The people’s choice awards are on and Stargate Atlantis is nominated. To ensure this fantastic series continues long into the future please vote for it here:
After 4 to 5 months straight of dedicating my life to studying for the GMAT and applying to NYU Stern’s MBA program I am finally done!
Application submitted.
What a relief!!!
This morning the news that almost every promoter and potential venue owner was waiting to hear was released. An easing of the requirements to get a liquour license, a relaxing of the liquor license laws and also a drop in the price of a liquour licenses. This will have significant impact for all NSW and will be a massive step in the right direction to allow NSW cities the liberties to become truly cosmopolitan destinations. At the moment due to the expensive and restrictive nature of the licensing laws only few venues can afford club/hotel liquour licenses which means to cover costs only main stream styles of music can pay the bills. These laws will aid underground and niche venues to be born.
Although the liquour license laws have not been the only issue with setting up a new underground venue in Sydney, the other being the recent increase in music loyalties, they will certainly aid in reducing the start up and running costs.
For the full article check out:
A friend recently asked about my General Management Admissions Test (GMAT) study and I thought it might benefit all if I posted it up here.
What is the General Management Admissions Test (GMAT)?
It’s the exam that people sit who wish to gain entrance to the MBA program at unis like Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, MIT e.t.c.
The GMAT is the following 3 sections with a 10 minute break inbetween
Written - 2 essays - 1 hour
Quantitative - Multiple choice data sufficiency and standard math - 75 minutes
Verbal - Sentence correction, comprehension, critical analysis - 75 minutes
So just about 4 hours all up. It is extremely exhausting exam and is a test of ones indurance.
I primarily used the following 3 books to study
Princeton GMAT Review
GMAC GMAT Review - Official guide
Kaplan GMAT Review
I also used the downloadable GMAC GMAT prep software
Now when I say used them what I mean is I read them cover to cover and answered each question twice!!!
I would strongly advise NOT using small press books. I also own the GMAT study guide by “Exam Cram” and about 1 in 10 answers were incorrect!! so I stopped using it.
If I was to do it again I would have also purchased the GMAC GMAT Review Verbal and Quantitive guides. I really missed having them as the GMAC book was by far the most useful.
I studied day and night for 3 months and took 5 days off work to study.
I got 670 i.e. the 87th percentile. Yay!
If I was to do it again i’d definately enrol at a GMAT school like Kaplan. It was very hard studying on my own.
…. or at least lets hope so.
Of late I am increasingly noticing companies bucking the trend of reducing costs to increase profits, and instead increasing cost to increase market capitalisation via improved customer service, and consequently increasing profits.
Example 1 - AAMI Insurance
AAMI have a slogan on their advertisements along the lines of “Call us and a real person will answer”.
Seriously how fantastic is this? Totally different to the majority of large companies who’s call centres are getting worse and worsen with long waits and offshoring.
Just last week I had to call Vodafone to change a typographical error in my details. I called every evening for a week and after attempting to navigate through the maze of their voice activated software I finally received a recorded message stating “Due to our fantastic range of products and services the wait to speak to an operator is greater than 40 minutes”. Needless to say when I finally got through I canceled my contract.
If it isn’t a long wait then it’s an offshore operator where there is a language barrier. Every time I phone such a call centre I find myself repeating each detail several times which can be both difficult and frustrating. Citibank is a shining example of this and their staff have often entered my details incorrectly. I have since moved to St George bank.
Example 2 - Bank of Queensland
Another prime example of a corporation following the customer service path, Bank of Queensland’s recent advertisements state “Customers have their own personal bank manager who know your name and give you their mobile number”. All I can say to this is WOW!!!
If the above 2 companies are fighting the current trend and if successful will be a big win for customer service. Will they start a new world order?
Oh and lastly remember at the end of the day your choice matters. Talk with your feet!
As we race towards the 5th version of the www.joshandfriends.com.au website I have been dealing with several 3rd party vendors who appear to have a philosophy of blatantly ignoring customers feedback and requirements.
Let me start out by defining what www.joshandfriends.com.au 5th version is. The current live site is the 4th version and was originally designed as an extendible content management system (Events, Profiles e.t.c.) with 2 additional 3rd party software products: VBulletin forums and Photopost Gallery.
As the current version of the site has grown at a tremendous rate and the industry changes constantly around it, it is vital that a new version of the Josh and friends site be released.
The new version of the site will focus more on:
1) Social networking.
2) Delivery of an extensive range of easy to use software to the end user.
3) A complete face lift to ensure that the site looks appealing and that all the seperate software products are integrated seamlessly.
This will see a range of new third party applications including vBulletin 3.7 (with promised new Social Networking functionality) and Photopost Classifieds.
So why the blog entry?
Well, during the development on the new site I have been dealing with vBulletin and Photopost and I am amazed to find 2 companies with such little regard to the needs and wants of their customers/users. Please note that this is mainly targetted at Jelsoft (vBulletin) and far less at Photopost.
Why do I say the above?
Over the above 2 years we have seen the explosion of Social Networking, spearheaded by MySpace and Facebook. These sites allow users to link with friends, create groups of friends and have enhanced profiles. Many 3rd party application vendors have now released social networking products of their own.
Jelsoft is the producer of the most commonly used forums software vBulletin and in late 2005 Jelsoft seized the crown of “the king of forums” but has since done almost nothing to update their core product, instead choosing to work on seperate module products vBulletin Blog and vBulletin Project, which could only be considered amateur at best. They have done this at the expense of meeting consumers needs, and one only has to browse the vBulletin forums (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/index.php) or search Google for “vBulletin 3.7″ (The next version with promised new social networking features) to find 1000s of furious customers.
Not only has Jelsoft not released any major new features to their products for 2 years but they have also refused to release any official release date on their new product. This means that anyone planing future updates to their websites have no accurate information for which to base their plans on.
While Jelsoft are busy outraging their user base new competitors are really picking up steam. IBP already has full social networking in their forum product. It will only be a matter of time before more irrate Jelsoft users switch over.
In addition to the lack of new features the standard graphic templates of vBulletin look like they were designed in the 70s (ok that is an exageration) but they are outdated. Yet again numerous people have commented on this in the vBulletin forums and yet again nothing has been done or at least promised to be done.
It is time for Jelsoft to stop resting on their laurels and demonstrate why they are the market leaders in Forum software.
Lastly Photopost, as previously mentioned they are no where near as bad as Jelsoft and i would thoroughly recommend their products. That being said they also suffer in a similar manner to Jelsoft. Photopost primarily produce Gallery software. They have just released a new version of their Gallery software with their own custom forums built in. This has enraged many Photopost Gallery customers as their is serious flaws in their core product that need to be addressed. For example Ajax technology is not used to upload large files or zips of images. This means the end user is not presented with a progress bar of their uploads and uploads will often fail entirely. This technology is in the reach of Photopost and is already used on eBay, Flickr, Facebook and Myspace.
Focusing on improving their core product is more important that producing a 2nd rate Forum software. If people want forum software they will buy forum software. I hope Photopost listens to the requests of the people on their forums and does not fall into the same trap of Jelsoft.
In conclusion. I would still suggest buying Photopost as they have a great suite of products and have promised to introduce new features asap. Jelsoft have an excellent forum software vBulletin but it is quickly becoming outdated. I’d wait and see when version 3.7 of vBulletin is released with the promised new features prior to purchasing.
I have always found it difficult in life to create truly unique ideas. Instead I tend to draw together a bundle of ideas that have been done before, improve and re-package them into a coherent professional product. Examples of this can be seen in both Joshandfriends.com.au and also the events I managed. Nothing in either are unique but rather a fine tuned conglomeration of everything cool that I see around me. This is not a negative aspect of my services at all, far from it, as they are great services. That being said I have always admired people who take a different approach and come up with unique ideas from scratch.
The other day I received an email about a new website called Tomorrow’s Date (http://www.tomorrowsdate.com). It’s a site that provides you with new date ideas customised to what you and your partner enjoy. When I read this I was amazed. It is so rare in this day an age, where almost every permutation of possible websites have been created, that an entrepreneur comes up with a truly unique product…. and to top it off it’s a great idea and a service that I personally want!
In today’s day and age so many relationships become stale over time and the introduction of home theatre’s has multiplied the problem as more and more couples choose to spend a night in rather than out. Although one doesn’t originally notice the boredom of staying in for a movie night on the couch as one continues to choose that over a night on the town it begins to set in.
So if your looking to put a bit of spice in your relationship or interested in checking out a truly unique idea then head over to http://www.tomorrowsdate.com/!
This week was the first week back for new series TV here in Australia.
Firstly it is great to see that channel 7 is now showing an additional Sci Fi drama at a mainstream timeslot. Bionic Woman on at 8:30 on a Thursday now joins the second season of Heroes.
My question though is as follows…
We all know that Stargate Atlantis is the current number 1 Sci Fi TV show (TV.com) . Why then are other Sci Fi TV shows like Bionic Woman being chosen ahead of Atlantis? What makes it even more odd is that Stargate Atlantis is not even shown in Australia at all on any free to air channel!
On my Sci Fi rant…. It’s time to bring Firefly back. If you haven’t heard of Firefly then RUN to the video store and hire it out. It is generally known as the most cut TV show of all time and it is currently one of the number 1 ranked shows of all time on RottenTomato.
Also in Sci Fi news here is to hoping that the Stargate Actor who played Carson gets awarded the role of Montgomery Scotty on the new Startrek feature film and that Stargate Atlantis Season 5 is announced.
Thats all for now folks. Live long and prosper!
NOTE: Since writing the above, GateWorld.net reported the rating for the opening of Stargate Atlantis Season 4 and they weren’t brilliant. It was outdone by Eureka. Pity 
Josh
The cats out of the bag. For the last couple of months I have been preparing my application to MBA schools. This has been a huge amount of work and has resulted in less of my time to allocate towards Josh and friends. Don’t worry all you Josh and friends nuts, I will be back with a vengeance! Once I have finished applying I will have many months to focus on Josh and Friends.
On that note we have a wonderful new website arriving over the Christmas holidays. This will be a major improvement on the current site and will focus on social networking aspects and a graphical redesign.
Anyway…. this week I have been brainstorming in order to profile myself for the MBA applications and i’ve come up with a couple of really cool 1 liners that describe myself:
Both I and Donna have been thoroughly enjoying the Stargate SG1 Tv series and have recently switched over to watching the newer Stargate Atlantis series, a spin off of SG1.
Stargate Atlantis is just getting better and better. If you like Sci Fi or really well produced Television then this series is for you!
The quality of the special effects, acting, makeup, plots and sets are all supurb. On the topic of the story lines each episode builds well on the past creating bigger and bigger cliff hangers , which often climax in massive battles (in space and on the ground).
If your feeling bored of the multitude of crime dramas on free to air tv or just looking to have a night in then hire Stargate Atlantis. You won’t be disappointed!
