US Gov rejects $700bn rescue plan

Thank goodness, the US Gov today rejected a plan laid out to rescue the financial system in the US and supposedly link through to helping out the rest of the world. You can always rely on the Americans to first cause the problem and then have the 'plan' to fix everything - just throw money at it, always works.

Now, I'm not going to go into details of the credit crunch and who to blame and what America should do - I do think that the banks need to close down if they can't keep going, in turn the US Gov should instead look after the people who have money/loans with that bank and protect them.

The BIG reason I don't have much sympathy for these big banks is because of this

(Just Google or Live search this - 'record annual bonus payout for Goldman Sachs') and immediately you'll find evidence going back just 2 years ago to record profits and amazing bonuses paid out to staff members.
link to article regarding Goldman Sachs and the article for City Bank in the UK.

Now these state that for Goldman there was an average of, and I quote,

The bank is paying $16.5 billion in compensation this year, an average of roughly $623,418 per employee

$623,418 per employee... Now I know some people who worked for Goldman Sachs at that time and they definitely did not get such a huge bonus so the guys at the top must have been bringing in the big bucks!

Another quote from the UK Papers:

The high rewards on offer in the exclusive world of Britain's boardrooms and City dealing rooms were exposed yesterday by figures showing a jump of 16% in bonus payments this year to a record £19bn.

That is equivalent to the country's entire annual transport budget. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) released its annual estimate of the scale of bonuses showing they rose by £2.5bn this year, following a £1.5bn rise last year, meaning they have leapt by a quarter in two years.

Now again this is ridiculous when the bonuses paid out are equivalent to the entire countries annual transport budget!

I was in the UK at the time and questioned how could the profits be soo good, why everyone wasn't getting into that business. Now I question - did the banks know what could eventually happen and just think 'stuff it, if its going to happen we might as well do it with a bang!'

Another article here
on Goldman Sachs 'predicting the recession' in Jan 2008. And here another article on Goldman's 70% decrease in profits Sep 2008.

I hope the people that are affected by this crunch are helped out by their Gov and that the banks learn a BIG lesson and something gets done to drastically curb their 'MASSIVE' annual bonuses!

Interesting Interview by Vinny Lingham on SABC

I like how the interviewer comments on Google Chrome as the 'video browser'...
Also it was nice to hear Synthasite's plans on monetising their position.

Vodacom to release iPhone tonight

I just received a text on my phone with the following text:

I keep you entertained! I keep u informed! Surf! I react to your touch! Join us from 9pm tonight 25 Sept at Vodaworld. I make my appearance @ midnight!

For those of us lucky enough to be in Cape Town we won't be able to attend... Is Vodacom trying to be like Apple and have some hype and 'fans' avidly waiting for it to arrive?

We'll soon see how succussful their launch of the Apple iPhone is...

National Heritage Day

Opening up my iGoogle this morning it was nice to see Google recognising the day and changing their logo. I then went and checked on Live.co.za (Microsoft's Search Engine) and Yahoo.co.za but unfortunately neither of them have offices in SA let alone servers or the South African domain setup yet.

Now it seems I comment lots about Google but when Microsoft and Yahoo can't even do the little things like Google does I see why they do struggle against

Google has also finally released Google Android on a HTC Phone, it looks pretty good and at the moment I couldn't say which phone or mobile operating system would be best. Going to be a good battle between Google, Microsoft and Nokia.

Watch a review of the phone here done by Sergey Brin:

New Microsoft Ads... I'm a PC

The 3 new Microsft ads now without Seinfeld, starting to get a lot better responses from the public.







The advert Apple have run on the NYTimes website: (also pretty good)

The internet in 5 years time

Google has teamed up with HTC to launch the HTC Dream powered by Google Android, this will be launched next week. This comes just after Google released Google Chrome beta to the public.

Now there has always been big talk that Google will eventually challenge Microsoft in terms of their operating system and with the launch of Google Chrome this is starting to become a reality.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the Dream will have a large touch screen, a swivel-out keypad and a trackball for navigation. The Dream will also feature a built-in 3 mega pixel camera, a music player and purpose-built access to Google services like Gmail, Maps, and Search.

In the late '90s Microsoft was the dominant operating system and the browser wars were just starting. So been the dominant player and already controlling the operating system on the greater majority of PCs they made Internet Explorer the default browser on all the Windows PCs. So now users would have to go and specifically find and download Netscape if they wanted a different option...

Microsoft was eventually taken to court and fined millions and millions of dollars for this anti-competitive behaviour.

When Google first started it was just a search engine and relied on operating systems and browsers to bring it to the masses. But now they have launched their own web browser and mobile operating system, will Android be adapted to run a PC? We will wait and see.

In the mean time I see history repeating itself as it always does - Google will be operating on all mobile devices (PC and mobile) and having the default search engine as Google, email as GMAIL, instant messenger as GTALK etc etc. Google how ever has already learnt a bit from looking back at history and with Google Chrome you get to select your default browser...

Will they get fined like Microsoft did? I think it depends on how anti-competitive it becomes, if they keep making APIs like they currently do and allow some greater flexibility then maybe it will be ok.

The one factor that is now also becoming a reality is Facebook with many people saying that they will also become the operating system of the future. Now many people may look at Facebook now and not think its possible, but it definitely is not a grasp at thin air.

In 2 years time - Open source operating systems like Linux could be the norm (depending on how secure they are from viruses as the hacking community is still focused on creating viruses for Microsoft PCs and not open source) with Firefox or Chrome as your browser, MS Office as your Word and Spreadsheet software and Facebook your main focus point when going online with all websites and software interacting with it. The internet in 5 years time is too much to try predict right now but its defintely going to have a merging of all devices, and expect internet on your TV very soon.

Bill Gates & Jerry Seinfeld - Advert #2

Since going live yesterday and been posted on YouTube it has already received 120,000 views and that was just this video I've embedded below and not the shortened edition...

Take a quick look




Now as you can see its sort of following on from what Hollywood have been doing with reality TV and putting people like Paris Hilton with odd families for awhile and seeing how they cope. As you can see in the family its an odd family with a crazy Grandmother.

I think they are trying to bring across the fact that Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld are as normal as you and me (besides their billions of dollars they have). The review on TechCrunch was of still been confused but the comments afterwards were pretty good and people seem to be warming up to it.

One item pointed out is that this ad is over 4minutes long, if you are watching your daily show like 'The Office' and this ad comes on - people who are fans of Jerry Seinfeld will watch the whole 4minutes of it. At least its better than soap/cleaning adverts on TV.

Steven made the following comment on TechCrunch

the “billions” of people watching the ads aren’t tech bloggers and admitted apple fans trying to analyze the ad to figure out why they should be buy ms products.

the ads are what they are, a funny attempt to connect to the public and brand microsoft using one of the most popular comics of all time. microsoft isn’t trying to reach any of the people who read this or any other tech blog with any kind of frequency. we know about the major software companies and be you an apple, open-source or m$ft fan-boy, you are not the audience. joe six-pack, the average american who uses their computer at home an hour or two a day is the audience. how is this complicated?

personally, i thought the first ad was okay, this second ad was pretty funny with the exception of the last :10. and i’d wager that most of middle america probably will find these ads funny and bring the brand microsoft back to their conversations. i mean, look at the conversation it’s creating here. job done in my opinion.

I am starting to agree, you can't look at it as one commercial but rather a whole story line with a number of commercials.

Viral Marketing on Blogs

In my perusing of the Internet I have come across a number of blogs been hijacked by a company trying to market itself. This hijacking is voluntary as the blogger normally has the following agenda:

they could get entered into a competition

readers could generate some affiliate sales for them

they could have directly received something in the post

or they could have been paid to write an 'editorial' on the company

Now from what I see if
a) a blogger comments on a company to get entered into a competition or to generate some sales they are generally in the beginning stages of blogging and just appreciate the response and recognition (or they just enjoy helping a company now and then and like seeing what response their blog causes)

b) a blogger receives something in the post then their blog is definitely more recognised and official as a blog that matters (recent example on the Ideate blog
(I'm not saying Andrew's blog is or isn't on the 'A-List' now) This is good if the gift is inline with the blog, not sure Andrew would have enjoyed receiving a pretty table cloth from Virgin instead of the flash disk...

c) a blogger gets paid and writes an editorial - I know quite a few people who do this and get away with it, look at gaming review sites. The question comes in when the blogger reports back negatively on the company (this couldn't really happen if the blogger was getting paid as there would be no point for the company to see it through)

So the trick is to do it and do it well. If you are going to get paid for writing an article then great just make sure its what your readers want to read about. If you are entering a competition (Berocca are running one in the UK now, example on Grant's blog)

Grant just pointed out the fact thay Berocca are running a promotion aimed at bloggers which was in line with content on his blog.

So be careful your blog doesn't become a nasty advert plastered site that is terrible to look at and read. The best way is for the company to create/establish an online community/fan base

Google causes United Airlines stock to plummet

United Airlines stock price plummeted more than 75% on Monday (8th Sep 2008) after a six year old bankruptcy story surfaced on Google News.

To get to how this whole thing started we have to back track 2 days to Saturday when Google News indexed a bankruptcy piece published by the Chicago Tribune way back in 2002. United filed for chapter 11 (bankruptcy) that December, but emerged from bankruptcy four years later.

Google is insisting that it isn't their fault and that its the South Florida Sun-Sentinel paper republished the story at 10:30pm on Saturday. The paper is insisting that Google Bots must have pulled the piece from the online archive. I tend to believe the paper here as I know that Google's bots can be pretty thorough and if a website was republishing articles at 10:30pm on a Saturday night there would be other older articles resurfacing...

This article that was pulled by the Bots didn't have a time stamp so Google just time stamped it with the current date - September 6, 2008. Not a wise thing to automate!
On Monday morning a reporter within a Florida investment research firm searched for 'bankruptcy 2008' in Google and this six year old story appeared in the results with the new time stamp on it.

Now this firm is one of Bloomberg's third-party content providers and the story was soon displayed onto the Wall Street monitors as nothing more than a headline, which read:

United Airlines files for Ch. 11 to cut costs

On Monday morning when Nasdaq opened the stock price sat at $12.30 but at 11am when the headline appeared the price dropped to $3 within the hour. Eventually UAL trading had to be halted and after the headline was explained the stock price rebounded and ended the day off at $10.92.

Its quite ridiculous how reliant everyone is becoming of Google and what effect it can have when it doesn't operate properly...

Advertisers standing together against the Google/Yahoo Deal

So, for those of you who don't know about the partnership between Google and Yahoo read the next few lines. If you know about it then skip to the next paragraph.
Basically - Yahoo and Google entered into a partnership in which Google will provide advertising placed alongside search results on the Yahoo site. This is been reviewed by the Justice Department in the USA and they have yet to reveal any results into any anti-competitive behaviour. Google announced confidence in the legality of the deal last month and stated that they were planning to move forward in October regardless.


Individual companies have not been prepared to stand up against the partnership and complain but rather have kept quiet. The biggest complaint so far has of course been from Microsoft until now. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) came out yesterday against the partnership.

The ANA, a trade group that represents companies including Procter & Gamble Co., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and General Motors Corp., sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas O. Barnett yesterday recommending that the deal be blocked.

The letter claims that “a Google-Yahoo partnership will control 90 per cent of search advertising inventory," and argues that the merger would be bad for advertisers.
The partnership "will likely diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers for high quality, affordable search advertising," the letter continued.

Google voluntarily submitted to a Congressional investigation when the deal was completed in June as a courtesy, but the company has said that it was not legally necessary.

While competitor Microsoft has already voiced displeasure with the plan, the Wall Street Journal thinks this complaint may hold more weight:

“As they weigh comments from outsiders, regulators often discount the views of competitors who complain about a deal, as Microsoft has done. They are likely, however, to listen closely to customers, in this case major advertisers, so the association's letter could be a significant hurdle.”

Yahoo responded to the letter on Sunday:

"We are disappointed with the ANA board's position regarding Yahoo's non-exclusive search marketing agreement with Google... Yahoo remains steadfast in its belief that this deal -– in which prices are determined by advertiser demand-driven auctions, and not by collaboration between Yahoo and Google -– will strengthen Yahoo's competitive position in online advertising and will help to drive a more robust, higher quality Yahoo marketplace for our advertisers."

I myself don't think the deal is a good one and would prefer Microsoft to eventually buy out Yahoo - reasoning is that Google needs some competition and its going to be harder and harder for Microsoft to compete without some acquisitions.

Photo: Flickr/dannysullivan

Seinfeld & Gates - their first ad...

The long-awaited $300 million ad campaign that Microsoft launched to counter Apple’s successful “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” campaign aired on Thursday night in the US and I managed to find it on YouTube this morning.

Its pretty darn random and I'm not too sure what the punchline is, the only thing what was quite funny was seeing Bill Gates do a little ass shake... Not many people are getting it and the only thing I could hope they're trying to do is to confuse everyone and draw them in and then follow up with some better ads.

Take a look and let me know what you think, I'd say its 90 seconds of old men trying on shoes and been stupid. It was quite funny seeing Bill Gates trying on shoes and displaying his discount card. Take a look and see for yourself...




Bloggers are saying that this has nothing to do with Microsoft and Apple but it does hint at what the future of Microsoft could be and according to the ad its going to be 'delicious'. If Jerry Seinfeld gets $10 million for that then that is just ridiculous, some of the comments on YouTube were even saying they'd lost their respect for Jerry.

Microsoft is trying to spread the advert virally and put it up on YouTube - that must have really got the hairs on their back going! They're trying to rebrand their image but have to use their rivals website to promote it, ha ha.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

Beware, viruses on Facebook

I've now been on Facebook for nearly 2 years and as all things with the internet, when it draws vast numbers it also draws the hackers and guys who like making viruses.

My first experience of it was using MSN's Messenger, it was earlier this year and up popped a message from one of my friends saying 'hi' and that he had some photo's of me or something. It had a link with it to view the photo's, I didn't hesitate and just clicked on the link - BAM, instantly the little bugger was downloaded onto my PC and also to make things worse all my contacts on Messenger received the same message from me.

I had to quickly try inform them and it resulted eventually in me having to format my PC - my PC became a spam machine and in one day it used 1GB of data!

So now on Facebook be wary when you get messages from your friends (like in this picture) make sure you don't click on the link.

I've found that I get random messages from some of my friends like this and they haven't sent it. Facebook generally catches it after 24hours and takes the message off, but it can't do anything if you clicked on the link.

In the last 2 weeks I've now received about 4 messages like this.

Another hats off to Facebook, apparently there little 'Gifts' you can send to a friend priced at $1 has generated $34million in annual revenue. Not too bad.

The Battle of the Web Browsers begins...

So, just a couple of hours ago Google released the first version of their internet browser, Chrome. And like many other bloggers I've just had my first attempt at using it.

A couple of posts ago I wrote about the new IE 8 (read here) and then I wrote about the new release of a great program for Firefox, Ubiquity, and then followed it up on an article regarding the renewal of the contract between Google and Firefox.

Now Google Chrome is launched... and with such great timing. The whole new Microsoft IE 8 was supposed to be about increased security, increase in loading time and tabbing. This was just after Firefox 3 had been released and was downloaded over 8million times in 24hours. I wonder what the stats will be on Chrome.

A lot of bloggers are giving their views on Chrome, I'm not going to mimick them but I'm rather going to say that I think IE 8 is going to be under a serious amount of pressure. In my mind its definitely now between Firefox and Chrome, my first like of a browser is one that quickly opens up a new tab and allows you to browse between them. The security that Google goes on about sounds good and the fact that it is going to be very open for developers is great.

Matthew Buckland mentioned the fact in his review that there aren't enough goodies with it, I say give it time let people check it out and within a week you'll start seeing the new apps coming.

Google and Mozilla in bed together for another 3 years

Recently Mozilla announced that it just renewed an agreement with Google that it will be assigning Google's search engine as Firefox's default. This agreement has been extended until November 2011.

Now if you are wondering how dependent Mozilla is on Firefox just look at the financial records for Mozilla from the 2006 tax year - around 85% or $57million came from Google.

Now their formal CEO has committed Mozilla to remaining independent and that if their relationship with Google threatens this in any way they will walk away from the millions it collects. Read more here.

Mozilla has come under some criticism from users with some names like 'Googzilla or GoogleFox' been thrown around but Baker still defends the position and claims that the community will always come first for Mozilla and that there are other ways to generate money.

From my perspective I don't see this as a bad thing or something that threatens Mozilla, if Google started to dictate conditions to Mozilla then it could be different. In the 2 years since the first deal with Google, Mozilla's market share has increased from 11.8% to 19.2% (article here)

So now on something slightly different, Microsoft has bought out the shopping comparison site Ciao for a sum of $486million. This is a mainly UK shopping comparison and review site that receives 26million people a month. This move has received some criticism and people are wondering why Microsoft did this? Ballmer has set aside $1.2billion per year to play catch up on Google, wouldn't this money have been better spent replacing the Google Search Engine on Mozilla's Firefox with Live Search?

If Firefox has almost 20% of the market share I would definitely think that getting that contract would have been far beneficial. I'm not sure what the anti-competitive people in the USA would have thought about that move though...

In case you wondering or you just don't know - users can change the default search engine on Firefox to a rival site if they wish too.