Archive by Author
How much should I pay you?
Compensation of staff is a tricky subject in any sized business, but perhaps more so in small business where there is no HR department to hide behind and years of past practice to follow. Is there such a thing as “market-related”? How much is flexibility worth? Should staff know each other’s salaries?
Joel Spolsky, a software [...]
My, My, My
While sitting in Cape Town traffic this morning I spotted this loyal ANC member doing his bit for the party:
Something bothered me about it, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what. Then it hit me – it appears that Jacob Zuma is saying “My ANC, My Vision, My Future”, which I was subconsciously [...]
South African Blog Awards
You may have noticed the big shiny gold tag on the right-hand side of the Ideate site, linking to the South African Blog Awards 2009. We think the competition is great for promoting the blogging industry in South Africa, and it’s always had our full support. Last year seemed to be the year that traditional [...]
Painting the Bike Shed
Poul-Henning Kamp, a contributor in the Open Source movement, popularised “Parkinson’s Law of Triviality” in an open letter that he wrote in 1999. Here is the guts of it:
C. Northcote Parkinson wrote a book in the early 1960′ies, called “Parkinson’s Law”, which contains a lot of insight into the dynamics of management. In the specific [...]
Being the best in the world
South Africans have a desire to be the best in the world at whatever they do (hats off to our Springboks and Proteas), and our business people are no different. Here is some sound advice from Seth Godin on how to achieve that:
Make the world smaller
The secret to being the best in the world is [...]
South African Websites that work: FlyPhoto
The curse of being a web designer/developer is that you can spot a hundred great online ideas, but realistically only action one or two at a time. Here is an example of an online service that is getting it right:
At www.flyphoto.co.za you can upload your digital photographs, have them printed at one of the country’s [...]
Don’t play the “stuff” game
I am going to paste Pete Carruthers’ entire newsletter from this week because I think it’s so relevant to where we’re all at. I trust that a link to his website and a hearty encouragement to sign up for and buy anything that he produces is enough repayment from us.
By now you will have noticed [...]
Too many projects, too little time, how to cope?
Your workplace probably doesn’t feel like this:
It’s more like this:
A hundred things screaming for your attention every minute of every day. And thanks to the wonders of Blackberries, 3G, laptops and cellphones, they scream every minute of every night and weekend as well.
Right now you’re reading this, but you know you should be working on [...]
iBurst/ADSL/3G discussion continues
We received this e-mail from an Ideate reader this week:
I have followed the “I-Burst” saga for some time now, getting a good laugh at the same time. I personally have been using Vodacom at work, just my mobile as a modem, very low tech I know, but it works for me. However, I noticed the [...]
Credit card confusion is ruining the industry
Yesterday this letter was sent to the Natal Witness:
Coming clean on credit cards
I can remember the days when credit card transactions could only take place at the point-of-sale and signatures were diligently compared. Nowadays it appears that all one needs is either your own or someone else’s credit card details (you can even buy them [...]
