If the world could vote (US Elections)

A friend of mine just sent me this website link, check it out. Basically what it is allowing people to do around the world is vote in the US elections and its limited to one vote per computer - the results are interesting.

So far nearly 500,000 people have voted and there is a definite winner. Check it out and lets hope the same results come out of the US in a couple of days.

I heard that Obama released an iPhone Application that will let you know which of your contacts are in 'swing' states and urges you to call them to make sure they vote.

I wonder if anyone here in South Africa will be this creative in their marketing, not that we have 'swing' states... but still, time they get aboard.

The petrol farce...

I read this morning that the price of petrol is going to drop by 35cents a litre, whoopi!

Reason for the decline is the drastic decline in the price per barrel of oil currently around $60 which is the lowest its been since Feb 2007, but we aren't getting the full decrease in the price due to the drop in the value of the Rand.

But, looking back at previous prices in March 2007 the price of petrol at the coast was R6.43/lt (data from this page) The Rand/US Dollar exchange rate was only at R7.38 to the dollar and the price of crude oil was $65 per barrel.

So why does our price only decrease to just under R9.00 a litre, you could talk about inflation and the cost of delivery etc but in just 18months inflation has caused the price to increase by R3 a litre?

The current rand / US Dollar exchange rate is at R11 to the dollar which in some way does explain the small decline but how things have changed in just a couple of months considering the crude oil price went from $65 to $150 and then back down to $60 - somewhere someone is making a ton of money buying and selling the oil...

The world we live in...

The other day while I was driving back from a meeting out towards Bellville I drove passed a chap hitch-hiking and I almost stopped to give him a lift.

The reason - cause it sucks when you are hitch-hiking and people just drive right by you without even noticing you. How do i know this? Cause when I did a ski season in Colorado, USA, I sometimes had to hitch a ride. Now there my ex-girlfriend and I had to catch the work bus at around 6:30am to get to the resort to start work and in Colorado in winter it is freakin freezing!

It would easily by -10degrees and sometimes even -20degrees and when you miss the bus you have to try hitch a ride in, and trust me the wind just goes straight through you and its cold. There it would only take longest 10minutes to get a ride, normally.

So, back to my story now. I had driven past this chap and was on my way home and was coming up to the Rondebosch common and at a red light when this elderly chap on crutches came to my window. I thought he was going to ask for some cash so was about to give him some when instead he asked for a lift, so I said 'sure, get in'.

Now I know South Africa has crime and that people are very aware of it and that people do moan and complain a lot about it, also that most of us know someone who has been robbed, raped or worse. And, because of this people don't really like to help people especially because if you give someone a ride you don't really know if they just want a ride or if they want to hijack your car or kill you.

So the chap got in my car and we drove off, think I got quite a few stares from the other drives - they were probably like 'What the hell is he doing!!!?'
After about 30seconds the poor chap was basically in tears, he couldn't believe that someone had finally given him a lift as he had been trying for almost 2 hours.

I was quite taken aback by this and continued to drive not quite knowing what to say, so he started to talk in between his tears about what had been happening and what he needs to do. Basically he was so torn down by the way people had been treating him, he was around 60 years old and had to walk on a crutch because of a car that had crashed into him a few years back and people wouldn't ever give him a lift. He said sometimes cars with 3 young guys in would drive by and not bother to give him a ride and he couldn't understand why they wouldn't as he couldn't be a threat to them physically as they could break him in half.

He was on his way to the Wynberg hospital to get some medicine for his wife, the day before he had walked for 5 hours to get to the waterfront to try get a job. The job was driving people from the hotel to the airport and they couldn't give him his job because he didn't have his driving license on him. The license had been stolen from him and to get a new one he needed almost R200 for the new license and ID photos.

His words were

Its not my fault I don't have a license anymore why should I have to now pay... I almost prefer the old regime...

While obviously I don't agree we should go back to the 'old regime' I do sympathise with the chap that he is stuck a bad circle. He doesn't have money and is trying to get a job but to get the job he needs money...

So, I drove passed the ATM on the way and withdrew some bucks for him to help on his way a bit. He couldn't stop crying the whole way and the scariest thing for me was that he mentioned he had been thinking about taking his life as he had nothing to show for it and was so tired of not been able to put food on the table for his wife and child to eat, so with my vast psychology knowledge (psyc 101 at Rhodes) I told him that that's crazy - if he took his life his wife and child would now have no-one helping them instead of him at least trying and been there.

He did seem to agree a bit here. SO I hope that where ever Jonathan is now more people are helping him like I tried to do. He even tried to get a job making tea or something but was told he couldn't get it because he wasn't female, he said 'its so degrading when you can't even get a job making tea'

Now, my real worry comes in when people just live in their own little world and just drive by people like Jonathan on the road and are very happy to go on a night out and spend R500 plus.

Something has to change, we can't carry on like this where a very small minority keep getting richer and ignore the majority and not care about their plight. I don't know what the answer is but we all need to try and help others around us who are in need, I think that is a good start.

And, please don't go giving everyone lifts now - be careful about who you let in because there are people who would try hijack you or worse...

The internet gives us small people a BIG voice

Yesterday while trying to do some work I was listening to 5fm Radio and DJ Fresh's show which I do enjoy. During they show they started talking about the old Simba packet design and how Simba just changed it back in the early '90s. Fresh was complaining about the fact that Simba did not consult him in their change and their design choice.... Now a major company like Simba back then was not going to go out and consult the average Joe as Fresh would have been back in the '90s.

They also spoke about products that were discontinued for some unknown reason back then and how they would like it back.

Now, we fast forward to the present day and look at major companies changing things and what happens when they do:

1) Facebook changes their profile design and has millions of people join groups complaining about the change

2) Yahoo makes changes and adds in a centralised profile page and has countless complaints pouring in while they are still only testing it.

3) Google makes changes to the iGoogle page and thousands of people start complaining, one chap was even quoted as saying:

How can I be rid of this ugly piece of crap?" asked one forum user about the iGoogle overhaul. "Google has decided to unilaterally change the layout of my page. If I can't find a hack or a Greasemonkey script to undo this, good-bye Google, hello Yahoo!

Will Google, Yahoo or Facebook bring back the old designs? I don't think so, the only difference now from 15 years ago is that we can make our voices heard. It now depends if the big boys decide to listen to us or not...

Google does more evil...

So Google continues to buck the trend in my eyes against their 'Do no evil' motto!

Recently reported on TechCrunch.com that one of their readers who currently spends $100,000 a month on Google Adwords was contacted by a lawyer from Google, the lawyer said he represented Google in their Yahoo advertising deal.

Here is a copy of the voicemail left by the lawyer:

Hi Darren my name is Donald Burke. I’m calling on behalf of Google to talk with Adwords advertisers about the new proposed Google/Yahoo Advertising Agreement. If you have a couple of minutes to talk with me, my number is…Thanks very much. Take care.

The reader phoned the lawyer back immediately and was asked to make a public testimonial in support of the deal:

I received a voicemail from an attorney representing Google yesterday so of course I called back (voicemail attached). We spend about 100K a month on AdWords so we’d apparently been targeted because of that. He was looking for large advertisers who use both Google and Yahoo (we do) who would be willing to provide public testimonials in support of outsourcing Yahoo’s search ads to Google. I told him I’m a free-market competition kind of guy so he tried to address my concerns for about 15 minutes and then called it quits.

According to the reader the lawyer was looking for people who advertised on both the Google and Yahoo networks, now either the Google lawyer was just guessing that the reader just advertised considering the amount they spend on Google. The problem would be if Yahoo provided Google with a list of companies that advertise on their network.

This is a deal that if Google wants to keep their heads above the water and not go against their 'do no evil' motto they should just walk away!

From $33 to $13 per share, poor Yahoo

Yahoo stock has fallen below $14 per share, the first time in 5 years and a couple of months ago Microsoft was offering them $33 per share - if I had 1000 shares I would have lost $20,000 roughly, OUCH!

Yahoo was unavailable for comments as they were waiting for their earnings report on the 21st October, that day could see their shares dip below $10 a share.

But, Yahoo was not the only website to decline - Amazon and Google both saw drastic decreases in their share prices.

Facebook SA about to reach 1million users

So recently some stats was released on the numbers of people on Facebook and the fastest growing countries etc, SA is very close to crossing the 1 million mark and I reckon if you had to include the Saffas living in London and elsewhere we would easily be over the 1million mark.

It was quite strange to see that in the 3rd quarter Facebook's traffic decreased by 1% in SA.... strange. I've been working with Facebook Apps quite a bit and have a wishlist app out now that works off the MyKindaPrices database and allows users to create a wishlist and their friends to view it and book items to buy. Now, people often talk about Facebook been the next Operating System but in order for it to work they would need servers in every country cause at the moment the way it works is as follows:

1) You're logged into Facebook
2) You click onto the MyKindaPrices App
3) Request is sent from your pc to Facebook servers in the US, they in turn send request to our servers in Joburg which starts returning the data via the Facebook servers in the USA which in turn the relays it to your PC here in SA.

That is quite a bit of a round about and it not the quickest way to do things, Facebook obviously needs to make it secure and this is the only way.

Microsoft just launched Microsoft Live Search on Facebook, now as Facebook has 135million users this could improve their search market share if everyone runs 10 searches a month on it... but I would still prefer localised search results, maybe they should use Google for that!

Just to update everyone in case you didn't know - Google and Yahoo have put their deal on hold while they wait for the authorities to OK the deal. They were planning to just go ahead with things.

Ask.com relaunches a challenge to Google

Ask.com or previously Ask Jeeves recently relaunched with a redesign that is supposed to be faster and provide more relevant results through its upgraded search technology and increased database size.

Ask.com's sponsored results are how ever powered by Google as Yahoo's will also be soon.

People are continually talking about how competitors to Google are looking for ways to set themselves apart from Google and be slightly different or better. Ask.com is going back to its way of been able to answer any question instead of searching for something. It also claims to have the biggest database of recipes available.

The question though, are people trying to beat a dead horse?. I'm not to sure they are based on the money they earn from such a small percentage share of the market. In August 46million searches were conducted on Ask in the UK which accounted for one in five people using the search engine.

I think that Ask.com and Yahoo are both missing the picture... Google has created a very sophisticated affiliate network which places millions and millions of its adverts on websites around the globe, they also have setup local servers and search results for many individual countries (like SA) - Competing search engines should maintain their 2% in the USA/UK but also be seeking to compete in local scenes where they could have more opportunity to compete against Google on the same playing ground and not be David vs Goliath any more!

Yahoo + Google = cracks in Google's motto of 'Do no evil'

Today it was announced that Yahoo had been granted permission by the Securities and Exchange Commission to keep certain parts of its Google ad deal out of the public eye and make it confidential.

Now, why would they do this when there is so much focus on this deal already and people like Microsoft and many companies looking to get the deal stopped. For me it makes Google and Yahoo look really bad!

In its quarterly filing with the SEC Aug. 8, Yahoo redacted multiple details about its search advertising deal with Google. Simply put, it was a festival of asterisks that looked like this:

One of the main reasons I feel this deal is bad besides a huge monoply coming out of it is the fact that the prices of keywords will increase drastically. Its already dodgy the way Google manages the prices and placings of the adverts.

If a company could provide decent results like Google does and provide better ad placing technology together with a great affiliate network they could challenge Google. Now, just to put all of that in place...