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A Selenium hint… December 14, 2006

Posted by James Webster in : web, development , add a comment

When you are writing your Selenium tests, I highly recommend that you use the ‘verifyXxx’ versions of the assertions rather than the ‘assertXxx’ versions. The ‘verify’ commands still cause the tests to fail however they allow a greater number of failures to be brought to light in a single test run. This saves time later when changes to requirements introduce subtle but broad changes to the expected values that are being asserted. You can observe the changes en-mass rather than one at a time.

Its probably an obvious tip but doubly so in hindsight.

Who Wants To Be A Venture Capitalist? December 7, 2006

Posted by James Webster in : finance , 6 comments

I’m not sure when I first encountered the concept of microfinance but I thought it sounded like a great idea; providing low-interest loans to the world’s most economically disadvantaged people to enable them to engage in entrepenurial activities for the benefit of themselves, their family and their community. Traditional aid and debt relief programs are essential to tackling the issue of global poverty, but self-sustainability also needs to be addressed and I think microfinance handles that admirably. So it was interesting to listen to the latest instalment of the fantastic Venture Voice podcast by Greg Galant where he interviews Premal Shah of Kiva.

Kiva (a non-profit company) acts as an agent for a number of microfinance organisations working with potential entrepenuers needing access to small amounts of capital in various parts of the world; Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, Central and South America. Details of candidate entrepeneurs are posted up on kiva and with nothing more than a PayPal account (PayPal waive their normal transaction charges I believe) you can contribute as little as $25USD as part of a syndicate providing seed capital to an entrepeneur aiming to provide a sustainable service to their community.

The money you lend is attracts a 0% rate of return so the real rate of return is actually slightly negative once you factor inflationary effects in. Kiva themselves charge a small amount of interest to the microfinance organisations to cover their running costs (but again remember they are a non-profit) and I assume the microfinanciers on the ground also have to cover their costs resulting in the entrepenuer repaying some interest on top of the initial capital they borrow. It would be interesting to hear from Kiva about what rates of interest the entrepeneur end up paying. In the podcast Premal mentions the desire to allow money to be lent at higher rates of interest set by the market surrounding Kiva; I would hope though that these rates are set by lenders such that they only offset the effect of inflation.

As with any investment there is a risk to your initial capital. According to Premal however rates of default on loans provided through microfinance mechanisms have historically been less than 4%. As always the best way to minimize specific risk and credit risk to diversify your portfolio. Kiva helps with diversification by providing a large number of investment opportunities.

If you have any other questions you really should listen to the podcast and then go to Kiva and provide an entrepenuer with the necessary seed capital to start a new sustainable business for the benefit of their community and family. And you too can claim to be a grassroots venture capitalist!

Grameen Bank is another well known pioneer in the world of microfinance; Iqbal Quadir of its grassroots telco spin-off Grameen Phone gave a talk at TED about the benefits of enabling the rural poor in Bangladesh the ability to set up their own local telephone network.

Some interesting companies to watch in the space of ‘P2P finance’ are Zopa (UK) and Prosper (USA). As far as I know there is no Australian equivalent just yet.

Google spreadsheet redux part 2 December 4, 2006

Posted by James Webster in : google , 3 comments

As expected by most observers, Google announced the availability of a GData API for Google Spreadsheets.

Now, if only my financial service providers would let my data out of their roach motels in a scriptable, schedule-able and machine-readable format, I could do something interesting with it, possibly akin to Dimewise or Wesabe.

I recently learnt (via More News) that Google Spreadsheets also has some functions for integrating with Google Finance… I wonder what sort of a Rube Goldberg-esque machine for pricing options could be built between Google Spreadsheets, GData and Amazon EC2?