Matan Armoni didn't need a prescription to see that visitors to online eyeglass retailer EyeBuyDirect.com were getting fed up and abandoning their shopping carts.
Armoni, EyeBuy's e-commerce director, had a hunch that the problem stemmed from the site's virtual imaging tool, EyeTry, which lets customers try on glasses as they would in a shop.
It's not often that an American IBM employee awakes to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer, is served mint tea by uniformed guards and catches a concert by a West African reggae superstar -- all within 24 hours. Yet that's exactly how Scott Jenkins recalls an average day in balmy Bamako, Mali.
Jenkins, an associate partner at IBM Global Business Services, was stationed in the growing capital for two months earlier this year as a Geekcorps recruit. A long way from IBM's tony New York offices, Jenkins lived and worked in Geekcorps Mali's mixed-use, four-story headquarters, where unarmed guards in purple uniforms served techies "a potent mint tea with enough caffeine to just knock you out," laughs Jenkins.
Ryan Whitney had been back in the U.S. less than two months when he received an urgent call from Geekcorps.
The nonprofit service agency wanted him to travel to Cape Town to help a consortium of African universities develop and promote open-source software. Although Whitney had just spent nine months backpacking through Central America, he leapt at the chance to return to foreign soil.
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