Ready, Steady, Present!

Just saw a post by 'Marketing Geek' Dave Duarte that goes like this:

For everyone who is speaking at upcoming BarCamps, Geek Dinners, Toastmasters and more… An observation from Woodrow Wilson:

“If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; of fifteen minutes,three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now“

A well prepared presentation shows respect for your audience and their time. It also helps calm your nerves.

Thanks for pointing this out Dave, but I don't agree about the preparation helping one bit to calm my nerves...

We have 10 minutes in which we will try to convince investors to give us R10 million. That's a million a minute! I've been preparing for weeks now, if not all my life!

Do you know where Doha is?

I'm currently using Wi-Fi at Doha International Airport in Qatar. I'll be here for another 4 hours and was very excited to see that they have Wi-Fi available. For free!

The bad news is that you get what you pay for. Pages are constantly timing out, emails aren't being sent etc.

I wish this were a Skyrove hotspot! Skyrove hotspots are faster, not because of the technology, but because of the business model. Skyrove charges per MB, therefore faster internet can lead directly to higher revenues for the Skyrove Hotspot Provider.

So, who wants to start a Skyrove movement in Qatar?

Angry Professor

I'm currently teaching a VB.net course at Varsity College. This is for one of my students... ;-)

Web 2.0 must Grow Up

In the beginning I thought all things Web 2.0 was really cool.

All of a sudden you could do everything from word processing to spreadsheets inside a browser, rather than having to install any applications on your computer. I really love applications such as Writely, Basecamp, Gmail, Google Maps, ZOHO Creator and others.

But the novelty started wearing off pretty quickly when hundreds of web companies started getting onto the Web 2.0 craze. If you want a Web 2.0 word processor, you can now choose from Writely, Writeboards, ZOHO Writer, Rallypoint and Jotspot to name a few.

It seems the rule of thumb for web companies is to take an existing desktop application and simply port it to a web browser using AJAX.

An interesting exception to this is Meebo. Meebo is a Web 2.0 instant messenger application that rolls together AIM, Yahoo IM, ICQ, MSN messenger and GChat into a single, browser-based chat client.

So far it's the same old formula. What makes Meebo interesting though is the fact that they keep doing new things with Instant Messaging that weren't possible in a Web 1.0 world, such as MeeboMe. (See the review TechCrunch. You can also use the Yeah!Fi LIVE CHAT widget right here, unless you're reading this through an RSS feed)

When film first became popular, many theatre companies performed popular plays and recorded the performances on film. But film was a new medium that made new things possible. Imagine all movies today were simply plays being captured on film?

That's exactly what is currently happening with Web 2.0!

We need more companies like Meebo to show us that a lot more is possible when you embrace a new medium and its possibilities, rather than simply regurgitating old 'plays' onto a new format.

'Not Invented Here' Syndrome

In the last year or so I've often approached ICT companies and small ISPs to talk to them about Skyrove. Although many simply 'got it', I often received resistance from others, mostly about some or other bizarre feature request or they'll tell me that they're planning to do the same development but of course it will be better. I would often leave such meetings stunned that these bright people couldn't see my proposal for the 'no-brainer' it is.

I was stunned once again by the controversy that sprang up over a statement made by Esther Dyson when she visited South Africa.

From ITWeb:

Esther Dyson, chairperson of venture capitalist firm EDventure Holdings and a member of the Presidential Advisory Council, added that consumers needed to be entrepreneurial by buying and reselling broadband.

“Though there was a sense of urgency on the behalf of the government, competition must come from the customer,” she noted.

Esther probably had Fon in mind when she made this statement. Like Skyrove, Fon allows folks to easily share their internet using a Wi-Fi router, but with a different payment model. (Per MB vs. Per Day) I spoke to the brilliant Robert Lang at Fon a few weeks ago who said, quite correctly, that South Africa wasn't ready for the Fon model, where we pay as much as $36 dollars for each GB we use.

Unfortunately, Esther's suggestion wasn't too well received. The most common objection being that it is a) not practicable (it is if you're using Skyrove) and b) illegal (also not true).

Perhaps it was just a matter of South Africans not wanting to follow some sage advice from an imported visionary such as Esther Dyson.

Geoff Hainebach, who was formerly CEO at Siemens Telecomms SA, explained it to me as the 'NIH' (Not Invented Here) phenonemon.

From Wikipedia:

"In many cases, Not Invented Here occurs as a result of simple ignorance, as many companies simply never do the research to know whether a solution already exists. Also common, however, are deliberate cases where the organization's staff rejects a known solution because they don't take the time to understand it fully before rejecting it;"

As a result of Esther's efforts, the government & DoC (Department of Communications) is now saying: "It's OK to share your broadband with Wi-Fi" (Read about it on Esther's blog)

This is a major milestone! Thanks Esther for being 'a bit of a troublemaker'.

Henk

p.s. Also see Jarred Cinman's blog for an alternative viewpoint.

Flatrate Schmatrate

Many people want flatrate internet in South Africa where we pay about $36 US for each GB we use. Flatrate broadband is being offered by the likes of IS; at a price. (about $300 US per month, with high latencies and restrictions on P2P)

Imagine the following scenario. You and your mate go to the local shopping mall. He buys a pair of sneakers, a new DVD player, a present for his girlfriend and 3 books at the bookstore. You buy some new socks.

Both of you pay a flatrate of $500 per month for your shopping mall "subscription". I.e. you've just subsidized everything your mate bought. Do you think consumers and shopowners would buy into this concept of shopping mall subscriptions? Of course not!

So why on earth would you want flatrate internet, where the majority of users are subsidizing the excesses of a minority?

It used to be that the internet was about reading emails and surfing the web. These days it's about VoIP, IPTV, streaming audio, podcasts, YouTube and Web 2.0 applications. One person could be getting a lot more value out of an hour on the net than another!

It makes sense to me that the more you 'buy' at this new 'shopping mall', the more you should pay. Of course you should qualify for bulk discounts, but why a flat rate for unlimited usage?

I envisage a world in which everyone is online all the time. There's simply no point in charging for the time you are online. You'll be online from birth. Therefore, Skyrove charges per Megabyte. It's a natural differentiator.

There's a pretty much direct correlation between the value-add of most online services you use and the amount of bandwidth it consumes. Web 2.0 apps use more bandwidth than surfing, VoIP uses more bandwidth than Web 2.0, video uses more bandwidth than VoIP etc.

One of the main reasons we are given is that consumers simply don't understand the concept of MB. The sooner internet operators realise that consumers aren't idiots and that "Megabyte Education" isn't impossible, the sooner we're going to see more affordable internet access.

Gmail has a Daily Quota

I discovered to shock & horror that Gmail wouldn't send any more mails today! Apparently I exceeded my 'daily sending quota'.

Background: This morning I sent out an email to all 270 Skyrove Hotspot Providers. I had all the email addresses in a CSV file and used a Macro to put them onto one line, in the format "x@x.com", "y@y.com","z@z.com" etc.

It seems Gmail couldn't handle the fact that there were inverted commas around the email addresses, so I received 270 'Mail Delivery Subsystem' replies... I removed all inverted commas so the emails now read: x@x.com, y@y.com, z@z.com and sent the email.

Everything went through fine. Then, as I was trying to reply to an email in my inbox, it simply wouldn't send. No message either. So I tried composing a new message. This time it said "You have reached a limit for sending mail"

Clicking on Learn More tells me that "Gmail has a number of sending limits in place to prevent abuse of our system, and to help fight spam. Common causes include: 1. Sending a message to more than 500 recipients... 2. Sending a large number of undeliverable messages. We suggest verifying your contacts' email addresses."

Considering it was a parse error on Gmail's part (I'm sure some programmers will cause it a parse 'feature') I'm pretty riled up about it right now.

Furthermore, we've moved over to 'Gmail for your domain' so there's no other way I can send emails from my Skyrove account...