Uber has been getting some flack for their infamous “surge pricing” that’s been in effect for the past few months. I was warned about it the first time on New Year’s Eve and saw on the app rates as high as 7.5 times the regular rate. Lisa Chow did a story on NPR, other similar stories got published and the general mood is that it is an asshole move by a company that...
Note: I was approached by volunteers for the Bernie Sanders 2016 US presidential campaign who now run the Code Corps project. I am not affiliated or involved with CodeCorps anymore. So, I decided to start a charitable enterprise. The idea is to provide free coding and design lessons (both in person and online). Ladies and gentlemen, I present: Code Corps. The financial aim is to make money (by...
I like crowdfunding. It usually removes friction, barriers and middlemen and matches demand with (sometimes only perceived) supply. Crowdfunding, thus far, has mostly either been for products (you send us $99, we’ll send you a smartwatch) or for donations/social causes (let’s raise money for an animal shelter). These two (product crowdfunding and donation crowdfunding) have already...
I work with Photoshop all the time. This makes it particularly annoying when, for weeks on end, it kept auto-recovering an old PSB file I was working on, no matter how many times I closed (or saved) it. The solution is actually quite simple and obvious: Simply right click on the PSB file and select Reveal in Finder: Now take that file (or if there’s more than one, all of them) and delete...
I made a cheeky little website a few weeks back to give a quick answer to all the bitcoin naysayers, who are all predicting an imminent crash. I present: So, Has Bitcoin Crashed Yet? Visit it at: For what it’s worth, I’m a borderline-naysayer as I don’t think that Bitcoin is currently a viable, stable crypto-currency (and I’ve sold all the coins I purchased early in 2013)...
Scenario: I’m walking down the street, trying to get in touch with a recommended restaurant to see if they have space available. Expected user experience: Do a Google search for the number, find it, tap it, call them (and hopefully find a table). Search, find, tap call. Actual user experience: Using my smartphone, I did a Google search for their name, found their website and tapped through...
“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.” – Don Marquis Working for an online company — or just having a constant internet connection at the office, at home and on your mobile devices on the go — it gets really easy to be distracted by digital interruptions. The never-ending emails, the torrent of tweets (mostly linked to pages, some which might even...
How not to run email marketing I’ll preface this post by saying that this isn’t a stab at any of the people or companies mentioned in this case study, but rather a post that highlights some mistakes made by companies (big or small) and how to improve things. I’ll also say that bad design (and development) of websites and emails drive me up the wall (I registered the domain yourwebsiteisshit.com...
There’s this great shop down the street from me. Last Saturday I popped in on my way back from a late brunch with a friend and a particular jacket in the window caught my fancy. The price seemed good, but something stopped me from getting it: there was an extra 10% charge for a “shelf display fee”, not shown on the price tag, which I had to add to the total price! They explained...
This city’s transportation system has momentum. It’s also a city that’s been doing well to assist with the transition of South Africans – of a broad economic rainbow – to be more supportive of public transportation, something that has a bit of a stigma of something you have to take not choose to take. It’s a place with a decent spread of rail, various buses, minibuses and private taxis; with...
Formerly Business Development and Marketing at Luno (where we went from eight nerds in a tiny office to hundreds of people spread over three continents) and before that Marketing at PayFast. Currently a full-time nomad, learning, running long distances and doing research, mostly in Mexico.