Monthly Archives: October 2008

On an empty stomach

I’m currently in Nepal with a group from Medicine Mondiale.  

One of the places we’ve visited is the factory they are currently building, where they will produce an infant protein formula.

This is a crazy part of the world, so there are some interesting stories I will talk more about here once I’m back to a more reliable internet connection.

In the meantime, here is a short video they have put together as part of their entry in Google’s Project 10100…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHTmUcTzZFI

From the voice over…

“Every year, more than five million infants die of protein energy malnutrition, because their bodies don’t have the energy to digest essential protein-rich food.

ProteinForte is a revolutionary pre-digested high energy chicken protein formula.

Made from unwanted by-products from the developed world, it costs only 20 cents and fits in a sachet.

And it could reduce global infant deaths by up to 75%.

The world can’t march forward with an empty stomach.”

Some very simple things you can do to be part of this:

  • Watch the video
  • Add your comments of support on YouTube
  • Vote for this project (okay, this only applies if you’re a Google employee at the moment – the rest of us: if you know somebody who works at Google, tell them to vote for this project)
  • Send the link to your friends
  • Blog about it

Easy!

I’m sure all of your help will be much appreciated.

Related posts:

We’re in the money

Question:

Why does the Powerball Jackpot max out at $30 million?

On a normal week they sell 1.5 million tickets.  Last week, when the jackpot was $24 million, they sold 2.5 million tickets.  This week they sold 3.5 million tickets, worth $33 million.  

So, it seems that a big jackpot is good for sales. 

Why not let the fun continue if nobody wins? Let the amount get REALLY BIG!

Also, for what it’s worth, and appreciating that maths is the LAST thing people think about when they buy a Lotto ticket, a quick calculation…

No doubt there were lots of people who don’t normally buy a Lotto ticket, but did this week.

However, the prize this week was 25% more than last week, but there were 40% more tickets sold, so the already low odds were actually much lower this week than last!

:-)

Related posts:

Motion Charts in Google Spreadsheets

Slightly old news, but anyway …

Motion Charts are now available in Google Spreadsheets.

These were originally made famous by Hans Rosling.  If you haven’t seen his TED talks please start here:

This seems like a solution itching for a good problem.  

These charts can easily handle five dimensions of data: x-axis, y-axis, bubble size and bubble colour + time scale.

Does anybody have an interesting and available data set like that which we could all use to play with?

Bonus points for NZ data. :-)

The Order of New Zealand

As a country, what do we reward?

Take a look at the list of the current members of the Order of New Zealand, which is our country’s highest public honour:

There are plenty of politicians: two former Prime Ministers, three other former Members of Parliament, and two former Governors General.  

There are artists, including an author, a poet, a potter, and an opera singer.

There are those who have been involved in community work.

There is a trade unionist, a doctor, an architect, a lawyer and a judge, a church minister and a theologian.

There is even an All Black and an Olympic gold medalist.

But nobody who is recognised as a business leader.  Nada.

Is there nobody who has made a worthy contribution?  Or are we just not including those who have?

Either way, it’s pretty telling isn’t it?

Credit, where credit is due

I was quick to complain about Contact Energy when I found their online billing frustrating.

How about something more positive …

Here is an email I got recently from Telecom:

The best thing about this? 

I don’t have to visit the website because the email contains all of the information I’m most likely interested in – the amount I owe and the date that the payment is due. 

As long as that looks right, I’ll delete the email and move on.  If not, the most prominent link takes me straight to the online bill, rather than dumping me in a maze of a marketing site.

The email is also signed by a real person, which is nice.

If I wanted to be really picky:

  • They could use fewer words – i.e. the first sentence only needs to say “Your latest online bill has arrived”. 
  • The URL for the link to the bill could be more human-readable – interestingly the link they provide direct to the bill at the bottom of the message is much nicer, so why not use that I wonder?
  • They could include the standard text that appears on the bill to explain that a direct debit is setup for this payment.

But, those are all small things. 

This is a much nicer user experience.  Full credit!

And, what’s really interesting about this … I’m now much more likely to be receptive to appropriate marketing messages that might be included in the future in this sort of email, or on the associated web site.

Thou shall not

Earlier this week I found myself in the Koru lounge at Wellington airport waiting for a delayed flight.

I was using the time to arrange an upcoming trip, and was quite surprised to see this brick wall when I tried to access TripIt.com:

Koru Club Fail
 

The “Your organisation…” is a bit misleading. I was just using the free wifi point.

If anybody from Air NZ is reading … what?

I realise it’s been a few years since I worked in a big corporate, so I might just be unaccustomed to being treated like a little kid by an IT department, but seriously what are you trying to prohibit here. You don’t want me to visit travel related websites while I’m in the Koru lounge?

What’s worse, you actually allow me to do it, but you want to make me feel naughty in the process? As it was I just clicked the “Use Quota” button and it let me straight through. What other sites you don’t think are acceptable, I wonder?

Quite weird.

By the way, speaking of Air NZ and TripIt…

Has anybody else run into problems with the new format e-tickets emails that Air NZ have introduced recently? I’m using Mail.app on OS X and am having a problem with the attachments:

The item in the inbox has 9 attachments, but the message itself has only 6. The 3 that are missing are the PDFs with the booking details.

When I forward to TripIt it is no longer able to automatically add the booking as it has in the past.

When I look at the same message through gmail.com it has all 9 attachments and works fine when I forward to TripIt, so it would seem to be a Mail.app problem.

Is this just me, or have others seen this too?

UPDATE (13-Oct): 

Kim from AirNZ added this comment.  Good news!

“Air NZ recently updated the design of its e-tickets, at the same time upgrading the system which generates the email and attached documents. The PDF and calendar appointment missing from the email when viewed in the Apple Mail client is a teething problem which is being actively closed down. We hope to have a fix in place later in the week.”

If nobody complains …

Thanks to everybody who took time to comment on my Fairy Tale Pricing post from last week.

I asked what other pricing techniques have you seen or used.

There were lots of great suggestions, including:

  • Paul’s cash back offer
  • Ben’s “give away the razor/printer, then skin ‘em alive on the blades/ink”
  • Julian’s product bundling (there is a whole ‘nother post for me to write at some point about Trade Me’s very effective “Feature Combo” bundle); and
  • Andrew’s “3 for the price of 2″, last but not least.

But, the winner of the book, by majority decision, is MikeE with this:

“Back when I worked at a paintball field (I was like 14), we firmly believed that if the customers weren’t complaining about price, you obviously weren’t charging enough.

Seems to work pretty well, if customers are happy with the price, keep uping it untill you get complaints.. you’ve now got the optimum price point ;-)”

Evil … but exactly what I was after.

Thanks to Fishpond.co.nz for supplying the prize. :-)