I’m spending a lot of time in Auckland, as we drive towards financing Pacific Fibre. However some have accused me of living in Auckland. I present here evidence, straight from my iPhone, to the contrary. I clearly live in Wellington, spend time in Auckland and am quite disturbed about that purple Hamilton spot. This is …
Monthly Archives: April 2011
Mastercard responds
I just received this response from Mastercard. – All Mastercards but only Mastercards will be accepted – No plans to increase the number of ATMs – where there are already long queues – The terminals are not locked to Mastercard – that is done at the acquiring bank’s end. Apparently the acquiring bank blocks out …
Why Mastercard’s RWC decision is stupid
Mastercard are banning other credit cards from Rugby World Cup venues, and insisting on only a pre-pay Mastercard or cash as acceptable forms of payments. The prepay card costs “$5-$10”, can have up to $1000 deposited into it and cannot be recharged. It uses ‘tap and go’ technology to accept payment of up to $80. …
Fiat’s deal to buy into Chrysler
Jeff Bennett at the WSJ writes that Fiat just increased its stake in Chrsler from 25% to 30%. The terms of that deal are fascinating, and very well crafted. The original stake Fiat was given was 20%, as part of bankruptcy organisaiton and alliance. Then they get given 5% more for each of the performance …
Even easier way to get around NBR’s copy protection
In the comments to the last post Mr. Annonymous said: “The Biggest problem they’ll have is that this takes 29 characters of javascript to avoid completely $(“span.copyright”).remove(); Or, available as a lovely simple bookmarklet: http://xrl.us/NBRSuperHax” To translate – all we have to do is to drag CopyNBRtxt to your toolbar to make this work, click …
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How to get around NBR’s copy protection
NBR today put in place copy protection for its articles. Basically the page injects hidden HTML into the text, so that “Princess Wharf developer David Henderson goes back to his creditors today to see if he can win support for plans to repay 4c in the dollar of a $105million debt and keep bankruptcy at …
Fix your website Michael Hill
Michael Hill International’s website requires Silverlight. I was trying to find their annual report. They have shares which one could buy. A quick search shows nothing from MHJ (aside from the dead homepage) appears on Google. This is appalling for investors and customers both.
Henri and FW – early management theory
Henri Fayol was an early management theorist. His Wikipedia entry shows a very simple approach which is largely unchanged today. (I just learned about him (again) today.) His Functions of management are simple: forecasting planning organizing commanding coordinating monitoring (French: contrôler: in the sense that a manager must receive feedback about a process in order …
Principles of Corporate Governance
I’m on a corporate governane course today and tomorrow – run by Massey University on behalf of COMU. COMU is the Crown Ownership Monitoring Unit, which “monitors the government’s investment in companies/entities owned by the Crown, assists with the appointment of directors, and provides performance and governance advice to Ministers.” In the USA corporate governance …
iPhones generate over 350Mb per month
Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2010–2015 [Visual Networking Index] – Cisco Systems At least that’s what Cisco saw during a study on pricing tiers in their last mobile white paper, and in the USA. The Android growth rate is also interestingly high, though the end game is unknown. Also unknown …
The problem with Microsoft is in this office
Gary Rivlin, writing for Fortune, wrote a super article on Microsoft’s problem. As a hefty hint of the contents the editors placed a large photo of Steve Ballmer under the headline. But more telling to me was this shot later in the article, of Steve in his office. It’s an office stuck in the 90s, …
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Lance Wiggs 