It’s almost that time of the year again where we prepare for one of the largest events of the year in the Overberg region –  The Hermanus Whale Festival.  The Whale festival attracts thousands of visitors from all over the world each year to come and watch the magnificent Souther-Right Whales, who come visit Hermanus each year just off our coast.

Each year the whole community works together to make the Whale Festival bigger, better and more memorable than the last and this year is no different. One of the regions largest events deserves nothing less than a top quality website and this year we as a community have the opportunity to vote on the new website design for whale festival.

There are three options to choose from and voting will take less than 5 minutes! You can also comment on the designs on our facebook page and let us know what you think of them!

Click here to go to the voting page

The Hermanus Whale Festival will be held from the 30th of September until the 4th of October.

Top of Rothung pass

As most of my family, friends and clients know, I was in India for a month and I’d like to say thank you for the support and patience for that month. I’ve had many queries from people asking me what I did there and my purposes, etc, so I decided to summarize it in a blog post. There were three sections to my trip so I will detail each one of these below. Hope it’s interesting reading:

• The LIFT conference in Delhi
• The motorbike trip to the Himalayas
• The trip to help out at the orphanage in Rajasthan

L.I.F.T CONFERENCE IN DELHI

Snake charmer on the way to the Taj Mahal

The LIFT (Leadership Input and Friendship Time) is basically a time where a few of relating churches in India get together and therefore this was a great time for me to meet many interesting people. During this time I had the opportunity to make new friends, find my way around Delhi, enjoy Indian cuisine and sights and have my passport stolen. The last one on the list wasn’t fun at the time, but turned out being an adventure in itself. I got to experience a police station in Delhi and I met the South African consular, who else can say that! I have many memorable and interesting times during this week, like the Taj Mahal, Agra fort and my visit to a hospital, but it’s too much to write them all down here. In any case this first week was a crucial time for me to find my feet. I also met Olga in Delhi from whom I bought the bike. She has blog (183daysinindia.blogspot.com). I encourage you to read it, since she was in India for six month travelling on a bike, on her own! Impressive!

MOTORBIKE TRIP TO THE HIMALAYAS
This was a part of my trip I was most excited about. Imagine riding and camping in the middle of the Himalayas. Well, that’s what I did and the experience was phenomenal. But first I had to collect the bike in Mumbai (Bombay), requiring a total of 51 hours on the train there and back as well as the politics and stress involved in getting the bike on the train and not to mention off the train and out of the station. But with a bit of effort and not too many problems I was riding for my first time in Delhi at 11 o’clock at night and I had absolutely no idea where I was going and I had no map either. Not great planning from my part, but of course there are always people to ask, so after 2 hours of travelling around Delhi, having a lots of fun enjoying the fairly empty roads, and a quick bite to eat at McDonalds, I managed to find my accommodation by 1am in the morning.

Shimla

Two days later I was off to Shimla after prepping and Travelled for my first full day motorbike ride. The road up to Shimla is incredible! It winds along the hilltops of the Himalayas and not only is it beautiful, but also really enjoyable riding. But unfortunately due to my long ride I got sick the first night and so I got to spend 2 days in Shimla instead of 1 day only.

My ultimate goal was to get to Leh (far north), but due to it being winter I was told by some tour guides that the 2 passes to ride over were closed. In retrospect I should never have listened to the tour guides, because at the very least Rothung pass was definitely open. But I made my choice and I aimed to go through Spiti Valley by going through Recong Peo. So I left Shimla stopped over for the night at a fairly dodgy hotel in Rampur and then next day didn’t get very far before I was delayed by a landslide on the road. So I lost another day and then arrived at Recong Peo the following day. At Recong Peo I couldn’t get a permit to continue so I had to camp the night at a small place just above Recong Peo called Kalpa. So overlooking three 6000m high peaks, I setup my tent and made a fire. What an experience!! I’ve attached picture of my campsite.

Camping at Kalpa overlooking three peaks over 6000m high

So the next day I hoped to get a permit, but apparently I’m not allowed to go through alone and there was no group coming through which I could join, so I decided to scrap that idea and I started heading for Manali. Again I was delayed due to a collapsed bridge so only the following day I reacedh Manali, but at least I had time to spare. On my way to Manali I travelled over Jarori pass which was where I saw my first snow and then down through Shoja, which is a most enchanting village. In Manali I learnt that Rothung pass was open and was quite disappointed since if I had travelled that direction from the beginning, I may have gotten a lot further.

Impressive Engineering making for great riding

In any case I stayed 2 days in Manali and on the second day I decided to go up Rothung pass. The only problem was the bike’s kickstart didn’t work on that morning, but I decided to continue in any case, push starting the bike, since in the mountains there’s always a downhill. The pass was very tough riding and I fell on the bike when I encountered some ice! I wasn’t hurt, but it was quite a fall and a shock to my system, warning me to be careful. So the ride up was quite challenging itself, but the site and the value of reaching the summit was enthralling and absolutely worth it! The next day I started back to Delhi and arrived there 2 days later.

I believe the bike trip really built my character and being on my own made me realize how comfortable and easy life is here in our beautiful city of Hermanus, so I learnt much and can’t wait to go back for another Himalayan adventure. Next trip I plan to meet many churches up there and make many new friends. And of course reach the town of Leh!

THE ORPHANAGE IN RAJASTHAN
After a couple days recovery in Delhi, I left on the bike south to Kota to join Global Challenge at an orphanage. I travelled 470kms that day from 6am to 8pm and boy was it a long ride. I took the wrong turn and ended up going on all the country roads, which have massive pothills/craters and seemingly someone didn’t think they were bad enough so they decided to put camouflaged speed bumps in the most arb areas. I’ll never complain about South African speed bumps again! But I did reach my destination, even though I had to use the headtorch at night since the bike’s headlight was out. Fortunately in India, road rules are the pirate code. They’re more like guidelines and even a cop laughed at me when he saw this foreigner with a tiny headlamp hoping to survive the ride.

The boys from the orphanage

In Kota I helped paint a church and got to preach in that same church which was an honour. The orphans and there stories were incredible too and that in itself was an unforgettable experience, with certainly a different flavour from the lonely bike trip north! But as the time at the orphanage came to a close so did my time in India for 2010 and after sorting out my passport and exit visa I arrived back in Hermanus on Christmas eve, with many golden memories.

Thanks for reading this post. As a Christian, there were many things which stirred my heart and I believe changed false perceptions in my life, calling me to more, and so I wish to say thank you to God for making this trip possible.

Regards – Steve.

P.S. For more pictures to go the facebook album

Firefeed (formerly Bmail) is a online marketing tool, mostly aimed at allowing a company or an individual to send html format emails or newsletters to a large number of contacts within their contact list. But it’s not limited to that. Firefeed is also aimed at being a comprehensive marketing tool and therefore allows one to administer their contacts and arrange them into contact lists and also import/export to and from other contact managers. And, in the near future, to create SMS campaigns, run surveys, rss feeds and podcast/vodcasts using the system. In the distant future we also aim to add a billing section to manage accounts.

For a year and half Studio137 has been developing the system, having first called it Bmail. Unfortunately Bmail never got off the ground since it had bugs and forced us to manually setup and prepare campaigns for clients to send. Taking all the valuable lessons learned from Bmail and the already built systems, we decided to re-develop it and called it Firefeed. Now with about half the code and with a far more user friendly interface we have a more efficient system and we are almost ready to release it in beta. What this means is that current Bmail clients will be transferred to this system and will be able to make use of it before it is officially launched next year (date to be announced).

So here are a few of the improvements and the additions that will be available in the beta and then in the final release next year.

BETA

• Far easier contact management system. Bmail had many ways to do one thing. Firefeed now has one way avoiding confusion and also allows all contact lists to be available at one click from anytime you’re in your ‘view contacts’ page.
• The ability to import contacts in a CSV file format and export in the same format
• A subscribe box to add to your website allowing visitors to subscribe directly into your contact list system
• Firefeed uses templates now as opposed to solely relying on a WYSIWYG editor. For Bmail clients who have tried to use the current editor to setup an attractive email, they will have noticed the difficulty and frustration of trying to save tables and add images etc and even the easier tasks of making a paragraph bold. Firefeed now is improved by limiting the use of an editor to only the content that requires a change and therefore the template structure always remains fixed. We also can easily incorporate custom templates which we can develop.
• After you’ve previewed your campaign you can send a test message immediately. In Bmail this option was only available after compiling your outbox, which can be a lengthy process if you have a large contact list.
• The images within your mail are uploaded directly to the mail server, therefore eliminated the long period of time to compile the message (in the backend the images were transferred across to the mail server)
• Limited reporting will be available in the beta version.

FINAL VERSION RELEASED NEXT YEAR

• Full reporting functionality. How many contact received the email. How many opened the email. How many links were clicked
• Full comprehensive help section and video tutorials following soon after
• Up to 40 templates to choose from
• And hopefully more

Currently Firefeed (www.firefeed.co.za will be available on the 9th December 2009) is not running on a live server so we included below 3 screen shots. Firefeed makes use of the full width of your monitor. Therefore clients with widescreen monitors will enjoy the ability to view contacts at one point.

A view of the ‘View Contacts’ page which allows you to edit and manage your contacts and arrange them into lists.

A view of the composing step of creating a campaign. As you can see you can edit individual parts of the template without affecting the template structure

A view of the template when it is previewed.

PRICING

Firefeed works on a per email basis. You have 3 options for payment: monthly, pay as you go and once off. One email is one credit. Please note that and email cannot be larger than 512KB. If it exceeds this limit then it is counted as another credit for each 512KB after that.

Please take note of the following:

• Both monthly installments option and pay as you go option allow you the full use of the current edition of Firefeed. The once off option is where we will setup the email for you and send it without you needing to create an account with Firefeed
• For the monthly installment option only half of your allow credits will be carried across to the next month. eg. If you have 5000 credits per month and you only use 1200 in one month then only 2500 credits are carried over to the next month and not 3800. Therefore you can never have more than 7500 credits in any month.
• Pay as you go option’s credits are kept for up to 1 year
• Once off option’s credits do not carry over
• Monthly installment option is subject to a period of no less than 3 months after opening and one months notice is required for cancellation
• Prices are subject to change without notice.

Additional costs

Sms pricing will come at a latter stage.

For any questions and queries please contact Stephen on 028 313 2150 or email at stephen@studio137.co.za

If you’ve visited the Studio137 website in the past you’ll have noticed that it’s in serious need of an update.

Well finally the new site is up and running. It’s a very simple site, since ultimately it is a temporary solution until time allows and something more elaborate can be created, but for the time being it has all the relevant information regarding the company.  www.studio137.co.za

The other exciting development is the addition of this blog. We hope to make it a valuable resource for information as well as allow potential clients and current clients the opportunity to view our other work. Also we plan to keep well up to date with news and information regarding products, updates and maybe in the future tutorials

Lastly don’t miss our facebook page and you can also follow us on twitter