Monthly Archives: November 2008

November 28, 2008 Posted in Compliance, IT, New business, New Zealand, Strategy 8 Comments

Diligent Shareholders Consider Fight

By Ben Kepes

Around the same time that Xero listed on the NZX, fellow tech company Diligent Board Books did also. Diligent is a web enabled service that provides board members with all the information they require, while still meeting all the requirements of Sarbanes Oxley in terms of record keeping and audit.

November 27, 2008 Posted in Business, Efficiency, New business, New Zealand, SaaS 1 Comment

LeftClick Scores a Coup

By Ben Kepes

Great to see some press time for LeftClick, a company I’ve had a bit to do with in an informal advisory role. LeftClick’s motto is “Make Every Click Count” and that’s what they do – increase the return on investment for web businesses by ensuring that more visits convert into

November 26, 2008 Posted in New Zealand, Society Leave a comment

Stink – Blame Winston and his Cronies for this one

By Ben Kepes

Christine posted about an unfortunate experience her young daughter had on a public bus in suburban Christchurch. It seems that xenophobia is alive and kicking – at least here in the Garden City. My parents were immigrants to New Zealand. 50 years ago they were refugees from the Hungarian revolution

November 26, 2008 Posted in IT, PaaS, SaaS, Web x.0 2 Comments

The Future of Accounting – Guest Post, Rod Drury

By Ben Kepes

As part of an Accounting 2.0 series I’m compiling over on CloudAve, I reached out to some accounting software visionaries to give us their take on the future of accounting/business software and how the eco system would look five or ten years out. Well know local (local in New Zealand)

November 25, 2008 Posted in IT, New Zealand, SaaS, Strategy 3 Comments

Xero gets its first win over the ditch!

By Ben Kepes

Congratulations to Xero who have just announced that the first of the Australian banks has come on board and is providing direct automatic feeds into Xero. As Lucy says; NAB will be providing this integral and innovative service in December for NAB customers using Xero. As soon as the feeds are

November 25, 2008 Posted in Society 3 Comments

Come and see the violence inherent in the system….

By Ben Kepes

Many commented on my birthday last week (I tend to forget these things but the joys of technology ensured others didn’t let me). An old school friend pointed out that we’re now in a position to empathise more fully with Dennis. As Evan said; I like Dennis. I like his

November 25, 2008 Posted in Business, New Zealand Leave a comment

Get Thee To Space…

By Ben Kepes

Well it beats a nunnery I guess! Over on Geekzone Mauricio scored a coup and is giving away a trip to space (well zero gravity anyway). You have to be in New Zealand and the trip happens in February. Enter online here. Only there’s no point, ‘cos I fully intend

November 24, 2008 Posted in SaaS 2 Comments

The Pictorial Benefits of SaaS…

By Ben Kepes

With a hat tip to one of my personal flock of tipsters, David Macgregor, Check out this great (yes frivolous but great nonetheless) video from the Google docs team. It’s summer in New Zealand so ice crystals are smewhat irrelevant, and I’m an agnostic so Yuletide greetings are somewhat irrelevant

November 21, 2008 Posted in Business, Economic Development, Efficiency, IT, New business, New Zealand, Society, Strategy 1 Comment

What NZ SMEs really need….

By Ben Kepes

Rod posted about their report into productivity gains for the New Zealand SME community. As Rod pointed out – this is an extremely important issues given that; Small Business contributes $50b to New Zealand’s GDP! We believe online technology is the key to improving productivity in the sector. The numbers

November 20, 2008 Posted in Business, Design, SocialMedia, Society, Strategy 4 Comments

The Perils of an Echo Chamber

By Ben Kepes

I love social media – it allows me to have interesting relationships with interesting people whom I otherwise might not know. But sometime the send/post/update key is just too easy to tap. Case in point the recent storm around an advertisement. Motrin is a US brand of painkiller and their

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.