Archive for the 'IT' Category

Of Nimby-ism and Mass Hysteria

Published by Ben Kepes on October 3, 2008 in Business, Business and the Environment, IT, New Zealand and Society. 0 Comments

Now I’m not going to wade into a discussion about the health-risks or otherwise of cellphone towers. I’m not qualified to comment and I really don’t have the appetite for the fight those sorts of discussions invariably turn into. All I’ll say is that I use a mobile device, and get mighty annoyed when I can’t get coverage with it - the solution to which is, I guess, more cell sites.

I do however have a pathological distaste for Nimby-ism, that affliction that sees residents react to whichever local development is planned with a “Not in My Backyard” mentality. I’ve been exposed to Nimbyism a lot in the past few years - I live in a location that has either seen proposed, consented or actually built two regional landfills, several major alternative energy projects, a few major tourism projects and some assorted infrastructure build outs.

I’m also involved in community groups in said reason and have seen first hand the passion (and sometimes blind passion) caused by these projects.

With all of this background it was awesome to read a post by Miki, a blogger who I have a major amount of respect for anyway, where he discusses the current debate going on around cell towers in a couple of New Zealand locations. For a bit of background Miki was an engineer for a major telco and has had to front up on numerous occasions to discuss cell sites with worried residents.

I can’t help but think that the majority of residents concerns however are more a case of Nimby-ism then they are of the concerns about cell site radiation and it’s consequences. There’s nothing worse than being told of the perils of landfills by a farmer that everyone knows has a rubbish pit full of the detritus of decades of farming and that gets burnt off every year or so. Or the concerns of locals about the environmental impact of a windfarm, a little hard to take given the slash and burn farming mentality that we’ve inherited from generations past.

All interesting thoughts - but the parting line must come from Miki who says it better than I could;

It doesn’t really matter what I say I guess - it’s what I do.

Ella [Miki's daughter] has just started at a pre-school two days a week. There are two sites within 100m of the pre-school. My position on this issue is clear.

No one can accuse you of being either a nimby or a hypocrite Miki - kudos!

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In the Nick of Time

Published by Ben Kepes on October 2, 2008 in Business, Economic Development, IT, New Zealand, New business and Strategy. 0 Comments

Times of global economic uncertainty are bad news for fledgling start-ups. None more so than those in need of angle funding. The fact is that most angel investors head for the hills at times like this - their own wealth and returns from their more robust investments are heading south, they’re generally not especially motivated towards altruistically giving their “hard” earned dollars, drachmas or yen away to others.

Into the fray then comes excellent news that a consortium funded by Sparkbox and K1W1, an investment company owned by Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall, have launched the Start-Up Fund, aimed at companies from Auckland’s business incubator the Icehouse.

Apparently the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund’s Seed Co-Investment Fund (SCIF) will match investments made by Sparkbox and K1W1, so enabling Kiwi entrepreneurs to get funding of up to $150,000 per project.

$150k is enough money to get over the proof-of-concept hurdle - it’s not so much that businesses get silly and spend up on bling - but it can remove some of the impedimenta to success.

Applicants for the Start-Up Fund must be Icehouse residents. The 85 start-ups that applied for this first round of funding were first cut down to 20, says Hamilton. Of this 20, six are now being put through a process that will cut the candidates down to two. The winner will be announced in the next couple of weeks.

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Woot - Xero’s gone all dingo on us

Published by Ben Kepes on October 1, 2008 in Business, IT, New Zealand, SaaS and Strategy. 8 Comments

Fair suck of the sav Marge, and will ya throw another snarler on the barbie and grab me an xxxx out of the esky (sorry - just practicing for when New Zealand becomes another state of our Western neighbour).

Cool to hear that Xero have fully launched their Australian offering. Fact is that Australia is a huge market (compared to New Zealand) yet still close enough to here for their to be some similarities in the way business is done - to that end Australia, in my mind, will be a key test of Xero’s market entry strategies. It was also cool to be alerted (thanks Dan) to the fact that Diversity is being quoted on that most illustrious of sites, Computerworld - just remember, you saw it here first (by several months!)

Of course I’m looking forward to seeing them go head-to-head with Saasu - I kind of feel that they’re both distinct products with different target markets - Saasu suits a larger operation more in need of an ERP lite offering, while Xero I see as being more of a step up from the "excel or a cashbook" crowd.

Either way it’ll be fun to watch. And on another note look what came up when I did a Google search for Xero - it seems Netsuite will clutch at any straw for business!

xero netsuite

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Build the Marketplace and the Stallholders will come

Published by Ben Kepes on October 1, 2008 in Business, IT, PaaS, SaaS and The Cloud. 0 Comments
Image representing Zoho as depicted in CrunchBaseZoho is launching their application marketplace today. Like other similar offerings, the Zoho location is a place where customers can come and browse different applications, try them out and buy them (or get ‘em for free in some cases). Think of it as iTunes for apps.

The difference between Zoho’s offering and those of other players, is in keeping with the differences between Zoho and its competitors in other marketplaces - and it’s a difference which has garnered them attention a little disproportionate to their size. Instead of charging users for application from the marketplace - Zoho passes them on at whatever cost the developer wants (including free if necessary). Zoho is happy with the potential of some downstream revenue created from the fact that the applications are created on their own product, Zoho Creator, and if users go over a certain level their is a charge for use of that product (bear in mind that their pricing kicks in at a pretty high level - for 10 Apps shared with less than 5 users, Zoho Creator is free.). It’s kind of like Apple not charging for downloads from iTunes - secure in the knowledge that they make coin off of selling iPods!

So far the range of applications in the marketplace is a little limited (it only launched today after all) but the different categories give you a taste of what can be done, and what’s to come. Zoho’s rationale for creating the marketplace goes like this;

There are many applications out there that are not available off the shelf, but are needed in a particular use case or situation, but there is not enough market for vendors to offer such situated software as the need could be specific to a use case or an individual/business.
Zoho Marketplace is trying to address this particular need. This market is not big enough for vendors to make a living and not small enough to ignore. With Zoho Marketplace, we hope to connect developers directly with users to create and purchase such applications providing a platform in Zoho Creator.

It’s great to see an alternative to the salesforce and Google offerings and it’ll be interesting to see how the marketplace develops over time.

Check out the video below (a little cheesy admittedly but interesting nonetheless!) and the somewhat more serious one further down.