In an article in the NYTimes that focuses mainly on Shanghai’s stellar results we find a table, and in that table we find NZ’s education test results. This is the PISA test of 15 year olds. I’ve often said that NZ has a good average education, while the USA has a much wider distribution, and …
Author Archives: Lance Wiggs
Judgment day – when will US and China, India and others
It’s hard to see how the United States can resume the rapid GDP growth necessary to reduce its fiscal deficit when almost 20 percent of its working population is unemployed or underemployed. A McKinsey Quarterly report on Globalisation’s Critical Imbalances. Prepare for large currency shifts between developed and rapid developing countries. If we are lucky …
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New Lingopal
I got Apple spam yesterday. We’ve added phonetics, sharing via Twitter/Facebook/email and copy/paste to the application. So now you’ll be able to tweet some of the ridiculous Lingopal phrases. Check out the changes on the Lingopal blog
Neither beautiful nor usable
Seen the Review your Website page before? Wondering what it is all about? Wondering why it ever existed and was so ugly? It was an experiment. I put the Review your Site page up to see whether it would be found, whether anyone would contact me, and whether anyone would actually pay me to criticise …
NZGirl is not safe
Perhaps it’s because the site is aimed at teenagers, and they are asking teenagers to show their breasts to everyone. Or perhaps it is because they are saying some breasts are better than others – when breast cancer folks are very careful to avoid that <update – this was reported by 3News, but @jenene says …
Telecom – why not walk in our shoes
recharge prepay ipad telecom – Google Search, originally uploaded by LanceWiggs. This is me googling to find out how to recharge my iPad prepay SIM card. The link I used to have to Telecom’s site no longer works, and so I sought help. Last time I got the answer from twitter. Telecom has a great …
That’s not friendly Air New Zealand
Card Payment Fee – Bookings – Air New Zealand, originally uploaded by LanceWiggs. I’d rather Air NZ admitted it and just charged us slightly more for fares. This card payment fee is ludicrous, as essentially every private traveller will incur the fee. It’s another line on the statement, makes us annoyed when we see it, …
NBN cost benefit notes
There will be 7 million new fibre connected premises in the world this year, for a total of 50 million up from 43 million. Most of these will be in Asia. Not many in the scheme of things, but this will be an interesting number to track in the next 20 years. “The NBN will …
The size of the cost-benefit
Australia’s Prime Minister Gilliard said it would be 50 pages, but instead the summary of the 400 page NBN cost benefit paper released yesterday was just 36 Pages. Here they are: Doesn’t this look a little like someone’s homework where they try to expand a set amount of text to reach a certain number of …
Beautiful giveaway
In a season of pre-Christmas shopping madness most retailers try to bombard us with special offers and incentives to buy. The folks behind 1Password are doing something different – giving their stuff away for free. It’s a great way to sell, and expanding their customer base is critical for Agile Web Solutions, but it also …
The just in time consumer
A long article in the Wall Street Journal says essentially one thing: People are holding lower stock levels in their pantry, and buying less items at a time. The Great Depression replaced a spendthrift culture with a generation of frugal savers. The recent recession, too, has left in its wake a deeply changed shopper: the …
10 ways to stop the cyclist killings
It’s madness. The recent spate of bicycle deaths is no doubt partially caused by the nicer weather and people getting out there on their bikes. But the families and friends left behind and all of the rest of us have cause to be angry, as the deaths were arguably caused by known hazards that did …
1-day – live is completely unacceptable
1-day – LIVE, originally uploaded by LanceWiggs. If the 1-day live site is real then it is completely unacceptable. It may be fine to show John from Waikato, or Tim from Auckland, but I suspect there is not more than one Kanwalpreet in Upper Hutt. That person has purchased something and had that information broadcast …
Do your marketing emails look this good?
Apple shows us all how to do it. It’s about what you don’t show.
Ultra Fast Broadband Will Render Telcos Irrelevant To End Users
“UFB will render Telcos irrelevant to end users”, and it’s time to have some fun debating that. It’s a breakfast and debate, at the Westpac stadium and on the 30th November. Check it out and sign up by emailling events@ffxbusinessgroup.co.nz – it’s $45. I’ll be on the Affirmative with the superb Vikram Kumar from InternetNZ, …
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Lance Wiggs 