My Blog

Where I work, we’ve had some experience with PDF converters.  Mostly abysmal. But we’ve found one crowd that seems to be on top of the game – WebSuperGoo.  Most of these converters totally mess up HTML to PDF conversion, especially when you have CSS involved.

We have one client that we have written the HTML to PDF converter for and we have had so many problems with other PDF converters we have eventually changed to using ABC PDF.  We’ve had some minor hassles, but WebSuperGoo have been excellent at responding to the questions.

In my small hosting business (DigitalTinder.com), I have written a simple acounting application that keeps my billing going.  Up till now I’ve been creating HTML files, printing to PDF and e-mailing them off by hand.  Today I downloaded a free copy of ABC PDF to test out an automated e-mailing of invoices as PDF after they have been created.  It was great, took about 15 minutes to do what used to take me about 2hrs previously.

The only down side is that as a small business, I can’t afford the $325 (R2500) for a license. Its actually pretty easy to use it, I still have to wait to see if the PDF’s get through the firewalls and mail filters and spam filters, or even if they make a better impression on my clients.

There’s a fine line between efficiency and and customer contact.  It saves me time ot use the PDF generator, but I lose the ability to have a personalised message for each client.  I can try and make a mail-merge’d email sound personal, but I don’t want to become an “impersonal machine” of a business.

My last post mentioned Grant from FusionReactor and how he’s got a great handle on PR in the web 2.0/social networking world.  I don’t have the same customer base that Grant has.  The majority of my customers actually don’t know about the inner workings of the technology underpinning their websites, whereas there are a number of tech savy people who use FusionReactor’s services.  Not that I’m saying that my customers are “clueless”… most of them are great entrepreneurs.  Their focus is on their businesses, not the technology and blogging/social networking is not at a mature enough phase for people like them to be using those tools.  In fact, in SA I doubt that there are many great businesses blogging and seeing business value coming from their blogs.  Its probably in the process of changing as I type this.  But I think it will be at least 6-12 months away.

So for now, I’ll have to keep some “offline” way of connecting with them.  Possibly SMS’s, or phone calls.  Keep efficiency up, but maximise personal contact with my customers. 

Its a learning curve for me and I’m looking forward to the journey.

In 1 week’s time we’ll be in our new place. We’ll be minus iBurst and DSTV… mainly it is for cost saving purposes but I’m sure it will also have plenty other benefits – less sitting passivly watching tv, typing on laptops (like I’m doing now) and more talking and socialising.

The big pitties are the cool series that are starting on DSTV, and missing our PVR.  (Pausing live TV is such a life changing feature for any Series watchers)

And since I’m in a linking mood, we’re using SA Movers for our move, MortgageSA for our bond, and ABSA are our new lords and masters (aka the bank that gave us the loan).

More linking – my connection to iBurst is organised via FusionReactor. I LOVE their service, although I’m not always quite as fond of their Account’s section (late invoicing of purchases plays havoc with nice neat budgetting and forgetful memories).  Recently Grant from FusionReactor recently posted a comment to my blog about their new service – In Page Ads.  His comment went along the lines of suggesting that I’d possibly like it since I’ve raved about their services before.

My official comment is that its an old concept redone… You put their system on your site, and every time a user clicks on a link they get shown an advert before they get taken ot the new page.  Its been done before, and has failed, so I’m not sure what is different about their system.  But Grant is a bright cookie and seems to know his social networking/web 2.0 pr implications, so I’m guessing there is something that I’m missing.

So since he’s been great to me, I thought I’d link to their In Page Ads system, and maybe someone who reads this blog can comment on it?

Just got a call from MortgageSA to say that we have had provisionally had a bond approved (pending a valuation of the property).  We had a nice response from ABSA and Nedbank, no response from FNB and a really crappy response form Standard Bank.  ABSA’s response just beat Nedbank’s so we’re going with ABSA.  (No rude comments, please… I know “My Bank” is crap, but hey, I’m going to be paying the least amount of money if I use them, so I’m going to use them)

Now we just need the valuation to be ok (it should be), and we need the body corporate to approve of our cat.  The cat should be fine as long as she is spayed and wears a collar, and our cat is spayed and will get used to a collar.

So, everything is looking good for us to move in on 1st April 2007!

I read two great blog posts today.  One by Wil Wheaton, and one by Joel Spolsky. 

Wil’s post was about taking the time to take care of yourself, not just living for your job or to help others.  Its something I’ve thought about every now and again: how can you help other people if you are dried up because you don’t take time to replenish your reserves?  Check it out here.

Joel’s post was about great customer service.  Its a pet peeve of mine so I won’t dwell on it for long, but he makes some good points that I think most companies don’t pass on to their support people.  Its a long read, but its pretty good.  Check it out here. 

Joel’s article actually mentions a company (Land’s End)that he has had awesome service from.  It is funny how certain companies seem to stick in your mind.  I remember them from about 1998 (when I was in varsity). I was helping out at the Sanlam Future Business Leaders Week by managing “sound/media” for various venues which meant that I got to listen to a bunch of really interesting speakers.  One of whom was “Brian Gardiner” (my apologies if I have spelled that incorrectly).  I first met Brian when he came to lecture at Rhodes University in the Infomation Systems department (my dad was the head of the department at the time, I was in school).  I think that in 1998 he was at Internet Solutions, and while I don’t remember much about his talk, I do remember that he mentioned Land’s End.  He was talking about doing business over the internet and mentioned how awesome their service was even though he was a customer in a different country to their main market.  At that time there probably weren’t too many large companies selling products globally via the internet.  But I do remember him telling me that they had done some great work in keeping him happy when he’d had problems.  Its good to see that they have kept up that customer service value going strong.

Continuing in the saga of the home acquisition story, I’d like to ruminate on how handy technology can be.

Back in the day, faxes were “all that”.  And while I still think they’re useful, I am really appreciating e-mail and fax to email.  In the quest to obtain  home loan you end up having to send and recieve a lot of faxes.  But, thanks to fax to e-mail a lot of this schlep goes away.  (I have a fax-to-email account from CyberFax)

The process for the bond application went as follows:

1. Christie and I have to fill out a “Fica” declaration form and fax it to the bond originator
2. We both have to send a copy of our ID books
3. We both have to send a copy of our last 3 months bank statements
4. One of us have to send through some proof of address.
5. We both have to send through a copy of our last salary slip

The only thing in this list that was actually faxed off is the form that we filled out.  (I was too lazy to scan it in and e-mail it.)  Both of us have electronic copies of our ID books, both of our banks faxed our statements to my fax-to-email account, SABC faxed me a statement with my physical addess on it, my salary slip is e-mailed to me so I just printed it to PDF, and Christie faxed her copy to my fax-to-emal account.

Then in one e-mail, I sent all of these electronic copies of to the bond originator.  No hassles with writing cover letters, printing things out, and waiting by the fax machine for ages until it sends successfully.  Just a few phone calls, and one quick e-mail.

It really was quite easy.  So by Tuesday next week we should know if we have a bond or not.  Yay!