here $8m = $2 per kiwi. whatever.
Author Archives: Lance Wiggs
Fark and PlentyofFish
I’ve been a fark fan for a while – it’s completely irreverent – even a ‘collosal waste of time’ according to founder Drew Curtis. Meanwhile PlentyofFish is the biggest online dating site in the world, also ‘according to its founder’ – Markus Brooks. What’s amazing about these two huge sites is that they each have …
Telecom pathetic: cannot provide telecomms
Would that Telecom could get the basics right… I don’t want money back, I want usable internet service. Being back in NZ means being back in the primitive ages of the internet. My (“max-speed”) access here at home is pathetic compared to France, UK and USA. It is too slow and unreliable for YouTube. How …
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PS3 vs Wii
So the PS3 will be $1199 in NZ. I’m a crazy technophile, but the PS3 holds no appeal. I could have purchased one in the USA this week – they were in stock at a Best Buy in Salt Lake City, but at US$600, and with the demo frozen due to overheating, I really could …
Ferrit as a price comparison engine – not good
Adam points out the Ferrit serves a purpose as a price comparison site, and Peter Wogan chimes in and agrees in the comments. Unfortunately Hitwise numbers (which I am the first to admit are not the most reliable) show that Ferrit is ‘far behind’ price comparison leaders Pricespy and Smilecity. Those sites are both, as …
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Jetblue vs Eurostar
Jetblue have introduced a passenger bill of rights after last weeks debacle. If you are delayed departing for 1-2 hours you get a $25 voucher, and 2-4 hours gets you a $50 voucher. This, by the way, is the best airline in the USA, and I am a loyal customer whenever I fly one of …
Ban incandescent bulbs – not a no brainer..
No Right Turn suggests we follow Australia’s lead and ban incandescent bulbs. While I think this is a clear case of Government intervention helping consumers reduce total cost of ownership it is not a total ‘no brainer’. While the short term increase in spend will eventually be matched by reduced electricity bills, this will be …
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Go ahead – be brave – charge fatties more
Go on AirNZ – please start charging by total weight…. I do like Rob Fyfe’s take that airlines would start offering discounts to the slim rather than charging premiums for the large. That may well be how it goes, along with surcharges for the super-fat. On the other hand why not just weigh the passenger …
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Ferrit – $36m flushed….
I missed the money quote… “Mr Brayham says Telecom expects to spend about $12 million on Ferrit in the next financial year, matching its contribution for the past two years.” That’s $24m dropped on a site that delivered $12,500 in revenue in the busiest shopping month of the year. Alternatively that $24m dropped on 2,700 …
Ferrit – It’s worse than I thought
Some interesting Ferrit stats from this article (thanks Q). Firstly only 1.2% of the visitors in December bought anything, secondly Ferrit makes “between 4% and 8%” of each sale. (Let’s be nice and say an average of 6%). Thirdly the average order size was “more than $100”. Let’s call it $110. So in December 2,700 …
Online retail: Ferrit sinks
Let’s see how the online retail market is going…. After a dip over Christmas/New Year Trade Me is back on track, while all of the other players are still not making any impression…. Ferrit’s pre-Christmas promotion gave a leap in traffic (this page impressions chart has two scales), but January and February to date are …
Dodgy boats…
So a bloke buys a boat, goes out with his family without checking the integrity of the boat even though he had painted the boat and suspected the hull was rotten. He also goes out without lifejackets for his family members. They get in trouble and the boat capsizes (not “sank” as reported, as they …
Food miles
New blog Celsias makes a point about food grown locally being more beneficial to the environment as it reduces ‘food miles’. A catchy phrase, but one that avoids much of inputs into the energy or carbon balance of providing food, as he alludes to. To be fair to farmers in NZ, for example, the total …
Dating in parallel
I especially like the first comment to this engineering oriented post on dating in parallel. Readers should be warned – playing with electricity can be extremely dangerous, and I feel that the size of the power source is in reality orders of magnitude higher
Is Yahoo!Xtra Australian?
As Mauricio Freitas points out Yahoo!xtra has a page up for a sneak preview, but with nothing showing just yet. I noticed one other thing- the url: http://au.docs.yahoo.com/xtra/ and the copyright message at the bottom, which is “© 2007 Yahoo! Australia & NZ Pty Limited. From this can we (over-)read that NZ is being run …
Lance Wiggs 