The closest I could get to an improvement on the voicemail system was messagePage, where an operator answers your calls and sends the details in a SMS.  It worked well for some time, but the costs rack up quickly if your calling volume is high.

The best solution is voicemail-to-email.  You can store them, delete them, and forward to a colleague if required.  Until johnr and his boys enable this in the Vodafone core, I have a dirty hack to get this going.  You will need NZBestMate enabled on your mobile.

1. Sign up to 2talk's Go Free plan. 

It'll cost you nothing a month as we are using them purely for inbound calls, not outbound.  Keep track of the 028 number, we'll need this later. 

2. Enable Do Not Disturb

Login to the 2Talk portal, and under the column marked Inbound Calls click Do Not Disturb.

Under Do Not Disturb tick Enable Do not Disturb Service and click Save Options. This will force all calls to your new 028 number to go to voicemail.

3. Setup voicemail service

Now that 2Talk will be handling your voicemail, you need to setup your greetings.  You can either have 2Talk call you to record, or upload an MP3.

In the field Send a copy of my voicemail messages to the following email address: enter the email you want your voicemails to go to.

4. Call Vodafone to setup NZBestMate

Call 777 and give them your new 028 number.  This will zero rate any calls made from your mobile to your 2Talk number.

5. Setup voicemail redirection on your phone

This is tricky as it varies from phone to phone.  On my Galaxy SII, it's under Settings > Call > Call forwarding > Voice call.  Modify busy, unanswered and unreachable to be your 2Talk number.

That's it. 

Do a couple of test calls to make sure it all works.  I've had this setup for a few months now - mine is slightly different as my 028 number registers to work, and my voicemails go through our VoIP PBX, but exactly the same concept.

The best thing is: I never have to use Vodafone's voicemail system ever again.

About two weeks ago I received this email (I've shortened it somewhat):

Great news! You will soon receive a Sure Signal upgrade. This free upgrade means you'll enjoy the great mobile reception you're used to with Sure Signal in a sleek new device, plus it'll prepare you for quicker data speeds on your mobile with our next network upgrade in the new year.

The new device will be couriered out to you in the next couple of weeks. So keep an eye out for the courier and you'll soon be enjoying all the benefits of our new and improved Sure Signal service.

The courier pack arrived at the glorious hour of 8am this morning.  The new Sure Signal is a much nicer looking, and a much smaller unit (new one on the left):

The new one is manufactured by Alcatel-Lucent (old one was Sagemcom), and has a Ethernet pass through port if you're not running a switch.  The new one also doesn't sit upright, with the stand making it lean back slightly:

The unit was dispatched from Brightpoint, with a return courier back to send the old unit back.

The best thing about upgrading to the new Sure Signal is how quick and painless it was - unplug the old unit, plug in the new one: done.  No port forwards on the router or any other configurations, the unit just works.  Surprisingly, it works with my Draytek modem, even though it's not the standard Vodafone ADSL modem that was provided.

If you have one of the old Sure Signals, and haven't received a new one in a few weeks, it might pay to contact Vodafone - the cover letter indicated the old Sure Signals won't be supported past April 2012.

I'm a big fan of the Sure Signal, and have recommended them to friends and family who have coverage issues.  The investment in one is not much, it uses very little power and the data it uses is zero rated.

Thanks Vodafone for the free upgrade!

Have a great break over Christmas/New Years everyone.

We heavily use the Google Groups function.  This allows you to have an alias, such as sales, support, info etc to forward to a group of mailboxes.  Trying to send an email to sales (at) 3bit.com was giving us this strange bounce error:

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

sales (at) 3bit.com

Technical details of permanent failure:

Message rejected by Google Groups. Please visit http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188131 to review our Bulk Email Senders Guidelines.

A couple days back, when trying to login to the Google control panel, it asked for us to upgrade, which I agreed to. I thought the above error was a mis-configuration from the upgrade, so I deleted all our groups and re-added them - emails were still bouncing.

After spending most of today trying a multitude of different things, I stumbled across this answer:

I suggest you enable Google groups for business in your control panel dashboard. Click 'Add Services' when viewing your dashboard.
Once you have done this, disable Spam filtering in each of the affected groups. You can do this in the 'Spam Controls' tab in your group settings. Select the option 'post them to the group'.
This will fix the issue.

In the Google control panel, click Organisation & Users > (your domain) > Services.  Scroll down the list and find Google Groups and make sure it's set to On.

For some reason, during the upgrade, ours switched off, and was causing the bounce messages above.  Hopefully this post saves someone from hours of cursing and shaking their fist at Google.

I've had a little time up my sleeves lately, so I decided to get my hands dirty and code up an application that would send and receive SMS messages.  Based on the advice of Geekzone guru sbiddle, I bought a Wavecom GSM modem (USB model) and dropped in a 2degrees SIM.

Doing some research, I found a handful of existing programs that would do the send/receive I wanted, but they were all too expensive (for example, ActiveXperts SMS component, US$795).  Using a standard COM port, I control the modem using the standard AT+ commands, that most (if not all) GSM modems support.  My thinking was that if I made the program light-weight, send/receive of SMS would be lightning fast.

I wrote a pretty straight forward, basic program - when a message is received, it logs it to a SQL Server database, does some processing, and then fires back a reply - this is where I came unstuck.

I've had the luxury of using commercial SMS gateways before.  They are super fast, and very reliable however you pay for the convenience. Trying to replicate this cheaply using a GSM modem is just not possible.

The biggest issue I encountered is speed.  The modem can only work as fast as the connecting network will allow.  Trying to send a message while the modem is already sending one will cause it to jam; the same happens for receiving multiple messages concurrently.  If you have a time sensitive application, this method is just too slow.

I also discovered interesting delays between Vodafone and 2degrees.  Sending a SMS message from my mobile (Vodafone) to the GSM modem (2degrees) would take around 25-30 seconds to arrive, however the reverse worked much faster at an average of 4 seconds.

My recommendation: if you want speed and reliability, go with a commercial SMS gateway provider (and be prepared for an light/empty wallet). For less time sensitive applications, a GSM modem will do just fine.

For perspective, every day, the world writes the equivalent of a 10 million-page book in Tweets or 8,163 copies of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Reading this much text would take more than 31 years and stacking this many copies of War and Peace would reach the height of about 1,470 feet, nearly the ground-to-roof height of Taiwan's Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world.

I have to admit, that when I first joined Twitter back in November 2008, I couldn't see the point.  I now use it daily to keep up with others in industry, chat with friends on Geekzone, and to ask questions from people who follow me.  It really is a useful tool, however, there is also a lot of crap that gets posted.

The benefit of having followers/following others is you can select who you want to receive updates from.  If someone is tweeting information that you don't find relevant, it's very easy to un follow them.  It also gives you unprecedented access to celebrities, without having to read filtered information from a PR company.

A quick email to Mauricio and a database query later shows around 120 Geekzoners have their twitter associated with their Geekzone login.

So how many of you are twats use Twitter?

Follow me by clicking the Follow button in the left hand side bar.

In Cameron's latest blog post, he outlines exactly how he got the data:

Quick summary of the video: using the online tool My-IP-Neighbors Cameron worked out the other sites running on the same IP address as Labour website lets-not.co.nz - one of those sites was healthyhomeshealthykiwis.org.nz, and with no index file and directory browsing switched on, it gives any visitor to it a complete file listing of every file and directory hosted on that site.  It also contained a surprising amount of files that really shouldn't be there - MySQL database dumps, personal and credit card details, plus other sensitive files.  To add insult to injury, the site has also been indexed by Google, meaning all the information on that site is now part of the Google cache.

Malicious hacking? Hardly.  Epic fail on the part of Labour's web team? You bet.

The "real life" analogy of this happening is not WhaleOil breaking into a Labour car and retrieving a briefcase of private documents and taking copies - it is more similar to Labour leaving the files spread out on the footpath, and them complaining when someone discovers and reads them.

I'm not condoning what WhaleOil does with the information; what I do want to point out is how he obtained the data is not hacking, not by any stretch of the imagination.  What has happened is the staff in charge of their websites have failed in the most basic steps to secure their websites, and it is not a design fault.  Hopefully this experience also teaches them not to store sensitive files online, especially not backups from their main website's MySQL database.  I also question why credit card details are being stored online - the industry standard is to use a third-party credit card processor who stores (if required) credit cards securely, removing this liability for your own website.

I would be asking some serious questions of the Labour staff, and how such a slipup could occur.

The first step involves picking Hotlink from the Vodafone SIM menu on your phone (unfortunately I can't screenshot this as I've already set it up).  It presents you with a list of supported banks.  Once this is done, you then need to login to your internet banking.

I bank with ASB, so under Mobile Banking I enter my mobile phone number under Mobile Top-up and then pick the bank account to debit:

The menu on my Nokia E71 changed about 30 seconds later - I now have the option to top up my mobile, and enter a specific amount, or top up someone else's.  The fact it is part of a menu, and I don't need to remember codes or a number to send a SMS to makes even more handy.

It's free to sign up - you can then become a walking, talking, Vodafone top up machine.

I'm a massive fan of the Amazon Kindle, having bought one for my partner at Christmas.  I see the success of this Walmart-Amazon deal being with how stupidly simple the Kindle is.

The Kindle is small, light and does one thing and does it very well - its e-paper allows you to read books.  No flashy graphics, no backlit screen, no having to charge it every night (supposedly the Kindle has a month's battery life) - it really is the perfect device for a book worm.

So Amazon has started with a great product the closely emulates a physical book (eg no eye strain), without having the bulkiness of a thick novel.  Good start.

Their next trick is delivery of books to the device.  I opted for the WiFi+3G model.  I login to Amazon, search for the book I want, purchase it (for far less than a physical book, plus no high postage to NZ) and within minutes it's on the Kindle.  Regardless of where you are in the world, Whispernet (Amazon's automagical delivery network, powered by AT&T) gets it from Amazon to the Kindle (or you can do it via WiFi just as easily).  Since this is all setup before you receive the Kindle, there's no having to find a NZ sim card, making sure it has credit etc.  Amazon do it all for you.  Not having to plug the Kindle into a computer to get books is also great.

Two nights ago I was reading a blog post about a book called The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick.  It's a complete history of Facebook and some of the financial, technical and social hurdless they have had to overcome.  From the time I read about the book, to actually reading the book on the Kindle was about 5 minutes.  I'm just about finished this book as I can't put it down (I read one book every two years, I'm not a big reader), and would probably not have bought it had I needed to drive to a physical book store, or waited two weeks for it to arrive by courier.

The Kindle really is an amazing device, I highly recommend it.  I should buy one for mum for Mother's Day, but I'm cheap, so she'll have to settle for some flowers instead.

You can support Geekzone by buying a Kindle through this link.

Hat tip to @paulhayton for the link to the article.

The tour lasted for about 45 minutes and a lot info was covered.  We got to see Panasonic's 3D offering (which I have already seen and raved about), their new plasma and LCD LED TVs, a LCD screen running 3D graphics natively from a Nvidia graphics card (must have for gamers, and I must convince my better half that I need one), cameras and camcorders, plus offerings in HiFi, DVD and Blu-ray players. 

There was so much covered, so there is only a brief summary below.  If you're keen to get more info, this post really doesn't do any of the Panasonic products any justice - drop into your local tech retailer and try them for yourselves.

• Plasmas/LCDs
• Improved the front glass panel to minimise light entering in - this means scenes of pitch black are much sharper
• Impressive 178 degree viewing angle (you reading this Samsung?!)
• Has the ability to convert 2D movies into 3D (we watched Sherlock Holmes, not as impressive as a "native" 3D movie, but very cool technology) - the Blu-ray player can also do this
• Better sound (personally I would stick to having a stereo system and not relying solely on the screen)
• DLNA / Wi-Fi enabled
• Ability to record TV to a SD memory card or a external USB hard-drive (plus pause live TV)
• Digital cameras
• Water proof up to 12m (with a dive case this can be extended up to 40m)
• Only compact camera with GPS, a compass, an altimeter and a barometer
• Has optical image stabiliser where other brand only have digital stabilisers.

Thanks Panasonic for the invite.

I'm well familiar with this topic as one of our clients specialises in GPS tracking.  In its most basic form, GPS tracking consists of two parts:

1. A tracking unit - a unit is installed in your vehicle and this calculates your current real-time position and relays it back to a server and
2. A server - this stores the GPS location with a date and time, and allows for this data to be plotted on a map, plus other useful reports, such as how far you've driven around today.

At face value, this all seems very big brother - a boss being able to see exactly where his workmen are at all times sounds like snooping, and to a degree, it is - this, however, is only a small part of the benefits of tracking your vehicles.  In a business, staff and vehicles tend to be big expenses, so it makes sense to report on both.

During development of Argus, I volunteered my car and had a GPS tracking unit installed.  It is a small box hidden in the car, and it reports back periodically to my client's servers.  Unless you were told, you would have no idea that it was there.  It is still in my car to this day for the following reasons:

• Security - my car alarm is hooked into my GPS, and should my alarm go off, my partner (she is included in-case my cell phone is flat) and I are sent a SMS message within 2 seconds with my car's location.  A couple years ago, before I had the alarm wired in, my car was stolen from the Botany Town Centre car park and dumped 200m away.  At that time, I was able to find my car within minutes (rather than waiting days for the Police to find it), and had the alarm been hooked in, I would've been alerted within seconds (a lesson learnt the hard way!).  This really is a must have if you have an expensive bike, custom car or boat.
• Accountability - during busy days of back-to-back meetings, sometimes I will not remember who I've met with.  By using some of the reports the next day, I'm able to backtrack where I've been, and this helps trigger my memory.  From an electrician's point of view, it can prove that you were at a remote location with the arrival and leaving times, should a dispute from a client arise.  I also use this feature often when possum shooting with mates - it allows us to see where we've been shooting, what time we arrived, and what time we left - unfortunately it doesn't help with our .22s' accuracy.
• Safety - the GPS unit has a variety of relays which can be plugged into your car, for example, a crash sensor could trigger a SMS message to a loved one with your current location, if you are unconscious and unable to respond.
• Peace of mind - having the facility to know where you car is at all times is very reassuring (good idea for parents with teenagers who take family car). 
• Productivity - there are gains to be made by analysing common routes, and combining them together to save on fuel and other vehicle costs.  I know of a customer who observed his workmen going back and forward multiple times a day between a supplier and a building site.  By better planning a job, they were able to make one trip to the supplier, get everything they need, and get the job done quicker.

(these are just a handful of the benefits)

For business owners thinking about getting GPS tracking, you need to get your staff onboard, and outline why it is a good idea.  I highly recommend against covertly installing tracking in your company vehicles - all it takes is one report left carelessly on a desk, or a tracking screen left up on a laptop and your staff will quickly figure out what's going on.  Nobody likes being followed without their knowing, and the best way to destroy any employer-employee trust is to track them behind their backs.

I'm glad I had GPS tracking installed and recommend it for both personal vehicles and business fleets.

Blatant plug: Contact the clever guys at Argus Tracking if you are keen to have a chat about GPS tracking or to have it installed.

I wish the "pleasantly surprised" started right from the get go, but alas, it started badly.  It always amazes me when companies who deal primarily on the internet have such offline signup processes - ICONZ was no exception.  The initial signup was online through a form, however after this I had to print, sign and scan back two forms - one was a data-centre application form, the other a payment form (yes a payment form for a free trial) - why do they need so much information? All that is really required is an online signup form, enter your credit card details and the new server should be provisioned immediately.  The whole selling point of cloud based offerings is this "instant infrastructure", so should I wish to order a virtual server at 3am in my polka-dotted pyjamas, I should be able to.

Once the forms were lodged, the server was up and going pretty quickly.  ICONZ were very patient with me as due to my heavy workload at the time, I wasn't able to test the server immediately. The provisioning email I received was great, it had plenty of detail and was nice and clearly laid out.

Remote access to the server was through VMWare Virtual Infrastructure Client, a 275Mb download which ICONZ provide.  Once up and connected, the vSphere Client allows you to access the server as if you were at the console, start/stop it, mount CDs/DVDs, monitor performance plus a raft of other things. 

National data is free, and you are able to monitor your international data usage through another portal (see below).  I was given 10Gb international, with more data available at $50+GST per 10Gb block.

Speed tests below, one national (hosted by Vodafone), the other to LA.

Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to really put the server under load, and test its uptime over a month (similar to what I did in the review of Where's My Server).  Knowing the reliability of ICONZ and its network, I'm confident that their cloud offerings have the same rock solid uptime. My one hesitation is the contention ratio Versa sits in is not mentioned on the website.

The pricing I was quoted was competitive; it's good to see ICONZ management have realised they were really expensive, and have met the market- still, however, expect to pay a little more than the other players in this arena.

As mentioned earlier, my biggest gripe with this service is the very manual provisioning.  ICONZ need to automate this, so I can easily add/remove servers at a whim, which is where a good cloud platform really comes into its own (against traditional server hosting).  It seems so backwards to have such an offline process for cloud services.

Other than provisioning issues, it's a rock solid offering from ICONZ, who have established themselves as a big player in the server market.

If you are interested in ICONZ's virtual server offerings, contact Zac Parish, Business Development Manager at ICONZ, zac.parish at iconz.net (I've personally dealt with Zac and can vouch that he really is a great guy to work with)

My thanks to Zac and the team at ICONZ for providing me with a test server to review.

Today Trade Me have announced their foray into this field with Treat Me.  As with other websites they launch (such as Trade Me Jobs and Trade Me Real Estate), they have the magic of critical mass.  When you have as many users as Trade Me, it's a no brainer that these users can be tempted into using your other sites, simply by you advertising that they exist.  It was this launch today that reminded me of a discussion I had at the recent Geekzone Pizza evening in Auckland.

A user there mentioned how a family member owned a large chain of beauty and massage salons.  He despised the deal websites as they target a fickle market, eg consumers who are only interested in getting a bargain from any random retailer, and are not interested in becoming a loyal, full-price-paying customer.  He would often get customers asking for similar deals at his salons, but at such a low price, it was economically unviable.

This got me thinking about these sites from the retailer's perspective.

Are these deal websites good promotional tools for retailers, or do they only get you customers until a better deal comes along from a competitor? Are they sustainable, and if not, will these deal sites all die once retailers stop providing offers?

I'm interested to hear what you think, add your comments below.

After a mix-and-mingle, we were given a short presentation by Miki Szikszai (@mikiszikszai), the CEO of Snapper, who spoke about some impressive numbers - 160k Snappers out in the wild, 38 million transactions, readers in 400 buses, 2,000 taxis and many retailers (complete media release here). 

Each attendee was given a Snapper Mini and lanyard, with a $50 balance - a very generous offer in my view.  The launch was at No 1 Queen St cafe who already accept Snapper, and we were able to order coffee and food.  As well as this we could use our new Snapper cards to get our shoes shined, or order pretzels.  It was a great demonstration of how the technology works - I've never used Snapper, so it was really helpful to be able to use one.

Snapper is also ramping up their marketing in Auckland, with billboards all over the city, and buses covered with as well (just about got run over taking the photos below)

A great launch and I look forward to using my new shiny Snapper at more and more retailers, as they sign up.

All my photos from the event are here.

Drama 1.  Two months ago, partner's parents moved house.  Pretty standard procedure really.  They forgot to put the order in early enough, so were without service for a week or so, but weren't too worried.  Once notified, TelstraClear proceeded to botch up the move twice, trying to move the non-existent service at the new house, back to the old house (seriously, how do you do this?).  No service for a month, a terse phone call (which took 50 minutes) and it was finally all sorted out.  A nice credit for the month of new service and we were all happy.  I put down the long wait times as something of an inconvenience, but all was fixed.

Fast forward to this month, and the wait time is still the same.

Drama 2. Toll bar has been dropped from the phone and there's no voicemail.  After calling their 0800 again, I'm put through to a customer service rep who is [insert synonym for useless].  40 minutes to get these two rather simple issues resolved.

TelstraClear: I know you've lost your main call centre in Christchurch, however I had dramas before the earthquake.  Get rid of your overseas call centre, they are unhelpful, and the call quality is pitiful.  Employ more kiwis, train them properly and give us the decent support that your competitors do.  Talk to the IRD: get their call back system implemented so I don't have to sit and listen to the piano over and over and over again.

/end rant.

All was going well for around three weeks, then when he or any of his other users tried to login, they would be presented with this error:

Unlike our 3Bit email (Google Apps paid edition), the free edition comes with no support, so I had to figure out the solution myself - a quick search of the Google forums show this is a common issue, and no-one really had a solution that worked.

While I wish I could claim some stroke of brilliance, the answer came to me by accident.

The issue is, if you don't verify your domain name within the time frame (three weeks), it seems Google disable the administrator account for the domain, which in turn, causes issues for everyone on that domain.  The ambiguous error message thrown by trying to login to the cpanel for the domain doesn't help.

To check whether your administrator account has been disabled, try logging into Google Accounts.  If your account has been disabled, you will be redirected to this help page.  I sent an email to Google using the link at the bottom of the page, explaining what had happened, and within an hour, the account was re-enabled, and I was able to login to Google Apps again.

I hope this helps save some hours and frustration for anyone else with this issue.

Ted Williams is homeless, and he stands on the side of Interstate 71 in Columbus, Ohio to beg for money, with a sign that reads:

I have a God given gift of voice, I'm an ex-radio announcer who has fallen on hard times. Please! Any help will be gratefully appreciated. Thank you and God bless you. Happy Holidays.

Being in the right place at the right time, a video of him was posted on YouTube by a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch:

Offers for employment have flooded in, Ted now has a Twitter account (@GoldenVoice614), and is being featured on news sites all around the world (more at Google News).

The link on reddit has gone mad, with 576 comments from readers offering everything from job offers, money to pay his salary and used suits.

It seems the internet can be used for good, and to give Ted a second chance.

It was at a training day for the Auckland SQL group (a group of SQL Server geeks) earlier this year that I realised how few developers knew what geospatial mapping was, meaning the decision makers in their businesses hadn't seen or didn't know about the vast benefits it can bring.  If you work with any data that involves addresses, you need to start mapping that data geospatially.

If you were given a list of addresses to visit, most people who pull out a map book to work out the best route; unless you were completely familiar with the addresses already, this is the easiest way to figure out a route.  Likewise, if you were trying to figure out the most central point to meet, a map would be very helpful.

Mapping data geospatially is taking addresses, converting them to their latitude/longitude, and then using them to achieve your outcome, whether it is putting them on a map, or calculating the distance between them (to name two very basic applications).

In June (yes I'm quick, I know), I posted a topic about the best places to eat, with the idea that this would give me data to help illustrate this post.  I took all the posts, geocoded the addresses (translated them into co-ordinates), and saved them to a database.  A screenshot of the list is below:

As a raw list, if you are looking for a place to eat, it's quite hard to determine anything.  If all these points are put on a map it becomes much easier (view live map):

Mapping provided by Geosmart (subsidiary of the AA), who also do maps for Navman and Tomtom GPS navigation units.

This is only a very basic application, to take this every further I could:

• Allow you to enter an address and then show you the nearest food places and the distances to them (with driving directions).
• List the food places based on the geographical location (rather than the random order they are currently in)
• Give each different food place a different icon depending on it's type (so a coffee cup for cafes, a beer for pubs etc)
• Figure out the most optimum way to visit a group of food places using Geosmart's clever routing engine (Route2GO optimisation).

Geospatially mapping makes visualising your geographical data much easier, and some of the savings that can be made, especially for delivery based industries (by using route optimisation) can be quite significant.

If you have any food places you want to add, please visit here and add your own.  Once I've checked it (and to prevent spam) it'll appear on the live list here.

My thanks to Geekzone users Antzzz, BurningBeard, coffeebaron, Ezzie, garvani, gehenna, jofizz, Lias, michaelmurfy, muppet, nickd, NonprayingMantis, oxnsox, rscole86, sarg, snonoz, timbosan, tomgeeknz, vinnieg, and xpd for their submissions.

Blatant self promotion: if you want to implement this or see what else is possible, contact 3Bit as we are certified Geosmart developers.

Tis the season for giving, so Giapo is raising $4,000 for Starship, to buy them a new Mass Flow Respiratory Sensor:

The equipment that Starship would really like is Mass Flow Respiratory Sensor and so we've decided to raise the funds and give a smile to the kids at the hospital.

The Mass Flow Respiratory Sensor is a critical piece of equipment that is used in lung function testing. This kind of testing is used to diagnose and monitor children with severe and sometimes life threatening respiratory or lung disease.

Over one thousand of these tests are undertaken each year at Starship on children from all over New Zealand who have conditions such as severe asthma, cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy.

The machines will cost $4000, but with your help we're sure that it's beatable (and in time for Christmas).

Between 12noon-2pm tomorrow (Saturday 18th December), Giapo is giving 100% of his revenue to Starship, served up by various NZ celebrities, including former Breakfast show gadget guy Ben Gracewood (who has a flavour in his honour since he's a fruit cake he likes fruit mince pies):

If you're not lucky enough to live in Auckland, donate online instead. I'm heading to Giapo around lunch time, DM me on Twitter if you want to chit chat over some yummy Giapo.

So what is cloud computing? The "cloud" is being able to access servers that are hosted for you by a third-party, allowing you to utilise them without the traditional downsides of heavily initial capital outlay for new equipment, having to replace equipment in 3-5 years, and being restricted as your business grows while your limited hardware is stretched.  Cloud computing means you purchase the capacity you require now, with the ability to quickly and easily add more space and power without having to upgrade hardware.  A simple analogy is outsourcing your servers (as opposed to just outsourcing your IT support).

Sitting on top of the cloud platform, is SaaS (Software-as-a-Service).  Instead of purchasing a license for software which is yours forever (and is a one-off), you pay a monthly, on-going fee to utilise software, usually through your standard web browser.  The benefits include access from anywhere, upgrades are handled for you, and extra users and capacity are easy to add on.  The poster child for SaaS in New Zealand is Xero (they can be compared to the incumbent MYOB).

What's my recommendation?

Cloud computing is a great idea, especially for new businesses.  Start up costs can be hefty, and by using the cloud more, you can concentrate on your core business, rather than having to purchase a HP or IBM server, with Windows Small Business Server, paying an IT company to setup, then monitoring it as your business grows: now it's much easy - just get BPOS (Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite, or Microsoft Exchange online) or Google Hosted Apps.

Downsides? I would shy away from any online backup solutions for now as broadband caps aren't high enough, and if a computer does fail, it will take a good amount of time to bring your data back to do a restore.  It'll get better, but too cost prohibitive for now.

I would also recommend that should your IT provider toss buzz words around, ask them to explain them in layman terms.  A lot of the trends happening at the moment are quite simple when broken down to their fundamental parts.

Any queries or comments, please add them below in the comments section.

What I witnessed today was a circus of poor training, customer frustration and bad PR.  I am not a Kiwibank customer, though I'll admit, I was thinking about swapping to them before today's performance.  I acknowledge that it's not fair to judge Kiwibank on one branch, and one encounter, though this was so poor it's hard not to leave without a bitter taste in my mouth.

What I saw today included:

• Three stations with three staff to serve a queue of 25.  It was a long time before I got served, and most of us were pretty fed up by the time we got to the counter.  Obviously this was known as they had allowed plenty of space for us to queue.
• One Kiwibank customer had a question that his attendant couldn't answer.  She jumped on the phone, was on hold for some time, then the customer stormed out after it took too long for her to get an answer.
• Another customer was trying to refinance his mortgage.  He had the forms, the first staff member had no idea what to do, so asked him to rejoin the queue.  After waiting again, the second staff member was also unsure, so she tried her hardest to complete the parts of the form he had been posted.  He (and rightly so) gave her a piece of his mind.
• Another customer was left waiting with a sizeable amount of cash in her hand, after making a withdrawal while the staff member left to get another form.  The customer was very nervous and wanted to leave quickly as she was a target with so much cash.

My suggestion: Kiwibank, build some dedicated branches.  NZ Post staff are not banking staff, they don't have the expertise.  I'm sure you've lost some customers today, and rightly so - they were being served as part of a circus, not a reputable bank.  Dedicated banking staff will learn who your customers are, and treat them well.  You've done everything else so well, but dropped the ball so badly here.

The best quote has to go to the customer queuing behind me: maybe the other banks charge more as they get you out the door faster.

Maybe.

 
The unconference was something I'd never participated in before.  Each session was  a open discussion between people rather than a traditional speaker-audience format.  Topics were far reaching from should carriers provide content, how to best filter the Internet with the less geeky question should NZ go completely organic? Information within discussions were protected by the FriendDA - participants were free to discuss anything, with those of us listening agreeing not to pass on any information without asking permission first.

We were a mixture of Telecom employees from the different divisions, suppliers, plus "externals" such as myself.  Impressively, all the Telecom internals took leave on Friday and they were giving up their weekends for their employer, unpaid.  This is not to say Telecom didn't go to considerable expense: they put on plenty of food, kept us well watered and organised a great venue with lots of separate rooms for sessions.

There are some very smart people at Telecom.  Some of the sessions really challenged my technical knowledge, giving me good insight on why particular decisions have been made and what the future holds.  Some of the best discussions were those over meals, or held in-between sessions.

The weekend has drastically changed my perception of Telecom.  I no longer see it as a slow, confused, and lumbering behemoth - Telecom contains some clever and passionate people who are working hard everyday to make positive changes to NZ's biggest telco.

Thanks to Amber Craig, Nat Torkington, Neal Forster et al for organising the weekend and inviting me.

Why do you make it so hard for me to topup my T-Stick (mobile broadband) when I run out of credit?  I sold my Vodafone data-card so we could start this new and exciting relationship together because your speeds were so much better, but you make it so hard to top up my account.

When I ran out of credit about 20 minutes ago you did this.

 
Why not show me my account (you already know who I am) and let me top up? One better, let me save my credit card number, so when I get close to running out, you top me up automatically. 

When I tried to login to Your Telecom you locked me out.

 
I had to pair with my cellphone, use Vodafone to buy a top-up voucher, then use the 0800 number to apply that to my account. 

Seriously, I'm offering you money, why do you not want it??

*sigh*

Lance Wiggs also blogs about some well overdue improvements to Your Telecom.

The GST increase on October 1 is a significant change to business accounting, and could be a good reason for businesses to start using Xero.  Since the GST rate hasn't increased since 1989, most vendors will have this hard-coded in.  Xero have already made the necessary changes, and businesses already using them don't have to do anything come October 1.

Something I received recently also helps sweeten the deal:

Signup here for a free account until November (affiliate link), or if you just wish to signup, click here.

Update: Lance Wiggs has a great post outlining how hard MYOB is to update.

Disclaimer: We are a certified developer for Xero.  I have also checked with Xero about promoting this offer on my blog, and they are happy for me to do so.

Quick to make a buck

Not one to miss a marketing opportunity, T-shirt purveyor Mr Vintage has created a benefit T-shirt with a seismograph in the shape of the Christchurch Cathedral to support earthquake victims. How lovely! From every sale, $5 will be donated to the Red Cross quake appeal. How generous ... Or is it? The T-shirt costs $29.95, so if they sell 150, Mr Vintage will bank $2842 (minus an estimated $6 each to make) and Red Cross Canterbury Earthquake Appeal will get $750. Plenty of businesses will be trying to capitalise off the earthquake in Christchurch - 'buy this product and we'll donate [insert amount here] to such and such appeal. Please, just donate the full amount directly. Or make an automatic $20 donation by phoning 0900-33-200.

Not one to take any criticism lying down, Mr Vintage issued a reply on their blog and issued the following challenge back to Ana:

ANA. It's really easy to sit back in your ergonomically designed computer chair and surf the Internet, picking out little things and printing them. It's harder to actually do something about it. Luckily, we're giving you the chance to.

THIS brand new 'Ana Samways donation t-shirt' is available for $1000 online at www.mrvintage.co.nz - just for you. There's but one t-shirt being printed that reads "I Love Sideswipe" in a lovely little pink heart

100% of the $1,000 will go straight to the Red Cross Canterbury Earthquake Appeal, and if you're cool enough to make this donation - WE'LL MATCH YOUR $1000. Everybody wins, especially Christchurch ?

Good show Mr Vintage.  You could've easily turned it into a mud throwing fest, but this way, the victims of the earthquake benefit with your rather creative solution.

Bravo.

Links on Twitter: @AnaSamways, @mrvintage]]>Tue, 7 Sep 2010 01:22 +1200