Pure Blue » Tech Business

Where’s the best place to do business?

Matthew — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:21:15 +0000

NZ of course, but then we would say that wouldn’t we!

Every year the World Bank releases a report detailing the results of its survey and for 2010, the Doing Business 2010 Survey showed that New Zealand held its No. 2 spot for another year:

Singapore
New Zealand
Hong Kong, China
United States
United Kingdom
Denmark
Ireland
Canada
Australia
Norway

The survey deals with a few key indicators, the important ones being ease of starting a business, employing workers, getting credit, paying taxes, enforcing contracts and protecting investors. According to Minister for Small Business Clayton Cosgrove it takes an average of 13.4 days to setup a new business, yet in New Zealand, it is one hour! That is ridiculously quick!

It is no wonder that New Zealand has so many small businesses. If you have the idea for a product or service, then there really isn’t a better place to do it.

Trade Me advertising … why?

Matthew — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:45:44 +0000

Trade Me has recently updated its design, which on the whole is pretty good. However, they have also added in third party, graphical advertising. The site always stood out above the rest (the likes of eBay for example) for its clean appearance and no-clutter approach. I can’t help but think … why add the ugly advertising? Looking more like eBay is not a good thing.

Ok, yes, there is the fact that there is a lot of traffic in NZ going to these pages on a daily basis, so there is the potential to serve up a lot of impressions and demand a premium for it. However, TradeMe has a very sound financial model – it makes money and it makes it very well! It’s not like they needed to do it to increase revenue. I suspect that FairFax Media will have pushed this, opening up TradeMe as a new target for their existing customers who already advertise with them.

Will people really care? Probably not, but I’ve lost a bit of respect for them going down this path.

IE8 – Is your site prepared?

Matthew — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:58:13 +0000

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is set to be part of Windows Update in the coming weeks. For most people, that means an automatic upgrade from Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), probably not really noticing much difference.

So what’s to be prepared about? IE8 is more ‘standards compliant’ than previous versions, meaning that your website may not look or even work exactly as you intend in the new browser! To update a web-site’s design to be standards compliant can be time consuming, especially seen as you may have only just got through updating to support IE7!!

Microsoft thought about this and so offers the ability to select a version of internet explorer that your site supports.

By default, the browser will be in “Internet Explorer 8 Standards” mode. For non-compatible sites, users will see a broken page icon in the address bar. Clicking on this will allow them to change the compatibility to Internet Explorer 7, for example. You don’t want your site visitors to have to do this, so as a site owner, you can specify what you support.

This is done with a meta tag, in the head of your web pages. The following will set a page to render in IE8, the same as it would in IE7:

That’s it!

Full details on other possible document compatibility values can be found at MSDN – Defining Document Compatibility

The Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit also highlights other features to be aware of as a developer. It makes interesting reading.

Icann votes to relax domain name restrictions

Matthew — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:27:43 +0000

Icann (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), who regulates top-level domain names (such as ‘.com’ and ‘.nz’), has voted to relax the rules.

From 2009 and for an initial “low 6 figure sum”, you would be able to register your name or company brand as a top-level domain. I can for-see the same mad clamour for names that was seen when domain names were first available. The high cost and the review process managed by Icann should keep things sensible … maybe. In the event of multiple submissions for the same name, an auction to determine the highest bidder is going to be the only way. How many bidders would there be for control of ‘.search’, or ‘.news’? … that could get pricey!

The other relaxation of rules is around the registration of non-Roman characters in domain names. There may be a few technical challenges with handling this, but it’s obviously a great step to making the world wide web accessible to everyone (4.5b people don’t user Roman script!)

Here’s an article from the BBC with more details.

Microsoft makes offer to buy Yahoo!

Matthew — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:07:59 +0000

At $31 a share, the deal would be $44.6 Billion in cash and shares. The reason behind the move is to tauted to be about gaining a greater share of the online search and advertising revenue, with the obvious focus being to compete more strongly with Google.

But it is not just advertising and search that Microsoft want to compete on. They are continuing their drive towards online software-as-a-service products. Steve Ballmer has said:

“The Windows user wants to be live. There will be a Windows Live. There will be an Office Live”

Yahoo! will provide an advantage in this area too due it’s recent development efforts and aquisition of Zimbra (online email and calendar product). Let’s see what happens if it goes ahead.

Launch Wave 2008 Technical Briefings

Matthew — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:10:35 +0000

It seems as though it’s that time of year again for Microsoft to push it’s latest and greatest development innovations. This year (last year was Vista) it’s the turn of VS2008 and SQL 2008 to get the limelight.

http://www.microsoft.com/nz/events/launchwave/default.mspx

I’ve probably been to a few similar sessions to those advertised, but as is typical, I wasn’t using the technology at the time so I’ve forgotten most of what was mentioned. So, it’ll be good to hear it again and it should make a lot more sense this time.

As always, the $149+GST entry fee goes on the ‘freebies’:

“All attendees will receive a promotional pack containing limited ‘not for resale’ versions of the Launch Wave products together with other software goodies.”

So this means a copy of Windows Server 2008, VS2008 (a trial only by the looks of it) and SQL 2008 (when it’s released) … very nice!

Getting Real – By 37signals

pureblue — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 06:00:33 +0000

I’ve looked at used some of the online tools from 37signals, such as Writeboard, Ta-da List and Backpack, and so I was interested to learn that they’ve written a book about their philosophy and company ideas. The basic theme is how to start out in a new technology venture, using the contrarian approach of providing less, releasing early, and above all – staying small.

“All the cash, all the marketing, all the people in the world can’t buy the agility you get from being small.”

The book is available online here. You can also pay US$19 to get a copy in pdf or US$29 for a paperpack copy. The online content is exactly the same as the printed version, which I’m actually contemplating purchasing … I always find it easier to make my notes directly in the book

“Keep it small. Keep it simple. Let it happen.”