So here’s my hypothesis…

Koos Bekker’s a smart dude, he realises - like pretty much all other smart dudes - that the future is in content, or more specifically, video-on-demand.

Now Koos has a great vehicle for VoD in DSTV, but he recognises a huge constraint - bandwidth, not the speed of it, but the cost (or perceived cost). A month ago, the biggest consideration when downloading a movie was not the speed of the download, but the amount of data it would take from your valuable bandwidth cap. 

So how does he play it?

Well he sees that he has a ace in his sleeve in Mweb. So a few weeks ago Mweb were the first to market with an uncapped product. Nice. Of course it doesn’t solve Koos’s problem just yet, as of course not all DSTV subscribers are on Mweb. However he just had to sit back and wait (and not for long at all).

Enter his Mweb competitors, they immediately jumped on the bandwagon, not only going uncapped - but driving prices even further down.

Does Koos care? Hell no, he’s ecstatic - even if Mweb doesn’t make a cent profit from the move they have absolutely served their purpose. Basically, SA’s ISPs just became Koos’s new bitches.

It makes me laugh really, hahahaha <– see.

Six months from now (or a year, who knows?) when Koos is ready, he can launch his constraint free VoD product because all connected South Africans, regardless of their ISP, have ceased to have a bandwidth cap problem.

It makes me respect the players like the Skyroves and ISs of the world that have had the patience and smarts not to jump on the bandwagon. If history is anything to go by, I imagine when guys like that do make their move, we’ll see something different and ass-kicking.

Anyway, like I said, Koos Bekker; smart dude…!

I just picked up a cool story on Geekologie about a guy who proposed to his fiance (that word has no place in a heterosexual relationship!) by hacking her favorite video game.

The relevance of that story here (other than its obvious geeky coolness)? Well instead of doing a Steve Jobs and getting pissed off with the hackers, PopCap is flying the happy couple out to their Seattle offices as part of the honeymoon, and they’re even giving a copy of the game to all the wedding guest.

Well played…!

So I was reading in Time the other day (their iPhone page is awesome) about the pettiness of the debates going on in the running of the Dems:

At a time of foreign wars, economic collapse and environmental peril, the cringe-worthy first half of the debate focused on such crucial matters as Senator Obama’s comments about rural bitterness, his former pastor, an obscure sixties radical with whom he was allegedly “friendly,” and the burning constitutional question of why he doesn’t wear an American flag pin on his lapel — with a single detour into Senator Hillary Clinton’s yarn about sniper fire in Tuzla. Apparently, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos ran out of time before they could ask Obama why he’s such a lousy bowler.

They mentioned a story that illustrates this fact perfectly. It’s an excerpt from Barrak Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope (I’m listening to it now). It goes like this:

In his first tour through downstate Illinois, Obama had the audacity to order Dijon mustard on his cheeseburger at a TGI Friday’s. His political aide hastily informed the waitress that Obama didn’t want Dijon at all, and thrust a yellow bottle of ordinary-American heartland-values mustard at him instead. The perplexed waitress informed Obama that she had Dijon if he wanted. He smiled and said thanks. “As the waitress walked away, I leaned over and whispered that I didn’t think there were any photographers around,” Obama recalled.

Haha, that shit’s punk rock, I like this guy. The thing is, it’s ignorant to think that the small things don’t count, they do, especially in politics. Why? Because most people don’t understand the big issues, and are far too lazy to find out.

Either way, if he wins despite the ever-so-petty mistakes, it will restore a little of my faith in the American voting public.

Then again, they voted old Fucktard* in for a second term, so just about anything will be a step up…!

A big hat-tip to Virgin Mobile for their Bransonesque up yours to Vodacom this week. Here’s the deal.

Late last year pensioner Hendrikus Wessels ran up a bill of R48, 000.00 trying to win a blue BMW by sending a shit-tonne of premium priced SMSs (approx 320 p/day). After Vodacom let him know the ammount he owed, he confessed that he couldn’t pay and was cut off and given terms to pay - terms that apparently still would have him in the poor house (oh, and he didn’t win the car - but you guessed that, right?).

This is where Virgin Mobile come in - in a great example of a big company thinking small, they announced this week that they’d pay his debt in full… directly to Vodacom. From IOL:

“We’ll be settling Mr Wessels’ bill, and have offered him a complimentary package for a year, enabling him to SMS as much as he likes. But we’ll make sure he can’t use it to enter competitions or partake in any premium offerings,” said Virgin Mobile executive head of corporate affairs Nicholas Maweni.

They’ve also offered Wessels a session with the National Responsible Gambling Programme in the Western Cape, which he’s accepted.

Now no-one will believe that this is pure philanthropy from Virgin, and you have to think that it’s a R50k cheque just to give the finger to Vodacom, either way though it’s very well played, and a good laugh to boot.

I would kill to see the Vodacom execs’ faces when they get that cheque…!

I use gmail as my primary mail client for the simple reason that it’s a phenomenal spam catcher. If you don’t want to use an online client, simply get gmail to check your existing mail account, then forward your mail back to that account, you get all your mail - spam free.

Unless of course you like spam - to eat that is. I was just checking my spam folder and I saw that the news feed at the top of this folder was full of spam recipes - saving my sanity and making me laugh. We’ll played.

On a similar note, Rob recently sent me this screenshot after searching apple.com, for “Virus”.

Lastly, Bill pumps iron on his last day, nice:

Three big companies not taking themselves too seriously - that’s something I can dig…!

If you’ve not already played FreeRice, you really should (Thanks Ruthie).

Basically, you’re playing a word game, every time you get a correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated to those in need via the UN’s, World Food Program.

The rice is paid for by the advertisers whose names you see on the bottom of your vocabulary screen. This is regular advertising for these companies, but it is also something more. Through their advertising at FreeRice, these companies support both learning (free vocabulary for everyone) and reducing hunger (free rice for the hungry). We commend these companies for their participation at FreeRice.

This is simply genius, they get advertisers pay for the donation, and I imagine the free rice gang are (deservedly) doing pretty okay too.

Wow, great idea, too much respect…!

I got a thank you mail from Suzanne Ravenall of Beyond Outsourcing the other day.
At the end of the mail was this line, directed to her financial guy:

Mark, the best thing you can do to reward these suppliers is get their payment through the system – walk it through today please.

A small, but awesome touch - sure we like to believe that we’re not in it just for the cash, but yeah, nothing says thank you quite like the cold hard stuff.

In the 10 years I’ve been in business, I’ve always made sure that staff and suppliers get paid before I do. Irrespective of whether or not my client has paid me (they have done their part after all). I’ve been told I’m a fool for this, but you know, nothing pisses me off more as a supplier than having to beg for what we’re owed - having a client be proactive like this just rocks my boat.

It’s no surprise really that she’s ranked in the top 15 female entrepreneurs in the world…!

This may seem like a strange, even paradoxical, name, but I guess that depends a lot on how you interpret the word punk. If like me, you were quite involved in the punk rock scene, you would see punk as:

…an ethic, a way of life that involves questioning conventional norms, changing the world - and doing the right thing.

So why capitalist? Well, I was driving to a punk rock show a few months ago in my then flash Mercedes, and I remember feeling embarrassed, I felt very un-punk rock. A sell-out. That pissed me off, you see I’d sold nothing out. I still wanted to change the world, I still question the norms, and I still wanted to do the right thing - I was just good at it.

It amazes me that in most sub-cultures failure = authenticity. This seems crazy to me as it in effect tells us that the system we believe in is fundamentally broken. My mission is simple, I want to create a business with all the punk ethics I mentioned above, and I want that business to rock. Every cent I make, proves that this way of thinking is a viable alternative. That’s why we’re capitalist punks.

So simply put, this is not just a blog, it’s a business philosophy…!