Your World Today

In a brilliant attempt at differentiation, American ad agency Boone Oakley (BooneOakley.com) scrapped its traditional website and is instead using a YouTube video as its homepage.

Utilizing YouTube tags and annotations, the company did not only succeed in engaging its website visitors in a very unique way, but it was also able to gain tremendous viral reach as the new site/video propelled it to being one of the top five viral videos on the internet for the week of June 12-19 (Viral Blog rankings).

Check out the video below, or go to BooneOakley.com to see it.

For those of you who do business internationally and who wonder if using the Maple Leaf alone is sufficient to associate their brand with Canada (and all the assumed ‘good vibes’ from that association), here is an ad that appeared in a middle east news paper that might give you an idea of what many common people in various countries think of when they see this Canadian emblem:

[via AdblogArbia]

The most recent kidnapping incident in Yemen involving a Dutch couple brought back the old question about how safe is it anyway to visit the Middle East, specifically Yemen.

Questions about tourism security in Yemen are misinformed at best. Brazil and Colombia have the highest rates of kidnappings in the world, yet that’s not the first  picture that pops to mind when thinking about an exotic vacation to Rio.

2008 Carnival in Rio de Janeiro (Attrib: Photo by sfmission.com provided on flickr under CC attribution license)

Research by the London-based ‘Control Risks Group‘ shows that between 1992 to 2000, only 52 people were reported as ‘kidnapped’ in Yemen. That’s about 6 people a year during the height of the kidnapping era in Yemen back in the 90’s.*

During the same 8 years, Colombia reported 5300 kidnappings, and Brazil reported 521. That’s an average of 2 people EVERY DAY in Colombia, and 65 people kidnapped annually in Brazil. The USA had 155 reported kidnappings, nearly 3 times the number of people kidnapped in Yemen during the same period.*

What’s worse is that since the year 2000, Yemen’s rate of kidnapping has steadily declined, while Brazil and Colombia went up. In  2003, Colombia averaged 10* kidnappings per day!

Yemen is the Biblical land of the Queen of Sheba, and purported ‘Cradle of Humanity’.  Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t want to check out scantly clad Brazilians in fantastic costumes parading the streets of Rio to hot Latin music during carnival. But please don’t raise your eye brow when you (or someone you know) are considering a visit to Yemen.

Just remember that on any given day, you are a thousand times more likely to be the victim of violence in Rio than you would be in Sana’a, the capitol city of Yemen.

(Concert infront of the old city in Sana'a, Yemen)

Here is a video from a tourist’s recent visit to Yemen. I found this on YouTube and it is the only video I have seen so far that captures the ‘essence’ of Sana’a like no doctored tourism video has ever been able to: the people, the noise, the architecture, the dust, the customs, the smell, and the utter simplicity wrapped in cultural complexity.

(* Source: “Meeting the Challenges of Global Terrorism” - Dilip K. Das, Peter C. Kratcoski, 2003.)

Daniel McCann (Photo Credit: Saskatchewan Business Journal)

Daniel McCann wants to revolutionize the current online payment process used by millions of online shoppers when conducting online credit card transactions. During a telephone interview from his office in Regina, Saskatchewan, the 29 years-old inventor and entrepreneur told Your World Today that his new device has the potential of making the role of third-party security verification (Payment Gateways) obsolete.

And he should know what he is talking about. He was 26 when he first came up with the idea of a personal credit card reader; a fresh graduate of the University of Regina with a Bachelor degree in Computer Science. He entered his idea in a business plan competition sponsored by the Regina municipal government (called Progress2Capital) and placed in the top 10. He tried again the following year and won the first place prize of $10,000 in cash plus $5,000 in legal services. This was all the start-up capital he had to convert his idea from dream to reality.

A short three years later, and at age 29, Daniel is the President of a new technology company that employs 15 full-time employees. His invention is a patented reality, and is being sold online and through retail stores in Regina. He plans to offer the device in stores across Canada by mid to late summer of 2009.

I ask Daniel about his ‘big idea’, hoping that he would share his long-term vision of re-inventing the processing of online credit card transactions, and how the new process will cut the middleman out of the equation (Payment Gateways). He obliges.

‘Payment Gateways’ are companies that are used by online shops to process online purchases made by credit cards. The extra encryption and transaction verification (that Payment Gateways provide) is required by banks and credit card companies to accept transactions from online shops because the credit card information is entered by consumers on a website by hand, which makes the transaction less secure than if the credit card was ’swiped’ at a point of sale (POS) terminal (e.g. : a retail store or restaurant transaction). When you pay for your bill with a credit card at a restaurant, the conventional store’s credit card reader retrieves the card’s information directly from the magnetic strip on the card and transmits it electronically to the merchant’s bank.

If Payment Gateways can be avoided, merchants and customers can save on transaction costs for shopping online by eliminating the percentage that the middlemen (gateways) charge on each sale to allow the use of credit cards on a website. This can translate into lower product prices for consumers, or higher margins for online merchants.

That vision will have to wait until enough people adopt the new portable device that he has invented in order to justify to merchants why they should go through the trouble of offering it as a payment option. If the technology becomes main stream, that will also convince banks and credit card processors to accept transaction info coming directly from a SmartSwipe device.

If that vision becomes reality, the impact on personal online shopping will be monumental. With the savings on transaction fees that online merchants can achieve by skipping the Payment Gateways, SmartSwipe can position itself as the next PayPal of the world.

For now, however, using the device allows online shoppers to automatically and securely fill the credit card fields in any existing online shopping transaction page. It is marketed as a safer alternative to entering credit card information manually on websites while shopping online.

The SmartSwipe website  gives a good list of potential risks to watch for when shopping online. This personal/portable credit card reader allows the online shopper to avoid entering credit card information manually by swiping the card using the USB-connected SmartSwipe device. The information is then encrypted using the same encryption technology required by banks, and transferred directly into the appropriate credit card fields on the website where the shopper is conducting the transaction.

Daniel was kind enough to send Your World Today a demo unit. I tested the SmartSwipe with a couple of online credit card purchases and  everything worked as advertised. The software didn’t activate automatically when testing a credit card transaction on Firefox (version 3.0.8), but worked without glitches in Internet Explorer (version 7.0.6).

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article, where Daniel McCann shares with YWT readers the journey of his invention from idea to reality, and provides valuable advice to similar entrepreneurs about patenting, raising capital, product design, and how online social networking played a crucial part in the invention process.

The battle between India’s two main political parties is heating up as voters prepare to head to the polls tomorrow (April 16) for the first of five phases of India’s ‘Lok Sabha’ elections. The Lok Sabha (or House of The People) is India’s version of the House of Commons in Canada in that it is the body of directly elected representatives of the people of India. Whoever controls the house becomes the ruling party for 5 years. Polls will close on  May 13, 2009.

The two main parties are:

1. Indian National Congress (INC, a.ka. ‘The Congress’) - Current ruling party.
2. Bharatiya Janata Party (”Indian People’s Party”, BJP)

Indian elections are monumental by nature. As one of the largest and most populated countries in the world, the numbers involved are staggering:

• Eligible Voters: 714 Million, a ’slight’ increase of about 40 million voters since the previous elections in 2004
• Elections Budget: 176 Million Euros (approx. $280 Million CAD).
• Number of Seats: 552
• Number of competing candidates in 1st Phase: 1715 candidates (122 women).
• Voting Style: Electronic
• Number of voting machines: 1,368,430 voting machines in 828,804 polling stations across the country

With such a vast election covering vast territories, political ads in India have their own special flavour. How else would you convince the majority of 714 million voters to elect your party? The term ‘Political Song and Dance’ is taken literally here, with parties vying to capture the hearts and minds of India’s diverse population.

INC “Hand Of Congress”

In the ad above, the girl says to her uncle: “Look what I’ve done with my hands”, and afterwards he shows her what the hand of the Congress has achieved.  (Translation found on France 24 Observers web page).

In fact, the Congress party was successful in buying the exclusive rights to the “Jai Ho” song featured at the end credits of internationally acclaimed movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. The song, which translates into ‘Be Victorious’, won the Oscar for Best Song in the 2009 Academy Awards.The party has been using it in elections rallies across the country, along with various other Bollywood-inspired campaigns.

This did not go well with the BJP party, so they created their own anthem to remind people of the grateness of the BJP era, which ruled india from 1999 to 2004 .

BJP “Anthem For Change”

I expect nothing less from such a colourful and diverse country!

[More Indian Election ad videos available here from France 24]