ZOL continues to be an innovative and pioneering ISP. Check out this letter they sent to their clients this week:

Here is a quick tip from ZOL that can save you up to 90% on your phone bill and get cheap Intenational phone calls and SMS messages. You can even get a UK or USA landline number that rings on your computer in Zimbabwe! And to make it really easy to top up your Skype account, ZOL is now selling $5 and $10 Skype recharge cards.

If you haven’t heard of Skype (www.skype.com) you are about to enter a new world! If you have, then are you aware of all the features including cheap calls to phones worldwide, cheap SMS, foreign landline numbers ringing in Zimbabwe and the ablity to set your caller ID to your cell number? To get the best from Skype you need a Broadband connection. However, Skype does work over a good quality dialup connection.

Skype is a global communications company, bought by eBay in 2005 for US$2.5 billion, that uses highly advanced encryption and compression technology to route voice and text communications over a global peer-to-peer network to effectively reduce the cost of phone calls to zero in many cases.

Skype-to-Skype calls and text are always FREE. However to make outbound calls to regular phones costs a fraction of the price of existing providers. More importantly ZOL has convinced a company in the US to sell Skype recharge cards in Zimbabwe. Topping up Skype has always been difficult for Zimbabweans - but this has changed! It’s now as easy as topping up your cell phone. Just buy a recharge card at one of our offices or payment points. (more…)

The various statutes that make up the law of Zimbabwe are public documents. So are judgements from the country’s High Courts and the Supreme Court. The challenge though, has always been access to these documents, until now. A new online initiative now makes all of these documents freely available.

Through a new website, www.law.co.zw, researchers, law students, lawyers and Human Rights activists can now access the legal information they need, at no cost.

The website also features a legal resources directory which lists various lawyers and legal service providers in the country.

The site has been going through a testing phase for its first month of operation and is now open to the public. “There are still other areas of content to be filled in,” said a spokes person for the project managers, “it’s an ongoing project, as new court cases come up, we will add them. We also plan to increase the scope of the site to archiving newspaper articles that cover legal issues.”

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Disclosure: ZiReport and Law.co.zw are both owned by Aripano Infinity.

I recently came across a unique blog that I loved immediately- it’s one with useful posts on making money in Zimbabwe. Most Zimbabwean blogs I know are about politics, so it’s refreshing to come across something like this every so often.

Max specialises in assisting Zimbabwean startups to grow. He is the founder of the Business Setup Group (BSG), an organisation dedicated to helping entrepreneurs start up and grow buisinesses the smart way.

According to the profile on his blog he has worked with more than 200 businesses in 35 different industries He’s also invested over 3000 hours of research and study into the fastest growing businesses and fastest selling products.

Here are some articles to get you started:

• Zimbabwe Business: Get Clients For $10usd Or Less – 5 ways
• 10 Steps to Direct Sales in Zimbabwe

Do check out the blog.

Arts Initiates, one of Zimbabwe’s leading arts and culture websites, is looking for writers from Bulawayo and Harare. Arts Initiates is edited by veteran Zimbabwean arts journalist, Wonder Guchu.

The potential candidates should be able to

• write reviews - literary, visual art, theatre and film
• possess analytical skills
• have own style of writing
• be incorruptible
• have no friends in the arts
• be on the spot to break news

If you are interested submit your portfolio of past works to Wonder Guchu on wonderguchu@yahoo.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it not later than June 20.

Jeff Jarvis talks about his new book: “What Would Google Do?” He asks what can other businesses learn from the fastest growing company in the history of companies- Google. What would a Google-run car maker look like? How about a Google-run insurance company?

Google is not just a company, it is an entirely new way of thinking about understanding who we are and what we want. Jarvis has done something really important: extend that approach to business and culture, revealing just how revolutionary it is.”
— CHRIS ANDERSON, AUTHOR OF THE LONG TAIL CHRIS ANDERSON, AUTHOR OF THE LONG TAIL

“What Would Google Do? is an exceptional book that captures the massive changes the internet is effecting in our culture, in marketing, and in advertising.”
— CRAIG NEWMARK, FOUNDER OF CRAIGSLIST