Blog Title: The Yellow Llama - Web Design South Africa

Government Health Warning!

Do Not Swallow Chewing Gum!!!!

Potentially seperated at birth

Could it be?

What if bands had Afrikaans names?

What if… just what if some of today’s popular bands changed to Afrikaans music… What would we end up with?

• Pet Shop Boys – Troeteldierwinkel seuns
• Smashing Pumpkins – Platgemoerde Pampoene
• Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Frikkie Gaan Fliek Toe
• Johnny Rotten & the Sex Pistols – Jannie Vrot en die Pomp Revolwers
• Spice Girls – Aromat Slette
• Simple Minds – Dofkoppe
• Mariah Carey – Meraai se Kerrie
• Joan Armatrading – Johanna Wapenhandelaar
• Four Jacks and a Jill – Vier Latte en ‘n Platte
• Queen – Moffie
• Ace of Base – Baas se As
• Hughie Lewis and the News – Louis Luyt in die Nuus
• Iron Maiden – Yster Sussie
• Ladysmith Black Mambazo – Mevrou Smit se Swart Mambas
• Bananarama – Piesangmagarien
• Meatloaf - Vleisrol

What other band names can you think of?

Fascinating Biology Facts

• The largest cell in the human body is the female egg and the smallest is the male sperm.
• It takes the food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.
• One human hair can support 3 kg (6 lb).
• The average man’s penis is three times the length of his thumb.
• Human thighbones are 20x stronger than concrete.
• A woman’s heart beats faster than a man’s.
• There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.
• Women blink twice as o ften as men.
• The average person’s skin weighs twice as much as the brain.
• Your body uses 300 muscles to balance itself when you are standing still.
• If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it.
• Men who read this are probably still busy checking their thumb.

Let sleeping animals lie

Kulula - It’s getting harder to defend you…

I’m a fan of Kulula. The whole ‘no-fuss’ approach to travel is just what the average Joe Soap traveller needs and it suits me just fine. This approach hasn’t been welcomed by everyone, but I always defend it - saying how a free meal & coffee doesn’t justify an extra couple hundred bucks in ticket prices.

They recently rebranded and redesigned their website - albeit with a couple of errors (which still haven’t been fixed by the way…) and included a new travel section which I thought I’d give a try when booking my 1 year anniversary holiday. However what has been an epic fail on their website, is the fact that they promote “Holidays from R1895″ and by the time i reached the payment area (after choosing the most basic and default settings for every option), my package price was sitting at R8000…! WTF Kulula? Did you guys all fail maths?

Here’s the step by step of Kulula’s dodgy math skills:

Firstly, I choose my departure date & location:

Then I choose the package that had the advertised price (above)

So far, so good… But now all of a sudden, I’m told very vaguely that I need to pay in extra for some or other reason:

Total cost so far: R2391.

So already Kulula is failing… if the prices that you’re selling your travelling on, are already wrong by the 3rd step in the process, then surely you guys should update your prices? I mean for crying in a bucket, YOU’RE THE FLIGHT OPERATOR - YOU KNOW WHAT THE PRICES ARE… So update your travel prices accordingly! I mean geez, it’s not rocket science guys!

Ok… end of rant… Lets move on in the booking process, shall we?

Oh wait, kak… I have to pay another R394.00 for my return flight… (See above rant - same applies)

Now, I’m choosing a car:

I leave all the options here EXACTLY as is, for fear of doubling my ticket price again…

And holy @#^*! Look at this: ->

WTF??

Kulula -> Take Note Please!!
Tell me PLEASE!.. how do I get a holiday at the price that you’re advertising?? Tell me please how I can actually get a holiday that will cost R1877 per person! Explain that to me please and let all of us understand your dodgy maths skills…

I tried mailing my compliants to the Kulula Complaints department, but their canned responses didn’t help much:

ME: Hey guys. your travel special page show a kruger park special for 1864pp which includes flights, accommodatioin & transfers etc…. i choose this package, choose all the cheapest options and when i get to checkout, i’m shown a price of 8487… what the @#% guys?

KULULA: Hi Mark
The prices that is advertised on our website states that ‘price from’. The packages are built on standard prices and the more the flights get, then the flight fare supplement increases.

ME: I chose all the basic details and used all the standard information.. so how does the price “from” go all the way up to over 8000, when i chose all the default information?? please show me what options i must choose, to get a package that costs 1800. prove to me how this works.

KULULA: Thanks for your e-mail. Our packages are built on standard cars. The basic car which is a Golf with no radio and no aircon. You receive free 200km’s per day. You can upgrade your car at an extra cost.

ME: I chose the default car with no extra features or anything… so how does your package go from 1800 to 8000??? you still haven’t answered my question…

That’s the last I heard from them…

Please Kulula, help the South African blog community out here… explain to us all how your system works so that we know exactly why we’re phoning Flight Center and not using our favorite green airline.

Possible problem for Obama to deal with

The Evolution of Man vs Woman

Obama’s USA changes begin…

Calling all Web 2.0 Icon designers

We’ve had this idea at The Yellow Llama for the longest time and finally last week we got our ass in gear and partnered up with @Norri from Maxiware to build a site that we’re hoping is going to have great appeal.

There are a couple good free icon websites that many designers use when putting together designs for various applications, IconFinder.net and IconArchive.com being a couple.

However the problem with these sites in our opinion, is that they’re owner run. This means that any new icons only come when the owner decides to upload new ones. The latter of the 2 above mentioned sites at least allows you to ’submit icons’, but even then it’s still owner approved and there’s no real recognition system in place to give the designers their well deserved kudos.

So basically, between last Thursday and today, Norio and I have slaved to get our new site up & running. The site features, among other things:

• Designers upload all the icons
• Designers manage a profile that includes their licensing information and links to their websites and social sites (Facebook, Twitter etc)
• Designers, if they have an Adsense account, can enter their publisher ID, and will earn 50% of clicks made on Adsense units that are shown on their icons’ pages.
• Icons are tagged for easy searching and categorization
• The designer uploads a 128×128 PNG icon, that is automatically resized to 64, 48, 32, 22 and 16×16 icons

  

• Each icon displays the designers information and the designers profile page includes a list of all the icons he’s ever uploaded.

We have many awesome ideas for future developments and additions to the site, some of which include:

• user can “favorite” icons and then have a page that displays his favorite icons
• advanced search: filter by user, filter by size etc
• subcribe to a newsletter that will mail out a weekly digest of newly added icons

Currently the site is still being ironed out, but we’re eagerly looking for some icon designers to come on board and get some icons uploaded to test out the system & give us some feedback on how we can make it better for designers & users alike.

Icon designers who’re keen to get on board and start uploading icons can contact me at markbloomfield at gmail dot com for more information.

Please help spread the word for this post!