Tuesday, November 20, 2007

South African Web 2.0 Startup Gets 35 Million Rand


I'm really stoked to see that my friend and Skyrove shareholder, Vinny Lingham, has just raised $5 million venture capital for Synthasite!

To put that in context: $5 million is almost R35 million.

This is by far the biggest Web 2.0 investment in South Africa to date and is even more significant considering that SynthaSite only launched into Beta two weeks ago.

The greatest thing about this is that it proves that anyone with a great idea and a lot of energy can launch a multimillion Rand business right here in South Africa. So if you have anything up your sleeve and happen to be graduating this year, say "no" to McKinsey/Accenture/Deloitte and start your own business!

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Surf the Net While Taking a Crap

Although this isn't quite what I had in mind, Rafiq Philips saw one of Skyrove's Wi-Fi hotspot stickers in the Woodstock Lounge's bathrooms, took a photo and posted it on Facebook with the following label: "Woodstock Lounge's Skyrove hotspot in the Gents. Surf the net while taking a crap."

27dinner October

What a great evening! Once again some of Cape Town's finest young geniuses and technology entrepreneurs getting together to generally be merry and learn from each other. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Here's a quick video from the great folks at Zoopy:

Monday, October 22, 2007

Backpackers Lodge for Bloggers

I generally try to stay in backpackers' lodges when I travel and don't have friends to bunk with.

The nice thing about backpackers' lodges is that you can mingle with other young people from different countries with different ideas.

The problem is that I'm starting to feel a little bit older, am travelling mostly on business and find myself not wanting to mingle as much with the raucous beer-drinking Aussies as I used to.

Wouldn't it be great though, if we had a few backpackers around the country that were focused on new media travellers? You know, the young "big idea" types who would prize a lounge with plenty power plugs, good coffee and Wi-Fi over a common room with a pool table and DSTV?

Please leave a comment if you think it's a good idea, know of something similar anywhere or if you have any ideas to add!

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Africa's First Wi-Fi TreeSpot

See the video below! Thanks to Zoopy for making it.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Animal Lessons in Management

I got this by email recently:

Lesson One

An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing. A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, "Can I also sit like you and do nothing ?"

The eagle answered, "Sure, why not."
So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle, and rested. Suddenly, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Management Lesson ?
To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.
Lesson Two
A turkey was chatting with a bull. "I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree, " sighed the turkey, "but I haven't got the energy."

"Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?" replied the bull. "They're packed with nutrients."
The turkey pecked at a lump of dung, found it actually gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fourth night, he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree.

Management Lesson ?
Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.
Lesson Three
A little bird was flying South for the winter. It was so cold the bird froze and fell to the ground in a large field. While it was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on it. As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, it began to realize how warm it was. The dung was actually thawing him out! He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him.

Management Lesson ?
1. Not everyone who craps on you is your enemy.
2. Not everyone who gets you out of crap is your friend.
3. And when you're in deep shit, it's best to keep your mouth shut!
This ends your management course.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

GeekRebel Launches

I've started a new site called GeekRebel!

I wanted to refocus Yeah!Fi on my personal experiences as an entrepreneur and have another space to discuss tech topics that are of interest to me. It's still early days, but I envision that GeekRebel will have a handful of contributors.

The focus will be mostly on technology, the people behind it and how it can change our world.

Head over to GeekRebel, grab the feed and watch it closely!

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Fool me Thrice, See you in Prison

For the 2nd time this year we've been a victim of a thief. This time a professional conman who appears to go from business to business running a somewhat elaborate scam.

We've been suffering a backlog of installations and customer call-outs, so when we received a response to a recent ad for a network engineer, we didn't do a proper background check before starting our new employee. (Let's call him 'Ant' for now).

Ant was working as a contractor to a company in Somerset West, where he was on 24 hour notice. He could start with us immediately. He needed a laptop computer for work, and told us that he could purchase the laptop he's been using from his previous employer. We offered to pay R3800 upfront, and he would pay back R3000 to us over 3 months.

He provided us with the account details and we transferred the money to a certain CJ Blignaut's Nedbank account on Tuesday, 28 August.

Having received the laptop, Ant started working with us on 29 August. (He warned that he might be a bit late, as he would first need to go to his previous employer. He showed up saying that they took a bit longer than he thought, as they first did a security search on the laptop he was taking to make sure there was no confidential information on it)

He jumped into the job with vigour! He took initiative and solved customers problems. He showed a very clear understanding of computer networks and was extremely patient and polite with customers. He didn't waste time but would quickly identify network problems, suggest solutions and execute them.

Within a few days he had seen more then 3 dozen clients and implemented strategies to improve customer service systems.

Tino, my partner, and I were thanking our lucky stars that we had found someone this good in a market where skills are scarce!

When he arrived last Monday, he told us that his apartment was robbed on the weekend. Apparently he had taken his grandmother to the Two Oceans aquarium, before having a picnic in the Company Gardens and then going to the Cape Town Museum. When they got back to his apartment, the place had been cleaned out. Including the food in his cupboards, his rent & car money which was in his wardrobe, and of course, the laptop that we had paid for the week prior.

We purchased a new laptop the same morning, this time for R5300, in order for Ant to continue doing his work.

Then on Monday afternoon, Ant sent me an email, saying that he was in a bit of a fix as he had to pay his rent and car repayments urgently. His mom would give him money, but as it was in the trust (his father passed away in January), it would take 2 weeks. He would borrow R4200 and pay it back to us within 2 weeks. I told him I would have to discuss it with my partners and let him know on Tuesday.

I felt uncomfortable with his request and discussed it with Tino, who was also not comfortable with it, especially as we haven't completed a full reference check. We discussed the possibility that he could be a fraudster, and both felt that things were fishy. Not because there were holes in his story, but because it all seemed so perfect!

We both felt guilty about suspecting him of foul play, but decided that we should contact his previous employers.

Early Tuesday morning I phoned his previous employer, who told me that he had nothing good to say about Ant, that Ant had left there on the 9th of August and took a laptop computer with him, that the employer had to go and retrieve from him on Friday night! (The same laptop that we paid for and was "stolen")

He also told me that Ant started working there on the 25th of July, and then simply didn't pitch on the 9th of August, claiming that he had to go to hospital to have a polyp removed. He carried on claiming that he was in hospital due to complications. However, before he left his previous employer, he also managed to "borrow" money using some elaborate story for needing it urgently and that he would pay it back as soon as the "trust" paid it out.

When Ant showed up for work Tuesday morning, Tino and I sat him down and informed him that we knew what was going on. We asked him to read, respond to, and sign a settlement in which he agreed to pay back the R3800 by 5pm. He had no response and signed the agreement.

However, 2 hours later he sent us an email saying that he felt it was unfair that he should pay back the full amount, as he had worked for us for 4 days already and that, in either case, he would have paid back the R3800 from his salary and that I should call him to discuss payment terms. (He probably doesn't care much for the fact that it costs thousands to recruit staff nor the days it's taken us to ensure the integrity of our customer information) He also carried on about us "umiliating" (sic) him in front of the other staff.

Earlier this year we were victims of theft by a partner company, and I spent thousands of Rands on a mediation process, believing that the culprit had made a naive mistake and that he would see the error of his ways and perhaps become an upright businessman. The mediation process turned out to be a time-buying exercise and the gent completely ignored the mediation agreement he had signed, claiming it was not legally binding!

Needless to say, I've had it with crooks, scamsters and liars. This time we went straight to the police and filed charges of 'Theft under False Pretense'.

Although I feel sorry for Ant, in that he is a seriously smart guy who could make a very successful (honest) living, I feel good about the fact that by putting him behind bars I'll be protecting other small businesses from becoming victims.

"Evil prevails when good men do nothing" - Edmund Burke

Friday, September 07, 2007

Blogging from ISPA iWeek - Part 2

Nick Wenban-Smith, Senior Legal Counsel at Nominet UK from gave an enlightening talk about domain name disputes. He mentioned a few interesting cases. In one case, a cyber squatting company registered Harrods.com. Harrods, instead of going through a dispute process, decided to sue straight away. Judgment was made against the cyber squatters, with costs! Considering what Harrods lawyers must cost, this led to the cyber squatters having to liquidate.

In another case, a Brit innocently registered itunes.co.uk before Apple launched its iTunes service. Apple decided to strong arm the guy by sending threatening letters. He got highly peeved by this and tried to sell to Napster! Although I like the way he gave Apple the finger, the courts didn't. It could now be shown that itunes.co.uk was an 'abusive' registration, and not an 'innocent' registration.

The (in)famous Rudolph Muller presented some interesting findings from a recent Broadband Survey. Although it appears customers are happy with the service they are getting from ISPs, they are not happy with the service received from Telkom. He also raised the concern that ISPs might have become accustomed to the monopolistic Telkom landscape and built business models accordingly. I suspect this is a bit like a frog being slowly boiled: Jumping out of the pot might cause enough shock to kill it!

Beaunard Grobler from the SAPS Cybercrime Unit gave a talk about fighting cybercrime in South Africa. It appears they are making good progress battling child porn, Nigerian 419 scams and Phishing crimes. He did admit that they are short-staffed and have problems retaining staff. I think most cybercrime these days is related to industrial espionage and is causing millions of Rands worth of damage to companies, large & small. Let's hope the SAPS expands this division dramatically.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Geek Dinner Powerpoint Karaoke

I'm very stoked to see that the London Geek Dinner website is using my definition to answer the question: 'What is a Geek?'

A geek is NOT a computer nerd… A geek is not someone who wears 2 inch thick glasses and giggles at the sight of a woman.

A geek is someone who is curious, information hungry and on a constant quest for more knowledge. According to Wikipedia, a “geek is an individual who is fascinated by knowledge and imagination

Geeks use information, logic and their imagination to make decisions or come up with new ideas. You get different kinds of geeks. Of course you have computer geeks but you also have botany geeks, philosophy geeks, music geeks, design geeks and (gasp!) marketing geeks!

So why the popular association of ‘geek’ with ‘computer nerd’? Because almost all geeks use computers. Why? Because a computer is the greatest information tool around and all geeks are information addicts. Many geeks will become extremely adept at using this tool and take some extra time learning how to get the most out of it.


One of the things they started doing at the London Geek Dinner is Powerpoint Karaoke. 5 speakers present slides that they they've never seen before!



I'll definitely try to attend the next time I'm in London!

Blogging from ISPA iWeek - Day 1 Presentations

Day One's presenters' slides are now available for download.

Blogging from ISPA iWeek - Day 1

I'm blogging from iWeek. Some excellent speakers so far and interesting chats with some of the thought leaders in the South African Internet space.

Njeri Rionge
, CEO of Ignite and founder of Wananchi, one of Kenya's largest ISPs, gave a talk about the face of the internet in Africa at the moment. Only 4% of Africa's population has access to the internet. She posed the question: "What do we as Africans want from Africa?"

Bill Manning gave a surprisingly interesting talk about IP version 6, and how Telcos are creating barriers to implementation. He made the strong statement that the 'internet is on its last legs' using the current IPv4 system.

Niall Murphy from TheCloud spoke about their very successful WiFi business with more than 10,000 hotspots in Europe. He spoke about the opportunities for service providers as long as they realise that the future is in mobile devices. I met Niall a bit more than a year ago when he was in South Africa. He gave me some good advice, but being young(er) and cocky(ier), and perhaps a tad too idealistic, I didn't listen to him. Needless to say, I learnt the lessons the hard way (or stupid way, depending how you look at it. In essence Niall put the point across that it's dangerous to build large public outdoor Wi-Fi networks, as the penetration into buildings is very low and Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices are not everywhere, yet.

Rael Lissoos from Magnolia Wireless gave a very entertaining presentation about how they've been delivering Triple Play (Voice, Data, Video) in the townships. They started by connecting schools to each other, which then progressed into a whole host of other services at much lower rates than our incumbent telcos are charging.

More after lunch!

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Nurture the Geek Stars!

I had the great fortune to meet Rajendra Pawar, the founder of India's National Institute for Information Technology (NIIT) in Durban yesterday.

Rajendra is in South Africa as an advisor to Thabo Mbeki’s International Advisory Council on Information Society.

Rajendra has been instrumental in developing India's IT skills base to what it is today since founding NIIT 24 years ago.

He has since then expanded NIIT into other countries and has gained plenty of experience dealing with governments and helping to shape their policies to accelerate skills development with the same success as in India. Let's hope our government heeds his counsel!

The 2 topics at this year's panel were the high cost of broadband and our skills shortage crisis.

I spoke briefly with Rajendra about the foundation of 'Centres for Excellence' where talented students would be spoilt with extra attention and resources.

I believe that it's crucial that we establish schools for gifted children and identify kids from around the country at an early stage and give them a higher quality of education.

Of course it's not a very popular idea in South Africa at this stage. It would be seen as unfair for the state to single out smart children and treat them differently. Besides for egalitarian ideology, why spend extra resources on an 'elite' few, when we are struggling to even get textbooks to the majority of pupils?

Post WW2, similar thinking was pervasive in the US and discrimination based on a genetic factor such as intelligence was not something the state would engage in.

This changed very suddenly in 1957 when the Soviets launched Sputnik. Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce commented on the launch, referring to Sputnik's beeps as "an intercontinental outer-space raspberry to a decade of American pretensions that the American way of life was a gilt-edged guarantee of our national superiority."

Besides for an increase in scientific research funding, the foundation of DARPA and NASA, the school curricula were also dramatically overhauled.

Prestigious schools for gifted children were founded and smart kids were 'head-hunted' from schools around the country and given better teachers, more resources and advanced topics taught using new techniques.

Our schools will gladly identify top rugby players and athletes at a young age and send them on special training camps or provide scholarships to the top sports schools in the country.

Imagine we forced our best athletes to run only as fast as the average speed of the rest of the team in the run up to the Olympic games? Sounds bizarre, doesn't it?

However, this is exactly what we are doing with intellectually gifted kids in public schools. Although our sports stars will inspire school kids to give it their best and often promote South Africa as a brand overseas, it’s our ‘geekstars’ who will come up with cures for diseases, solutions for poverty, software that aids medication delivery and build businesses that will employ thousands and bring millions of Rands into the country.

Although South Africa is not in a Cold War with any other country, we are definitely at war with poverty and poor education. Let's start fighting!

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Mate of the Week - Instant VPNs


I recently discovered Hamachi, a very neat little application that allows you to establish a Virtual Private Network (VPN) within in minutes without configuring any routers or firewalls across any network.

For the non-techies out there: A VPN fools your computer into thinking it's on a private network, thus allowing you to share files & folders, print to shared printers or, in my case, play a quick game of DotA with a friend of mine without needing to organise a LAN party.

Hamachi works on some of the same Peer-to-Peer principles that allow Skype to bypass most firewalls (and Vodacom/MTN engineers). The interface is uncluttered and ridiculously simple.

Hamachi comes 'freemium', meaning you can get a basic, yet fully functional version for free. If you want to start linking up 100s of computers, you can pay $5 a month for the premium version.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Yeah!Fi Mate of the Week - Organising your Life




If you're as bad as I am at organising your cr*p (which you may fondly refer to as your post-its, shopping lists, phone numbers or doodles), then I strongly recommend you to check out BackPack from 37Signals.

Backpack is a Web 2.0 'Information Organizer' (aka 'Lifesaver', in my mind anyways) that allows you to gather your gather your ideas, to-dos, notes, photos & files online. You can also set email and mobile reminders to be sent to you.

Backpack organises your information around pages, where each page can have several lists or notes. A note can include a picture or links. One way I've been using it lately is in my search for office space. I created a page for this 'project', and added a separate note for each potential location with the details, contact numbers and a photo.

The functionality is just right for 'Getting Things Done' and ties in very nicely with the GTD philosophy. Furthermore, Backpack is 'Oh So Slick', with a quick AJAX interface which further helps to get things done quickly, rather than wasting your time working with the app itself.

Here's a screenshot with annotations: (Click to enlarge)


The biggest drawback about Web 2.0 applications is that you can't use them when offline. Not to fear, that's where PackRat comes in. It's a very simple app (for Mac OS X) that links with your Backpack account to keep things synchronized. Get it here.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Don't Get Left Behind Waiting for Mobile WiMax

I've told a few people already that I see WiMax as a lot of 'hot air', and I DON'T mean literally. So it was good to see the following comparison between WiFi Mesh and WiMax from Strix Systemstoday:

Wireless operators worldwide are already taking advantage of WiFi Mesh to deliver true wireless broadband today.

Here are the top reasons you should take advantage of WiFi Mesh today:

* WiFi Mesh represents a major revenue opportunity and architectural shift for carriers, service providers, and cellular operators in terms of high-value, high-bandwidth services.
* WiFi Mesh networks are already deployed with proven and scalable high performance delivering mobile voice, video, and data applications extending hundreds of miles.
* WiFi Mesh is future proof. WiFi rates that exceed 100 Mbps will become available in 2008 with 802.11n, a legitimate alternative to wireline capabilities.
* WiMAX promises only 20 Mbps or less shared throughput over a large number of subscribers
* WiFi Mesh is already in use today for critical public safety, emergency services, and Department of Homeland Security applications.
* WiFi Mesh is capable of supporting high-speed transportation applications exceeding speeds of 180 Mph.
* There have been more than 20 million WiFi handsets and dual-mode smartphones sold worldwide in just the first quarter of 2007 compared to virtually no WiMax devices. Some analysts predict that the number of WiFi handsets and dual-mode phones will reach 100 million by year-end 2007 and the much anticipated iPhone is expected to accelerate the demand in mobile WiFi access.

By the time mobile WiMax even rolls out officially, operators will already have a large installed base of WiFi customers... Can you afford to be left behind?

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Yeah!Fi Great Quote #1

"Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense." - Winston Churchill

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Are You A Psychopath?


In my last post I talked about my recent experiences with 'Snakes in Suits'.

But how do you identify a psychopath?

"Likeable," "Charming," "Intelligent," "Alert," "Impressive," "Confidence-inspiring," and "A great success with the ladies": These are the sorts of descriptions repeatedly used by Cleckley in his famous case-studies of psychopaths. They are also, of course, "irresponsible," "self-destructive," and the like. These descriptions highlight the great frustrations and puzzles that surround the study of psychopathy.

Psychopaths seem to have in abundance the very traits most desired by normal persons. The untroubled self-confidence of the psychopath seems almost like an impossible dream and is generally what "normal" people seek to acquire when they attend assertiveness training classes. In many instances, the magnetic attraction of the psychopath for members of the opposite sex seems almost supernatural.

Cleckley's seminal hypothesis concerning the psychopath is that he suffers from a very real mental illness indeed: a profound and incurable affective deficit. If he really feels anything at all, they are emotions of only the shallowest kind. He does bizarre and self-destructive things because consequences that would fill the ordinary man with shame, self-loathing, and embarrassment simply do not affect the psychopath at all. What to others would be a disaster is to him merely a fleeting inconvenience.
(Ray, J. J. and J. A. B. Ray, 'Some apparent advantages of Subclinical Psychopathy', The Journal of Social Psychology, 1982, 117, 135-142. Thanks to the commenter for pointing out the correct source)
Also have a look at Kubrick's Psychopaths.

Here's the really scary part: 4% of the adult population suffer from psychopathy...

More in my next post on how these individuals drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth. And what to do about it.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Snakes in Suits

I've had the great misfortune the last few months to deal with some unbelievably unethical 'businessmen'.

I really struggled to understand the motivation for why otherwise intelligent beings would lie, steal and cheat when this clearly was not to their own longterm benefit.

Today I started reading Paul Babiak and Robert Hare's 'Snakes in Suits - When Psychopaths Go to Work'. Here's an excerpt that already goes a long way to explain it:

Most workers are honest, loyal, law-abiding citizens, concerned with making a living, contributing to society, and raising a family in a fair and just world. Others, though, are more selfish, concerned only about themselves with little regard for fairness and equity.

...

Some who have faltered may have experienced a weakened moral sense of "right" in the face of excessive temptation and easy access to power. Others may feel justified in reaping the rewards in proportion to the size of the organization they lead, arguing that their extravagances seem excessive only to those who have little hope of being so rewarded. Still others have embraced the self-serving mantras that "greed is good" and that success at any cost to others is justifiable and even desirable.

But another group exists, one whose behaviors and attitudes are potentially much more destructive to the organization and its employees than those noted above who are motivated by greed or big egos. This group, the subject of this book, displays a personality disorder rooted in lying, manipulation, deceit, egocentricity, callousness, and other potentially destructive traits. This personality disorder, one of the first to be described in the psychiatric literature, is psychopathy.

...

Some people with psychopathic personalities are in prison because of their crimes against people and property. Others are in prison for committing economic or white-collar crimes, such as fraud, embezzlement, or stock manipulation.

...

In addition to the problems their abusive behaviors cause to spouses, friends, and family members, individuals with a heavy dose of psychopathic traits are potentially harmful to professional relationships. For example, their grandiosity, sense of entitlement, and lack of personal insight lead to conflict and rivalry with bosses and coworkers, and their impulsivity and "live in the moment" philosophy lead them to keep repeating these and other dysfunctional, antisocial behaviors, despite performance appraisals and training programs.




The key here is that "most" people are honest and law-abiding. I think it's crucial for good, honest and law-abiding people to team up against the psychopaths.

As Edmund Burke said: "The Only Thing Necessary For Evil To Triumph Is For Good Men To Do Nothing".

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Best Web Design for Insurance Company

I did some research today (briefly) on Pet Insurance when I came across Petplan Australia.

Anyone who's applied for insurance online knows that it's a time consuming schlep. Petplan Australia really seems to have put a lot of very clever thought into usability and the result is a true gem of a website!

Let me show you the ways:



This is the homepage. First off, big and bold sections so you can quickly find what you are looking for. Even a nice big Contact section! These guys have clearly read Seth Godin's "Knock Knock". The site is also much more 'cutesie' than its competitors. This is important, as pet lovers will be buying insurance to get a warm and fuzzy feeling to start with. The web designers here show a strong understanding of the wants and desires of the client visiting the site!

Contrast this with Suncorp's pet insurance webpage.

Next I clicked on the 'get quote now' button.



Notice how they clearly tell you at what step of the process you are as well as showing a progress bar. What's also great here is that they don't ask you to fill out a form at the first step. They say: "Hey, we're gonna assume some things for now to help speed up the process."



Step 2 asks you to select your plan. 3 simple choices!



At Step 3, they already tell me how much it's going to cost. Only now do they ask me for my contact details as well as my dog's name and age.



Step 4 and they start getting a little bit more personal. I found the question "List the activities that the Dog is used for" a bit funny.



Step 5 asks you to confirm everything so far before going onto Step 6 to fill out your payment details and Step 7 to give you confirmation.

Notice that at each step the "What's covered for dogs..." section is consistent. This is a question that people will very likely ask multiple times throughout the process!

Petplan Australia's web designers did an absolutely brilliant job and for the first time ever I actually enjoyed visiting an insurance company's website. The combination of understanding customers' desires and a very simple yet informative user interface ensures that they stand out head and shoulders above the competition, and the website makes you feel as if they actually care a little bit more about your animal's health.

National Braai Day and Social Media


One of the more interesting concepts promoted at the last Johannesburg 27dinner was National Braai Day.

National Braai Day will allow us to get together, burn the past and cook up a succulent future. Braaing unites us all in a common purpose and transcends racial, social, cultural and language barriers. There’s really no excuse not to gather your family and friends and whip up feast - it’s the start of summer and a public holiday.


Jan Scannell from braaiday.co.za handed out braai tongs to all attendees!

I think it's really interesting how some traditionally 'offline' companies and NPOs are starting to embrace blogging and social media!

Calendar Revolution Arrived

One of the greatest difficulties I had moving from Windows to Ubuntu last year was replacing Outlook. This was greatly eased by using Google Apps, where I had my email and calendar online. But whenever I was on the move and offline, I wouldn't have access to my calendar.

So I installed Mozilla Sunbird, a calendar application that can also integrate with the Thunderbird mail client. This meant that I could see all my calendar events locally, by syncing to my Google Calendar. The problem was that this sync was one-way only. Any changes made on my local calendar would not get uploaded to my Google Calendar.

Add in a PDA that needs to sync as well, and you have a right mess!

No more! Sunbird 0.5 was released a few days ago and with it comes 2-way sync with Google Calendar. You can run Sunbird on Windows, Linux and OS X. Change your calendar data on any one of your devices and see how it all syncs up!

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Yeah!Fi Mate of the Week - Free Music!


At last week's 27dinner I had the pleasure to meet Galen Hossack, who together with Daryn Smith is the co-founder of LoadTheShow.

Here's how 'LoadTheShow' works:

You register as a user. You download free music. The artist receives R2 every time you download their songs. This is paid for by advertisers.

Now that's a simple yet clever business model!

It does raise some sustainability questions. Overseas the typical rate per 1000 impressions is $25 or R175, so every song that gets downloaded needs to provide about 12 impressions. In South Africa, advertisers probably pay a bit more, but it could still equate to a lot of advertising noise. In the short term, LoadTheShow has a daily limit of 50 downloads, on a first come first serve basis.

LoadTheShow has attracted sponsorship from Levi Jeans, and is about to launch a new website soon (the current one is very 'early stage' and somewhat too verbose)

Galen has a solid background in the music industry, as a band member, owner of a recording studio and as a partner in a music publisher. This has helped the site to "sign" 75 artists since launching in April.

If they keep adding artists and advertisers and can figure out how to make 1000s of downloads available daily, LoadTheShow could well be another great South African success story!

Amatomu for Breakfast

Some people have a newspaper with breakfast.

I prefer to have Amatomu for breakfast:



This was from a promo done for Charly's Bakery ("Mucking Afazing Cakes") by Goldee at the 27Dinner last night.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

The Next Big Thing is not Web 2.0

Check out this article on Vinny Lingham, one of Skyrove's shareholders.

I think GQ misquoted him on Incredible Connection though. What Vinny meant to say was that traditional software, distributed on CD or DVD media, was a thing of the past and that the future was online Web 2.0 applications.

Personally, I think the future is a bit different.

Currently, I can use OpenOffice to edit my offline files. For online collaboration on documents, I use Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

What I really want to be able to do is combine offline and online work seamlessly. Internet connectivity is not ubiquitous yet, and I need access to my files and appointments when I'm on the go, but also want the collaborative power when I am.

The next revolution is not that everything will go online or Web 2.0, but rather that there would be seamless synchronization between online and offline applications.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Plaxo is Dead. Where is Plaxo?

Remember Plaxo?

No, it's not a kind of mouthwash. Plaxo is an online address book that syncs with Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Address Book. You never need to ask your contacts for updated contact details again. All they need to do is install Plaxo as well and your address book will always be up to date with their latest contact details. Vice versa, your details will always be up to date in their address books as well.

Brilliant! So why does Plaxo suck? Eric Edelstein and I were chatting the other day, when he mentioned how cool it would be to have an app like the one described above. He mentioned all the features it should have, and I thought hey, Presto Plaxo!

So why has Plaxo faded away?

One of the main things mentioned in other blogs is the infamous 'Plaxo Spam'. Plaxo will send out update requests to everyone on my address book who does NOT have Plaxo. Until they join, that is. Basically, they tried to spam you into joining!

This seems to have raised the ire of a lot of people, and it backfired hugely for Plaxo.

But why would it backfire for Plaxo, but not Facebook, which does the same thing? Facebook will also look through your address book and send invites to all your contacts who aren't on Facebook yet.

The difference seems to be Facebook simply asks your friends to 'Join'.

Plaxo, on the other hand, asks your friends to 'Update their Details'. They don't need to join. So the first time you do this with pleasure using the attached form. The 2nd time you get a little annoyed and by the 3rd time you probably join Plaxo or you simply ignore future messages from the service. Most people chose the latter.

Ironically, Plaxo did it this way so it would be less annoying. It wouldn't force your friends to join.

I suspect what happened was that people were introduced to Plaxo by being asked to do something for Plaxo. Plaxo did nothing for them in return. It would have been better if Plaxo simply asked you to join a few times, "so that your friends will always have your most up to date contact information and you will have theirs".

Unfortunately, it seems it's mostly Game Over for Plaxo already, unless Google buys them and revamps the product and their drab-looking website. I for one hope that a young programmer working from his bedroom will take the charge and build an online address book that not only syncs with Outlook, but also integrates with Facebook!

UPDATE: Plaxo 3.0 was released today with a whole host of new features. I'll give it a thorough spin and report back soon.
UPDATE 2:So far the Plaxo Assistant for OS X is using more than 500MB of my 1GB of RAM, causing a massive slowdown! It also creates a new duplicate for calendar entries in iCal every time it syncs.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Underpromise, Overdeliver

This is Paul Potts. A humble cellphone salesman from Cardiff, trying his hand at the 'Britain's Got Talent' auditions.

Make sure your sound is nice and loud for this.



UPDATE: If you'd like to download videos such as this from YouTube to keep forever, simply use KeepVid

Monday, June 18, 2007

Speed Dating for VCs & Entrepreneurs

The 3rd Open Coffee Club (OCC) Cape Town is happening this Wednesday.

If you are an entrepreneur, a VC, or someone clever looking for some 'Entrepreneur Porn' this is the perfect place to meet some like-minded folks with smart ideas and/or cash to invest in the next killer app!

From their website:

The Open Coffee Club was started to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow. Read the blog post that started the ball rolling.


I will be giving a short (10 min max) presentation about some of the experiences (read: mistakes) I've had with trying to raise funding for Skyrove, as well as how the Open Coffee Club was integral to raising our latest round from Lingham Capital.

Check out Eric Edelstein's post for details.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Sales is All About the Angle

One of the great difficulties with building a complex product, is that it means different things to different people. I got a new Nokia E61 phone specifically because it has Wi-Fi amongst its many features. For many people this feature might not matter one bit, and telling them it has Wi-Fi might confuse them and steer them away from this product.

Look at this sculpture carefully:



Doesn't look like anything interesting. But apply a light source at just the right angle and have a look at the shadow it casts:



Some people will only be interested in the 'technical' details of the sculpture, but for most people out there it's actually about the shadow. In the case of software applications and services, the interface.

More pictures like this

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Idiot of the Week

I started doing a regular post called 'Mate of the Week' a while back. I never thought I'd spend (waste) time doing an 'Idiot of the Week' column, and hopefully this won't become a regular feature.

But sometimes people are so moronic you've got to give them credit. This week's Darwin Award winning idea comes from a bunch calling themselves the 'Free Bandwidth Campaign'.

Being unhappy with South Africans being charged for local bandwidth, they decided to do something about it: USE MORE BANDWIDTH!

Sheesh, I wish SA schools and universities would spend a little bit more time on teaching the principles of logic.

Anyways, they propose to do this by getting people from around the world to install a little virus that will download random content at a steady rate from South African hosted websites, so as to put an immense amount of strain on Telkom's network.

I suppose this idea for slowing down the South African internet to a crawl wouldn't be as bad if it weren't for the fact that the people footing the bill won't be Telkom, but rather any South African who hosts a website locally, and is already paying exorbitant fees for every megabyte uploaded. (typically 10c a MB)

To the kids behind this: Wake up, smell the roses, and start using your programming skills to do something good. This is the worst idea the three of you have ever had and is hopefully the worst idea you will ever have. Congratulations on receiving the inaugural Yeah!Fi "Idiot of the Week" award.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Read/Write Culture



We auctioned off a few more routers at the 27 Dinner last night. All proceeds are going to iCommons, a non-profit that promotes free culture, free speech, free software and do cool things like bringing Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and the 'out of control innovator' Larry Lessig to South Africa.

The lucky new owners of Skyrove Hotspots-to-Go are:

Angus Robinson (R800)
Derek Abdinor (R1000)
Thea Burger (R900, which she actually offered after the auction was finished!)

I love what iCommons is doing to promote 'out of control' innovation through their clear understanding of how social networks affect Read/Write culture.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Lingham Capital Invests in Skyrove

This post has been moved to GeekRebel.com

I'm delighted to announce that Skyrove has acquired its first round of Venture Capital from 'VC 2.0' firm, Lingham Capital.

Vinny Lingham has the magic ingredients to become a successful Venture Capitalist. He's an entrepreneur who's been there, done that. He's investing his own money and, more importatly, his own time/bandwidth into the handful of startups he's funding! (For now Skyrove and Synthasite) He's not managing other people's money nor is he having someone else manage his. He's made a commitment not to invest in more companies than in which he could play an active role.

I asked Vinny to do Guy Kawasaki's VCAT (Venture Capital Aptitude Test), and he scored more than 40 points.

If Vinny keeps following the no bullshiitake approach to investing in other startups that he did in dealing with Skyrove, I foresee Lingham Capital as the first VC fund in South Africa to even come close to their Silicon Valley counterparts.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Yeah!Fi Mate of the Week - Mobile Tracking

This week I had iTrackLive installed in my new motorbike. (My last bike was stolen 6 weeks ago).

Cape Town based iTrackLive provides a small portable, rechargeable, GPS tracking device that you can install in your car or simply drop in your child's backpack and then track using your cellphone or iTrackLive's brilliant web interface.


iTrackLive being installed. This is still the 'large' prototype version.


iTrackLive founders Tristan Phillips, Jean-Claude Malengret and Richard Parry


This is my trip back from the video store. (Click to enlarge) If I mouse-over any one of the arrows, it shows me the speed I was going. The maps are useful for visualizing the info, but iTrackLive also has a very decent reporting tool for fleet management and asset tracking.

iTrackLive is only just starting to provide their service publicly. What's unique about iTrackLive is that it's not yet another satellite tracking & recovery service, but rather that you can track your assets yourself (and see how fast your 18-year old is going when your lend him your car).

Because they use GPS, they are also not limited to providing their service in South Africa, but anywhere where there are cellphone networks available.

At R2400, you'd struggle to find a cheaper solution for tracking your car or your kids!

Yeah!Fi Quote of the Week

Always do what you want, and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind - Dr Seuss

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Dell Robbing Africa Blind

In the USA a Dell Inspiron 6400 notebook computer will set you back $699 (default features), while in South Africa the same model will cost $1380. That's almost twice as much! And even though we're looking at the same model, the South African version also uses a slower, older processor.

Similarly, an entry-level Apple Macbook costs more than $1500 in South Africa, and that's the OLD model with slower processor, smaller harddrive and no iSight camera. The latest model being sold overseas will only set you back $1099. That's a full 36% difference!

Misters Dell & Jobs, please realise that we are NOT wealthier in Africa than in the US. Please stop ripping us off! Instead of trying to do something phenomenal like a $100 laptop for Africa, how about just knocking off a few hundred, instead of a few features, so that at least we pay similar prices to the US & Europe?

Monday, May 14, 2007

Letter from iCommons

I got this fancy letterhead from Heather at iCommons today that says:

Many, many thanks for the generous donation from Skyrove and the 27 dinner supporters who raised money for iCommons.

It is much appreciated!

Best wishes,

Heather Ford
Executive Director, iCommons


Well done 27 dinner supporters!

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Yeah!Fi Mate of the Week - Vo3G



Think Skype. Ever tried it on your mobile phone? Those of you who did probably know that it doesn't work too great. Skype was written in the Delphi programming language, for fast computers running Windows. I'm one of the first 100,000 or so people who started using Skype, so I'm huge fan, but today we need a VoIP service that actually works on our internet-enabled mobile phones.

Enter Yeigo. Yeigo was built from the ground by 3 UCT graduates to be run on internet-ready mobile phones, whether they use 3G or Wi-Fi. Yeigo to Yeigo calls are free. If you call a friend who doesn't have Yeigo, you'll save about 80% on your calls. Even SMSs cost a 10th of the usual price.

Normally, a 1-hour call to my wife would cost me R150. With Yeigo, it should cost about R10, according to their co-founder, the vivacious Rapelang Rabana!

This means that Yeigo uses about 5MB of bandwidth in an hour. Compare this with Skype's 30MB!

Rapelang and her team are onto something phenomenal with Yeigo. She did a live interview for SaFM on Friday and the phones were ringing off the hook.

For MASSIVELY bringing down the costs of mobile phone calls in SA, Yeigo definitely gets this week's 'Yeah!Fi Mate of the Week' award!

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Yeah!Fi Quote of the Week

Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels.
The troublemakers. The round
pegs in the square holes - the
ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules and
they have no respect for
the status quo. You can praise
them, disagree with them,
quote them, disbelieve them,
glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing that you
can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.

-Apple Computer Ad, 1997

Monday, May 07, 2007

Liar Liar

Today I test-drove a few motorcycles from different dealers. The last place I stopped at was Linex Yamaha in Cape Town. I asked the salesperson about the benefits of buying a Yamaha scooter, instead of a cheaper import such as Jonway. He started telling me how the Jonway scooter across the road has been standing in one spot because it uses a special sparkplug that can't be found anywhere (nonsense). I then asked him how the Yamaha XT660 compares to a BMW 650GS. He told me that it wildly outperforms the BMW 650GS and that the BMW will only go 140 km/h "flat-out". I don't know if it really does go as fast as the listed 176 km/h, but I did drive one last year and got it to 140 with plenty of revs to spare...

Now, I've met a few liars in my life. One of the things about compulsive liars is that they'll happily lie in front of you, to other people, gladly exposing their fickle art. What's even more bizarre is that the lies they tell are often insignificant and simply telling the truth would have had no bad consequences for them.

I think the reason why liars continue lying is that they're seldom confronted with it. I mean, I know when I'm being lied to, but often feel that I'd rather 'move forward' than accuse a liar of lying. Who wants to hear "You calling me a LIAR!?!?!?" being shouted at them? Or the less aggressive version: "I thought you trusted me?". No-one starts throwing their toys out the cot quicker than a liar being called a liar.

I think my message to compulsive liars here is this: We know you are lying. We might not say anything now, but we ain't gonna trust you much in the future.

Trust is probably the most important aspect of a successful business. Tell a few small lies to a handful of clients and you and your company will very quickly see your profits dwindling.

Sunday, May 06, 2007

The Sky's the Limit

Check out this article on Skyrove in last week's Financial Mail Campus.

I had a great interview with Alita Byrd, FM Campus' editor, and I think she did a great job of explaining the Skyrove concept. (Maybe my dad will finally understand what we do)

Alita sent me the article before it was published to double-check all the facts. We normally call our end-users 'Skyrovers' and we don't have a specific name for our 'Hotspot Providers'. Alita actually called our Hotspot Providers 'Skyrovers' in the article, and it sounded so darn good that we decided to start doing it too, instead of correcting the mistake!

Henceforth, anyone who starts a Skyrove hotspot will be called a 'Skyrover'!

I hope to get some 'I'm a Skyrover!' bumper stickers out soon! Cut of the last part if you drive a Rover, Range Rover or Land Rover...

Everyday Greatness

My friend Shana gave me Steven Covey's 'Everyday Greatness' for my birthday yesterday.

Covey relates the old story of the ship captain who asked another vessel to divert course. (See the modern day video remake below)



The lighthouse is permanent, fixed. The size of the vessel nor the rank of the helmsman mattered. In this way the lighthouse is like a principle. "Principles are immovable; they are timeless and universal. They do not change".

He mentions principles such as vision, innovation, humility, quality, empathy, magnanimity, perseverance and balance. Principle that will make us more effective and more satisfied with life.

"If you doubt this, consider living life based on their opposites, such as lack of vision, laziness, vanity, sloppiness, closed mindedness, revenge, lack of determination or imbalance. Hardly the ingredients for success.

"Everyday Greatness is a way of living, not a one-time event. It says more about who a person is than what a person has. It speaks more about people's motives than about their talents."

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Google Search Box Test

Did you know you could put a Google Search Box on your site and earn money when people use it? (I suspect you did)

Thanks to Vinny Lingham for providing me with a brilliant yet very simple idea related to this and Skyrove.

For now just testing it here on Yeah!Fi to see how it all works!

Saturday, April 28, 2007

These are Good Okes




Many many Thank Yous to the following people who in one night not only helped spread community wireless, but ALSO donated money to iCommons, a charity that promotes free culture and internet society.

Jacques Marneweck (Deep PHP Diver) - R900
Nikki Friedman (aka The Lush) - R850
Ian Gilfillan (Greenman and Wikipedia Translator) - R550

They each get a Skyrove Hotspot-to-Go!

That's a total of R2300 going to iCommons, who are promoting my favorite message: "Less Control leads to More Innovation"

More Kudos to Jacques, who decided to throw in an extra R50 AFTER the bidding had stopped!

Thank you to Graham and Chris from Stormhoek for sponsoring some wine that helped the bids go up.

Big thanks to Mike Scott for some awesome cartoons that capture the essence of community wireless!

Bru and Boegie Join the Wi-Fi Community

I'm glad to say that Bru and Boegie have a very good understanding of Wireless technology!

I met the amazing cartoonist Mike Scott at 27 Dinner last night, and asked him if he wouldn't mind doing a doodle on the back of one of my Skyrove business cards, related to wireless technology. He did 5! Here they are:








Tuesday, April 24, 2007

It's about sharing, stupid!



I was massively inspired after meeting Creative Commons chair Larry Lessig! His message is focused around 'Read/Write culture' and the "freedom" of online content.

He gave countless examples of how less control leads to more innovation! I constantly talk about building a worldwide community of Wi-Fi hotspots that is almost totally out of control, allowing entrepreneurs to earn a living by reselling bandwidth, while at the same time bringing down the total cost to end-users.

To say thanks to Heather Ford and iCommons for bringing Larry Lessig and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to South African shores and their work in promoting free society, Skyrove will be sponsoring 3 Skyrove routers to be auctioned at the upcoming 27 Dinner, the proceeds of which will go to iCommons.



These babies will earn you money, while giving your neighbours cheap Wi-Fi access!

If you're not convinced about how cool sharing your internet is, go check out
the Skyrove movie at www.skyrove.com.

Also see this post by Mike Stopforth and this post by Dave Duarte and this post by Jared Cinman and this post by Esther Dyson and this post by Glen Verran and this post by Dave Gale and this post by Chris Rawlinson! *phew*

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Skyrove on The ZA Show

DJ Glen Virran spoke about Skyrove this week on The ZA Show!

If you'd like to listen, go get the MP3 here.

Mate of the Week - Eye Candy

Chris Rawlinson from Stormhoek yesterday introduced me the Windows XP Zune theme.

I've never been a fan of Windows themes, as they always seemed to slow down everything and were often clunky around the edges, but Zune is simply stunning:


(Click on image to enlarge)

What's even better about Zune is that it comes direct from Microsoft, not a 3rd party.

If you're like me and you're a bit fed up with looking at the same XP desktop for the last 6 years, click here to download the Zune theme (only 1.6 MB), this week's Mate of the Week.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Wireless isn't Always Best...



The above cartoon is by Mike Scott, check out www.bruandboegie.co.za for more hilarity.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Open Coffee Club

Cape Town Super Connector Eric Edelstein is starting up a Cape Town chapter of the Open Coffee Club!

From the website :
The OpenCoffee Club was started to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow.


The first meet up is going to be at the MIND-ALTERING Extreme Hotel. Click here to see Jon Cherry's fantastic photos

I know the Cape Town Web & Geek crowd have some phenomenal ideas. I think Eric is the right man to start introducing South Africa's risk averse investor crowd to the 'new' internet revolution!

See Eric's post here if you would like to attend or know more.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Mate of the Week - Highrise CRM

There once was a children's program on TV called 'Zet', and every episode they would choose a 'Mate of the Week', typically some 6 year old kid who drew a bad picture of Zet himself, who was some form of South African Sasquatch.

I thought I would start doing some product reviews on Yeah!Fi about products that make my working life better. I hereby introduce to you 'Mate of the Week'!

My mate this week is called Highrise CRM, the latest super Web 2.0 product from 37signals, well known for Basecamp, a Web 2.0 project management app, and for inventing Ruby on Rails.

I have tried a few different Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools: ZohoCRM (too slow), Salesforce.com (too pricey) and most recently SugarCRM (too complex).

Nonetheless, the 3 mentioned above are pretty much clones of each other with nothing original offered by any of them. All of them are too cumbersome for a small business to use and not in the least bit intuitive.

You will need to train your staff about the differences between leads, opportunities, contacts, accounts and cases while simultaneously beating them with a whip to motivate them enough to actually use the software on a frequent basis.

37signals decided to bugger all known wisdom and develop a CRM application from scratch. And it is simply brilliant. It took me about 10 minutes to set up and completely understand how it works.

The interface is simple, uncluttered and incredibly intuitive: (Click picture to enlarge)



The coolest feature is definitely the Email Dropbox. When I get an email from someone, I can simply forward the mail to my Highrise Dropbox email address. It will automatically attach it to the correct contact. If I haven't yet created that contact in Highrise, it will be created for me!



If you have a small business with a handful of employees and a growing customer base, I strongly recommend you give Highrise a spin. It could really make your life better, and therefore deserves this week 'Mate of the Week' award.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Let Me Backrub Him

Did you know that Google was originally called Backrub?

I wonder how that would have worked. Imagine someone sending you a Resume and you ask the chick in HR if she's given him a Backrub?

The key to a good name is to choose something that is not too generic. If you combine two words, try and shorten one or both of them. Do a Google (Backrub?) for your name and make sure it doesn't have a hundred other meanings.

We thought of dozens of names for Skyrove (initially called SkyWi) before we got the one that was just right. 'Rove' is defined as "move about aimlessly or without any destination", which is exactly what our Wi-Fi hotspot users (Skyrovers) do, in the Wi-Fi sense in any case. And 'Sky' alludes to the fact that it's wireless and implies freedom of not being connected using a 'fixed' line.

We immediately liked the name. What cinched it was the fact that a Google search on 'Skyrove' did not return one single entry. No domain registrations, no products, no confusion.

A Google search on 'Skyrove' today returns a mere 755 results, but all of them are related to us.

It's difficult to choose a proper name for your company, especially one that has meaning and which has not been used before.

Also ask a few foreigners if your new name means anything funny in their language. I feel sorry for the Stanford boys who decided to call their 'online career community' Doostang. (Not a good word in Afrikaans, though I'm gonna ask Nikki Friedman next time I see her: "Het jy al Doostang getraai?")

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Why Branson Really Succeeded

One of the most enjoyable biographies I've read is Richard Branson's 'Losing my Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way'.

I greatly admire Richard Branson, not just for what he has achieved, but more so for how he has gone about it. His style is very different from most entrepreneurs' and it's a style that cannot easily be replicated.

When I first started reading his biography, I was somewhat disgusted to learn how he often opportunistically started businesses. He described in detail how the system of 'resale price maintenance' imposed unfair taxes on music records, and how he discovered that he could bypass this law by declaring records as export stock and doing a few spins in his van around the Dover harbour!

"It was a criminal plan, and I was breaking the law. But I had always got away with breaking rules before."

I wondered how someone could have become so succesful if this was his attitude to doing business!

Branson then went on to describe how he was eventually arrested and spent a night in a police cell.

"Incentives come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from a pat on the back to share options, but avoiding prison was the most persuasive incentive I've ever had."

A settlement was agreed the day after, and his mother had to re-mortgage the family home to help pay the settlement.

He vowed that he would never again do anything that could land him in jail or harm his integrity.

Throughout the rest of his life, Branson consistently keeps the moral high-ground, never accepts or offers bribes and refuses to stoop to BA's level by countering their 'dirty tricks' campaign.

And look how that worked out for him...

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Tertia meets PayPal

Tertia has just raised $2000 on her blog for an impoverished family in less than 6 hours!

The only way she could possibly do this was to use PayPal. But she couldn't simply receive the money directly:

"The reason why I can't do it myself, is that PayPal wont allow South African account holders to receive payments, grrrrrr! Poor Boulder has to do it for me, then pay the money across to my brother in the UK, who then has to pay the money across to me in South Africa and I will draw the cash for Harrison. He doesn't have a bank account, he can't afford the bank charges. Bank charges are horrific in this country, making formalised banking inaccessible to the poor. Don't worry, I wont put him at risk by making him walk around with all the cash at once. I'll give it to him in amounts he feels safe carrying around."


So I decided to put another challenge to Tertia:

Is there any chance you could use your influence and large following to pressure PayPal into allowing South African account holders to RECEIVE money as well as sending it. If this happened, we will very quickly have TONS of township entrepreneurs selling beadwork etc etc etc to a GLOBAL marketplace!

This is one of those things that could be so phenomenally viral as well... As soon as a few township entrepreneurs start selling their goods online SIMPLY and EASILY, many many more will become computer literate and learn how to sell their goods on eBay etc.

Sheesh, imagine the interesting blogs that could be written by such entrepreneurs:
"Today I went to ask for a bank loan. I told them how I was going to sell my unique wire-art online on eBay. The woman just laughed at me. Probably because she saw that my Adidas shoes only had 2 stripes left"


Combine township entrepreneurship + township bloggers + Scandinavian buyers and voila! You suddenly have millions of Rands flowing into this country and going directly to the mini-entrepreneurs.

Before you know it there'll be no need to ask people for donations. Though even if you did, you wouldn't have to hop 3 bank accounts to get the money into the country.

See Also: It's Tips for Trevor Time Again

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Simple Change, Big Result

We recently added Username/Password fields to the Skyrove homepage, so that users could log in without first having to click the 'My Account' link.

It's too early to be statistically significant, but in the few days that the change has been there, Hotspot Provider 'Sign Ups' have increased 150%! *



I've wanted to do this for a while, simply to save time and save some people from that one click that might just cause them RSI.

I discussed this change with Axel, our intern, and he mentioned something interesting: Apparently, a website that allows users to sign in on the homepage is more 'sticky'. People who aren't members of the site, will feel part of the 'outcrowd' and will be more interested to find out more in order to become part of the 'in' crowd.

Furthermore, if you have a username/password login section on your site, it looks like there actually MUST be other people using your service!

Is this general knowledge? Has everyone always known this but I've only figured it out now? Does anyone actually find it annoying that some websites make it clear that you won't be 'cool' until you register and they would rather be part of the 'outcrowd'?

*(Admittedly, there were some changes made to our explainer page a few days earlier, and maybe the effects were only being felt now. My best guess is that the combination of the two changes might have had an exponential effect)

Sunday, March 18, 2007

iBurst Petition

I got some emails last week regarding my 'negative' post about iBurst Idiocy. I think the main reason why I was so upset with iBurst (I'd never bother writing a similar post about Telkom), was that I thought they were doing everything right. They were building a phenomenal brand and getting a strong following, and then they go and piss it all away by printing a 140,000 pamphlets spreading false information.

I just don't get it when otherwise intelligent and highly paid business executives seem to lose all control over their morals and decide for some reason that instead of competing fairly, they'd rather try underhanded methods to damage their competitors.

Anyways, I'm ranting again. What I did want to say is that Johann Botha has gone a step further than just 'whining' about it, and has helped set up a petition of sorts.

Please check it out and follow the steps to lay a formal complaint with the ISPA.

Clever CopyCats

In some ways I regret not having taken out a patent on some of the unique features of Skyrove, now that we've seen a handful of copycats popping up. In other ways, I realise that a patent is very hard to protect and that building your brand is really the best protection one could have against copycats.

There will always be people who are clever enough to recognize and copy good systems, yet unfortunately not smart enough to come up with something original.

This is not always a bad thing. It's a good thing when the copycats are doing it with noble purpose and if their vision is truly one of making the world better. When this is the case, I can do nothing more but smile and acknowledge that greatest form of flattery: imitation.

For an example of what I would consider noble imitation, have a look at the Skyrove Movie and compare it with the Tomizone movie which was made about a year later. I spoke to Steve Simms from Tomizone who was big enough to tell me that their video was largely inspired by Skyrove's. I have no problem with this and Steve has been a pioneer in getting Wi-Fi to more people. In this way I see him as a fellow visionary, not as a competitive threat.

To some extent, the Open Source movement is based on this noble purpose. It's about putting something out there for people to replicate and improve. But it's made clear that you cannot do this without recognition of the original author.

It's when copycats undermine the original work and deliberately try to undo the good work of the innovator that they should be put in their place.

Like the 'clever' little gopher in the video below:




Just because you were 'clever' enough to steal something in a new and high-tech way, does not mean you'll get away with it. Be truly original, and you won't have to fight off the crows.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Implied Contracts

Last week I busted the myth that Verbal contracts don't hold as much water as written contracts.

What many people don't know is that there's another type of contract that has the same legal force as an express (written) contract: The Implied Contract

From Wikipedia:

"An implied-in-fact contract (also, "contract implied-in-fact" or simply, "implied contract") refers to a contract agreed by non-verbal conduct, rather than by explicit words. Such contracts are formed when one party accepts something of value knowing that the other party expects compensation."

"Many businesses are based on implied-in-fact contracts not covered by law, but by mutual interest of the parties."


Of course, it's often easier (and cheaper!) to defend a written contract, but I think our many businesses would never get off the ground if they had to pay a lawyer to draw up an overwrought contract everytime they did business with another company, especially if doing business clearly holds mutual benefit.

At the end of the day, if you are lacking a full-on written contract, do not despair. A verbal agreement PLUS an implied contract PLUS written evidence in the form of emails (also between 3rd parties) PLUS 3rd parties who are willing to testify will put you in pretty good stead.

Although lawyers are known to nitpick on the finer details, especially pre-trial (it's worth it when you're paid by the hour), a judge will very quickly figure out whose rights are being infringed upon.

The only way to achieve long-term business success, is by running an honest and ethical business.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Entrepreneur Porn 2: Juice

I had a fabulous dinner with Greg Durst and Helio Machado from Endeavor this evening. Greg is the person who coined the term 'Entrepreneur Porn', and he's done his bit to hook up some of the voyeurs (Venture Capitalists) with the pornstars (i.e. Entrepreneurs).

Tonight Greg spoke about some Cheese & Wine evenings Endeavor has organised, where he brings together some great entrepreneurs, private equity investors, some wise folks and some rich folks with no particular agenda.

Greg: "The most amazing thing that happens if you combine smart and passionate people with cheese and wine, is the 'juice'."

I think he was referring to the ideas and the synergies being formed. I hope so in any case...

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Loose Verbal Agreements

I love how the movies sometimes influence our thinking about everyday life. Here are some myths that you may or may not believe:

1. Cardoors can stop bullets (myth busted)
2. Cars explode when you shoot at them (myth busted)
3. When shot in the chest your body will go flying backwards through the air (Newton's 3rd Law would have the shooter flying backwards as well)
4. Verbal agreements aren't legally binding (Remember the guy in Jerry Maguire who said "My word's as strong as oak" and then signed with someone else, leaving poor Jerry no recourse?)

I'll address movie myth 4.

Gilham's Solicitors has a very clear article on verbal contracts:
"It is immaterial whether the contract is verbal, in writing, or partially verbal and partially written, although common sense says that recording the agreement in writing creates a document that may be referred to for its terms in the event of a dispute between the parties."

Furthermore,

"Draft contract documents, emails, letters and order forms may lend assistance to deciding the terms of a verbal agreement, and courts have used similar agreements with third parties to apply a standard of reasonableness in determining the terms of the contract in the absence of writing."

Keeping your word is the right thing to do and will build a better society, and it's for this reason that the law recognizes verbal contracts. You may not subscribe to this belief, but realise that a lifetime's reparations might not regain you your integrity once you've sacrificed it.

Also don't try myths 1 to 3 at home...

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

iBurst Idiocy

I see iBurst has been getting loads of flack from consumers for their deliberate smear campaign against 'unlicensed' wireless broadband operators.

Here's an extract:

"Anyone who is upset over iBurst’s calls for the public to be wary of doing business with unlicensed operators, need to answer a simple ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ to each of the following questions:

- Is it true that only certain operators such as iBurst are licensed to build their own public communications networks?
- Is it true that ICASA has warned illegal wireless ISPs that they are potentially committing criminal offences?
- Is it true that customers of illegal wireless ISPs face disconnection as ICASA cracks down on illegal operators?” iBurst said.

"iBurst now considers this matter closed," the company concluded.


Okay iBurst, I answered 'yes' to all of the above questions.

Now Alan Junior, if you could please answer the following simple question with 'yes' or 'no':

Are you smart enough to realise that as a result of your shortsighted and libelous smear campaign that I, nor anyone reading this blog, will likely ever use iBurst in the future?

I now consider this matter closed.

UPDATE: Since writing this post, I've been using (and recommending) iBurst more and more. First simply as an interim solution while waiting for a Telkom line, but then continuing to use it in areas where connectivity is robust. I think iBurst could make significant inroads providing last mile connectivity. Let's hope they focus on doing that and don't commit another blunder as in PE.