Category Archive

By The National, 30th October 2006

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea – For the first time, Papua New Guineans can now shop on the internet through the website www.esishop.com.pg using the local currency. Data Nets Ltd and Westpac Bank Ltd have launched its internet shopping site that enables credit card holders in Papua New Guinea to buy goods and services in the domestic and overseas markets. Data Nets and Westpac Bank unveiled their latest joint effort in producing PNG’s first ever e-commerce site, which allows Master Card and Visa Card users who have access to the internet to buy PNG goods online using the kina.

The launch last Thursday was witnessed by senior members of the public and private sector in which the first ever local internet transaction was made involving a purchase of a PGK100 [US$35.57] B-Mobile pre-paid card. The transaction was done in seconds. Data Nets general manager Sundar Ramamurthy said: “It is our effort to assist Government and the private sector in creating growth and the move into the next century, “We understand that people need a credit card, however, many people prefer to use this when paying for goods purchased over the internet,” he said “Our aim is to make this possible in PNG so that people will come to trust the transactions,” Mr Ramamurthy said.

The shopping website www.esishop.com.pg is the launching pad for e-commerce in PNG and will allow customers to buy products and services from the safety and comfort of their home 24 hours a day.

It also allows people and companies to sell their products and services on the global market anywhere and at any time and will benefit tourists and tourism agencies where holiday bookings can be made at the convenience of the tourist in their own time-zone.

One of Data Nets goal for the future is to link up with Air Niugini and PNG Power Ltd to provide online booking of airline tickets and online purchase of Esipay load credit to its clients

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Interesting that they have decided to launch this e-commerce service with only 1 product (B-Mobile credits) to sell, but again I guess it’s a start of some sort. There are 3 areas which I would like to see developed with e-commerce in PNG.

Firstly, Data Nets could have launched the e-commerce inititive with a leading hotel in PNG or Air Niugini so that some actual money could be made right from the word ‘GO’. The market and usage of credit card payments on the internet for PNG websites is overseas right now. This is something we mentioned in our article on tourism websites. Right now hotels and the tourism sector, especially Air Niugini, need the use of this service. The other reason also being that starting with an active market like tourism will give e-commerce service providers like Data Nets a more relevant working experience platform. This learning curve can then slowly lead them into what would be appropriate for the PNG market. In any case they have noted that they will be looking at Air Niugini, so that is a good sign for the future.

Secondly, the overwhelming usage of EFTPOS/ATM cards in PNG would to me have suggested that an e-commerce initiative in PNG would focus on a more accesible form of electronic payment rather than Credit Cards. Most PNG’eans already have a bank card of some sort so I would think that for the PNG market you would start with what the market is already used to and what the majority has access to. Even pre-paid facilities for e-commerce functions would be great, like our article on pre-paid e-commerce for music.

Thirdly, Westpac is the local bank where your money will be deposited in Kina, the payments are still however being processed by an overseas based company. From an economic point of view the fact that it is an overseas gateway for the e-commerce service means that money made on e-commerce payment clearance is leaving the country.

In any case it’s about time someone started this, it is a move forward and is better than doing nothing at all. We at Masalai are quite excited about the possibiliities it opens for our website clients. A big congratulations for the great initiative by Data Nets and Westpac.

By Emmanuel Narokobi - 22nd October 2006

7.20pm: Okay so we’re on again with SMS Polling for Ice Discovered 2006. Last week was a slow start with only 127 votes coming in so as I write this tonight waiting for 7.30pm to come around for the secound round of votes to come through, I’m hoping that we’ll get more votes tonight.

We have seen up to 1,995 votes in one night last year, so I would hope that this year will see an increase in these figures. The success of an SMS campaign relies heavily on marketing the campaign but at times last year and even last week we noticed that some of our test SMS messages never came through.

With all this talk of Digicel and another mobile phone operator coming in to PNG we definately would like to see an improvement in our mobile phone services. SMS is obviously secondary to voice services but it would be nice to see it be an instantaneous and reliable service as well.

7.40pm: Our two Ice Discovered contestants tonight are Vasiti and Pennie and right now Vasiti is in the lead with 22 votes and Pennie at 9.

Problem though is that we have had about 15 calls to the mobile number when people should be texting not calling. Note sure if EMTV has instructed viewers effectively that the number is for texting.

7.44pm: Vasiti on 32 votes and Pennie on 15.

We have been toying with the idea of texting back a thank you message so that people know that their SMS has been recieved, but with our current setup which is outside Cellnet it would mean we would have to be paying for sending out messages. The ideal situation would be for us to setup within Cellnet’s system so that we can add a markup on the SMS message so that we can be paid for our service by the users.

Some ideas for the future using TV and SMS could be for example people texting Chef Golonzo on the EMTV Haus and Home show to receive his recipies. Once we can find a sponsor for this it may be a reality in 2007.

8.00pm: Vasiti on 80 votes and Pennie on 50.

Just looking at the messages coming in, most people just text the name of the people they want to vote for, but some go to the trouble of writing their full name and the province they’re from. That’s quite encouraging because then we can tell where the votes are coming from because we can’t differentiate the mobile numbers like landline numbers.

You also get funny messages like ‘Vasiti is HOT’, ‘I want Vasiti’ and this one ‘Vasisti is so hot, is she married?’ ..LOL..

8.30pm: Vasiti on 118 and Pennie on 113.

Obviously some people do vote more than once, but that’s allowed in this voting, we have not included misspelled names though and right now we have about 26 misspelled names.

9.00pm: Vasiti on 139 and Pennie 133.

10.00pm: Vasiti 184 and Pennie on 178.

11.00pm: Vasiti 194 and Pennie 184. Voting will end at 12.00 midnight.

12.00pm: And so we end this nights voting with Vasiti on 198 votes and Pennie with 192. All up we had 469 SMS votes with 79 not being recognised answers (i.e. they had spelling mistakes or they forgot to put in the contestants name in to their SMS vote) . Well on that note I better go get some sleep…

By Emmanuel Narokobi - 29th September 2006

Hooray!! Finally at last Google has given us more capacity to install Google Analytics for our customers. As you may have read in our past articles we already provide this service for Post PNG, Tourism Promotion Authority and the Surfing Association of Papua New Guinea, so you too can now enjoy this very important and useful tool. The service is free of charge but there may be installiation fees depending now how complex your tracking requirements may be. For example if you have a large number of downloads that you want to track.

We are now planning to have it installed on 13 of our current clients websites and this will effectively replace our old system SmarterStats™. Although SmarterStats™ was effective it was not very accurate in differentiating between search bot hits and human hits so it gave us some very skewed readings. The other downside to SmarterStats™ was that every website tracked with it had to be hosted by Masalai, which in practise is not always the case. Some clients are quite happy where they are hosted so with Google Analytics this gives us the freedom to track websites that are not hosted with Masalai as well. So remember also that just because we didn’t build your website doesn’t mean you can’t use the system, this is open to anyone that has a website.

In the wider scheme of things the more people that sign up for Google Analytics with Masalai, the better understanding we will gain of how PNG websites fare in terms of online exposure internationally. Everyone today knows about how important the internet is for business and gerneral information and so finally now we have the tools to actually quantify that importance into numbers which can assist not just Masalai and our clients but industry associations and possibly government organisations in planning and marketing of PNG goods and services.

By Emmanuel Narokobi - 4th September 2006

As always you see or learn something new when you travel. The latest interesting thing I saw was the iTunes pre-paid card which was being sold at Newsagents and shopping centres in Australia.

A pretty good idea I though, because without the need for a credit card and just like the B-Mobile pre-paid cards we are already used to, you can buy music on iTunes Australia for $1.69 a song. Basically you are given a PIN number which you enter into the iTunes Music Store and as seen below you are given your amount to spend. (I was left with $1.41 after my purchases)

So I started thinking maybe a company like Rapid Phones or CHM could sell the cards, so people in PNG could buy songs on the internet through the iTunes Music Store. But sadly I do not see this taking off too soon in PNG, especially with the majority of home internet users on dial up. I tested it out and it took me roughly 6 hours to download 4 tracks. That’s right, just 4 tracks, so maski for now.

What it does give me inspiration for though is that maybe one day we could have a PNG website or websites with pre-paid options for PNG internet users. This could be a viable option to credit cards for purchases on the internet. For example using pre-paid internet cards for e-commerce like software purchases and downloads, or maybe even for Easy-Pay with PNG Power so you don’t have to line up for so long in those queues after work at Stop N Shop.

By Emmanuel Narokobi - 7th June 2006

The www.surfingpapuanewguinea.org.pg website was one of the earliest jobs we did and in order to show some tracking of visits to the site we used a free tracker on the homepage. Looking at it today the number of visits is 3,893. Although it may seem allot, the tracker is very basic and is unable to give us more detailed information about the visitors to the site. For arguments sake we can say that since the website was done in 2003, that would mean that at 365 days a year and over 4 years ago the site is roughly been live for 1,460 days. Divide the 3,893 figure on the tracker by 1,460 days and the result is an average of 2.6 hits a day.

Since setting up Google Analytics (GA), we decided to implement GA on the www.surfingpapuanewguinea.org.pg website. We were pleasantly surprised to see how popular (in PNG terms) the website actually was. I guess it is not surprising considering its international tourism appeal and the fact that PNG is perhaps one of the last frontiers in surfing.

After setting up GA for the surfing website on the 20th May 2006, the site has to date received 209 visitors in its 19 days of GA operation. From those 209 visitors, 180 were new visitors and 29 were returning visitors. So roughly around 10 people a day would have been visiting our surfing website over the last 19 days alone. Comparing that to the above result from the homepage tracker, you can see a very different picture now of the surfing website. So for example at 10 visits by 1,460 days we should have been seeing 14,600 visitors and not 3,893.

The vast difference is perhaps attributed to the fact that the free tracker service was perhaps only tracking new visitors but not returning visitors which could explain the lower number. On the other hand we can safely assume that GA is accurate because each of the 209 visitors can be traced back to the Internet Service Provider they originated from, hence giving each visitor a recorded place of origin and thus verifying each visitor.

To further expand on the information GA can collect, we also have statistics for how many pages these 209 people looked at. These are called page views. The figure for page views for the surf website was 1,132. This means that the 209 visitors looked at the various pages of the website 1,132 times over the last 19 days. We were clearly impressed because for the first time we had some real detail in the statistics to show different ways of analysing visitor information.

What was equally more impressive was our ability to see where in the world all these visits and page views were coming from. So in regards to the geographic location of our visitors we found that 104 visits came from Australia. This represented 48.6% of our website visits coming from just one country, which was our highest ranking country. So what does this mean to the Surfing Association of PNG? well it means that perhaps they need to increase their surf marketing to the Australian market because they seem to be quite keen on seeing what is on our surfing website. To break this down even further GA was able to tell us that from the 104 visits coming from Australia, 35 visits came from New South Wales and 31 visits came from Queensland. So even more targeted marketing can now be planned.

Another interesting feature of GA was it’s indication of the sources for its visits to the surfing website. In other words whether people visiting the website had directly typed in the website name in a browser or if they had got to the surf site from a link from another website. It turns out that the largest source of visits was 75 out of 209 visits, this came from Google searches. The second largest source were direct visits at 48 out of 209 visits. The most encouraging and exciting one was the third source at 31 visits from the Tourism Promotion Authority (TPA) website. This is clearly good news as it shows that the TPA website is actually doing it’s job of promoting tourism activities in PNG.

We had a meeting today with TPA and they too will be included in our limited list of GA clients. Our guess is that if the surfing website is getting these types of visits then the visits to the TPA site must be by far greater. The Surfing Association of PNG and TPA can now begin taking major leaps forward in better understanding their markets to improve the tourism industry in PNG.

By Emmanuel Narokobi - 18th May 2006

At the beginning of this year we introduced our SmarterStats™ service to privide our clients with website statistics so that clients could fully analyse and understand how their websites were being used. For example giving information on how many hits they were getting etc.

But just today Masalai got it’s invitation from Google to open it’s very own Google Analytics account. Google Analytics (GA) allows you to track the effectiveness of your online marketing activities and helps you optimize the content and layout of your website. Out-of-the-box functionality includes conversion goals, funnel path analysis, Google AdWords integration and e-commerce tracking. The goal of GA is to empower you with information to maximize your marketing ROI and increase website conversions. (When they say conversions, it means converting a user into actual sales)

Although SmarterStats™ and GA both do similar things, GA takes website analytics to a new level. The main difference being that it is more detailed and more geared towards bsuiness results. Another advantage is that with SmarterStats you have to host with Masalai but with GA this is not necessary. But the best feature of all is that GA is FREE.

But wait!, there is a catch, we had to wait a couple of months to get our GA account invitation and even then to use it you will need a Google Mail account, which again you will need an invitation to get one. On top of all of that Google has limited Masalai to offering this service to only 5 profiles (websites). We have been informed that this will be increased shortly, but again we do not know when.

In any case and for now we still have SmarterStats™ and when Google gives us greater capacity then we can offer this FREE service to more PNG websites. If you want to find out more about GA, visit their site at http://www.google.com/analytics/

By Malum Nalu - 10th May 2006

Papua New Guinea now has a window of opportunity for its small and medium enterprise sector to international markets. This follows the launch of the Small
Business Development Corporation website by Trade and Industry Minister Hon. Paul Tiensten on Thursday, January 26.

The SBDC website - www.sbdc.gov.pg - is a deliberate attempt by the organisation to assist the SME sector to have access to relevant market and business information. “Our main aim is to promote SMEs to enable indigenous Papua New Guineans to be self-sufficient, thus improving their standard of living and contributing to the development of the country,” says SBDC managing director Mr. Brian Kiap Komun.

“We are the Government’s lead agency in the promotion of its SME Policy. “The challenge on SBDC, therefore, is both an exciting and challenging one, especially in this day and age of information technology and globalisation.” Minister Tiensten says the website will hopefully be a window for PNG’s SME sector to the world as well as open up new international markets for the country. “It is recognised and has been raised or discussed in many national forums and seminars in Papua New Guinea about the lack of access to relevant market and business information,” he said. “Even the current SME Policy identifies Information access as one of the constraints to SME development in PNG. “It has also been realised that a lot of information is institutionally driven rather than market, industry or sectoral driven. “It has been highlighted in many APEC SME related forums and meetings that PNG is lagging behind in terms of having an official SME website or portal. “In other words, of the 21 APEC economies, PNG is the only economy that does not have an official government SME Website, ranks poorly in terms of ICT infrastructure, ICT application and no national policy on informatisation. “Most of the other APEC member economies are in the advanced stages of having a highly informatised SME Sector. “The use of ICT in business is the way of the future and unless we as an economy vigorously pursue and embrace this we may find ourselves missing out on market opportunities due to globalisation.

“Given this back drop, there is a room for lot of improvement by PNG in terms of ICT awareness creation, as well as ICT ownership and application by business and commerce in keeping with global trends. “This project/initiative is being undertaken by SBDC in an attempt or effort to address the lack of access to market/relevant business information by the SME Sector. “Nonetheless, the overall issue of informatisation cannot be solved by a single entity such as SBDC and needs a more concerted push on a national scale by the government.” The project aims:

• To comply with APEC action agendas and requirements on informatisation and establishment of official SME website;
• To respond to global trends in e-business, e-commerce and e-government etc;
• To ensure that there is a website for the SME Sector to access market information, create opportunities for business matching and real-time information on such matters;
• To enable access to the public and SME sector information on available financial products and services, SME business tends, trade/industry data and statistics;
• To provide information on SBDC, its products and services;
• To access and increase knowledge and understanding on SME development policies, strategies and methodologies by drawing on the best practices of the leading APEC member economies;
• To facilitate and host successful SMEs and SBDC’s Small Enterprise Development (SED) network partners; and
• To create linkages with other government websites.

Project beneficiaries will be the SME Sector, SED Network partners and others outlined above.

The website will provide:

• Data bank/mine of SME related information on markets, business/trade data, trends and statistics, financial products and services.

• Real-time information on business matching and market opportunities globally.

• Knowledge bank of world/APEC economies best practices on policies, programmes, strategies and methodologies on SME development.

• Window to the global economy by our SMEs, whilst other SMEs in the APEC economies accessing our SME sector.

Last year the SBDC called for tenders to develop the website. The successful tenderer was Masalai Communications, a 100 per cent locally owned company run by young IT entrepreneur, Mr Emmanuel Narakobi. Masalai Communications commenced work on designing and developing the website, which was then successfully tested.Following the launching by Mr. Tiensten, SBDC staff will continue to regularly update the website for the benefit of the SME sector.

By Emmanuel Narokobi - 3rd May 2006

I got this great email from a friend recently and after having 2 mobiles stolen from me this year, within the space of a month, I needed to do something to at least make me feel better when my phone was taken.

Read the instructions below on how to have your phone disabled after it is stolen. Cos when the buying stops, so will the stealing!

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How to check your Mobile phone’s serial number? Key in the following digits on your phone: * # 0 6 #

A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset.

Write it down and keep it somewhere safe.

When your phone gets stolen, you can phone BMobile and give them this code.

They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless.

You probably won’t get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can’t use/sell it either.

If everybody knows this information and does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.

Please spread this useful information to everyone you know.

By Emmanuel Narokobi - 21st April 2006

It’s amazing how as busy as we are, most of us are guilty of taking part in sending jokes around to our friends or at most times sending jokes to people we only know by email address. Obviously there are also socially useful purposes like sporting clubs and associations. And of course the most useful purpose of all, Work!!!

One thing I find though is that sometimes not everybody wants their email addresses to be seen on your ‘cc’ list. So I’ve had to remind myself to use the ‘bcc’ as well. And I also find that it becomes a pain when I have to continuously email about 30 - 40 people regularly within a year (for rugby stuff). Some of you out there might know this already but a couple of weeks ago I discovered the distribution lists function on Outlook.

Finally, now I can email all my regulars without having to painstakingly look for each of the 30 persons email addresses. For those of you who don’t know about the distribution list on Microsoft Outlook have a look at this useful webpage, http://ict.cas.psu.edu/training/howto/outlook/DistributionList.htm

On the other hand If you’re in say the hospitality industry etc, (like our favourite place, LAMANA) and you want some more power and functionality in your mailng lists there is a fairly cheap software called WorldMerge that can help. It’s major functions are:

• Automate e-mailing - up to 8,000 messages an hour.

• Protect your contact list - your list of recipients will not appear in the cc: box.

• Personalize your message content with information from your source file. No more “Dear Valued Customer” messages!

• Send targeted mailing to a partial list of your contacts using the WorldMerge filtering tool or manual selection.

• WorldMerge Project Wizard guides you through the process quickly.

• Save and reuse messages and mailing projects.

• Use your existing database or source file - WorldMerge supports many file types; chances are your existing mailing list’s file format is supported.

• Save money - while maintaining direct control of your mailings. This program provides comparable services to a list server, but you won’t have to pay someone to manage it for you, nor maintain a dedicated Internet connection.

• Advanced features - send messages in text or HTML format with multi-part mime, send attachments, add your signature, and more!

You’ll need a credit card to pay but it’s a pretty good software for it’s price and it has a FREE version.

And once again No, we are NOT masalai-i-tokaut…in case some of you are wondering…

By Emmanuel Narokobi - 21st March 2006

This has absolutely nothing to do with IT and websites, but all to do with PNG. How about that huh?? PNG’s Ryan Pini, Gold Medal at the Commonwealth Games.

All I can say is LOOK OUT THE SCORE BOARD!!!! Awesome Stuff Ryan!!……..

Kingpin Pini - Herald Sun
Danny Buttler
21mar06

PAPUA New Guinea’s first ever swimming gold medal will be celebrated from Port Moresby to Rabaul.

Ryan Pini’s victory in the 100m butterfly prompted jubilant scenes at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre as the normally partisan home crowd realised the significance of the win.

PNG has won just one gold medal in Commonwealth Games history — a lawn bowls triumph in 1990.

“It’s unbelievable. I’ve just felt so good in this competition,” Pini, 24, said.

The crowd’s raucous reaction to his win was almost as stunning as snaring the gold, he said. “It’s incredible — they’ll cheer for anyone.”

Having won PNG’s sportsman of the year in both 2003 and 2004, the university student will now be an unbackable favourite to add a third title to his name.

PNG Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare said the victory was one of the greatest in his nation’s history.

“In the Papua New Guinean mountains and towns they all will be watching,” he said. “It’s all spectacular, it’s all fantastic — I’m very, very proud.”

Even Michael Klim, whose hometown fairytale had been spoiled, enjoyed the moment. “He deserves it — he’s a great guy,” he said.

By Emmanuel Narokobi - 2nd April 2006

We’ve been working recently on a website for the Kumul Lodge, based in Enga. It’s a beautifully kept secret in PNG. The interesting thing for us about this job was not so much the chance to travel for a website job, but the fact that the PNG Tourism Promotion Authority (TPA) paid us for this job. TPA’s funding for this job is an amazing step forward for tourism websites in PNG. TPA’s encouragement and the growing number of tourism websites in PNG like the well known PNG Business Directory (PNGBD) is doing wonders for the online presence of PNG.

We have seen a handful of PNG websites now also incorporating online sales into their sites, especially hotels. Which all in all is an exciting prospect to think that although we are light years behind the rest of the world, the first steps into e-commerce are beginning to take place. Judging by all these developments it is therefore not hard to see that tourism will perhaps be the most proactive industry in PNG to push the development of e-commerce.

In 2000, we wrote an article on e-commerce in PNG, it was a long time ago, but it still highlights today what we still need to have in place for PNG to fully utilise the economic benefits of e-commerce. In our paper we noted seven major areas of the PNG environment that needed to be addressed:

(i) Awareness and Education
(ii) The PNG Market size
(iii) E-commerce infrastructure
(iv) Telecommunications infrastructure
(v) Legal System
(vi) Government Role
(vii) Business Models

Despite the above list, technically it is possible to conduct e-commrce in PNG. However one of the interesting dilemas we face now is that we are still not able to have credit card payments on the internet made into PNG bank accounts. As Tony Westaway, former Retail Manager for Bank South Pacific explained to us, “…Internet Banking does not provide for transfer of funds to accounts at overseas Banks and this is because of the need to meet Exchange Control and IRC regulations. Likewise we do not receive funds transferred in electronically apart from via the SWIFT protocol (commonly referred to as telegraphic transfers).These funds coming into PNG from say Australia are usually from an Australian dollar account conducted within that country…”

What this all means is that if you want to do e-commerce right now, all your money will have to go to an overseas account, before it gets transferred via telegraphic transfer back to your account in PNG. This translates into longer waiting periods for payments to get to you and increased costs in banking fees.

It is good to see however that our tourism website population is growing and this will in turn lead us into improvments in our customer service on these websites, which hopefully will lead to e-commerce initiatives. So our guess is it that it will only be a matter of time before some large private or government body with a website pushes for e-commerce payments to happen in PNG for it be be used widely by other PNG websites.

PNG will get there eventually, but in the meantime to all those websites embarking on e-commerce initiatives, please keep in mind security. I have seen at least 2 PNG hotel websites with unsecure pages which ask for credit card details.

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Related Articles:

• e-commerce in PNG, 2000 (142KB)

• e-commerce website design (189KB)

By Dominic Krau - The National, 28th October 2004

The judiciary has launched a website that will provide the public and stakeholder with information on the Supreme and National Courts. Chief Justice Sir Mari Kapi launched the website in Port Moresby on Tuesday. The website may be accessed at www.pngjudiciary.gov.pg.

The website took 10 months to develop and was created by local website developer, Emmanuel Narokobi of Masalai Communications.

Sir Mari said the aim of the website is to share and disseminate information on the judiciary to it’s key stakeholders, the court users, and the general public. The website contains information about the judiciary, its support services, court practice and procedures and other relevant information. Sir Mari said, like all websites, this one was dynamic as it includes links to the case management system across the law and justice sector as well as having the capacity to allow electronic transactions.

“It is important that our stakeholders are made aware of judicial services and practice and procedures, not only to assist them in accessing these services but also to make them understand the circumstances that affect that delivery,” he said.

He said the National Law and Justice Policy advocates for public awareness in the law and justice sector and one of the judiciary’s annual goals is to disseminate valuable information using various communication mediums.

The other programmes include the court exhibition that runs in conjunction with Magisterial Services aimed at opening the courts to the people, and the Post Access to Laws Project, which is being implemented with other agencies in the sector.

Sir Mari also encouraged suggestions from users on improving the website so there can be a increased use of it.

The website project was funded by AusAID through the Law and Justice Sector Programme.