Author Archives: Lance Wiggs
Antarctica – albatross
Antarctica – random picture
We are back from the icy south, still on the boat but about to disembark. Here’s a friend:
Going Offline and South
I’m off to Antarctica from 10th of February to 9th March. During the trip there will be essentially no internet access, though the occasional email or blog post may get through. While I am away I will turn the comments on the blog off, to stop potential growth of the several spam comments that I …
The End. AllAboutTheStory closes down
We are sad to announce that AllAboutTheStory is closing down. We had a talented team, a great idea and did a lot right – but in the end it failed. Founder Julie Starr put in the lions share of the commitment into the business, but in the end, as she wrote to members: We’ve enjoyed …
What else is important to the NZ Government?
Having had our fun with Antarctica, let’s look at some other areas of concern. How often do the Briefings to Ministers mention certain other words? Let’s start with “internet”. I would content that the internet is an important feature for Commerce, Economic Development, Tourism and Small Business, so it’s a surprise that it isn’t covered …
Continue reading “What else is important to the NZ Government?”
How important is Antarctica to the New Zealand Government?
The MED’s Briefings to Incoming Ministers are a wonderful institution, and a must read for anyone interested in NZ Government policy. They were released today, and survey all of the major issues that ministers need to know for their portfolio. A group of us are of on a boat from Friday next week to promote …
Continue reading “How important is Antarctica to the New Zealand Government?”
The Facebook IPO: comments
I’ll update this as I read the S1 prospectus. Facebook’s daily user growth is slowing. While 6-10% growth per quarter feels like a lot when annualized, it is getting close to being a normal company. Facebook is running out of target market, and especially target market with pockets deep enough to be monetised. The monthly …
Don’t do big deals
McKinsey Quarterly reports on a study of 1,000 companies and their approach to mergers and acquisitions. This builds on work we did in the Evergreen project in 2001. The answer is simple, just don’t do big deals as they will likely lose money. A big deal is defined in the study as one that is …
Don’t blog like a pro
I strongly believe that any activity that is “good for business” but bad for customers, is, in the long run, bad for business. One example is from ProBlogger, who say this about their attitude to linking to other websites from professional blogger sites: “Instead of being a helpful way to share relevant content with our …
It’s not safe working in America
The Atlantic’s photo survey of America at Work (or not) is doing the rounds. It’s a compelling set of pictures that showcases all that is right and wrong about the world and the US today, and I highly recommend having a look. The survey is amazing, and sad. My own impressions of the work being …
Stuffed pictures
For some reason Stuff have chosen to “protect” their photos by disabling right-clicking. This is a giant leap backwards. Firstly it makes for an awful browsing experience. I tend to randomly right-click on things as I browse, and the pop-up dialog box is unexpected behavior. It’s behavior that feels like it breaks the internet. Secondly …
Share portfolio 2011
US portfolio results for 2011. A relatively simple trading year for my US share portfolio, which was up pleasingly versus the benchmark of 0%. All I did was buy some Call options on Amazon (betting that would go higher). I later sold some of them, bought some Puts to hedge against the price dropping too …
Xero blog: Focus on the customer, and do so with your strengths
Xero’s blog has drifted off course recently, as they commissioned external writers to come up with such marvels as Choosing the right smartphone for your business, How to avoid holiday computer disasters, Social networking policy: what’s in yours?, How to exit a business and win and How to make sure your emails aren’t marked as spam. The quality of the …
Continue reading “Xero blog: Focus on the customer, and do so with your strengths”
2011 in review (auto-post)
Below is an automatically generated post by WordPress.com. While I don’t agree entirely with the direction of WordPress (the last thing we need is yet another social network), I do enjoy their essentially free service that continuously gets better. The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: …
Lance Wiggs 