Maritex's New Year Promotion!

To celebrate the New Year we have launched a new year promotion campaign. Below is the annoucement that we have on the website:

Automatically enter to win free points packages by sending messages during the next 4 days... The more you send, the better your chances of winning!

All messages sent during the period from 2009/01/01 000:000:00 to 2009/01/04 23:59:59 will represent one lottery ticket for each message. Therefore the more messages you send, the more lottery tickets you will accumulate and the greater your chances of winning. There is no extra cost to enter the lottery besides the usual cost of sending a message.

We will randomly pick winners after the lottery period and will contact the first, second and third places winners after the drawing is completed.

1st place: 500 points
(5000 yen value)

2nd place: 200 points
(3000 yen value)

3rd place: 100 points
(2000 yen value)

Any questions can be directed to: support@maritex.jp

So send as many messages as you can and good luck!

SMS Is Too Expensive

Is a complaint that I hear all the time. It was also a complaint that I had and I griped about it a lot. From where I come from, and international SMS could be as cheap as 0.427EUR. In JP one of the carriers are charging you 0.809EUR/message. That's twice the price. And the purchasing power in the 0.427EUR market is 3 times less than that of people in Japan. Talk about expensive.

There are alternatives for people in JP of course: There are companies that will charge you as low a price as 0.121EUR but there are drawbacks: The covered countries are limited, and all of them are coupled with international calling pre-paid cards.

But if you want really cheap SMS, the best way to go is to get free SMS. Just go to Google and search for "free sms"; You'll get 11 million hits. Even GMail enables you to send SMS for free (albiet only for the US currently). AIM has been doing it since forever. The thing is, even these free SMS solutions didn't solve the problem.

The great thing about SMS (or keitai email in JP) is that they're mobile and ubiquitous: SMS is Anytime and Anywhere. It doesn't cut it to just be able to send SMS if you're in front of the computer. You might as well be sending emails. They're free too.

Another thing is that when you send SMS, someone is footing that cost. Nearly all of the free services will let you send a certain amount for free and block you out if you exceed a certain amount. These setups are not transparent and difficult to understand. They are not designed for everyday use. They are not Anytime or Anywhere.

Most of these services also uses a single number as the origin of the messages they send. It's too expensive for you to have numbers assigned to unique customers which you just can't predict when will come. This means that it'll only be a one-way communication for you: Friends receiving those messages will 1) not know who the message is from 2) can't reply to the message since these services won't know how to route those messages to you, since they don't know to which message a reply was sent in the first place.

So what we wanted was something really like what SMS is, but that doesn't cost you an arm and a leg to use. Something easy to understand, transparent and easy to use. And while we're at it, we wanted something that we can also send pictures with. That's why we launched Maritex.

Maritex is not a 100% SMS service (since we're not a mobile carrier), but it's close, if you're sending from JP. All we do is open up the cheapest route and connect them together to enable you to have a cheaper and easy way to send your SMSs or MMSs. All JP mobiles now come with email sending, and using that you can receive and send messages like you always do. Maritex supports sending to 144 countries and if you buy the biggest package for 500 messages, you actually only pay 0.0809EUR per message (plus data charges from your carrier, of course).

All EUR rates above are taken as of Nov 27 2008 from http://www.oanda.com

Three Rules for Startups

A friend of mine posted a link in Facebook to a blog entry by Mark Cuban on his rules for startups. Interesting.

I would like to add to this list my own personal rules when I started MARIMORE (and still is). Very simple, only three of them. I always believed that businesses are never static. They grow like any organism and will have to react to changes. So for any rule that you make, you'll have to be prepared to reverse them somewhere down the road.

But anyway, here goes:

• Work hard
• Stay healthy
• Know where your money is coming from and where it's going to go
  

Working hard is a no brainer. It does not mean working long hours exclusively, but is more towards understanding what you have to find out to make things happen, figure out how to get that information and working to build things towards that end. Most of the time you'll need time to do this and that's where the long hours come from, but if you're smart and have invested time beforehand to set in place processes to help you get those information, it won't take as much time when you have to repeat the process again.

An important pre-requisite to working hard is to love what you do. Have passion for it. Knowledge too plays an important part: The norm is that you won't have the passion for something that you don't know. Likewise, you seldom see people having passion for something that they don't give a dam about. It's beyond I if passion or knowledge comes first, but in MARIMORE we only do things that we know about and love. This gives us the drive to continue improving and making things happen. This drive is important when you only have a handful of people and little money to move around.

The second rule also is a no brainer, but I find it suprising that it seldom gets mentioned in your everyday "rules for startups". I only realized this when I went to Terrie Lloyd's Entrepreneur's Handbook Seminar sometime around a year ago. Terrie explained that the most important element in running his business is being healthy. Which makes total sense.

If you're like us, you'll have a business with a small stream of steady revenue coming in from different sources. You have ideas you want to turn into reality which will help to grow the business, but you don't have that big pile of cash to burn through for a year. So you take up consulting work to supplement that stream of revenue, to make sure everyone has something to eat and to push your ideas to see the light of day. Basically you're boostrapping the business and the key to making all this happen and click is, that's right: You.

Most of us who have day jobs and a check waiting for them at the end of each month usually don't realize this but the saying "time is money" believe me is really not far from the truth. The key ingredient to growth is time, but if you're not healthy physically you'll be busy taking care of yourself and you won't have time for the business.

So staying healthy is of a prime importance. I personally take supplements daily, try to include as much exercise in my daily schedule, like using the stairs and not the escalator, walking to the station instead of taking the bus. Gurgle and wash your hands often. Take your vaccination. Make sure you have medical and dental insurance. And also remember to stop working and take a break when your mind and spirit says "enough!". Usually I go to the hot springs then. Oh and watch the food. You are, after all, only the sum of what you eat.

The third rule is just general business common sense. No company in this world does not have it's own finance. As the one who decides if a company sinks or floats (remember, your decision plays the bigger part, not Lehman Brothers, R.I.P or what Google is building next) I believe you need to have grips on how and where your money is. Based on this information you'll know which vendor is trying to pull your leg and which vendor's leg you can pull, to give yourself the extra leverage to go win more customer's hearts. You'll also know if that espresso machine or that company trip is going to save you on taxes at year end or not.

So far these three simple rules have guided us down the path of growth for the past year. I'm pretty sure these rules can be ported to different sets of organisations, so I'm releasing these Three Rules For Startups under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License to be shared by every one on this planet (or off it).

There.

偉大なヤフーのカスタマーサポート

このあいだ残念なことに妻はヤフーの音楽サイトからダウンロードしてきたいくつかの音楽ファイルの代金の支払いが失敗しました。
結論からいうと、いろいろの手違いで、オンライン支払いができなくて、伝票でコンビニ払いになったが、その伝票が配送されましたよーと言われながら未だに届いてない。結局未払いのままで、以下のメールが届いた

From: customer-support@yahooda.com
Date: 2008/11/14
Subject: 【重要なお知らせ】Yahoo! JAPAN サービス全面停止のお知らせ〔お支払い期限：11/27〕
To: hogehoge-xxxx-1234@hogohoge.com


*******
このメールは、ご登録メールアドレスにお送りしております。
*******

Yahoo! JAPAN ID：imadanikanewokurenaianatayo 様

Yahoo!ウォレットカスタマーサービスです。

メール上部に記載いたしましたYahoo! JAPAN ID では、
Yahoo!ウォレット登録支払い方法にてお支払いが完了していない
ご利用料金がございました。

そのため、これまでコンビニエンスストア払込票をお送りし、
Yahoo! JAPAN の有料サービスご利用料金のお支払いをお願いして
まいりましたが、現在までに入金の確認がとれておりません。

よって、Yahoo! JAPAN 利用規約、Yahoo!ウォレットガイドラインに
照らし合わせ、Yahoo! JAPAN ID のサービスの全面利用停止と、
将来にわたってのご利用制限を実施いたしました。

◇Yahoo! JAPAN 利用規約
http://www.yahoo.co.jp/docs/info/terms/

◇Yahoo!ウォレットガイドライン
http://wallet.yahoo.co.jp/html/guidelines.html

Yahoo! BB ならびに同サービスに付随するサービスにつきましても、
Yahoo! BB サービス会員規約(約款)等に則り利用契約を解除させて
いただきますので、ご了承ください。

◇Yahoo! BB会員情報 - 会員規約
http://provider.bb.yahoo.co.jp/terms/

該当ID には、今月あらためてコンビニエンスストア払込票をご登録
住所にお送りいたします。

送付先は、登録のご住所（Yahoo! BB をご利用の場合は回線設置場所の
ご住所、Yahoo! BB をご利用でない場合はYahoo!ウォレットに登録
されているご住所）となります。

※払込票の発送は、11月 14日（金）から順次行っております。
到着まで 5日ほどかかりますので、今しばらくお待ちください。

お支払い期限は、11月 27日（木）です。

お支払い期限を過ぎた払込票は無効となりますので、お手元に届き
ましたら、お早めにお支払いをお願いいたします。

==============================================================
■未納料金のお支払いについて
==============================================================

11月 27日（木）の支払い期限までにお支払いが確認できない場合は、
未納となりましたご利用料金の今後のお支払いについて、弊社が契約する
債権管理回収会社よりご案内をいたします。あらかじめご承知置きください。

恐れ入りますが、今月発送する払込票にて期限内にお支払いください
ますようお願いいたします。

※すでに全面利用停止後のお支払いとなりますので、払込票にてお支払い
いただいた場合でも、該当するYahoo! JAPAN ID のご利用再開はいたしません。

==============================================================
■Yahoo! JAPAN サービス全面利用停止の経緯について
==============================================================

該当ID では、先月お送りした払込票での未納をもって、すでに
全面利用停止を適用しております。

全面利用停止の適用後は、有料無料を問わず全てのYahoo! JAPAN
サービスをご利用いただけなくなっており、ログインも行えません。

払込票でのお支払いをお願いする際は、今回同様、発送にあわせて
ご登録のメールアドレスあてに、ご案内のメールをお送りしております。

全面利用停止の適用までに、ご案内のメールにて送付先となる住所の
確認方法や、未納が続いた場合の措置について、重ねてご案内を
差し上げておりました。

そのため、払込票が未着だった場合など何らかのご事情を伺いましても、
該当するYahoo! JAPAN ID のご利用再開はいたしかねます。
ご了承ください。

また、全面停止が適用となりましたお客様には、別のYahoo! JAPAN ID
取得による利用を含め、再度のご利用をお断りいたしております。

誠に恐れ入りますが、何卒ご了承くださいますようお願いいたします。

以上、よろしくお願いいたします。

------------------------------------------
Yahoo!ウォレットカスタマーサービス
http://help.yahoo.co.jp/help/jp/wallet/
------------------------------------------

まぁ、代金未払いでサービスを止めさせられるというのは一般的なことで無理もなく理解ができるが、上のメール一番インパクトがある文書は

そのため、払込票が未着だった場合など何らかのご事情を伺いましても、
該当するYahoo! JAPAN ID のご利用再開はいたしかねます。
ご了承ください。

また、全面停止が適用となりましたお客様には、別のYahoo! JAPAN ID
取得による利用を含め、再度のご利用をお断りいたしております。

いろいろカスタマーサポートとやりとりしていたみたいんだけど、消極的な答えしか得られませんでしたー。id自体がもう無効になったから、それがどうにもならない。

結局のところ、「伝票が届いたら払ってね。けど払ってくれてもアンタのidを廃止する。あとー、別のidを取ってうちのサービスをつかうこともやめてー」 ということだよね。停止されたidの再開利用をさせないから未払い金を払う意味もないし、その上にキッパリと縁を切る。

オイラとヤフーのサービスは長い付き合いだったのよ。１０年ぐらいちかく、まず通常のメールアドレスとしてY!メールを使わせてもらっていた。そのあと、路線情報や、天気、オークション、ショッピングなどなど、使わせてもらって、広告もクリックして実際に買い物まで至ったケースもある。未だにまだ大事なメールなどもY!メールアカウントに保存されているし。お金の話にしたいならば、この１０年間の付き合いで、少なくとも何万円か確実にヤフーのトータル売り上げに貢献しているはずだ。

それでも、何百円の未払い金のせいで「もう知らんぞ」というのはどーうかと思うよ。確かに詐欺師とかだったら再発防止としてこのような対応は適切だと思うが、うちらが同じ扱いで客を喜ばせるかよ。もちろん、詐欺師や悪質の常習犯客かどうか最初にはわからないと思うけど、その見分けるデータって、アンタの手に全部あるんだから、本当に払いたくない人なのか、払いたくてたまらない人なのか、いい客なのか、ただの詐欺師なのか、という判断はアンタの仕事だろう。その対応ができなくて客に迷惑をしているのは、本当に上等だね。

こんなカスタマーサポートはやっぱり偉大のヤフーしかできないだね。ヤフーは何らかのご事情を伺いましても不公平な扱いを感じた一人二人の客に逃げられても損はないね。

どんな商売をするにあたっても、一番大事なのは公平に扱われるということだ。これは売る側でも、買う側でも同じこと。「やすっ！」と思ったら買う側は「ラッキー、得した！」と思うのは当然で、買う側として全然公平な取引だから文句なしでお金を渡す。逆に売る側は客を喜ばせるためにそこまで値段を安くすると店は潰れてしまったら売る側には不公平だからしたくないだろう。一方、あまり高い値段に設定すると、買う側は高いから「なんでそこまでは払わないといけないの？」と不公平に思うだろう。

うちも同じ感じで、公平に扱わせてもらいたいだけ。未払い代金の伝票が届いたらコンビ二に払うから、そのあとidをまた使わせたい。あとは普通に人生を送りたいだけ。それでもできないのは本当に不公平で、本当に残念。

やっぱり偉大なヤフーはザ・オンリーワン企業だね。おめでとう。

Book review: Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It

Is the name of a book that I've recently purchased which explains what they call ROWE: Results-Only Work-Environment.

This book explains a pilot project which was exercised at Best Buy that allows employees total freedom of their time, i.e you can do your work anytime, anywhere and even say no to your boss if your think that a particular work is not worth your time doing.

The authors Cali Ressler and Jodi Thompson (their website here) stresses how we are all tied up to the "old" way of working; How we are judged by our time in the office instead of the actual results that we produce from our work.

The book also explains that in this world of ours, we are constantly bombarded with responsibilities and demands, personal or carrerwise. The dry cleaning, meeting up with friends, picking up the kids from school, the morning meeting at 9 or the weekly reports that we have to send in: These are all demands that we have to attend to but the reality is we do not have the controls to do that. The controls here point to our ability to manage our time. We do not have the controls because we are tied down to a system that was placed a 100 years ago, which most probably had less demands and responsibilities compared to what we are facing now and did not predict that we will get to this point.

Quoting from the book:

When people have high demands and high control, their life can be hectic but manageable. They figure out what needs to be done and when.
When people have high demands and low control, their life is both hectic and miserable. There is nothing to figure out. They are trapped in a system that piles on the demands but denies them control to meet those demands.
This is why work sucks.

The book also touches on how the relationship between the manager and the employee changes when they do decide to throw away office time and schedules. The most stressed out word here is trust. You will have to give unconditional trust to your employees or team members to act like responsible adults and deliver, instead of goofing off. The manager and her team members must also agree beforehand on what will they be evaluated on, i.e in what shape will the results of their work be. As long as those expected results are delivered, there is to be no question on how those results are achieved. This in the end, the book says, will strengthen communication instead of weakening it, since the whole team now is focused only on the work and results.

Overall the book gives you a good explaination on what is ROWE, what was their experience and the resistance they initially had when they converted bit-by-bit the workforce at Best Buy to ROWE. At the end of the book they give you tips on how to bring the cause of ROWE to your workplace and how to deal with the skeptics.

The book though does not tell you how to actually roll out ROWE at your workplace. I think the reason behind this is that no two workplace is the same, and while they have the a set of guides that says what and what's not a ROWE, it will be up to the people of those workplaces to find a way to make changes to their working style to match with what ROWE is all about.

Personally I find this way of working fascinating, and is actually what we are trying to achieve. Not so much because I am in the IT industry and we all deal with data all the time and physical presence is not a requirement, but because how the company is set up right now in such a way that we can't afford to look only at people who we can see everyday. Outsourcing or off shoring for example is now not an alternative for us, but more of a necessity to keep everything running and not have to pull straws to see who gets paid this month. By having someone do work without physical presence means that you are forced to look at only one thing to decide if we're getting somehere: The actual results.

The need to be physically present at the office or factory for work for a specified period of time started a long, long time ago, before I or you were born. At that time it was abused too such an extent during the Industrial Revolution and saw women and even children working in poor conditions. With working conditions unregulated, the health, welfare and general well-being of working people suffered. The 8-Hour Day Movement started sometime a century ago to limit the time of work, and since then when we say work, we mean that we are expected to be at the office or factory for 8 hours a day. After more than a 100 years, this practice of attaching time to work still continues. I believe now we come to a point in time that instead of the amount of time actually spent, we should be judged by the value of the results from our work. Time, in it's essence, is actually priceless.

Web SMS released

We released a new tool to compliment the mainly mobile Maritex SMS service today, called Web SMS. Web SMS allows you to send SMS messages through the web browser if you have access to a computer using your Maritex account.

You can access Web SMS by first logging in to your account here and then following the link called "Web SMS".

The biggest difference between sending messages via Web SMS and through your mobile email (other than one is through the browser and another via email) is that it is significantly cheaper to send through the browser.

• One, you do not get charged data charges by your carrier like when you send email, if you're the few unlucky ones not on a flat data plan.
  
• And two, the price for sending SMS via Web SMS is 0.9 point, a 10% discount from the usual 1 point when you send your messages via email.

We all also know that when you're in the office or want to write a long message, it's better to use the computer keyboard than typing using your mobile's keypad. The From number in your messages will be set to your SMS number, so replies to your messages will be sent to your mobile.

In the current release, you can only send a message to one person at a time and there are no address book features, which means you have to remember/write the phone numbers (bleah!). Depending on how things go, we will make changes to these to make messaging easier with Maritex.