Finally, one of the big boys has joined the blog search niche. I wrote about this at an earlier date (Blog Search vs. Standard Search) on my company’s corporate blog, so it’s interesting to watch it unfold.

I’m not surprised that Google created it’s own blog search tool, but as of now I’m underwhelmed by it. I’ll stick to Technorati and Blo.gs until something truly better comes along. You can try out the new Google blog search at blogsearch.google.com.

Wow, that’s a lot of money. You start throwing around numbers like $2.6 billion and people will take notice.

I use Skype, it’s a great way to keep in touch with my family around the world. It’s free, except for that internet connection that I already pay for, so why not use it? Not only does it allow me to talk to my family, but I can send them an attachment through Skype at the same time – things like pictures or small movie files. The team at Skype put together an incredible product and I’m glad they’re going to get paid for their efforts.

The big question is how this works into Ebay’s overall strategy. I admit to “not getting it” on this one, but I’m sure someone can enlighten me on how purchasing a communications company fits into being an e-commerce giant. Is eBay trying to reinvent itself? The quote below from eBay president Meg Whitman did nothing to clear up my question:

“Communications is at the heart of e-commerce and community,” said Meg Whitman, eBay’s president and chief executive. “By combining the two leading ecommerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in Internet voice communications, we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the net.” (NY Times)

I guess only time will tell, but I for one am interested in understanding the underlying reasons for this move. Plus, I want to make sure Skype works just as well (or better) for me in the future. eBay doesn’t exactly have a stellar record of taking over companies and giving good service. PayPal, though useful, has had it’s fair share of blunders and is staggeringly disappointing in the customer service department.

I took a look at the statistics for the web browsers used to visit WhiteAfrican.com. I have to say that I am VERY pleased with my readers for using Firefox as their browser of choice. If you’re not using it, and still using Internet Explorer, please visit the Firefox website to download the browser and give it a whirl. I’d also like to point you to one of my past posts on the topic for reference: “Firefox – Or, how I kicked IE to the curb“.

An incredibly intersting story of how one man’s experience with a company has adversly affected that company in a LARGE way. Companies are slowly learning that consumer power is something that they will have to listen to and respond to.

To: Michael Dell….
CC: Michael George, chief marketing officer and vice president for the U.S. consumer business, Dell

Gentlemen,

Your customer satisfaction is plummeting, your marketshare is shrinking, and your stock price is deflating.

Let me give you some indication of why, from one consumer’s perspective. I won’t bore you with all the details of my saga of Dell hell; you can read all about it here and here. The bottom line is that a low-price coupon may have gotten me to buy a Dell, but your product was a lemon and your customer service was appalling.

Read the rest here.

The truth is that each customers negative experience might not have the size audience that Jeff Jarvis’ does, but that they still have an audience. For example, I average about 30-40 readers a day here on WhiteAfrican.com. Add to that the number of friends and family I talk to on a regular basis. If I’m pissed off enough to blog about it, I’m probably pissed off enough to tell everyone I know offline as well. Even if only 20% of the people I communicate with act, that’s probably 15-20 people who will walk away from the company I’m upset with.

I’ve looked around at a number of open-source CMS’s, and Mambo stood out as one of the best on the market. I’ve used it for 3 different websites now, and have found it easy to use, logical, and best of all – it has had a great group of developers who update it frequently. They’ve won Best of Show for a couple of different shows, once even beating out FireFox (which really says something).

I’m a little upset because of recent politics and power plays that have been going on between the original company who created it; Miro, and the Mambo Development Team – a group of individuals who donate their time to continue development of this application. Read about the political situation here.

The reason I’m upset is because it looks like the application that has grown and been embraced worldwide is going to disappear as a viable free CMS option. If you care at all about this type of stuff, you can read more about what the Mambo Development Team has to say at the website OpenSourceMatters.org.

So, David thanks for pointing this out to me… and a special thanks it is because now I’m pissed off and want to kick Miro CEO Peter Lamont in the head! Money grubbing bastard.

Though I like to put my own content and thoughts out on this blog, sometimes I just have to hand the baton to a better writing contemporary. Paul Graham writes some great essays about technology and business, and my friend David Seruyange is one of those gifted bloggers.

Seruyange, a Ugandan guy I grew up with in Kenya playing soccer and basketball against, does a far better job of expressing himself about the essay than I ever could. At this point, I will humbly bow myself off of the stage and point you towards David’s blog article.

Here’s an exerpt from Paul’s Essay:

Business still reflects an older model, exemplified by the French word for working: travailler. It has an English cousin, travail, and what it means is torture.

Here’s an exerpt from David Seruyange’s blog:

If there was a draft for my future start up, I’d take a clever programmer from Microsoft over some of the really smart amateurs I know because they’d be better at getting the job done. I’d take the fratboy, even though I wouldn’t want to talk to him too much, over the geek to do the sales work. And I’d take the most down to earth, practical, literal person to do the operations work over the most gifted hacker/artists I knew. I’d want a lot of talent, but not the 2004 US Men’s Olympic basketball team.

There’s nothing like reading an original thinker’s essay, then having them debated by another great thinker and writer.

I’m a huge fan of Firefox. I have just recently begun to realize that because I work in the tech/web world that I assume that everyone else is aware of the same changes on the web that I am. Not true at all. In the same way that I am not as aware of current trends in other industries, things like biotech or current Angolan politics, others are not cognizant of the sea changes that are going on in the web.

Here is my simple intro to Firefox after discussions with non-technologically inclined family and friends:

Firefox is a web browser. You can use it in place of Internet Explorer, AOL, Safari, or whatever else you might be using. Why switch? There are a couple of easy answers to that question, the first being security compared to Internet Explorer, ease of use, tabbed browsing, and plugins.

You can have Internet Explorer AND Firefox on your computer at the same time. My suggestion is to download Firefox at here. Try it out and, try the tabbed browsing (ctrl+T), and read up on the different plugins. You can also import all of your favorites from Internet Explorer, so if you’re like me, you won’t be going back after the switch!

If anyone has any doubts about the revenue growth online, please reference the graph above. As you can see, there was a large dip from 2000 – 2002, which gradually caught up and overtook the best of the 90’s “boom” by 2003. This time the growth has a firm foundation and is no longer built completely on speculation.

Search engine marketing (paid ads on search engines) has been a huge growth area. Media spending has experienced even more growth with increased usage of the internet around the world. The deterioration of eyeball time on traditional media like TV and print has caused a swing in the amount of money that large advertisers are pushing into the online world. When they no longer get their “bang for the buck” on TV, the web is a good place to go.

For reference, here is a link to the number of users in each country worldwide. Of particular interest to me is the fact that it looks like Africa is missing the boat here.

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