hitting the wire*

Venture Capital anyone?

If you're looking for VC of between say R1m and R15m, are based in SA, have an 'exportable' idea in the Telecommunications, Media and Technology (TMT) field and the ability to build a sound business out of the idea, let me know and I'll point you in the direction of a solid VC fund with a big name behind it looking for the next big thing out of Africa. (and no it is neither Mr Shuttleworth nor Mr Lingham)

Might be an idea to read Guy Kawasaki's blog posts on 10 lies Entrepreneurs tell VC's and vice versa before you do! ;)

Now that was a nice short post from your favourite blogger was it not Tim?  Bet you can't resist calling to find out who the VC fund is.  Except now that I've written that... you won't!  Yes, yes, I know, confirming your take that I'm a dubious Christian and all that! <wicked chuckle>

And now I need to find another laptop, having apparently destroyed the hand-me-down that replaced the one that died of exhaustion a month or so ago.... <sigh>  Hey?!  I'll evaluate a laptop! :>> any takers ?

Not quite amAzed, but impressed.

Two weeks back I mentioned I'd been approached to blog about a GPS you can load onto your cell phone, the amAze GPS.  I suggested they let me have a unit to play with before I did so.  Here are my impressions.

Conclusion.

For those who don't want to wade through the detail, I'll start at the end shall I?  I was not blown away by this GPS system, but once I'd got the hang of how to operate it, used it a few times and I sat back to consider the value for money, I had to admit it is.  Value for money that is. 

It finds what you're looking for (if you're not vague) and it takes you there. To within metres.  At a fraction of the price.  (OK, so it did fail me once in Jozi, but I was warned by my host that not even her husband's Garmin can find their street in Bryanston!)  Just don't run out of phone battery while blindly following the GPS!  Quiet panic.

How it all works.

The software is free and the little bluetooth GPS unit is R500.00.  So where is the catch you may ask?  As I understand it from David Lehman of Phoneit GPS, the plan is to link location based advertising to the system, in the form of banner ads (going to be a challenge on a small screen!) and an opening screen sponsor will fund the system.  The ads will appear during times when information is called (via GPRS/HSDPA) from the back end server during an address search for example, and they will last 10 seconds. They could be both visual and verbal with the capability to click and view the profile of the advertiser and even navigate to their web site.  They do not intend targetting the ads at specific LSM or interest groupings.

The software works on a range of phones.  If your phone has an onboard GPS (like the Nokia N95), you're away at no cost, if not, it will work with almost any Bluetooth GPS unit – Phoneit GPS have apparently used Holux, On course, Global Top, QStarz and a few others.  

You won't be able to buy an ad-free version per se, but you can create a closed user group where they will white label the product and allow a specific group to receive only the white label sponsors message to his specific user group.  Now there's a corporate gift with an ROI! ;)  A closed user group rate is related to the number of users and would be negotiated based on the customization required – standard sponsor rate for opening screen as example is R1.50 per active user per month.

The experience.

Setup was easy.  As long as you were reasonably specific about the suburb you were heading for (specifying "Cape Town" just did not cut it!), it was not too difficult to find a location.  There is a postal code field which helps a lot! The voice prompt was not irritating and gave due warning of changes of course.  It did not interrupt phone calls, but overrode whatever other app I was using at the time.  Prompts were generally timely and unambiguous.  Deviating from the planned route caused furious recalculations which took far too long over GPRS (a good minute before it was directing me again, which had me missing turns in Jozi!). 3G/HSDPA a must. 

Oops.

I thought the unit had been remotely disabled when the evaluation week was up, but was told I'd be the first person to have bust one or had one fail.  Sheepishly, I discovered I'd unwittingly disabled bluetooth on my phone! <smacks forehead> 

Oh dear.

One irritation that hit me early on was the weird AC plug on the power adapter.  Fortunately I have one of the neat little gadgets which converts just about any known international plug format to the familiar one we know here in SA.  The CD did not have much on it from a usefulness point of view except a demo that needed bluetooth (which my laptop does not - long story - don't ask!).  The 'manual' is all of 3.5 pages long - the English portion that is. The website is hosted overseas and response times are not great.

Set up.

You have 2 options for getting going; a web based form to complete, download software and install via PC/phone; the other is kicked off by SMS'ing a key word to a +44 number.  I resorted to the SMS route and have to say it was painless and it was a matter minutes before I had the app installed and was playing with it.

Navigating - the app.

Large icons.  Fairly simple choices. 
"Search" - which allows you to enter an address (drop downs seem to be limited to names it learns from you), keywords or even a weather forecast request.
"Calculate route" - allows you to specify start and end and get an abbreviated route description and even a demo 'drive through' of the route.  The demo could move a little faster...
"Map" - which allows you to see either a street map view, an aerial photo view or a mix of both.  You can zoom in to "house" level or out to country level.
"Favourites" - which allows you to save locations for future use.  You're limited to 10 locations though, which could be a bit frustrating.
"Tools" - allows you to adjust various settings like language and metrics,  scan for bluetooth GPS units in range, and the like.

"Help" - Some basic user instructions for the above choices.

Hidden costs.

Marc Forrest warned me that it might "chow bandwidth".  I monitored my billing online and could see nothing that made me worried.  I tried switching between "arrows" mode (where the display only gives you the next turning / route choice) and "map" mode (where you can see the compass icon marking your position moving through the map) and it was noticeable that "map" mode cost me more; and here we're talking R2.00 for a trip instead of R0.20.  Bear in mind this was using GPRS and not 3G/HSDPA.  ('Your mileage may vary' as they say!)

Navigating - the route.

With a bunch of noisy kids in the car, it was necessary to use the   hands-free.  Without the kids, leaving the phone (in my case a Nokia E65) in the dash and following the leading lady was just fine.  Once you'd identified your destination using a street number, keyword and if possible a postal code, it was a simple matter to tell it to take you there and wait for the prompts.  The routes tended to not always be enitrely logical when I was in familialr territory, but having set the app for "fastest" and not "shortest" route it is not surprising.  Deviating from route usually initiated much furious route recalculations, including "make a U-turn at the first available opportunity".

If I was specific, it was accurate to within 20 metres.

Will I buy this?

I have to say that until I had to drive somewhere I had never been before, I had no real need of it.  But when it came to finding Linen Drawer, the guys in Paarl who are donating linen to one of our CSI projects, or the way to Little Tuscany guest house in Jozi, it was a boon.  I could see a company handing this out to Sales reps and field techs particularly if there was some way of securely loading site info into a drop-down.  I'm sure the Garmin's and Tom-tom's of the world (and here I need to say I have never used them) have fancier features etc, but this found where I needed to go and got me there.  At R500.00, I may well buy one and leave it the cubby hole for one of those "lost" days.

The ultimate test?

The good people at Phoneit GPS have agreed to donate the unit I have here to the Hout Bay Volunteer Ambulance Unit who tell me their biggest challenge is always their way to the patient without getting lost.  So I'll be touching base with the dedicated paramedics in a month or so to see what difference it has made to their lives and those of their patients.

I'm going to be quite sorry to hand over this little sucker, especially as a great idea for a location-based service I'd love in my car daily has just hit me and I am compelled to pursue it... ;)

that's me. looking for myself.

Is your mobile phone bugging you?

Bretton picked up this story in c|net news.com.

The FBI seem not only to be able to turn on your mobile phone's microphone remotely and use it to monitor any conversations within range, but they are allowed to do so and use the evidence in court!

The technique is called a "roving bug".

"Kaplan's opinion said that the eavesdropping technique "functioned whether the phone was powered on or off." Some handsets can't be fully powered down without removing the battery; for instance, some Nokia models will wake up when turned off if an alarm is set.

...

Because modern handsets are miniature computers, downloaded software could modify the usual interface that always displays when a call is in progress. The spyware could then place a call to the FBI and activate the microphone--all without the owner knowing it happened. (The FBI declined to comment on Friday.)

...

Security-conscious corporate executives routinely remove the batteries from their cell phones.

...

Malicious hackers have followed suit. A report last year said Spanish authorities had detained a man who write a Trojan horse that secretly activated a computer's video camera and forwarded him the recordings.

"

Can you imagine confidential business meetings from now on where everyone is expected to haul out their phones and pull out the battery, leaving both lying on the table?!

Technically, very neat, but from a right to privacy point of view, seriously frightening.

A GPS on your phone for R500.

Too good to be true?  We'll see.  You see, I have the opportunity to play with a neat looking little gadget that looks more like a futuristic dinkytoy car than a GPS.  In return, I'll blog on my experience.

Last week I got an email out of the blue from a bunch called AmazeGPS asking if I would be prepared to blog about the launch of their GPS system in South Africa. Being a sucker for new technology, having eyed out GPS' for a while but found them too pricey, and yet being a bit suspect of deals "too good to be true", I agreed as long as I could evaluate one.

Today, a box arrived via courier.  This sleek little gizmo nestled inside along with a 'handbook', CD, AC charger and Car charger.

I'll do a detailed review once I've put it through it's paces, but suffice it to say, I'm impressed that I did not curse once before I had a pleasant female voice giving me the first verbal cue to a trip from my front gate to work.  Considering every delivery person (including the local Scooters Pizzas guys) cannot find our house, that was heart-warming!

Let's see how we do from here shall we?

Are SA Universities going down the tubes?

(No boet, I don't have writer's block again... I'm just juggling and dropping too many balls at the moment!  As requested, here is the text of the article that appeared in Business Day.)

The Future of SA’s Universities Lies in the Pipes

Universities are looking for new communications partners to connect them to the world. It’s a big responsibility: without the pipes, they’re going down the tubes, says Storm Telecom business development director Dave Gale

There is an aphorism in academic circles: “publish or die”. If you’re not publishing original research, or contributing to academic discourse at a high level, you’re not only unable to compete – you’re not even in the game. South African universities have to struggle with transformation, with creating skills relevant to our country’s needs, with very limited funding, and with being on the far side of a long plane ride to major centres of research. It’s pretty tough.

But they have been doing it. South African universities are still managing to stay engaged with top-tier research institutions in the US and Europe. And – more importantly, with institutions in China and India, which are our peers as “almost developed” developing countries. This is particularly true in the engineering and sciences fields, where technology is not just key – it’s all-important.

So yes, we can hold our heads high – but much of the success achieved is through sheer determination and grit, because our universities still have to struggle every day with wholly inadequate network infrastructure.

How inadequate? Put it this way … South Africa connects into GÉANT (Gigabit European Academic Network) at 155Mbps. European institutions connect in at multiples of 10Gbps. That is not two or three, but hundreds of times as fast! Fair enough, they’re close to each other… but China isn’t, and links in at multiple gigabits per second.

This isn’t just a my-pipe-is-bigger-than-yours locker-room size contest. It’s a basic requirement for participating in international research collaborations. It’s a basic requirement for developing new technologies. It’s a basic requirement to be competitive in the modern world. We’re not trying to keep up with the Joneses – we can’t. We don’t have the funding or expertise to stay up with the Cambridges or MITs of the world. We’re needing to keep up with the da Silvas and Novaks and Guptas and Changs. Our peers like Brazil, Hungary, India, China.

There are any number of modern technologies that specifically require high speed, low latency connections, notably for voice and video services. This is where a huge amount of commercial opportunity awaits. Many Web technologies (especially in the Web 2.0 space) assume a high speed Internet connection to function effectively. Modern business applications are often the aggregation of multiple services being pulled in from servers scattered around the office, country or planet. Many consumer and business applications are embedding voice and video. All require high speed links.

We don’t just need fast links to make applications work, we also need development skills and technology strategies that can only be honed in a high-speed network environment. If our students and researchers are learning in an environment that mimics the business environment of five years ago, they’re in trouble.

Turning academic achievement into business success is vital for the future of South Africa’s economy. Look at Yeigo, a startup created by some UCT computer science graduates and launched through the Cape IT Initiative’s Bandwidth Barn business accelerator. This company designed a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to allow you to use your cellphones data channel to make cheap voice calls.

Great technology, especially in telecoms-constrained Africa. But while it’s valuable now, in many ways it points towards a developmental dead-end. The rest of the world is heading to broadband with voice running as a virtually free service on it. We’re developing better tyres for the wheel, when the rest of the world is climbing onto rocket-ships.

So where to from here?

TENET (South Africa’s Tertiary Academic Network, which connects the major tertiary education institutions) is looking for new network partners as its old contract with Telkom comes to an end. It is looking to a new breed of communications service providers to give it high-tech network services that also stretch limited budgets the furthest.

Technology is not just an enabler of science and engineering research – it’s a communications enabler. Not only do universities need to provide fast technical resources to laboratories, it needs to provide effective, low cost communications to all staff and students. Cheap international phone calls. Video conferencing. The stuff of collaboration.

This is a critical period for South Africa – in this race, once you fall off the back of the pack, regaining your position becomes well nigh impossible. We’re not trying to win the race – that’s unreasonable. But we must stay in the running.

Watch out Yeigo, here comes Google!

It is one of those immutable laws of business.  If you charge too high a margin, even if  you have a de facto monopoly, someone is going to find a way of stealing your market.  Ask Telkom.  The likes of Storm have made a good living out doing just that!

The likes of local entrepreneurs Yeigo and UK farmboys TruPhone have been beavering away to develop the ability to do VoIP over 3G or WiFi using one a bog standard cell phone.  OK, so one of the new bog standard phones (with WiFi/3G etc), but you get my drift?

Now when the Google guys set their sights on that market, you'd better sit up and take note, I don't care who you are and how smart you are. 

CrunchGear has an article on Google wooing the mobile phone manufacturers.

I finished reading "The Google Story" yesterday; you can't help being seriously impressed with these guys.  They are aggressively innovative, irrepressibly keen to take on huge challenges and have a war chest that is rapidly making Microsoft's look commonplace!

If Google intends taking on the cellular industry with a free phone (and they have managed to make a serious amount of cash with the concept "free"!), the cellular industry and others who are challenging them better take a good hard look at the threat to their business plans.

The Red Bull X-Alps. These guys are having an incredible experience!

A race along the Alps.  Krippenstein (Austria) to Monaco.  800km.  30 athletes.  They can walk/climb or paraglide.  One ground based supporter, who is not allowed to use motorized or powered flight.  The race runs 24x7, snow or shine.  First one to Monaco wins.

A colleague at Storm, Keith Mould, who paraglides himself, pointed me to the website where you can follow the whole thing live - even using Google Earth if you choose!

The tracking data is apparently sent from Nokia N95 phones the guys carry.

I imagine days like this make all the pain worthwhile!

VoIPTopia @ the June 2007 CT 27 dinner.

I was honoured to be asked by Dave Duarte to give a brief presentation at the last 27 dinner in Cape Town.   The guys from MissingLink have made a video of my 5+ minute rambling available on Youtube.  Before (& if!) you watch the clip you should know that I showed the "VoIPTopia" clip which we created for the Broadband Summit in Feb, which I posted about here.  (that is me... I've just stopped shaving so often)

The last time I watched myself on video was when I participated in a roleplay where I was a CEO of a company guilty of some disaster like a toxic chemical spill on the N1 being grilled by John Bishop (those of you younger than 40 may not recall the sharp, incisive, rather intimidating style of the man).  I won a dare & a case of cider by holding up a mini "Hi Mom" banner at the start.  Ah me, I must try and dig out the VHS clip and get it digitised.  Would be a good for a laugh I'm sure.

Henk was most amused that my notes were in the form of a mindmap - there is no way I can speak from a prepared text:

that's me.

what next... a virtual braai?!?

There are times when the use of IT to implement virtual reality makes me wonder if it's just me and all the other jokers are driving the wrong way down the M1, or what?!?

Checking out a suspiciously good deal on Dell laptops (not quite as good as it would have been if the blaps Henk Kleynhans and his mates spotted had paid off, but a good one nevertheless), an ad for what I can only think of as the DVD version of mood music caught my eye...

The virtual fire.  Just plug in the DVD, adjust your screen and volume, and voila, you've  all the mood that homo cavus or whatever he was called got out of a good blaze, without all the fussy, messy, time consuming stuff!

Not only that, but hey you can choose what type of fire you'd like!  Maybe you'd just like some glowing coals... or a gas fire, or ... hey, what about an electric fire!

I vaguely get the idea of a fishtank simulation... but this is just one step before some schmuck tries to tell me a pill with all the protein of a steak, with some esters for aroma and taste and a fake fire DVD can replace a braai.  If anyone ever does I'll make sure they use it as an enema!

Fake fire.  pah!

engineers. doomed for life.

Being who I am, engineer jokes are something I collect, if only to disappoint my lawyer, CA, and medic buddies when they say "have you heard the engineer joke about..." "yup".

This is the first animated Dilbert I've seen.  Love it.