Ego related posts

On Forexagone.com, we like to do everything ourselves, meaning we don’t like to use many third-party services to handle our work, so we are sure that everything is tailored to our needs, well integrated and working all together. For sending our emails, we decided to do it ourselves as well and not use a service like mailchimp or such. I learned much throughout my research and work on implementing the necessary technical stuff, so I thought it’s a good idea to write my learning on my blog, so it will be like a reminder for me, and it could help others who want to do the same.

Nota Bene: this post is not about the email marketing strategy itself, it is only about the technical setup for sending emails from your server and doing it right.

Like me, you have your own reasons for sending emails from your own server and not using a third-party service. If you decide to do so and go on reading this article, you would like to know the benefits of implementing the things I describe. There are many benefits.

• it lowers the chances that your emails land in the spambox of your subscribers (heck it is important!)
• it makes you comply with the legislation (can vary from the country but better too much than not enough)
• it makes your subscribers happy
• it shows a professional attitude

My list of good practices might not be complete and I excuse in advance, but they are already pretty important to carry out.

There are many aspects of my life that have changed since I decided to be a full time traveller, and I had to make many adjustments to the way I work in order to fit with my new lifestyle. The two new constraints I have to deal with are:

• I can’t carry much (one suitcase less than 20 kilos + one backpack)
• I must be able to manage my business with the same efficiency, like when I used to be sedentary

Therefore, there are a few items I had to buy, some others I had to throw away, and I started to make bigger use of the Cloud. I carry all of my office in my one backpack, which includes the following:

Whether you are a freelance worker, a young startup entrepreneur or simply belong to the category of people who don’t need to go to an office for working, then you should definitely give a try to coworking.

I experienced coworking for the first time as recently as last week, when moving in my first coworking space here in Manila, Philippines. It’s called Co.Lab, and they have two locations here in Legaspi Village (Makati) and in Barangay Kapitolyo (Pasig). Coworking is a style of work in which you share your working environment with other work-at-home professionals. Unlike incubators or standard offices, they include a social dimension that makes the whole thing almost non-formal and encourages collaboration, meetings and exchanges. It’s warm, it’s young and it’s full of creative energy!

People I could meet at Co.Lab so far have the following profiles: freelance web-developers/graphics designers, professional bloggers, subcontractors for foreign companies, web show directors, startups, internet entrepreneurs. I can see many advantages working near this kind of people: I meet people who have the same interests and maybe lifestyle, I meet potential business partners, I can share and exchange ideas of projects, I can listen and learn from a wide variety of profiles (which happen to be international profiles also), I can help and/or ask for help with high skilled people who work in the same field, and I can also possibly make friends!

I think I found something cool there, and wherever my life brings me in this world, I will definitely always look for a coworking space around me to spend my days in from now on. By the way, I happily heard that the first coworking space in Strasbourg, France (the city where I used to live, study and work for a couple of years) is going to open its doors soon in March 2012 at Rivétoile. Check it out if you’re an independent professional from Strasbourg, I know you’re many and it’s worth giving it a try.

One of the big things I undertook last January was to start a new lifestyle, like completely. I wanted to become a perpetual traveller, a nomad, I wanted to be free and have no strings attached in any ways. So what I did: I sold up everything I ever used to own, including my furnitures, most of my clothes, my computers, my car… I left my flat, and redirected my mails to my parents’ place. All what is left can now fit in a single suitcase of 20 kilos, ready to accompany me everywhere and anywhere. But I had to choose judiciously the items to keep with me at all time. Here is my conception of the perpetual traveller kit, the essential things that I cannot afford to leave behind. read more… »

I just arrived in Manila (Philippines) one week ago, with absolutely everything I own in my life which is: a 20kg suitcase and a backpack. I spent the last two months selling everything else I used to own: furnitures, PCs, car, clothes, and any other material thing that was just taking space in my flat and that I was never using. I actually realised that I didn’t need more for living than what I could make fit in my suitcase (well, I am compromising a little actually, as I can’t have an as diversified wardrobe as I would like to, but it’s a compromise I can accept).

So here I am, with only the strict needed belongings for my living, that give me the flexibility and freedom to move from a location to another if I like with just one flick of a finger. That’s my choice, I believe that owning nothing but being free to move everywhere is what’s good for me. As long as it doesn’t affect my work. Like I was doing last year during my trips in Asia and the USA, I can adjust my working habits to be sitting in a Starbucks with a 3G dongle and be as efficient and productive as if I was staying in my home town in France.

So here I am, in Manila, capital city of the Philippines, where I will stay for an undefined period of time during which I will take care of discovering and learning everything possible here. I spend my days in a coworking space called Co.Lab Manila, which gathers a couple of startups, internet workers, entrepreneurs and freelancers sharing the same working space and commodities for a small fee compared to renting a real big office. For lunch I try to go out and discover new local restaurants as much as possible (Filipinos are fond of fast food restaurants and street stalls, I am still looking for vegan or organic places here ahah). For dinner I also try to go out as much as possible and get around my neighbourhood. And of course last weekend I was hanging out in a nightlife district with my Filipino girlfriend and her friends. I had lots of fun there! read more… »

Since I needed a Filipino number in addition to my French number, I ended up buying the cheapest phone I could find here. It’s a Samsung GT-E1080F that costed me around 15 euros in a Samsung store. I kept my iPhone for my French number and so I am using both of them. I intend to use my Filipino phone only for calls and text messaging, but I surprisingly found out 4 cool native features that my iPhone is missing. Two of them are unforgivable though and should really be implemented in the iPhone, the other one is just funny

Auto-reject calls

Very handy when you don’t want to hear about some people. Enter her number to the block list, and all the calls from that number will be automatically rejected. I remember a friend of mine needed that feature last year, and we could never find something that works on his iPhone, neither in the native features nor in installable apps (even from the Cydia store).

Text messages: Block number

This is the same feature as the previous one, but for text messages. Again, you can edit a block list of numbers that you don’t want to receive SMSs from.

Fake call

That feature is funny. Actually, I haven’t checked if there is an app for it, there is probably one on the Cydia store. Well, this is a native feature on my Samsung phone. While in an annoying meeting that you want to escape, put your hand in your pocket and press four times the DOWN key of your phone. Then, after a variable amount of seconds (that you can change in the settings of the phone) a fake call from an unknown callee will make your phone to ring.

Privacy lock

This is quite redundant with the passcode lock of the iPhone, but still useful. Instead of locking the whole device with a passcode, the Samsung GT-E1080F will instead add locks to the key applications you wish, such as the calls logs, the address book or the SMS. So someone can still use your phone, like playing games or using the calculator, and the privacy of your SMS is still good. I think that could be a good feature for iPhone, as it often happens that I give my iPhone to friends who want to play, but not necessarily feel comfortable that they read my texts or calls logs.

There it is, I find the comparison between that little Samsung phone and a 50-times-more-expensive iPhone funny, regarding this foor little features. If you have a solution/workaround for the foor of them on iPhone, thanks to comment on that post, I am personally interested in knowing them!

Like I already did one year ago comparing mobile plans in France and in the UK, I am now writing a little review of my experience of mobile internet plans in the Philippines compared to France. Once again, you will see that France fails, and French people have good reasons to feel like cash cows sometimes…

For my comparison, I will consider “SIM only” prepaid plans, which means you just pay for your actual internet connection and not include the price of the device (phone, 3G stick or personal hotspot).

Let’s say it from the beginning, the comparison is — oh — painful for French consumers… This is what Orange (France) and Smart (Philippines) offer for unlimited surf, for prepaid plans and excluding the price of any device:

*prices are in proportion of the actual offers. To be accurate, Orange offers two unlimited options: 1 day for 6 euros, or 2 days for 10 euros. On the other hand, Smart offers two unlimited options: 1 day for 50 pesos (0.83 euros), or 5 days for 200 pesos (3.32 euros).

Let’s take the most advantageous case for Orange, which is the price for 2 days of unlimited internet, and let’s see that France is just 6 times more expensive than the Philippines.

I understand that the cost of living is no comparison between France and the Philippines. For knowing both countries, I know that the biggest difference comes from the labour cost. For the physical goods, you can find everything. Computer hardware and european cars are almost same price in the two countries, whereas food is about 2 or 3 times cheaper. Nevertheless, I will never believe that Orange is not taking advantage of the lack of competition in France to not maximise their profits excessively, at the expense of consumers.

I am writing this post from a coffee shop in Quezon City (Manila, Philippines) from my 3G connection that gives me a fair 1.5Mbps up/down for a bit less than 1 euro per day. (just for you to know the context)

Long before moving to Manila (Philippines) I have had wanted to get my hands on the Huawei e5 for its capability to turn a 3G connection into a wifi hotspot. I had tried to find it in Europe (France, UK, Romania…) and in the USA (Los Angeles, New York City), but now way to find any. Actually, that device seems to be available only in Asia (or online, but as I was going to the Philippines soon, I could wait).

Basically, what the Huawei e5 does, is to turn your 3G connection into a WIFI hotspot where you can connect up to 5 devices. There is also a USB port that allows you to connect another computer like any USB modem. So you can in the end connect up to 6 devices. read more… »

I am now writing this post from a Coffee Shop located in Eastwood City (Manila, Philippines). This is my first experience as an entrepreneur-traveller (as I explained my plans already some months ago, how I intend to live an unusual life) and let me tell you how things are going so far…

I went for a 24 hours trip (flew from Frankfurt to Dubai, Dubai to Manila, drove in the traffic to get to my flat…). However jetlag wasn’t so heavy, maybe I get used to it as I am travelling more and more. Here, climate is a shock compared to France. I sweat all the time when I’m outside, fortunately all the buildings have air conditioning or so. The violent typhoon that passed by Manila seems away now, at least the district I am living in doesn’t seem affected by it. Cost of living is low here, which allows me to get around in taxi easily, and have nice restaurants for the price of a meal at a French McDonald’s.

It took me some days to properly settle, get a decent Internet connection and being operational for my cruising speed. I can manage my work online pretty well so far (except I must work a bit late to be synced on the French timezone) and I will write a full post about it in the coming days.

Speed and reliability of the Internet network is a lot lower than what I expect in France, but at least it works. It’s not working well in my flat though (with 3G) but if I go down my building to the first coffee shop, I can get 1Mbps.

People here are nice and smile a lot. Customer service is not outstanding though, even if there are 10 idle sellers in the store, no one will jump on you to offer help… It’s the Filipino style, I have been told about it so it’s not a surprise, but it’s interesting to see the social and cultural differences with France Well, I could talk a lot longer about the Filipino specs, but it will be for another post!

Stay tuned!

Steve Jobs has passed away last night, 5th of October 2011. He was a great innovator, inspiration for all the IT people and entrepreneurs and we will regret him a lot.

My breakfast was bitter this morning when I read the news, but later on I found myself energised back and got some big motivation. Eclipse/Photoshop are open and working hard this afternoon. I remember Steve, and how hard work, creativity, innovation and courage led him to build this empire. Yes, even if you’re gone, you will still be a model of entrepreneurship and innovation to me and my fellows. You can rest in peace now, Steve.

Note 1: homage to Steve Jobs is on Apple’s website
Note 2: you can send condolences to rememberingsteve@apple.com