10 April 2006 in Business | Comments (5)

So my flatmate headed back to his parents house in the weekend. He is the family techo so of course he usually deals with all their computer related issues. He noticed that their internet was going slow, which seemed odd since they had a 5GB cap and they hadn’t used 5GB yet and had been slowed to 64k.

After some investigation he has found that Telecom gave them their “free” upgrade – from 512Kbps down to 2Mbps down. That’s great, free upgrades is always good. However, he also found that they had downgraded their cap from 5GB to 1GB. Everyone makes mistakes, so they phoned up Telecom. No, apparently this is normal and if they want to go back to a 5GB cap they need to pay $10 per month to get it.

So the “free” upgrade actually costs $10 per month. Sounds a lot like a scam to me.

Has anyone else found this sort of behavior when dealing with Telecom? I’m with Paradise so I haven’t personally had to deal with this issue (and my parents are stuck on dialup thanks to our amazing ADSL coverage in New Zealand).

- JD

15 March 2006 in Business | Comments (0)

John Lewis recently pointed me in the direction of 37 Signals new book – Getting Real.

The book is about developing web applications from a business point of view. It includes contributions from Seth Goodwin, Andrew Hunt (The Pragmatic Programmers), Marc Hedlund (O’Reilly) and many others.

You can download it for $19 off the 37 Signals site (it only comes in PDF format).

I’ve always been a fan of books that blend technology with business so I was already holding high hopes for this book before I read it. I’m not about half way through the book and it’s pretty good. Don’t go expecting pages dripping in theory and academic proof of why certain things should be done one way and not the other. The organic nature of the book makes great to print out and just have a flick through when you need some inspiration on a project.

Most of the subject matter is common sense but often flies in the face of conventions that most people use. Certainly worth $19 The only small thing so far that doesn’t seem so good is that it doesn’t appear to print very nicely (fonts are not strong enough to make easy reading).

- JD

14 March 2006 in Business | Comments (7)

With the recent sale of TradeMe it’s no surprise that I’m hearing all sorts of people talking about starting some form of online business. It’s interesting to see that existing online businesses are all getting a bit more of an uptake thanks to the sale.

I noticed last week comments about NZDating.co.nz and how they have more than half a million members now and talking about how much traffic they’re getting. It seems like some of these sites are now salivating over how much they could be worth based only on how much traffic they receive.

The interesting site that seems to be gaining strongly from the TradeMe deal is Zillion. Zillion is a competing online auction site and they’ve received some good press in the last week. So much so that on the 6th of March their sever was overloaded. Then they increased their traffic by 100% in a week. That’s not too bad – they must be pretty happy.

What I’ve found interesting about the TradeMe sale is how it’s brought big business to the kitchen table. It seems most people aren’t even aware that big deals happen all the time. Perhaps because so many people are involved in using TradeMe they take notice. Perhaps because they were acquired by a publishing company they get more press than other deals? It seems most people discussing the TradeMe sale are completely unaware, for example, of the 3.3billion dollar take over attempt on CCH.

So what’s my point?

I’m really just happy to see more people taking an interest in what’s happening in business circles. Even if most of them are just wowed by the 700m dollar figure I just hope that people take a moment to look at what other activities are going on in our own backyard.

- JD

6 March 2006 in Business | Comments (2)

The New Zealand web success story that is Trademe has been sold for an amazing 700million dollars!

It’s great to see this sort of value being placed on a New Zealand technology company Things are looking rosey for the NZ IT industry.

Congrats to the whole team

Full Story: Fairfax acquires TradeMe for $700 million

- JD

6 December 2005 in Business | Comments (4)

There has been plenty of chat about Ferrit.co.nz lately so I thought I’d add to it. I noticed a weird looking advert in the bottom of MSN and found upon clicking it that’s an advert for Ferrit.co.nz.

Truly a weird type of advert – it’s like they want to appear dodgy. Maybe it’s designed to make people not realise Ferret is backed by a 4 billion dollar company? People like under dogs I can’t say I feel anymore compelled to spend money there.

To visit: click here.

– JD

26 July 2005 in Business | Comments (0)

I saw something interesting over on the WordPress blog (WordPress are the open source group who make the blog software I’m using here).

They’re sponsoring a conference on business blogging and are offering a $100 discount to any person that provides a trackback (this notifies them that somebody has linked to their entry). Seems like quite a clever way of boosting the awareness of your event by getting people to post blog entries about it.

– JD

9 June 2005 in Business | Comments (0)

Google has just overtaken Time Warner to become the worlds largest media company. Impressive to see – it really is further proof that the new economy companies that actually have a viable business plan are able to be successful over the longer term.

Read more: Click Here

– JD

23 March 2005 in Business | Comments (0)

This morning on ASB Business I was impressed to see that Rod was interviewed about Cebit as well as giving some details about Aftermail.

I’ve often wondered about that show – I’ve been watching it since it started and I’m not sure how much they go looking for news or people/companies actively contact them with stories. Over time it seems they’ve been moving into more of the latter as it doesn’t seem to be so much “news” as such. It used to be more about global business news however the new format of covering local businesses is a change I’ve liked.

At the risk of turning this into a bit of a ramble, I’ve also found that the presenter of ASB Business isn’t quite what he used to be – back when it was Telsta Business he seemed to ask better questions that didn’t seem quite so scripted. Maybe it’s just me

– JD