April, 2008

Mr SMS – Pieter de Villiers of Clickatell

Posted by beyond438 on Apr 30, 2008 in Business, Entrepreneurship, South Africa, Technology | 0 comments

Seems like Pieter de Villiers is a good name for South African success stories. There’s the rugby player, the hurdler, the business consultant, and the IT whiz. De Villiers (the whiz) is the CEO of Clickatell, the first (and leading) global high-speed service provider of bulk SMS messages. Its 8,000 customers can connect in over 200 countries. (Company motto: “Any Message, Anywhere”) Clickatell allows a business to communicate with its customers, suppliers and staff using a variety of formats (fax, land-line phone, pager, IP connected devices, and of course, cell phone) through a technology that is easy to use. Pieter and three other businessmen founded the company in 2000 in South Africa. Since 2006 Clickatell’s headquarters have been in Redwood Shores, Calif., but it has an office in Cape Town and in the United Kingdom. Clickatell just announced that it was selected by several leading health care organizations to improve communication with their patients. The organizations are using Clickatell to deliver critical information by cell phone. For example, in the United Kingdom a user can text “stop smoking” into their cell phone, then receive relevant information on kicking the habit. In the United States, a Georgia-based health care company is using Clickatell to help doctors and patients interact. Hospital discharge instructions, delivered by cell phone, can be more readily complied with. Other doctor’s orders can also be delivered by cell phone. Pieter started his career in 1997 in the optometry field and has sales, new business management and product development experience. In 1999 he was hired by Micrologix to identify Internet opportunities and to manage the organization’s ecommerce. Pieter also participates in several forums including Wireless Internet Caucus, GSM Association, and Open Mobile Alliance. Information on Pieter’s personal life isn’t readily available but you may get a chance to meet Pieter and the Clickatell group if you are attending the African Banking Technology Conference in Lagos, Nigeria May 7&8, or the NACHA Payments 2008, being held in Las Vegas May 18-21. Clickatell is participating in both events. Clickatell also powers the messaging for the world assembly of 140 parliaments.

I am famous!

Posted by beyond438 on Apr 21, 2008 in Blogging, Entrepreneurship | 0 comments

OK, not really. Elance posted a nice article about the way I use Elance to source service providers for different projects. I recently contracted a design house to develop a new WordPress template for me. You are viewing the end product. What do you think? Here is part of the Elance article:

Meet Carel Bekker, a technology expert, business consultant and Elance buyer, who left a corporate job to start his own strategy consulting firm, Beyond438. Beyond438 helps European and South African companies start business operations in the U.S.   

You can read the rest of the article here.

Top ten web applications I use daily

Posted by beyond438 on Apr 7, 2008 in Technology | 4 comments

More and more I’m migrating desktop (offline) work to the Internet or the Cloud. I’m still not there, but I hope to be using only web apps in a few years. Technologies like Google Gears and Adobe’s AIR will make it possible to take your online (Internet-based) applications offline. Micro Persuasion wrote a great (but technical) article on how to create your own PPNC (Portable Personal Nerve Center). TechCrunch has two interesting articles on bridging Desktop and Web Applications — see part 1 and part 2. In these articles the author also refers to site-specific browser products like Mozilla’s Prism, Bubbles and Fluid for the Mac. These products allow one to encapsulate a web application into a self contained desktop application.  Now for my list of most used web applications.The following is a list of the top ten web applications I use on a daily basis:

1. Gmail: I use Apple’s Mail app as my primary email application, however I read all my email into Gmail as a backup and also in case I don’t have my trusty MacBook Pro with me. I use labels and filters to tag each email with the name of the email account.
2. Google Reader: I use Google Reader as my primary RSS feed reader. If I use FireFox on the Mac I can also view blog posts offline using Google Gears.
3. WordPress: My blogging platform. I think it’s the best.
4. Mint.com: I use Mint for my personal finances. After the initial setup it will categorize your transactions while you sleep — cool! Well, actually you still have to do some re-categorization and renaming, however it gets pretty smart after a month or two.
5. Del.icio.us: I use this funny-name-that-I-always-misspell site to save and manage my bookmarks.
6. Zoho: I started with Zoho CRM, and now use Zoho Creator and Zoho Meeting. Zoho Creator is a great app to quickly develop a simple web application for data capture — EXCEL on steroids. Zoho Meeting is a FREE version of Webex.
7. SiteKreator.com: SiteKreator is one of many online website creation tools. I like SiteKreator because of the low monthly fees, professional themes and great support. I hope you’ll agree that my Beyond438 site looks very professional.
8. Google Docs: Google Docs is not going to replace MS Office or Apple’s iWork anytime some, however it’s very useful to quickly create and share documents.
9. GrandCentral: Google acquired GrandCentral in 2007. Your GrandCentral phone number is positioned as your one phone number for life. It also has very powerful voicemail features.
10. DotMac: I use Apple’s .Mac service to host and manage my personal website. Very easy to use and manage your digital life online.

April 9, 2008 update:

See PCWorld’s list of top nine list of online apps.

This is my list. Do you agree? What do you use?