“about 20 percent of online daters admit to deception. If you ask them how many other people are lying, however–an interviewing tactic that probably gets closer to the truth–that number jumps to 90 percent.” So quotes an interesting Scientific American article on online dating. (via here) My experience was that people do lie, though I …
Author Archives: Lance Wiggs
Yahoo! Pipes
Rowan started this one – here’s this blog’s RSS feed in French, courtesy of the new coolness – Yahoo! Pipes. It helps that I’m in France and so can of course completely understand all of the perfectly translated output. (What’s with the French thing today – first Fronde, now this….) You can even subscribe to …
Synergy is now Fronde
I understand the need for Synergy to change their name – Synergy is a pretty generic word and in use by companies is pretty much every other country. Fronde is a French word meaning Sling, and the revolutionaries that are described using the word were, how do I put this, strongly anti-government…. Here’s a nice …
Sunday Star Times redesign
Interesting blog post about the redesign of the Sunday Star times – from the persepective of an American designer who was involved. It’s a little old (Sept 2006) but still makes for a good read. It’s always refreshing to see how the Kiwi ‘can do’ attitude is seen in the rest of the world.
Wal*mart video downloads
Couldn’t say it better. Wal*Mart have managed to get all the movie studios on board, which is great news for the movie download industry. Unfortunately the product is expensive, DRM’d, low quality and Windoze/IE only. Still – it’s a step forward, and if the RIAA and MPAA listen to Steve Jobs, then maybe we’ll have …
Microsoft, Privacy and Kiwi Police
Very interesting situation where Microsoft refused to deal with a police request because they are “a foreign company and not subject to NZ laws”. What terrible PR. And what hogwash. NZ privacy laws are a lot stronger than the US laws, especially when it comes to trading information between businesses. But when the NZ Police …
Wikipedia and Kiwi Foo Camp
Fun little discussion on Wikipedia about whether the Kiwi Foo Camp wiki page is spam or not. The questions are around whether or not the page is promotional, and whether or not you would expect to see it in an encyclopedia.
Future of Newspaper industry
Here’s an answer to a question I posted a little while back in Linked-In while playing with their new questions and answers feature. It was rated ‘good answer’ by the questioner, whatever that means. Question Future of the Newspaper Industry? How long will the newspaper business continue as it is today? Circulation has been decreasing …
eBay listings fall in some categories
Interesting eBay UK has seen some category’s weekly listings fall year on year, sometimes dramatically. Good summary here, which refers to this, who got it from the Bear Stearns eBay report. The biggest falls were in media – DVD’s and music seeing 15% and 26% drops – hence the recent price changes. Even eBay.com saw …
Scarcity in sport
Great comment from the economist blog – American Football is much more profitable (and popular) than NBA & Baseball because of the scarcity of the games. It’s true – the season is relatively short, the build up is to one event only, and the popularity of the Superbowl is undimished. Those that are foisting more …
Private Equity in NZ
NZHerald has a piece on private equity (PE). Several things stand out. Firstly there are apparently no NZ based PE funds looking for investors at the moment, secondly you can apparently get into PE with $10-20k and thirdly PE will get you returns of 20-30% per year. There may well be funds being raised – …
Wishbone
Great little success story from Wishbone. $10m turnover, 100 employees, 13 stores, great supermarket distribution and, most importantly, a great product. (Terrible, out of date, single page website though) Their business model is interesting – they manufacture yummy ready to cook food, and sell it through 3 channels – supermarkets, takeaway stores (either ready to …
Yellowlife
Yellow pages launched Yellowlife, which will spam you with advertisers junk if you register big life events with them. (marriage etc.). Sorry – it’s a tool to help you plan big events. It’s a good idea in principle, and it is good to see a new site laucnhed. I do have three issues though… 1: …
More leaks than a…
So much for confidentiality – Most if not all of the Yellow Pages bidders have been identified by three(!) insiders. At least 9 companies are bidding, apparently, and KKR, CCMP Capital Asia, Pacific Equity Partners, Carlyle, Bain Capital, Providence Equity Partners, CVC Capital and TPG are eight Private Equity firms interested along with Sensis – …
US Politics via Harry Potter..
For those who don’t share my passion for US politics (which I try to keep out of this blog) here’s one way to think of the status quo: “Dick Cheney is Lord Voldemort. George W. Bush is Peter Pettigrew.” Don Rumsfeld is Lucius Malfoy, while Cornelius Fudge represents administration supporters who deny that anything is …
Lance Wiggs 