this one? Why not?
With a minor, I think, outage last night, Telecom’s XT isn’t racking up the best track record.
@NealRich is the engineer that put it all together – and to his credit he fessed up to it a FooCamp. I’m a big fan of the XT network when it works – for my iPhone, and so I am grateful for everyone’s efforts at Telecom.
It was remarkable to hear from all of the the Telecom folks at Foo the story of how Telecom responded to the XT outages, and how it helped the organisation embrace the new web communication methods. It was a potentially transformational moment – and certainly a learning one. I hope it continues to help them drive change across the entire organisation.
However I just couldn’t help editing the picture Neal sent me though. Sorry
A gentle reminder to everyone that sends out email messages.
An unsubscribe link is a link that says “unsubscribe” and links directly to a page that says “thank you for unsubscribing” or “are you sure Y/N?”
An unsubscribe link is not “click here to login to your account and change your preferences, which means you need to remember your login details, fail and then retrieve a new password, navigate our complicated site and then figure out how to unsubscribe.”
If you want evidence – well here’s what happened when I started typing “Dopplr.com” into my browser. The two links that Safari prompted for me, aside from the main domain name, are “forgot_password” and “account/email.”
Here’s Why
If a customer is sick and tired of receiving your emails, then every additional email she receives is increasingly annoying, and it makes her feel worse and worse about your company and product.
Eventually she will want out – and for companies it is damage limitation time.
Letting customers out as easily and as pleasantly as possible, leaving them with a final impression of professionalism and just a little humour (if you can pull it off) will soften their negative stance, and while they may not recommend your product to others, they won’t be as keen to disparage it either.
So poor Dopplr – the time has long since passed when I thought your service could be useful or even cool. I don’t want to go to your website, I want you to stop sending me emails and I certainly won’t recommend your service to anyone else.
So I’ve now closed my Dopplr account.
To give credit to Dopplr this was not too hard (once I had done the forgot password dance) The close account link was easy to find, I was able to give reasons why I wanted out, and they tell me that all is now deleted.
Something I wrote about for Idealog seems to be coming true:
Facebook itself will also sink at some stage….
It’s very hard to predict what and when social networks will succeed and fail, but there is probably a simple test to determine the point of failure—and it’s almost certainly related to the date that your mother joins the network.
Now we hear via The Age that parents are arriving on Facebook – and teenagers are leaving:
Figures show that the number of older users of Facebook increased nearly tenfold in America last year, while university-age users declined by 55 per cent….
The online community has responded by creating groups such as ”My grandma is on Facebook”, ”My granny is on Facebook and I love it!” and ”Proud Nannas, Grandmas, Pas and Grandpas on Facebook’
I like using the analogy of bars and nightclubs to think about social websites and dating sites.
The cool people, whoever they are, discover new pubs and bars to hang out, and the crowds slowly build. After a while the venues become too popular, the bars too crowded and the uncool people dominate. The cool folk give up and move on to the next venue, and the cycle continues.
Facebook is a big popular bar where your parents and grandparents are coming to hang out and dance. The lights have been turned up, the music slowed and, well it’s almost time to leave. It is, however, a very big bar, so it will take time to empty, but once the rush starts it could empty pretty quickly (like MySpace). Small networks of friends will move to the next venue, and their friends and their friends will follow.
The big question is what the next venue will be.
Announcing the launch of MyTours – today we have launched our first product on to iTunes.
MyTours is a website that lets you load pictures, sound and text to create a tour. It’s great for Museums, local bodies, tour guides and other people that already have their own tours, and also for people that want to create their own.
Inside the web application it’s a simple process to create a tour, add points or stops and then connect them on a map.
and of course, as you’ve noticed from the screenshots, we then make an iPhone application out of it. The first client is Walkingtours.com.au, and their application is live on iTunes.
This is exciting – as it proves the system works, and, while we are forever tweaking and improving, it means that we are open for business.
The team is impressive. MyTours is founded and led by Glen Barnes, with development for both the website and iPhone application by Nik, Ollie and Jared from Code2Customer and design by Natalie and Emma from Decisive
We believe this has huge potential as organizations embrace the iPhone and iPad. The next step is to bring more cusotmers on board. If you or your organization is interested then try it out, email Glen at hello@mytoursapp.com, call him on +64 9 3600 617 or 021 042 9471 or follow us on Twitter.
Dear Sky Sports
I am writing again.
Last time I received your spam we had a great conversation and you promised to make some changes – which you have, and well done. I pointed you towards New Zealand’s Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 and the the handy guide for businesses,
and I suggested four actions. Let’s see how you did:
So yes – well done. But there is one thing.
You guessed it – it’s the fact that I actually received the email below – and I really didn’t want to. So I have now clicked on the “If you would prefer not to receive communications of this type in the future, please tell us by clicking here” link and clicked “yes” on the functional yet terse page. We shall see whether there is a next time.
Oh – and the sender email address was: skymarketing@mailap.rnmk.com. That doesn’t come across very well.
The signs are not good – friend wrote this to me when he received his version of the email – and he is not happy:
Last time they did this I phoned them and persisted in opting out of everything. But here it is again!
Don’t they ever learn?Now I’m wasting the time of their call centre staff being angry and annoying.
cheers
Lance
Your unsolicited spam:
1: John Key’s speech was not as bad as all that. The consensus around the political bloggers is that he is not doing enough, but I feel that we in NZ are actually doing pretty well (versus other countries) at the moment, and making dramatic changes to the balance of the economy could create wildly unpredictable side-effects.
I like the emphasis on taxes that are efficient, although I still wish for a simple yet low capital gains tax and GST to remain at 12.5% and an end to the distorting taxation system for share investments. And yes – the landlords will get their comeuppance at some stage.
There is surely a lot more to come but I am happy that the Government seems intent on governing by consensus not fiat, and by increment and not by big blundering moves.
2: Bloggers can, and should, apply for the Qantas Media awards, but do so before March 1.
3: There sure is a lot of rubbish out there when searching for SEO and social marketing measurement tools.
4: Do you live in Wellington and are thinking of cycling to work? Sign up for some encouragement and inspiration at Active a2b
5: I am still in absolute awe about the Wellington Sevens experience. It was my first time since the first year – and the event was truly remarkable. Thanks to Natalie and friends for dragging me along.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”>
Lance Wiggs 