Introducing: The Bolivian Express, a new English language newspaper, set up in association with Express Press in Bolivian my myself, two friends from college(Amaru Villanueva Rance and Xenia Sarina Elsaesser) and a Bolivian journalist I’ve only talked to over Skype (Ivan Rodriguez Petkovic).
From the website:
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Debating whether to go traveling or to get work experience instead? Now you can do both
THE PUBLICATION
The Bolivian Express is a new English-language newspaper published by Express Press, a Bolivian publishing house responsible for two prominent magazines distributed nationally and internationally.
Want to take part? Applications are now open
THE PROGRAMME
You will spend one or two months of your summer (July-August) in Bolivia. During this time you will have a chance to work alongside experienced professionals and gain first-hand experience learning the tricks of the trade. You can also register for tuition in all areas by practitioners and experts from each field. Spanish lessons are also provided for speakers at all levels. Flexible working arrangements encourage you to travel in the country to gather material and help us make business deals. Whatever you decide to do, the team will help you make the most of your stay.
IS THIS RIGHT FOR YOU?
We are looking for writers, photographers, designers, as well as people interested in marketing and the business side of things. Whether you’re leaving sixth-form, planning your gap year, a languages student planning your year abroad, or simply someone looking for a career-break or something to do over the summer, this could be just the thing for you. Some experience is valuable but what is most important is a genuine interest in journalism, publishing or marketing, as well as curiosity for Bolivia and everything it has to offer. Work will be assigned in line with your level of experience; you will be challenged but you will get all the help you need along the way
Our website is http://www.bolivianexpress.org and we have a Facebook group too, which is pretty dang retro these days what with all the page suggestions and all.
Come back over the next week where I’ll write about how we managed to set up the business in less than three weeks working on the cloud across three different countries and without spending a single penny. It’s a good story. For now, just tell your friends about this thing.
I often travel from my lovely hometown Galway to my work town Dublin on the GoBus non-stop speed wi-fi bus. I love the service but so do a lot of other people so I book ahead to ensure a seat.
GoBus Ireland Defaults to a booking of zero tickets. Handy.
When you use their website to book a ticket it asks you your starting point, destination and time. At this point I usually click next, only to get the form spat back at me telling me “zero is an invalid number of passengers”.
Now I don’t mean to offend the adorable web designer who designed this piece of code but COME ON!! How many people do you think go to the trouble of filling out that form to book zero tickets? Let me take a wild guess: none?
Whats more there is a second failing with this form design: users must first select which “route” they wish to take, before then choosing a starting point and ending point. Considering that there are only two journeys available with GoBus (Galway-Dublin and Dublin to Galway), having to choose your route THEN your starting and ending point is tautologous, as one is implied by the other.
Forms should be designed to cater for the typical user in as efficient a way as possible. Your typical visitor to GoBus is there to book a single ticket for themselves. Intelligent web design would mean defaulting to a passenger number of “one” so that these typical customers can book without needing to fill in an extra tautological.
When designing a system – be that a piece of software, a business strategy, or anything else – always ask if there are any unwanted consequences to your design decisions. It is all too easy to let a flood of enthusiasm blind you to the downsides of any proposed design. Avoid this error by asking yourself “will this proposed system have any consequences I have not yet considered?”.
Wisdom from Brendan Touhy, former secretary General of the Irish Department of Communications.
Businesses face a problem. They want to sell their products at a high price to customers willing to pay this amount, whilst retaining the customers willing to pay only a lower price. By choosing a low price, the business misses out on potential earnings from those willing to pay more. By charging a higher price, the business misses out on sales of customers unwilling to reach that high.
What’s the solution?
The simplistic solution is to find the price at which you get the highest monetary return – e.g. total number of purchase x price paid per purchase and then apply this price.
The clever solution is to split the product into numerous brands, differentiating such that those willing to pay higher will choose the product priced at that level whilst those unwilling to pay those prices will buy at the lower price.
Exhibit A: Dunnes Stores Orange Juice from Concentrate.
One product. Three prices.
€0.79/L The faded fruit and awkward "cut open" packaging makes these juices unattractice
€0.99/ L The plain white packaging makes this juice look tasteless, but at least it has a handy lid
€1.19/L The slim packaging and fruit photographs make this juice posh looking
Now, imagine the same principle was applied to website subscription packages….
Like many other blogs we’d like our readers to submit their favourite posts to social bookmarking websites, yet we weren’t getting a lot of submissions. A big factor is (obviously) because our content isn’t that all great yet (it will be in time – trust me). Another factor is that our traffic ain’t too high yet – at this point we average about 35 readers per day.
A third factor, a lot more easily remedied is that a lot of our readers don’t know what social bookmarking is, how it works or what is in in for them (or us, as webmasters). With this in mind I wrote a guide to social bookmarking, automatically appended to every post.
Enjoy. And don’t forget to bookmark.
