a simple new category on Trade Me., but some pretty serious efforts have gone on behind the scenes to make credits accessible to everyone. Well done Trade Me, Meridian and M-Co.
Now the question is whether trade Me dares sell to overseas buyers, where the market is huge….
yet another social networking site – Multiply – looks to be encroaching on, mainly, Friendster’s space. They offer more privacy options than facebook and myspace, and a much cleaner more professional look.
On Jun 6th Multiply boasted 5m members, up from 4m 2.5 months before, when usage metrics were up over 500% from the year before. So yes – a solid site, slick and with great growth. It’s a good platform to base a personal-oriented blog that you want to keep relatively serious.
I’m about done with social networking though, and I already have a blog……
Wired has a nice little demonstration of what is wrong with the market structure for mobile telephony in the USA. The four major carriers have each somehow crippled the Razr2.
AT&T has high speed data with HSPDA, and the Opera web browser but does not play video on the outside screen. It, along with most of the others, costs $300 with a one year contract.
Sprint has video on the external screen but slower internet access and a different, though ok, browser.
T-Mobile’s RAZR2 is Linux based and plays more audio types. No word on data speeds.
Verizon (who amusingly once fought for ownership of Verizonsucks.com) has an archaic WAP browser and, it seems, a walled garden marketplace. yuk.
This is before comparing call and data plans. It creates such a ridiculous level of confusion for everyone in the market – from product manufacturers who have to spend extra time and money on customisaton, to consumers who wonder what the heck they are buying and to retailers who wonder what the heck they are selling.
That extra time spent on customising and launching these high tech fashion products means that the USA will maintain its technological gap from more efficient markets.
No wonder Apple is cleaning up by making it simple for consumers to understand their product.
In the meantime it is possible, but painful, to buy a SIM card to plug into your unlocked super-cool foreign GSM phone, or you can go to Wal*Mart and pick up a cheapo prepay number.
It’s strange, but this post on Love Calculator that I wrote months ago consistently gets a few views every day. It even seems to be growing.
It seems that our scamming friends are wandering the world. Just this week there have been a comment from the UK (a 14 year old girl) and a ‘contact me’ from Canada (a guy) from folk asking how to be removed. So I thought I’d dig in a little, find out more about these expensive love calculators and determine how to remove yourself from their services.
Meanwhile Google ads for these calculators are well in swing over here in Australia – Google, you are not doing yourselves any favours by taking money from people that scam 14 year old girls..
But first – not only are the lover calculators geographically spread, they also vary in look. The original look and feel (well when they started their dodgy NZ Google ads) was this:
Which has now turned into this, which is actually a big usability improvement for the primary goal of delivering expensive TXTs:
That purple bit is the T&C’s sentence stating how much this will charge your cell phone, and was emphasised no doubt because of the ASA finding. Purple on blue is better, I suppose, than blue on blue. White on blue would have been better.
You can also find this look in Canada (and elsewhere) – where about half of the text below the fold is highlighted, but the amount they charge you is lost in all the boldness and blue on blueness.
Here’s one from the USA. It’s a different look, but the same old scam:
and there is also this other look – this one from Australia
These looks are, I guess, constantly updated and are, I know, available at a mixture of domain names. I can’t find the UK offering.
So – below the fold is what I found – how much you get hit for and how to remove yourself by country. The worst is Australia, where you get whacked for $26.60 straight away.
I’m not linking to these sites as I refuse to give them the Google juice
<update – check the comments – all the number’s you need are there>
<update 2 – more sites that can help. These scammers change their operating names all the time>
Rip Off Report (one person’s saga – solved)
Class Action Connect – for those that want revenge. Get enough sotries and some lawyers may take interest. Personally I think this is an easy win for a US based class action suit, but it is really hard to hit them across all jurisdictions.
A planetfeedback complaint about tones4us.com. It seems the company also has a long line in ringtones.
A Wired blog entry about the Secret Crush Facebook application that installs spyware. Stay away! My Luv Crush is also mentioned, as is owners of all this – Mobile Messenger.
A blog entry by DragonTail about the Love Soul Mate scam.
A series of comments about 1-800-416-6129
Gadget Inspector warns not to sign your friends up to these as a joke.
HitUSA.com warns about Got Spring Crush/gotspringcrush.com, ugotacrush.com and ugotcrushedon.com.
Juha wrote about this in NZ back in March 2007, then again in Feb 2008.
Zhenya Tsvetnenko’s the guy behind it all – he’s a Russian expat that has made a fortune.
Continue reading “Remove yourself from love lover and crush calculator txts”
Sony really should have owned the digital music layer market – after all they had the orginal walkman, and the mini-disc player was dominant in many geographies.
But they lost billions in sales by trying to restrain copying of music through horrendous digital right management which crippled their devices. You couldn’t copy data on to mini-discs, and even now copying music between theri devices is fraught with peril and hacks.
Well – it seems they have finally woken up, and removed their proprietory encoding mechanisms from the Walkman range, and soon from the PSP.
Hopefully it won’t take them long to figure out that what works for music will also work with video – and move to remove the DRM from Blueray.
Sony has the power to do this as they are also Sony entertainment, with a vast catalogue of video and music. But why they didn’t embark on this path years ago remains a mystery for the ages.
So I just bought a few SNE shares – just in case they really get it…
Apple really is transforming an industry – Nokia has unashamedly pre-announced an iPhone clone. That link is complete with video goodness.
The more important thing to me is Apple’s ability to change the market structure. Currently there is far too much power with the telcos, and by launching the iPhone Apple has managed to grab some (10% it seems) of their revenues.
The end game is we pay a set amount for wireless IP access, use the unlocked device of our choice and the applcation (phone, internet, sms) of our choice.
The big elephant in the room for me is the possibility of P2P mesh comms displacing telcos. Nobody is pushing these as there is a limited revenue model. It is, however, a public good thing – we all win if we do this. If the device manufacturers can wean themselves from telcos then it will start to be in their interest to go mesh – after all it will be all about the devices.
Sadly the telcos are generally dumb enough to fight this all the way to bankruptcy, rather than take the lead into a new market and create new revenue models.
The top 2 stories on Scoopit right now are shills – one for ‘inpageads’ (to much text te read, but some sort of ad thing) and another for ‘Tubby‘ (an orange, usable Ferrit killer in its infancy.)
It’s a shame. Scoopit had (or perhaps still has) a chance at being the Digg for NZ, but their woefully slow performance killed it for me. It got so bad that I could not post a link there, so I just stopped doing so.
Meanwhile the virility of the site has gone, with articles on the front page moving very slowly, and now the marketers have taken over.
Sad.
Please clean it up guys. I notice the speed is up to scratch now – perhaps the thresholds need to be lowered to get more action?
Scoopit!
Three clients this year have all come in with record profits. It’s a symptom of what they are – excellent companies.
BHPB made record EBITDA of US$20.1 Billion, and profits of $13.7 billion. Thats on the back of some stellar commodity prices and solid volume increases. Records in Aluminium and Stainless Steel Materials helped things along. (I consulted 2 years back to Bayside Aluminium (record production this year) and am now with BHPB’s Nickel West Kwinana Nickel Refinery)
Trade Me made $50.4m for the year – slightly above a pretty solid target, and double last year.
Fairfax announced EBITDA of AU$571m, up 13.1%, with Fairfax NZ down slightly to NZ$185.9m EBITDA. (I consulted on and off to Trade Me, Fairfax Digital NZ and have a small ongoing relationship with Fairfax NZ)
I don’t get to say this very often due to regulatory requirements, but I’d BUY FXJ, and BHP – they are great companies.
So I have IraqSlogger on the list of sites that I visit every day or two. It’s a long list, and the Slogger is good for a very quick scan of the news from Iraq, but it has not been that useful.
Well – they’ve just announced that they are gong fully subscription-only from Sept 1. Fair enough – they have been struggling to get ads as the topic is pretty tough to advertise on.
But the price. The price. They want a staggering $59.95 PER MONTH. That’s the discounted rate, a saving of $20 from the $79.95 per month list price. Suffice to say they’ll be well off my list.
I guess they have realised or decided that mostly professional journalists are visiting, and they think that what they are offering is worth the investment by editors. All I can say is that it is sad to see a resource like this disapear, especially at a time whne Iraq news is so passe.
via Stuff
“In April, Telecom responded to the Government’s proposal to split the company into three businesses operating at arm’s length with a counter-proposal to sell off its copper phone network to a third party or Telecom shareholders taking a stake in the proposed new network company.
A Telecom press release described the Government’s proposal as “fundamentally unworkable” and uneconomic.
The hard-line approach was driven to a large degree by Mr Bogoievski, the source said.
The source said the board’s change of mind on how to manage the company in the new regulatory environment left Mr Bogoievski and other senior managers, who wanted to continue to fight greater government intervention, at odds with the board and caused a great deal of tension.
It is understood Mr Bogoievski, a candidate for the chief executive job, wanted to maintain an uncompromising stance if he was selected.
Good riddance then (if true).
This demonstrates that Mr. Bogoievski did have a good vision of the nature of the future marketplace. He focussed, it appears, on milking the monopoly cow for short term gains, and was therefore part of the underinvestment that eventually led to Goverment intervention. At the end of it all it was not customer first.
An alternative approach would have been figuring out how to make the most of the Government’s (and your customer’s) passion for change, rather than fighting the us and them battles of the past.
Another source expected acting chief executive Simon Moutter to leave Telecom, describing him as a “hawk” in his approach to Government relations, and possibly unwilling to change stance under a new and more conciliatory chief executive.
The source said one reason Mr Moutter left his position as chief executive of lines company Powerco was because of his disdain for the level of Government regulation in the electricity sector, and the increasing intervention in telecommunications could prompt him to move on.
Ditto. Both these gentlemen failed badly on “Strategy”, the very first of four “must-haves” from the Evergreen work that shows whether compaies are great or lousy. A big part of Strategy is a clear understanding of where the market is going in the future.
Simon – perhaps you too should fall on your rusty sword from those ancient battles, and save new CEO Paul Reynolds the trouble.
Guy Kawasaki lists 6 tips for responding to Craigslist ads, which would also apply to non-corporate online ads on, say, Trade Me Jobs.
Guy’s list is simple: apply fast, use a proper cover letter, respond to the employer’s questions fast, respond to the employers questions well, indeed go above and beyond when responding to those questions, and don’t be stupid….
The rules around replying quickly to a job advertisement don’t necessarily apply to corporate roles being recruited for by HR departments or external firms. That’s because these processes often have apply-by dates, and the responses are looked at in bulk on that date. Personally I always tried to avoid that process, as it’s a potential sign of a lumbering bureaucracy.
AwayPhone has what seems like a good solution if you are going to travel to a bunch of different countries. It only works for home phones from the USA, UK/Ireland and Canada at the moment, but from there you can roam pretty much anywhere, including Australia and NZ.
The Register has a good review. It is not perfect, but better it seems than using multiple phones. As I currently have, err, several* phones, I certainly understand the attraction.
Basically you make a call, which gets dropped, and then you get called back by a voip service. The voip service connects through to the other caller. You have a local number in the away country, so local callers do not have to dial your home country, but can still be called on your home number.
It also works with SMS, but not, alas, data. So, until this arrives here in better form, with data and local access, I’ll stick to my multiple phone strategy:
*Right now I have:
a NZ phone (Nokia 9500 communicator)
an Australian phone (an indestructible Nokia that gets vibrated harshly on my Austrian motorbike)
a US phone (cheap pre-pay locked Nokia, purchased from Wal*Mart for about $50. This is the cheapest way to make calls in the US)
a South African phone. Another cheapo Nokia. Somewhere.
and the new Nokia E90 Communicator, which is being delivered to me this week sometime. It does pretty much everything, ad will replace the 9500, which is pretty much destroyed by now.
And yes, I trust there will be an iPhone in my future, once the dust settles from the unlocking adventures, and once it is high speed (ie. European).
I’m pretty convinced that a two phone strategy is best – e.g. a local phone (Australia right now) and a home phone. That let’s the locals call you without paying over the odds, and of course makes it cheaper to call them. When I travel through several countries on a trip then I try to get sim cards (or locked phones) for each one. I’d really love a phone with multi-sim card capability.
I also like the strategy of a bunch of people that I hung with in the Philippines 2 years back – one work phone (often the 9500/E90) and one personal phone (something fun). You can turn the work phone off in the evenings.
Fairfax NZ Digital chief Bernard Hickey is now blogging, at Show Me the Money.
I worked with Bernard at Fairfax when he came across from the Independent Financial Review to run Fairfax Digital. Good guy.
Bernard is first and foremost a professional journalist, and is always good for some insights and opinions on what the economy is doing and what is going on in the worlds of business & Government. I guess blogging let’s him keep writing while he is also running things at Stuff, RugbyHeaven and other new sites.
Seeing as he is in Wellington three days a week, Bernard almost qualifies as another Wellington Blogger.
Welcome aboard….
Here’s a review of MYOB on Apple’s Australian store. Now it may have been a shill, but there are still the 101/111 people that “found the review useful”.
This has to be the worst software system that I have ever used, how it could be for a mac I’ll never know. Totally scatterbrained layout with infinite overlapping windows, and virtually no flow. The Human-factors interface appears nice and neat on the surface and then fails completely. The User guide is incomplete, tech support is outrageous, Tutorials must be purchased online. I feel completely used, and I’m selling my software online just as soon as I can. Even trying to register the software was a event. I didn’t buy an inexpensive small business software program to spent 4 times the amount to learn how to use it. This software may appear to be great when someone tells you what it can do, but if you cant even set it up you’ll never use it. I would avoid this software at all costs..
and another, from Amazon
I’ve used MYOB AccountEdge (version 4, release 7.50, for Macintosh) for nearly 18 months. Buying this software was one of my worst mistakes….
along with a note of warning from a otherwise happy customer:
MYOB has a great product here that has the opportunity to rule the SOHO Macintosh space. Unfortunately, their inability to provide customer support limits their growth potential.
just look at how ugly and how unintuitive this is…
Message to Xero – hurry up already…..
[update Xero General release press release]
Just do it.
Sure NZX is tiny compared to other companies and markets, but if we want the NZX to keep improving, and we do, then we need someone of Mark’s quality there.
and this is how much you pay for that.
Lance Wiggs 