The Home of Ben May, Hervey Bay, QLD, Australia. » Business News

Dinner @ Coast

Ben May — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 04:34:54 +0000

To those who don’t know – I am a bit of a foodie, I love good food, coffee and wine – however it’s not a common thing in a small(ish), regional town like Hervey Bay that has a very broad median age (that is, lots of young and old people – and everything in between) and also suffer from high unemployment mixed with a fairly low socioeconomic status, so there has never really been more than 1 or perhaps 2 “up market” restaurants in Hervey Bay, and while some have been and gone, trying to offer a inner city product, while delivering it with lousy service – not a lot have stuck around for the long haul.

At the end of last year, Coast Restaurant was opened in Hervey Bay. I hadn’t been there until early this year, but had heard many great things about it prior to dining there from range of people. I’ve now been there four or five times for dinner, and have been impressed every time. Great food, great wine and just as important, great service.

This week Coast did something which I think is a first for Hervey Bay, and that was a 5 course degustation dinner, and even better, prepared by e’cco bistro’s Philip Johnson.

It was a great night – lots of wine, great lineup of food to try and a great atmosphere – let’s hope events like this continue!

Making WHMCS and Saasu talk

Ben May — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 04:16:44 +0000

One of the main reasons I haven’t completed the leap to WHMCS in the past, is the fear of having to manually bring across accounts from WHMCS through to Saasu.

While both systems have API’s I knew it would be possible – but simply have the time to try put an API Connector together- and to make it work nicely.

Earlier in the year I started looking again, as I really need to move my hosting management softer to WHMCS for greater management / organisation of my hosting portfolio.

I was introduced to OneSaas – who are an Australian IT company – who are building connectors for many of the popular cloud based applications – and keeping contacts and invoices synced.

Read more about Syncing WHMCS and Saasu here – I worked with the guys at OneSaas as they developed this plugin for a reasonable fee (considering the time this will save) – and have now released this as a module in BETA for other WHMCS users to enjoy.

Where did January go?

Ben May — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 06:31:48 +0000

Wow, we’re already day away from February 2010, where have the first 30 days of this month and year gone?

I have not had a chance to really jump back on the poor old site and write anything, there has been many changes in the last couple of months for me commercially.

Towards the end of December, I re-branded my existing business and founded Alyte Creative, this was after I assessed my existing business arrangements and how things had been running up until that point, and for what was going to be best leading into the future.

Alyte is the crystallisation of the services and level of service I had been providing all kinds of businesses since leaving school. For those who may not have ever guessed, I am an I.T. oriented individual (nerd for short usually works), and focus on providing outstanding websites for business of all sizes. Having a considerable understanding of I.T., server administration, networking and such, this underpins the terrific websites and web apps I produce.

January has been a very busy month, both looking after clients and establishing many new programs for Alyte that I hope to launch in the near future. As I start to gain some time away from the office, I hope to get back to my pattern of posting here once in a while.

For more information on what Alyte is all about, the first stage of the website is live – head over to alyte.com.au

Marketing at its Best

Ben May — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:44:09 +0000

I was looking on the Hervey Bay Tackle World website recently, and saw I could download the Tackleworld Jingle as a ringtone. Opened it up in iTunes, and it as a nice high quality track (rare!) which sounded really nice.

As the song it now in iTunes, it syncs with my iPhone and iPod.

When driving around, I have my iPhone on shuffle, and play through my car sound system, and on comes the Tackle World jingle.

This is a terrific example of a jingle, and the company that produced it for the Tackleworld Franchise have done a terrific job. This is by far, one of the best, catchy, well sounding, yet thought provoking jingles I’ve heard in a long time!

Even though I’m not an angler, and don’t even eat seafood for that matter, the jingle still triggers key emotions that make me want to go buy some fishing gear, and hit the sea for a day of fishing.

How many corporate jingles do you hear, and actually turn up the volume, rather than skip or mute the track.

Well done Tackle World. If you wan’t to download this jingle, head on over to the Tackle World Hervey Bay Website

[audio:http://media.benmay.org/tackleworld.mp3]

ATO 20% PAYG Reduction

Ben May — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:37:05 +0000

Like many small business owners, I recieved a letter from the ATO to say that due to the Federal Governments recently announced initiative to help small business owners during the “Global financial crisis” that they will have their December Quarter BAS PAYG payment reduced by 20% which would save businesses like mine, hundreds to thousands of dollars.

That was all I read of the 2 page letter, I have more important things to do today- after emailing my accountant, I was quickly informed that it’s not actually a reduction at all, the Government are just letting you pay 20% less, but you will still need to pay it in a few months time when your income tax is due.

So basically – there is no REAL finanical gain in this at all, rather than paying $2500 now, you only need to pay something like $2100 – and pay us that other $400 later.

Thanks for the false hope ATO.