Book now pay later with Qantas.com.au

About time – we’ve aways been able to do this with travel agents, and now Qantas lets you schedule a flight and then commit later. Unfortunately there is a $25 deposit, which you lose if you do not commit. It is unclear whether you lose this if you move the flight. (So it isn’t perfect or close).

The next step is to make complicated international trips work as well as good travel agents. I’m a big fan of Flight Center as the staff are extremely well trained, but in this day it should all be possible online.

On IPOs Xero and BF

To me a successful IPO:

is fully subscribed

raises the money at a fair price

results in a healthy listing

Xero was fuly subscribed, BF was not. We shall wait and see whether BF is able to make the second deadline with a meaningful shareholder base.

To determine whether the price was fair, we look at what happens post IPO. If the price skyrockets then the shares were underpriced and more value could have been extracted. If the price drops (or if the issue is undersubscribed) then the reverse is true. XRO is now a bit under $1, and the knives are out, though the drop is not that large for such a thinly traded stock. BF was overpriced as it was not fully subscribed.

A healthy listing means that the shares are actively traded. Active trading means the price remains correct and not volatile, and means that it is worth it for the exchange to have the stock listed. XRO is on the main board of NZX, but as my friend points out in the comments to the previous entry, it is not actively traded. I don’t believe this is showing success, and certainly would not be seen as such on the Nasdaq and the like. I do not know whether that is a symptom of NZ’s tiny market and small number of participants, XRO’s tightly held shares by a few big shareholders or general apathy.

Suffice to say that a market is meant to price shares correctly, and if that is not happening, then we do not have a market.

Xero – 92 cents – what does this mean for burger fuel?

not a great record for Xero shares so far, on very thin trading though. Remember they launched at $1.10, but cost IPO investors $1. If you didn’t get any shares at the IPO, and still believe, then now would be a good time.

nzx

well for a start BFW has not yet managed to raise their minimum $8m, and so delayed their IPO from July 16 to July 23rd. This is not boding well, but at least now ‘founding shareholders will pick up any shortfall’.

It’s Mickey Mouse stuff if you ask me – $1 IPO’s (they call these penny stocks in the USA), unscheduled IPO delays and XRO’s downward price performance as investors begin to understand the financials rather than the hype.

Should you use Amazon?

A few comparisons of NZ versus US shopping prices in Sunday’s SST.

DVD’s are about the same cost in (I buy mine from Amazon), while a lego toy was half price in NZ. It pays to pick and choose it seems.

Generally electronics were much cheaper in the US though. Windows Vista Premium is half price if you buy it in the States, though you’ll either have to use Shipbuktu, find an eBay seller who ships internationally… or just get a mac.

Jalopnik joy

I’m a huge fan of Jalopnik – which covers all new and exciting in the car world. They have largely taken the place of car magazines for me.

anyway – how the heck did this happen?

jalopnik

(the car came in from outside, after going up a mound. The front end of the BMW is in a bad state)

MISAustralia.com – lousy launch

Good: launching a new site

Stupendously Bad: Using AFR.com technology

I don’t know where to sart – such a frustrating experience from a new site..

The articles are displayed in flash. You can’t copy, highlight with a mouse as you read, change the size of the reading window or scroll using the mouse button. In short a decidedly unpleasant reading experience.

This is the article window – look but do not touch is the message.

misaustralia

Worse yet, there are different kinds of media as well. Can you tell which link sends you what media in the screenshot below?

misaustralia

The editor’s pick article gives, no kidding, a 404, “Fast facts” is a flash text article and “Asia Pacific IT leaders survey” is an annoying pdf that pops up, even in Safari where reading pdfs is built in.

In the .multimedia section, the first (IPO bubble) article gives a video, as does the second, but the third is another flash based ‘text’ article. Actually that text article is allegedly a blog. Forget about commenting on the blog of course – it looks exactly the same as the other flash text articles. Meanwhile the text articles opens in their own space, but the videos have other articles around them.

So the site is making me think, which makes me frustrated and I’m getting so hung up on the usability that I won’t read the articles. I feel sorry for the journalists. I feel sorry for me – it is hell visiting that site.

At least it is free. It will remain free right?

Trade Me launches Pay Now

Trade Me have quietly launched Pay Now. This is a really important development, as it is the final barrier falling between Trade Me’s traditional model and true eCommerce.

Now you can Buy and Pay with a credit card in one move, and just walk away from the screen. All for free. (Sellers pay a credit card transaction fee).

That means there is no need to use internet banking to transfer money, which saves at least a day in time, and saves money for those, like me, with accounts that charge fees.

Did I mention this is important? 150 sellers have already signed up (you currently need over 500 feedback to be a seller with Pay Now). I could be nasty and compare that number of sellers to, say, Ferrit. But I won’t bother.

I just bought a book, and the implementation is sweet and seamless – just select one of the addresses you have used before, enter the card details and bang – you are done.

Well done guys. It’s been a while in the pipeline, but this is a new era.

RugbyHeaven soft launch

The guys at Fairfax have quietly launched rugbyheaven.co.nz. (Sadly I am not there to watch)

If you were (a rugby fan and) wondering where YahooXtra’s Marc Hinton and Duncan Johnstone had got to . . . . well now you know. There are also articles there from the likes of The Press’s Richard Fowler, Dom Post’s Ben Fawkes and Waikato Times’s Evan Pegden.

Anyway, have a look, and don’t be afraid of giving some early feedback.

I have to admit I’m a huge fan of Duncan’s proposal to put Rueben Thorne in the AB management not on the field.

NetRatings abandons Pageviews..

..well at least in Australia. It seems that Netratings has woken up to the reality of Web 2.0 and videos, and will use time on at site as their principal measure. That’s fair, as far as I am concerned, and something I’ve advocated for a while. We shuuld remember that NetRatings is not dominant in Australia, as they are here in NZ.

Apparently this comes to NZ, and hopefully then it will eventually encourage NZHerald to abandon their abominable but statistically friendly multi page article strategy.  Of course with that same sort of advertiser-driven statistics-first approach we could expect them to make the site fiendishly difficult to navigate, thus promoting time on site.

Unfortunately this still does not solve for measuring people like me – as I typically have anything from 10 to 50 websites open at once (in tabs, multiple windows and multiple browsers). It also doen’t solve for those using RSS feeds and the like. But it is at least a step in the right direction.

10 tips for Telecom’s outsourcing to Manila

I’m actually ok with Telecom outsourcing part of their broadband help-desk support to Manila – as long as they do it right, which, knowing Telecom, they won’t. Here are some implementation tips for them….

Firstly, don’t let the Filipinos pretend that they are sitting in Waikanae or Auckland. That’s insulting to them and insulting to us.

Second, make sure the training for the Manila based operators is nothing short of excellent. There are five Telecom trainers over there now – I hope they are amongst the best ones you have.

Third, the systems that the operators in Manila see need to be identical to those in New Zealand. We don’t want to have to ‘talk to a real operator’ in order to get anything done. That is not fair on the Filipinos, and it is not fair on the customers.

Fourth, send a bunch more Kiwis over there, and hire expats and ex-residents that live in Manila. The crew will need all the Kiwi localisaton tips that they can muster.

Fifth, use Manila for surge situations, and so use a provider that can instantly upscale the number of operators during outages and emergencies.

Sixth, pay those operators well so that you get high quality staff and so that turnover is low. If you are seeking to squeeze on prices then you’ll have predictable results.

Seventh: Invest a fortune in expertise into the systems that the operators will use. Don’t use the guys Ferrit used to build the systems.
Eighth: Offer a 0900 direct dial service for a high quality local, instant answer 24 hour service. If Trade Me can do it then so can you.
Ninth: Test and keep testing the system, which means calling yourself and not relying on survey results.

Tenth: Make your sucky sucky broadband work properly so that we don’t have to call in the first place, and we are happier if we do have to.

Lose your bags with USAir

 From  a WSJ article comparing the various US airlines on various measures:

“US Airways mishandled about one bag for every 130 passengers — roughly one on every flight.”

Backing up my experiences.

My US airline favorites, JetBlue and Southwest, came in first and second. Again.