Just an advanced heads-up on a story I'm currently researching.
It seems that one of the Net's oldest, and highly respected anti-spam organisations,
4
MAPS,
may be succumbing to the lure of the almighty dollar and loosing its claim
to altruism.
Another anti-spam service,
4 ORBS,
which offers a similar free service by listing
open mail servers that can be used by spammers to relay their spam claims that
MAPS has been engaging in decidedly anticompetitive behaviour in the lead-up
to its commercialisation.
Look for more information on this unfolding story in the next day or so.
Government: Get Out Of The Way!
There was a very interesting interview on TV One's
4 Telstra Business Programme
this morning in which interviewer Michael Wilson spoke to Klaus Heymann, the head of
4
Naxos Music.
For those who don't know about Naxos Music, it's an incredibly successful label
that focuses on the production of high-quality, low cost titles mainly in the
classical music area. We're talking about a big company with a huge turnover
here.
In the interview it was revealed that Naxos had strongly considered locating its
operations here in New Zealand some four years ago -- but despite wanting
to do so, the company stayed where it was instead -- in Hong Kong.
When asked why this was so, the interviewer was told that NZ's tax system was
decidedly unfavourable for anyone dealing in intellectual property and that
the R&D tax regime was unacceptable to Nexus. The company's owner said that
he didn't believe in government's offering inducements to entice overseas companies
to relocate -- all he'd wanted was policies that simply kept government out of
the way.
Once again we hear exactly the same sentiments being voiced by yet another
entrepreneur or highly successful company -- when will the government wake up
and smell the coffee?
The key words were "intellectual property" -- that is the real currency of
the new economy and it is something that normally requires a significant
investment in R&D to produce.
For the benefit of our politicians I will type this
very slowly -- because I know you can't read very quickly:
NZ Business Does Not Want Handouts
NZ Business Wants R&D Tax Parity With Its Competitors
Government -- You clearly have little understanding of business (need I
refer to the spectrum auction debacle again?) -- so please don't ruin
the hard work of those who are trying hard to move this country into the
21st century by pretending that you do!
Stop crippling NZ's Knowledge Economy and get out of the way!
Cool!
As a commentator on the industry I'm always looking around to see what others
are saying and doing. As a result, I dropped into Yahoo's
4 Most Popular Columnist Sites
to see who's being held in high regard these days.
Well knock me down with a feather (he says modestly), if Aardvark's
name isn't up there -- rubbing shoulders with the likes of Jesse Berst, Robert X Cringley
and Jerry Pournelle!
Net Marketing
Banner ads suck -- you, the readers of Aardvark told me so in response to
a recent column. You also pointed out that Radio, TV and print advertising
for websites was pretty ineffective.
So how do you drive traffic to your website? Are there any cheap and effective
tricks you can use to massively boost the number of visitors you get each day?
From tomorrow I'll be running a series of pieces in which I'll give some
of the tips and secrets I've discovered over the past five years of running
this site and 7am.com.
As always, your feedback is welcomed.
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