I’d heard about the Close Up interview with Fairfax’s recently departed Sunday Star Times About Town gossip columnist Bridget Saunders. It looked like it was a bit of a hit-job. The last place I would have thought to see it was on Fairfax owned Stuff. I found the link to the video from the homepage …
Continue reading “Stuff – remove the TVNZ video on Bridget Saunders”
I admire democracy – after all the alternatives are much worse. I also believe that a robust ‘loyal’ opposition is a necessary part of a healthy democracy. But it all falls apart when an opposition chooses vindictiveness and obstruction over constructive opposition and collaboration. Two recent examples: The US Republican party apparently plans to add …
Continue reading “Negative political tactics make you look dull”
eBay have taken a leaf out of 1-day‘s playbook and have launched a Daily Deal on their UK website. The idea is simple – offer a compelling deal from the homepage, drive traffic to the site each day and sell the bargains by the thousands. Meanwhile once you arrive at eBay.co.uk each day, why not …
Continue reading “eBay UK stacks it high and watches it fly”
BMW has just released the street version of their Supersport bike. This is an important event in the decade long takeover of the marque by horsepower crazy hoons. Those hoons still believe in ABS and traction control – this bike has 4 settings that adjust the engine, ABS and traction control for Rain, Sport, Race …
Last week we saw a plethora of New Zealand headlines bemoaning the poor behaviour of ‘kids today’ – this time in how they handle their sensitive information online. The punchline was that one in two students had posted sensitive information about themselves online in the past year. TVNZ went with Half of NZ teens post …
Continue reading “Uncovering the truth behind “50% of teens post senstive information””
While I may not agree with it entirely, Mikearauz has come up with a useful way to look at the way casual interest can turn into advocacy online. Since I don’t agree with it – I decided to have a crack at my own version. This is my take on “Blogging Engagement” – written from …
I am immensely proud to live in a country where, when faced with a well trained and armed guy fortressed in a house, the police acted in a responsible manner. Even after the provocation of seeing one of their number shot and lie dead in the street for the duration of the siege, police fired …
photo, originally uploaded by LanceWiggs.
I was pretty angry at Telecom yesterday when I wrote Pay the $900,000 Telecom you cheap sods, but a day later it seems that they will do so. Good. Now that the debacle is over, let’s check the winners and losers tally. Winners – in order Vodafone, for a well-timed legal action which created a …
Continue reading “The XT network debable – Winners and Losers”
Sigh. And there I was praising Telecom the other day – praise it seems that was all too soon. I am concerned that recent behavior is indicating that Telecom is back to its old monopolist ways. I write of course of the XT network interference with the Vodafone network. The facts laid out in Vodafone’s …
Continue reading “Spend the $900,000 Telecom – you cheap sods”
An interesting survey by eMarketer, via WebProNews: Stop. Don’t look too hard at the table. This survey is fundamentally flawed. The flaw is simple, and it reflects an old mode of thinking: These days the media is not the message. For example there are over 200 million blogs (they have stopped counting), and to rate …
Lingopal translates between 42 languages – and can be operated in any of those languages as well. That means it is of use to people shopping on all of the Apple iTunes stores. So it was always going to be interesting which countries picked us up first. Would backpackers from Australia and UK find us …
I’m trying to convince my mother to switch to Xero from MYOB. The unfortunate problem is that all of her history is stored in MYOB, and so switching requires re-keying of invoices and the like. The solution to this is to commence using Xero at the start of a financial year, which leads to a …
Continue reading “Importing MYOB data into Xero – opportunity?”
Notes from Seth Klarman’s speech at Columbia Business School is, interestingly, the most popular clicked-on link from here, coming from The Baupost Story post. So let’s do a round up of coverage, find some more reading on the Baupost story and see what we can learn about how Baupost’s approach pays off for investors during …
Continue reading “How Baupost’s goresight let them weather the storm”
Lance Wiggs 