A week or two back I entered my email address into the Vodafone web site and gave them permission to email me updates on the NZ release of the new iPhone 3G.
Today I received an update. Here it is…(drum roll please)
The new iPhone 3G – it’s all happening.
Hi,
Here at Vodafone, we’re eagerly counting down the days until the launch of the new iPhone 3G – and we bet you are too!
So, what’s next?
We will be rolling out our exciting iPhone 3G plans very soon. So make sure to keep an eye on your inbox to stay ahead of the game.
What’s really exciting is NZ will be one of the first countries in the world with the iPhone 3G!
Stocks will be limited so you’ll need to be quick.
Regards,
Kursten Shalfoon
General Manager Products
So what did we learn? Well nothing. I think Matt sums it up nicely…
Rusty says:
“Hi,
We can’t tell you anything still, but thought we’d email you anyways.
Bye!”
Come on Vodafone, release some actual information already!
One of my fitness-crazed friends recommended that I take a 5 minute break from the computer every hour or so to give my neck and shoulders a rest and reduce the risk of being Quasimodo by 40.
So instead of taking a quick walk around the block I’ve taken up Rockband. A few short steps from my desk to the couch, I thoroughly recommend this game to anyone like me whose attention span for games runs 10 minutes or less.
Play a few songs, blow off a bit of steam and then throw the drum sticks down in frustration and return to your desk.
I really enjoy the company of young people who are on the path to discovering their passions and their talent. It’s great to be around people when they finally realise they love something and they’re good at it. It’s an exciting energy.
Equally it’s frustrating when I see people with obvious talent who aren’t in a position to take full advantage of it. This is especially true in business.
In start-ups and small businesses you often see highly talented people working the equivalent of three or four different types of jobs, just because they think they have to. Graphic designers dabbling in coding, developers doing their own accounts. I’m sure you’ve all seen it.
While I appreciate it’s hard in a small business (Zillion absolutely falls into this category) if you have a skill or a talent it might be a good idea to take full of advantage of it and find ways to make other people responsible for the things you’re not so good at. If these means hiring an accountant to file your GST returns so you can spend an extra two hours a month designing great web sites for $150 and hour then maybe that would be a good investment? If you’re a smart developer who writes amazing code but laying out pages with great usability isn’t your thing, then maybe it would be better to team up with a good designer and work together? Trying to do everything yourself may not lead to the best result possible, and may not be that much fun either.
In my own work life I’m still landed with plenty of jobs I’d rather not do, but pretty early on I accepted what I wasn’t good at and found people who were. My brain isn’t wired to write code so I don’t even try. This has allowed me to focus on what I am good at rather than struggle with what I’m not. And of course the end result is better too.
It’s got me thinking about the importance of attention to detail and using terminology correctly and consistently throughout your web site.
To use some examples from Zillion, an “auction” is how you sell an “item” and an “item” is what you actually sell. You can therefore “win an auction” but you eventually “pay for an item”.
Sellers are not “listers” and pictures are not “photos”. A Member Name (not “member name” or “username”) is how you’re identified on the site and what you use to sign in (not “login”).
Zillion is not “zillion” and happysheep is not “Happysheep”. nzflatmates is certainly not “NZ Flatmates”.
In my opinion, getting this wrong is right up there with misspelling someone’s name, so as a team we try our very best to remember to get it right.
My Dad used to always say to me “good manners costs you nothing” and this is no different. Attention to detail costs you nothing either. Microsoft would never refer to themselves as “Micro soft” just as eBay wouldn’t refer to themselves as “Ebay”.
Just because you’re small, why treat yourself and your brand with any less respect?
And before you ask, yes I’m a bit weird and at times I can be very difficult to work with…but I’m lucky that I’m by no means the only person in the team who shares these values!
I discovered today that we value space exploration to the tune of US$17.6 billion dollars while at the same time 25,000 people die every day as the result of starvation. This doesn’t feel right to me.
…is that it’s not actually getting people out of their cars.
The run in to work today was worse than I can ever remember. The idea that higher prices will force people to leave their cars at home seems to be off the mark.
I think my friend Alex put it best when she said “it wont happen. I’d rather spend all the money I have on the petrol than catch a bus.”
Seeing lots of small improvements go live feels great.
Today on Zillion we increased the size of pictures in categories and on the listing page. With more and more people upgrading to bigger LCD monitors and broadband, the timing felt right. The site looks great. We also jiggered the Favourites page so it’s possible to view new listings from your Favourites quickly and easily from the one page. Very cool.
On happysheep we created a page where enthusiastic members can download banners and buttons (go go go!) to display on personal web sites and blogs. It’s important to encourage things like this when you have a near non-existent marketing budget (it’s hard to justify spending big bucks on advertising when you have a “free to list” business model).
These changes only took a small handful of hours off and on over the past couple of weeks. The only tricky part was running a script to resize the images on Zillion and reducing how long we retain images on expired listings to ensure our backups don’t balloon too much.
Unlike some changes we’ve made in the past, today’s improvements feel well worth the effort. Small wins FTW.
Sometimes “going away” for a few days is all that’s needed to get a fresh perspective on a few things and open your eyes to a world that’s different from your own existence.
That’s how it was for me anyway.
My short trip across to Sydney was a lot better than I expected. I hung out with people I don’t usually hang out with, did things I don’t usually do and came away from the whole thing energised and egaer for the future. It opened my eyes to things I don’t like about my current life and things I want in the day/weeks/months/years ahead.
Traveling is cool, even if it is just across the Tasman. I hope people remind me to do it more often. It changes your perspective.
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