One of the downsides of being a Mac user is the difficulty in synching a Windows PDA phone to your Mac. You can resolve that two ways

1. Buy an iphone - no good if you are still on a contract paying off another phone
2. Get Syncmate from Eltima software

Syncmate is now available with a free edition that allows you to sync your contacts and calendars - including Google calendar. The expert edition allows you to sync itunes and iphoto plus some other goodies as well.

I have had this up and running quickly and the support questions I had were answered super quickly.

Here is a feature list and a screen shot from their site:

• Synchronize Favorites, Contacts, Calendar, Notes in mobile device accordingly with their analogues Bookmarks, Address Book, iCal, Stickies on Mac OS
• Ability to work with iTunes and iPhoto
• Synchronize separate folders
• Build-in converter, which compresses video to MPEG4
• Synchronization via USB cable and WiFi
• Compatibility with Windows Mobile Pocket PC 2005/2006, Windows Mobile Smartphone 2005/2006

I could be wrong here but it seems like an amazing co-incidence to me. I am happy to stand corrected but have not been able to find anything that indicates how the name was created.

In November 1965 an episode of Get Smart called “The Two Chiefs featured a Kaos agent who was a master of disguises dresses up and looks identical to the Chief and impersonates his way into Max’s apartment.

The dialogue goes like this:

Max “Chief, what is the countersign?”

Chief “The new countersign or the old countersign?”

Max “I didn’t know there was a new countersign! What is the new countersign?”

Chief “I say Apples, you say MacIntosh. Ready?”

Max “Apples”

Chief “MacIntosh”

So, there you have it - another case successfully wrapped up. The old “name the product from a password in the spy sitcom trick”.

The Mac was launched in January 1984, 19 years later. And, no coincidence I’m sure, in the magazine that launched the Mac a Tandy TRS80 Computer with 80186 chip was on the back cover….

The back cover contains an ad for the Tandy TRS-80 Model 2000, perhaps the only PC ever designed around the 80186 processor. Tandy claimed the 8 MHz true 16-bit CPU was a big improvement over the 4.77 MHz 8088 (with an 8-bit bus) that IBM used. And for just $1,500 extra, you could buy the Model 2000 with a 10 MB hard drive (See http://lowendmac.com/history/1984dk.shtml or Wikipedia for more Mac history)

My father bought a TRS 80 - so when it comes to the earliest Mac, you could say we “missed it by that much!”

Recently I took Google Adsense ads off my blog. Why?

Two reasons

1. No one was clicking on them
2. I wanted to use the space taken up by Google to promote my own content

To be fair, I haven’t spent hours and hours tweaking Google Adsense formats, and perhaps if I had I might have got a better result. However, the click through rates can be pretty low click on content networks for Google Adwords campaigns, and after several thousand impressions and few clicks I decided to make a change.

The other more nagging issue is the value that the ads add for the readers. Whilst lots of bloggers do use Adsense to make some really good money (see Darren Rouse’s blog at www.problogger.com for plenty of good tips), it takes a really concerted effort to build up lots of traffic.

If you have had any experience with Google Adsense, I’d love to hear it, please comment on this post….

In the same way that the television screen has been overtaken by the computer screen, I am beginning to wonder if Mofuse (the mobile version of my site) might overtake direct traffic.

Just checking my stats for yesterday - quiet day on the blog, 26 page views according to Google. Feedburner has 33 people subscribed via RSS - but up to 175 views, mofuse shows 31 page views.

Interesting, but what does it mean? Like all bloggers, I’d like getting the numbers upwards. With these three different services we are seeing different definitions of hits, and perhaps here there is also some overlap in users that either click on a rss feed and then decide to go to the blog. No doubt this will become clearer, but the early tip is an obvious one - cover all the formats that you can.

There is also the second question of clarifying who is looking at what traffic. Those that are coming directly to the blog are reading more of the articles on directorship matters. Those coming to RSS are reading what’s more recent (more the Web 2.0 posts), and those to the mobile version are reading a similar mix but mainly iphone related.

So, what is your preferred means of checking out content? I’d love to know….

The ipod has really changed the way we use music - we’ve got 3 in our household (4 if you count my original 40 gig hard drive version that died). But the potential for the iphone to change the way we get and consume web based information is vast.

So, you’ve gotta get mobile. Thankfully, it is easier than you might think thanks to MoFuse.com

As I blog on Wordpress, less than 2 minutes later I have m.justindavies.com.au as well as http://justindavies.mofuse.mobi and an iphone specific URL at http://justindavies.mofuse.mobi/iphone

As a tip, if you create your own address off your domain as I have done (m.justindavies.com.au), remember to add the cname record at your domain so it will work.

Importantly with any web presence, you have got to track it - and this is where mofuse excels providing great stats tracking. I suspect we will see lots of growth in iphone related traffic. For more on the topics of tracking users, please see my Feedburner post.

So, comments please. Where do you think the growth in online traffic for the iphone will come from? And how will it drive the way we use mobile phones in the future?

Find the top 100 web apps as per BRW at Ross Dawson’s blog here

Thanks to Ross Dawson for compiling the list onto his blog, and great to see so many great ideas out of Perth (which has been described by people such as Christopher Golis who established Nanyang Ventures and wrote “Enterprise and Venture Capital” as the entrepreneurial capital of Australia).

It is a great creative space…. and I would love to hear from anyone who knows of others that are contenders for next year’s list….

One of the great things about running your own blog on your own domain is that you can pump Google Analytics through it. I use Wordpress for my blog and quite a few people I know also do so.

Whilst Google Analytics is fantastic at tracking who is looking at what and when, the big area that is unknown is the RSS feed - increasingly people are using RSS in various readers - Google Reader, Safari etc to keep up to date with news without having to visit various blogs.

One of the benefits of firing your feed via Feedburner is that you get access to statistics on who is reading your blog via RSS.

Another reason for looking at Feedburner is that if you change your blog address, those people who subscribed to your feed at that blog address. My feed address from this blog is www.justindavies.com.au/feed but you can also subscribe to the feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/~u/justindavies

Why is all this important to track? Well I have discovered that I have as many people tracking my blog via RSS as I have visiting it - and that means I have twice the readers I thought that I had. I can also see which posts they are reading (the RSS readers populate all posts, so chances are those that subscribe will read more than one.

In the last few days I have been listening to various podcasts from the Australian Institute of Company Directors in relation to issues of guidance requirements in relation to reporting requirements for boards. See here for their podcasts. The key issue is around the very difficult balancing act between guidance for how boards should report to make the requirements clearer, to actually being specific as to how to run a business. The former is important and the latter clearly inappropriate.

One of the interesting areas is financial reporting. In discussing the issue with my colleagues that recently completed the AICD course, we found the variability in valuing assets (particularly when the values may fluctuate) very interesting, particularly when giving consideration to how valuation decisions affect profit outcomes. Whilst we clearly want true and fair representations of the accounts, understanding anomalies around the way assets are valued (and how that positively or negatively affects performance) is important.

The good news is that a new accounting valuation standard is being adopted and introduced on the 1st of January 2009. Introduced by the Accounting Profession and Ethical Standards Board (APESB), APES 225 Valuation Services provides a consistent approach, definition of terms and will hopefully lead to a common understanding among companies and accounting firms about what constitutes a valuation according to Kate Spargo, APESB Chairman.

You can download a copy of the above at APESB site at this link.

Feedback: Have you experienced any issues around reporting? What do you think the key challenges are?

At our recent “Chatham House” meeting (graduates of the AICD course in Perth) we discussed the issues of:
1. Some of the great practical advice that graduates of the AICD Company Directors course had been able to apply; and
2. The legal issues and risks of being a director, particularly non-executive

The course is very good at outlining responsibilities and legal issues for directors - highly recommended if you are considering or are a director. Interesting, a number of participants indicated it is significant enough for them to never consider being a director. I have asked many people including various directors as well as Professor Bob Garrett who wrote The Fish Rots from the Head, amongst other books (signed copies proudly on my bookshelf) whether they shared the view that the legal position against directors is too onerous. No one seems to share the view.

In some respects, the purpose of a limited liability company is to encourage considered risk taking. However in recent times a great deal of that risk has been transferred to the board.

I was very pleased to see a great article by John M Green in this month’s Company Director magazine that succinctly gets to the heart of the issue. He also proposes a better way.

As John describes it, the key issue is that non-exec directors fees may be (depending upon the size of the company) from $30k to $200k per year. If the company faces a significant claim, directors can face unlimited liability, a weak business judgement rule and a newly burgeoning litigation industry? So, small amount of fees against potentially catastrophic risk. He makes a very good point.

Non executive directors are always going to be disadvantaged in business knowledge as compared to company management. Those people who have the talent to be non-executives also potentially can add value to companies by consulting - without the legal liability, and with the ability to involve their own consulting firm to deliver on other projects to the company without conflict of interest becoming an issue.

Non execs play an important role however in the governance of companies - and the role is required as more companies take the path of listing to expand their capital base.

John M Green’s suggestions (to apply only if fraud hasn’t occured):
1. Cap NED’s liability in proportion to their fees
2. Consider Charity NED’s and cap a fixed flat amount
3. Consider NED’s shares as part of settlement.

In summary, the reason why many people I have asked indicate that nothing is wrong with the current system is that the penalties are necessary to have big deterrents to avoid situations like HIH. I agree wholeheartedly. The area of reasonable concern is where directors act in good faith, being diligent and genuinely acting in the company’s best interests. Potential consequences are catastrophic but the rate of prosecution is low. John’s suggestions leave the big stick against fraud, but provide a more sensible position for NEDs. I look forward to the outcome of the government review in this area.

What do you think? Please leave your comments on your experience and views.