Just because you can change the design of your blog, doesn’t mean that you should. That interim design really was ugly….
unmovable ads destroy content…oh and mac surfers are growing
If you are going to host a popout ad, please please please test it with a few browsers. This Computerworld article looked really interesting, until I found it was blocked by an unmovable ad.
I was running Safari, on my Mac, which delivered the point of the article more elegantly than any words.
The NetRatings demographics survey instrument
We all see these, and for some reason recently I’ve been seeing the NetRatings survey a lot when I go to the NZHerald site. Perhaps my cookies keep getting deleted, perhaps I’m using too many different browsers (3 on my mac, 1 at work). The data we in the industry get from these surveys is really valuable, so I’m going to attempt to constructively criticise the survey questions:
Thanks for asking. You should point out that the answers I give you will apply to and be available not just to the NZHerald owners, but for all sites I visit that subscribe to the NetRatings service. That’s pretty much everyone here in NZ (except for Yahoo!xtra).
1: looks ok
2: Actually I access the internet pretty much constantly, and from multiple devices. This makes me feel like the survey is stuck in 1999. Perhaps you could also include either “more than 3 hours a day, 1-2 hours a day” or even “from 2 or 3 places a day, from one place a day”.
Continue reading “The NetRatings demographics survey instrument”
Gareth Morgan & Kiwisaver
Good to see Gareth Morgan putting actions behind words. His newest venture is a KiwiSaver product, and information is available at aptly named Kiwisaver.com. Great scoop on getting that url.
Gareth is on a campaign to remove a lot of the shoddy practices in New Zealand’s investment community.
The new Kiwisaver product is aiming for simplicity and transparency.
“No hidden agendas or fees, no conflicts of interest. We don’t hide fees behind unit prices, bank fees, or insurance premiums. Beware the low headline fee merchants – it’s their hidden expenses you should be terrified of.”
Here is the prospectus, which is hidden in plain view on the site – to get there you need to click on the big red link above the menu line on the right, but I cannot (yet) find it in the menus.
Investors have a simple choice to make – whether they want a conservative, balanced or growth based investment strategy. I like this approach a lot, as the average Kiwisaver investor isn’t going to be up with the latest in portfolio theory.
The fees (in the prospectus) are $200 or 1% per year, whichever is the highest. That’s a great fee for those investing hundreds of thousands, let alone a few thousand. There is also an option to pay $500 and then just the 1% fee from the next year – rather than the $200 fee if that applies. I did a rough model, and, assuming you will invest the same amount as your original investment each year, this option makes sense if you place $2,500 or less each year. At 4% of income that implies an income of $62,500, so this approach makes financial sense for the majority of New Zealanders. Actually it also relates to what you expect the average return to be, which gets quite complicated as you really have to do a monte-carlo of the range of expected returns each month. But $2500 or less per year is a good rule of thumb if you believe returns will be in the 6-9% range, which you should. The benefits of the $500 approach kick in in the fourth year or so.
If you are considering a Kiwisaver scheme, as an employer or employee, then I wouldn’t consider any other.
(Disclosure: I have some money placed with GMI, the company behind GMK, and have also recommended GMI before. That’s it.)
Publishing all those letters to the editor
“Most” of the letters to the editor received by The Economist are published on their website, with the best ones also making the newspaper. The letters are helpfully grouped by the article that they refer to. It is a wonderful synthesis of old and new world media.
This is a classic idea that seems so obvious in retrospect.
Static versus flash
How are my Samoan investments doing?
..my Kiva.org investments that is. A while back I lent money to 5 entrepreneurs via Kiva.org in Keyna and Samoa. The three Samoans have already started repayments, and I have pseudo credit for about 8% of the original amount from each of them. This speed is great, as it keep me engaged in Kiva and demonstrates that my donation loan is working as it should. Once the entire loan is repaid then Kiva makes it trivial to roll them over into new loans.
Amazon logistics: single shipping
I ordered 21 books from Amazon the other day, choosing, as I always do, ‘expidited international shipping’. The books normally get shipped in 2 or 3 boxes, but this was my email inbox this morning…..
Has Amazon figured that it is actually cheaper to ship items by piece to NZ than in a few bigger boxes? Amazon allocates $7.46 per book to ship, which could just be the total cost divided per book, or could relate to the shipment cost.
The process is fine tuned – while 3 different IT books are being shipped in one box, I bought 5 copies of “Don’t Make Me Think” and they are being shipped book by book.
If Amazon have indeed worked out it is cheaper this way, then is really points the finger at the international shipping companies and their pricing structures. It may have something to do with the US Postal Service recently dropping Surface Mail for international shipments.
Amazon would have worked out that their own internal costs of finding the books, ensuring they are in the same place at the same time, and putting them into larger boxes exceeds the extra costs of packing and shipping in consolidated boxes.
Moreover they are doing this on the fly – order by order, book by book. That is pretty cool.
Now – suppose the books are stored in the warehouses pre-packed? Then all Amazon would have to do is take the book out of the shelf, place a sticky pre-paid address label on it and ship. One touch. Once you have that system then all sorts of logistics savings could result: they don’t have to bring the books back to a central sorting location, they can pick up all the books in one area and ship them from that area, they can get the books pre-wrapped before getting to the warehouse and they can get bigger discounts from shipping companies because their orders are simpler to handle. I also imagine that handling damage would drop way down, and the entire process lends itself to automation.
Or you could say that the pre-packed books would be too big, so I’m guessing that they are pre-wrapped in plastic, and then put into a box/bag as they are picked up and tagged.
Amazon realize they are very good at this, and so are now offering to “fulfillment by Amazon” for non-Amazon independent sellers, including large eBay sellers.
It is stunning really. I’m going to be very interested to find out what delivery company was used for my huge incoming pile of packages, and where the books were shipped from…
Church, State and PCWorld
1: Draft (or edit) an article called “Ten Things We Hate About Apple”
2: Get a call from your business-guy CEO who likes getting calls from Steve Jobs – asking to kill the article
3: resign. editorial integrity is everything.
4: End up a hero on the web – including slashdot.
Fantastically well done to former PC World Editor in Chief Harry McCracken
Foolish publisher of the year awarded to heavy handed PC World CEO Colin Crawford. (no comments on his blog – I wonder why…)
If only other editors would follow Harry’s example. I’m thinking of those that run large TV cable networks in the USA. We really are very lucky here in New Zealand where editorial really is separated from business.
TheAtlantic.com
The Atlantic Monthly magazine continues its transformation from an excellent magazine and ok website into an excellent magazine and an excellent website.
The site now features A lister bloggers Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan, along with James Fallows and Ross Douthat who are a senior Atlantic correspondent and a senior Atlantic editor.
The homepage, as I write this, still has not changed, and nor has Andrew Sullivan’s blog. But look at the other three bloggers to see elements of the new design, which apparently is launching imminently.
Moving Matt Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan (who moved in Feb, 2007), both of whom have very strong independent presences, over to theatlantic.com would have taken a lot of clout. or money.
It’s a smart magazine that wields the power of bloggers to drive traffic and opinion. Well done to The Atlantic Monthly*
*that’s the official, legal, name – the magazine I have next to me is titled “The Atlantic”.
Moyers, Internet and TV
Bill Moyers, a respected journalist from PBS, has come back from retirement in an astonishing way.
Not only did he launch a new PBS series (Bill Moyers Journal) with an excellent documentary entitled Buying the War, he has backed it up with an excellent website.
The video of each program is available for free – in a flash player or you can download an mp3 audio podcast..
For bloggers, or those of us in third world countries (or NZ) and fickle broadband, there are show transcripts. Here’s a great one from the Jon Stewart interview.
The site is backed up by a blog, and there are plenty of links to sources and extra information pertaining to each program.
In short it is a stunning mix of the best of both media – it amazes me that non-profit PBS is the organization to lead the way. Kudos to them.
RightMedia demo
Google Yahoo! <thanks Dave and Mauricio> just purchased RightMedia – which is some sort of online advertising marketplace.
This deal has uncovered the world’s slowest but actually kinda fun demo – check out their homepage and click on the Take the Tour button.
It’s been 5 minutes so far and the demo still hasn’t told me anything I couldn’t read in one sentence. It’s almost as if the demo creators knew that I’d be doing three other things at once (blogging, reading other websites, cooking dinner)
Blenheim air show
Somewhat randomly I went to the Blenheim airshow the other week. It was remarkably good.
I was on the phone to a colleague in Australia when this trundled around the corner:
Before you knew it a full-on dog fight was in progress, complete with bombs:
Some airforce stunt pilots made for this lovely shot:
While for a lot of people this stunning Catalina float plane stole the show:
Orcon marketing
Did Orcon think that this was really the appropriate way to market their brand at Armageddon? What is it with ISP’s and marketing campaigns in NZ?
Worldwide Crackberry
Has someone actually done it? The biggest pain when travelling is that either your international friends and associates need to call your foreign number, or you have to buy a local phone or sim card.
There are problems with both – the first incurrs costs for both you and your callers, and many in the USA in particular have internatonal call-barred phones, courtesy of inward looking corporates.
The second issue is that those pre-pay phones (I recommend Wal*Mart for the USA) don’t roam outside the country where you bought them, and expire before you come back. You also have to start toting multiple phones around. So you are constantly moving phones, and your callers have to know which number is currently active.
Enter the Blackberry 8830 and Verizon Wireless‘s new Global BlackBerry service.
The phone costs US$400, and has both GSM and CDMA EVDO capability. The dual frequency roaming I don’t care about – after all GSM works everywhere.
But that Global Blackberry Service local number feature is the interesting part. What they appear to offer, at $US7o per month, is global email access and the ability to have a local number (for more $ I guess) in a bunch of countries. If they get this right this would be the perfect corporate traveller and even backpacker accessory.
But let’s look at that list of countries: “Australia, Europe, parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North America”.
I don’t see New Zealand in there – so I guess it will be the iPhone after all. Meanwhile Verizons international roaming prices have a way to go before sanity.
While at least Sprint is also doing this we are not yet seeing all the elements in place for proper global roaming at local prices. This is Vodafone’s market to take, but they are incredibly slow at doing so.
Lance Wiggs 