Archive for 2008

Is “do no evil” losing it’s sheen?

Since I am blogging about Google, this is worth a mention (as it has certainly been a topic of conversation here…). Is Google (especially Google SA) still endeavoring (and manging) to “do no evil” (see point six in the “ten things“).
Referring to my previous article, Google may have done Firefox in (its debatable) but less debatable (or perhaps not?) is their recent “doing in” of Entelligence, a Cape based web dev and SEM company: http://www.fin24.com/articles/default/display_article.aspx?ArticleId=1518-1786_2386045

Read this article and post your thoughts. My take is that Google must decide: “work with channels”, or “don’t work with channels,” but don’t try to have your cake and eat it.

I sincerely hope Google isn’t becoming too big and arrogant to remember how important loyalty and trust are…

Some more “evil” considerations:

http://www.theopensourcery.com/wordp1/index.php?p=409
http://ablog.apress.com/?p=1019
http://www.oreillynet.com/windows/blog/2005/08/is_google_evil.html
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/19061/53/

September 3, 2008 | 1 comment | View Post

Google’s Reflection in Chrome

This week saw the release of Google Chrome, Google’s new feature-rich browser based on WebKit and Firefox components. It has been met with a mixed response and has also raised some interesting thoughts/issues/discussions…

See for example the outcry about the extreme licensing “liberties” that Google is taking in their terms and conditions for Chrome (incidentally the same terms and conditions for Google Docs)

Basically, whatever content you put through the browser, they own it.

Also see the “abandon Firefox” article. The guys who are trying chrome will be predominantly Firefox users (IE users are slower to change/experiment). So the “we are taking on Microsoft” sentiment does not really roll in this case. Interesting to see how Firefox responds.

I am not that excited about it for web:

It uses the same WebKit based renderer as Safari (and an inferior version at that, read)
It doesn’t have some vital features that other browsers have (e.g. ad blockers) in order to serve Google’s other business objective (e.g. “making money through ads”)
It doesn’t (yet) work with a number of Google’s own products: techcrunch

- They do admit that they are “far from done”

Firefox has the head start on the web browser market when competing with Microsoft and Chrome will have to do much to beat them now.

An interesting aside, people are also raising concerns that these browsers with richer capabilities may cause a “split in internets”: information week

The most exciting prospect around Chrome seems to be the mobile version. Chrome is mostly likely to become the de facto standard on Android and thus mobile browser

Of course, it is a Google product and so I am sure it will ultimately be successful

Let’s see how it pans out…

September 3, 2008 | 4 comments | View Post

PersonL ready for commercial (beta) release

PersonL is now ready for use for paying clients and we have already secured three paying clients (details to follow as clients go live).

This week we released the last of the vital/core features and the team is now focussing on the “wishlist/enhancement” items (some of which can be seen here). Immediately we will be building:

The PersonL Instance API (used by our clients to create customised job searches on their web sites if they choose)
The PersonL Instance Job Search (accessed directly via a link)
The White-Labeled PersonL Instance Job Search (which can be embedded into our client’s sites via iframe)
PersonL Joomla Plugin (this will be released open source to the Joomla community as an easy-to-use job search for any Joomla based site using the PersonL API)

PersonL also released new/refined packaging & pricing today which can be seen here: www.personlplace.com/Sign-Up/

Please send us your comments & suggestions as per normal…

August 29, 2008 | 0 comments | View Post

New PersonL Site Blitz!

Yesterday, I (proudly) sent the following mail to the office:

“We have just officially entered PersonL (last minute) into this years TechCrunch50 Contest

We had half applied, decided it was too late, and then they mailed me yesterday and asked me to complete the entry by tomorrow…

So we got cracking and churned out a much upgraded web site and content in just two days (planning, writing content and everything).

Well done to the team who did this: Martin (design and input), Pascal (most of the dev and styling), Tim (Powerpoint, Flash and graphics) and Ferdi (making sure it all came together).

Check it out and let us know what you think.

Rob helped out a bit on testing from a usability perspective. I wrote the content.”

The amazing thing is, i think it is the best website we have ever built on such short notice.

August 1, 2008 | 3 comments | View Post

PersonL sponsors CareerPlanet

CareerPlanet is an initiative designed to contribute, meaningfully, towards the development of a skills pipeline for South Africa.

In practical terms, CareerPlanet has a mobile network of computers and trainers who setup in shopping malls for a week at a time and assist kids to understand the “world of work,” profile themselves and have their minds opened to opportunities that they may never have considered before.

CareerPlanet needed a way to manage all the profiles of the kids attending their mobile kiosks, and PersonL was a perfect fit.

August 1, 2008 | 0 comments | View Post

The Google effect

Google has progressed from being known as a worldwide phenomenon, to simply a standard in the way we conduct our Internet lifestyle. I’m actually quite shocked that Word has identified ‘Google’ as a spelling error. It’s an indispensable tool used and loved by all. I must confess that it’s so effective, that I sometimes use it to find pages on websites for which I know the URL, because I know that Google will find what I’m looking for faster than me.

It’s almost too easy. No, wait, it IS to easy. Why? – because it’s made us complacent, lazy and incapable of thinking for ourselves.

Think back to the last time you did research for a project. You probably spent about 10 minutes on Google looking for references. Maybe you even tried a few variations on the keywords used for the search before you were confident that all relevant info available in the universe had been accessed. How about some images to go with that? – certainly. Just make sure you ignore the little clause that states ‘…subject to copyright’ before you download, and you’ll be fine. Research complete. I wonder how many business plans have been preceded by a 10 minute Google search?

August 1, 2008 | 1 comment | View Post

WWW SA helps fight Xenophobia

Last week the horror of xenophobic attacks that had been gripping the country spread to Cape Town. With more than 18 000 foreign nationals displaced from their homes scared, cold,tired and hungry. Our staff decided to do something about it. Bianca Clavaux our HR coordinator had this to say “we just don’t realize how blessed we are and so many of our staff felt this was a time for us bless others in real need”. So within a few hours on Monday morning our staff helped raise R6 998 , then along with our other partner companies we matched each rand contributed by the staff, so in total we had R13 996.

A quick call to the Red Cross, (who have been doing really excellent work in rallying together volunteers and resources) and we had a shopping list of what was most needed. To fight the freezing cold Capewind we needed blankets, Makro said they had 194 blankets in stock…..we bought them all! A while later and we had stacked 1221 tins of food. All in all this was 2 bakkie loads of goods, with no more space left we were off to the Wynberg Red Cross where we were met by a bunch of overjoyed volunteers who helped us offload all the goods, later to be distributed across the Cape Town area to those who needed it most.

Thank you to everyone who supported this initiative, if you would like to help fight xenophobia please contact the Red Cross via their website.

May 28, 2008 | 0 comments | View Post

Finding the right CMS solution

Matthew Buckland wrote an interesting article giving a good overview of the importance of the decision “which CMS technology should we use for our web app?” and catagorizes the possible solutions into three basic categories, namely 1. open source, 2. proprietary and 3. built from scratch.

At WWW, we have been delivering Content Management System (CMS) solutions for over 5 years now. We have had an interesting journey in this regard and have come to some strong (and hopefully useful to others) conclusions.

May 20, 2008 | 0 comments | View Post

Archive for 2008

Is “do no evil” losing it’s sheen?

Google’s Reflection in Chrome

PersonL ready for commercial (beta) release

New PersonL Site Blitz!

PersonL sponsors CareerPlanet

The Google effect

WWW SA helps fight Xenophobia

Finding the right CMS solution

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