Ant’s World

So I set up a blog for my dad a while back, and he got a bit of a crash course on navigating his WordPress dashboard last weekend. He “retired” to Swellendam a couple of years ago, but promptly started another veterinary practice there, and is as hard at work as ever. He also runs a small business on the side - propagating bromeliads. It’s the perfect business to market with a blog. It’s a very defined niche.

However, ‘bromeliads’ is still a highly competitive term on Google, with 328 000 results in organic search (69 200 if you add ‘South Africa’). My dad has some great pics, and there’s loads of information he can share about the different species, tips for looking after them, etc.

It’ll take a bit of time to climb the rankings, though. There are 145 000 results on blogs alone. But that’s a lot of bloggers with which to interact and share link love.

It will be interesting to see how well it does in attracting bromeliad enthusiasts, and gardeners more generally, and whether it leads to increased sales. I think it will.

Next project: my mom’s B&B in Simon’s Town

Cue Stork ad now

I read a great quote from Steven Clift - a strong proponent of e-Democracy and e-Government - yesterday.

He asked, “Isn’t it interesting that the best-designed government websites are those collecting your taxes, while the worst sites are those giving you a say on how your taxes are spent?”

Amazingly, given the internet penetration among its population, he was referring to the United States. It seems the pattern is universal.

I used e-Filing for the first time last year and, while it has its bugs and irritations, it’s certainly efficient and effective. But improving government service delivery by providing more and better services online is something about which I feel strongly. I advocated the DA taking it up as an issue last year, and the result was a discussion document entitled “10 Steps to get Government Online on track.”

I’d really like to see government go beyond the obvious. If you can file your taxes online, why shouldn’t you be able to apply for an ID document or Passport, or renew your driver’s licence, online? Continue reading ‘Why is tax collection the most effective aspect of e-Government?’

One of the key differences between this year’s general election in Zimbabwe and the widely-believed-to-be-rigged presidential race in 2005 is the practice - agreed to in the Mbeki-mediated pre-election talks - of starting the count immediately after polls closed and displaying the results of the count to public view outside each polling station as soon as it is completed. Add to this the greater penetration of mobile phones and internet access, and it becomes much more difficult for President Robert Mugabe to cling to power by manipulating the election results.

Thanks to a newsletter from an NGO called Sokwanele, I discovered an Independent Results Centre for the Zimbabwe Elections 2008, which is doing a tabulation of votes parallel to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC - incidently, I got a “Forbidden” error when trying to visit this page).

The site’s parallel tabulation gives Morgan Tsvangirai 50.3% of the presidential vote (based on the votes of 209 out of 210 constituencies), Robert Mugabe 42.9%, and Simba Makoni 6.8%. It gives Tsvangirai’s MDC 99 seats, Zanu-PF 95 seats, and Mutambara’s MDC and Independents 12 seats. Three constituencies have to be contested in by-elections due to candidates having passed away. Continue reading ‘Mobile and Internet tools make it difficult for Mugabe to steal election in Zimbabwe’

A quick update on my previous post about Eskom’s Meatball Sundae… It seems that the beleaguered power utility has been paying a bit more attention to its online reputation management and marketing (perhaps someone read my post and approached them ).

First, a Google link search on Powering South Africa now returns 116 results; whereas, before, it only had two inward links over and above one or two internal links.

Second, whereas a search on ‘Eskom’ returned a lot of highly ranked negative results a month ago, Eskom’s own sites (main and subsidiary) dominate the first page of the search results; and the first truly negative link is only halfway down page 2.

It may be partly explained by the fact that there was much less load shedding in March, and that they haven’t been getting flamed as much lately, but they definitely seem to have been doing some work on their online presence too.

If you’re not prepared to answer email enquiries, don’t invite them on your website.

Earlier this week, I submitted an email enquiry to Multichoice about whether subscribing to just MNet was still a possibility. Despite a growing array of DStv bouquets, there’s no mention of good old fashioned MNet (and the ‘Buy MNet’ link on the MNet website is just a link to the DStv site). This is actually the second email I’ve sent (I sent a similar query some time ago, but didn’t follow up).

Multichoice might ask why I didn’t follow up with a phone call if I didn’t get a response. It’s not a particular priority of mine to subscribe - even less so, after experiencing their non-responsiveness - but, more to the point, I’d refer them to the first line of this post. Why set up an email address for enquiries or webform if you don’t have the capacity or the system to respond to those queries? Continue reading ‘If you invite email enquiries, make sure you respond’

We’re reviewing the DA’s main website at the moment. It was built in 2003, and it’s long overdue for a revamp.

We’ve got what I think are some pretty cool ideas to make it fresh, interesting and entertaining - for example, we’ve picked up a few ideas from Barack Obama (although he probably spends more on his website and online presence than the DA’s entire annual operational budget) and the LibDems in the UK, among others.

But I’d love to get some input from users, web designers and online marketers about what they think would make an excellent party website. So I’ll keep our specific ideas to myself for the moment. I don’t want to influence or limit any innovative ideas that may be out there. Continue reading ‘What do you want to see on a political party’s website?’