You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2009.
ArrivedOK lets air travelers automatically alert others about their arrival at their destinations. Schedule your flight at http://www.arrivedok.mobi with the destination airport, expected arrival time, your recipient phone numbers or emails. ArrivedOK tracks your cell phone in the mobile network when you turn it on after the landing. Then it instantly sends ‘Arrived OK’ messages to the list of your recipients.
If you ever traveled by air, you know what people in an airplane do when it’s just landed and ruling to the ramp. Everyone grabs a cell phone to call or send an arrival message to somebody — mother or father, wife or husband, girlfriend or boyfriend, colleague or boss. You probably do it too: “Arrived OK”. It is not very informative but it is very important. Because someone who cares is waiting for it. Or you want to make your colleagues in the office jealous about your vacation in Thailand 
Based on patent-pending technology, ArrivedOK works by detecting its subscriber’s mobile phone when it is registered in a local GSM network. ArrivedOK allows sending personalized arrival alerts to different groups of recipients, and enables subscribers to save on international roaming charges when traveling abroad.
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New message from ArrivedOK.mobi
John Doe (+14082478825) arrivedOK in Frankfurt.
Hey, I’m on my way home! Miss U!
John.
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Great idea… Not yet in South Africa. Who’s going to help launch it here?
Well the TwitterVerse has taken the Universe by storm. Twitter soaring past 14 million users already.
Companies using Twitter as a service. Entrepreneurs using Twitter as a business. Others using Twitter socially. Whatever the case, even newspapers losing out through the Twitter Storm.
So it’s all happening. A hype not only, it’s a tool that will either stay or be improved upon.
For your information even I have been ‘recruited’ to Twitter. I will now also Twitter for @salambc
Salam Business Club
The Salam Business Club is the world’s first social business network especially for the Arab, Asian and Muslim business world with members from 170 countries around the world. Join the hottest Internet startup and find old friends, colleagues, valuable business contacts and new markets for your products.
Poken is a tool for social networking that can be used across many social networking platforms.With your poken you instantly connect with new friends across online social networks when and where you meet them. The poken hand pulls out of the body, revealing a USB connector. Insert the USB connector into any computer with web access to easily upload your new contacts to the Poken web database.
On the Poken site you and your friends can view your contacts alphabetically, or chronologically in your “social timeline.” You can also send messages, group contacts with a label, write notes for yourself about each contact, and so much more.
Pool your friends together and buy a 12-pack. Visit DoyouPoken now!
Salam Business Club (SalamBC), the social business network built especially for the Arab, Asian and Muslim business world, and that recently launched versions in Arabic, Urdu and other languages (and soon in Persian), will be officially announcing an interesting new business development for their service in the upcoming days.
Through a partnership with the Institute for Islamic Finance and Banking (IFIBAF), they aim to be the first online destination to offer Islamic Finance and Banking products to its members.
The deal comes at a time when demand for Islamic financial products is really high and growing, both from Muslims as well as non-Muslims all around the world, yet this demand remains far from covered and satisfied by whatever offers currently exist in the market. And the current economic crisis is pushing even more people to consider Islamic finance and banking as a safer option, with a number of banks working on building up Islamic finance units.
The Islamic finance industry, which is still a nascent one, is currently estimated at $700 billion to $1 trillion in asset size, with a 15-20 percent annual growth rate.
The move by SalamBC to launch such products also comes upon the requests and feedback that they kept constantly getting through listening to their members.
With this deal, SalamBC brings its whole database of members from over 180 countries worldwide to the table, while the IFIBAF brings its long years of experience with Islamic finance and banking, as well as its extensive global network within the Islamic Banking Community, to offer together a central entry point to Shariah-compliant financial products for everyone interested.
Their initial focus for their offerings will be on the European market, as the demand there is largely unsatisfied, but they will be extending to the rest of the world soon after that, as they continue to finalize more partnerships and agreements around the world.
All the best Rias, CEO & Co-founder of Salambc!
Before I sign off today and go & vote tomorrow (SA Elections). I have to just bring to your intention the following business idea. It’s way innovative and so unique:
Flogo
It’s not a bird! It’s not a plane! It’s a FLOGO!
Flogos are synthesized from proprietary surfactant (soap) based foam formulations and lighter-than-air gases such as helium. They last for 30 – 40 minutes and travel high, hundred and even thousands of feet.
It’s cool for events, roadshows and other advertising campaigns and there clients: Nintendo and Walt Disney are using it!
They have offices all over except Africa and India? Partner with them? Who knows…
News24.com Pic
Tomorrow South Africa is voting: The most competitive elections in South African history I feel. And the most important elections too… So to all my International Visitors… no Twitter and Blog updates tomorrow.
To all my South African brothers and sisters…I can’t tell you who to vote for, but I can say it’s essential to vote and even a religious right!
All the best
StartUpAfrica is a blog dedicated to entrepreneurship in Africa with a particular focus on technology entrepreneurship. A number of the challenges faced in Africa (poverty, crime etc) could be solved by an increase in entrepreneurship.
They hope to achieve the following outcomes:
- Promotion & stimulation of entrepreneurship in Africa
- Assistance to entrepreneurs with advice & training
- Providing information & news on Supporting organizations, events and industry news
Good news:
I am now an official blogger for StartupAfrica.com!
Join me their too…
Cheers – appreciate the support!
Zappos Blog
On the 6th of April 2009, I emailed the CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, about his excellent presentation at the Startup2Startup event. I followed it up with another email with regards to the Zappos Culture Book. In other words I wanted to see why Tony (Zappos) was on Oprah.
Sent on 7th April:
“Thanks alot Tony
Is it possible for a Zappos Culture Book? Would love to read it. Electronic one maybe?
Willing to pay for shipping?
Address: Khalil Aleker, 43 Doreen Road, Rylands, 7764, Cape Town, South Africa
Thanks so much,
Khalil Aleker”
Tony emailed me within 30 minutes or less:
“Thanks for your email! We’ll be sending out the culture book to
you right away and you should be receiving it within the next few
days.
Also, if you’d like to learn more about how we manage our culture,
customer service, marketing, training, hiring, and business in
general, check out our new “Zappos Insights” subscription service:
http://www.zapposinsights.com/
There are a number of free videos if you click on the “Featured
FREE articles” in the left column. You can also see a list of
books we recommend reading by clicking on the “Suggested Reading”
link.
Inside my Zappos Culture Book
Next time you’re in the Las Vegas area, be sure to stop by our
offices for a tour! Our headquarters are located right next to the
airport. Tours take about an hour and are available on any weekday
(we recommend Mondays through Thursdays when there are more people
in the office), and we have a free Zappos shuttle service that can
pick you up from the airport or your hotel and then drop you off
afterwards. To schedule a tour, just email Jerry Tidmore at:
jtidmore@zappos.com
Hope you enjoy the culture book, and please let me know if there’s
anything else I can do for you!
My Zappos Culture Book
Yesterday I received my Zappos Culture Book. Now is that Customer Service or what? We all should put ALOT of ZAPPOS in our day…not a little.
To the Zappos CEO and the team… I have no words… I salute you and all the best.
Enternships.com
This weekend I was invited to test Enternships.com. A site to help find work placements in Entrepreneurial ventures. To be honest I was impressed with the Private Beta Site.
Enternships will help companies/start-ups promote opportunities to thousands of students in the UK and beyond for short term internships and full-time positions. Hopefully with success they expand to Africa soon, very soon. I have a few friends with degrees, who are sitting at home… waiting…sadly
To Rajeeb, Nazem, Leah and the rest of the team… all the best. South Africa is waiting…
TV vs Internet
Well it’s not surprising at all. Just read a report this morning according to Microsoft that Internet Consumption will outstrip Traditional TV in June 2010. Content and Communications Services (like email & social networking) represents 65% of all time spent online and Commerce represents the rest.
Surely this broadband revolution has led people to spend more time on the internet (home or work) than sitting in front of their TV’s. To me personally, over the past 18-24 months, have enjoyed the new applications, networks, internet start-ups,web service or even email (Gmail Labs).
Just this week I have heard Facebook signing up their 200 Million subscriber. That’s massive! It’s all about access let alone speed of their connectivity. High School students now go online via their mobile phones. My cousin, age 9, received his cell phone last year.
Should we embrace it? Hell yes…
TV vs Internet Graph
“The graph above shows that if current growth trends remain unchanged, Internet consumption could increase to 14.2 hours per week or 61.5 hours a month in 2010 against 11.5 hours for TV2. However, it also shows that as Internet penetration nears saturation, online consumption could see a marginal decline and this would lead to roughly equal TV and Internet hours of consumption by 20112 (11.5 hours per week for TV and 11.7 for the Internet). In this case, we would see the changeover from TV to the Internet as the most consumed form of media by the middle of 2011″
Email me for the full PDF report from Microsoft.
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