Who gives you financial advice?

“Chief executive Charles Anderson said the level of qualification among the SovNet force varied from nothing more than high school exams through to a handful with university degrees.” Maria Slade, NZHerald That’s the CE from Sovereign, an insurance company, and he was referring to the need for their 4o0 financial advisers to become certified within …

The best form of imitation: Rugbyheaven.co.nz and SuperXV.com

Fairfax NZ’s Rugbyheaven.co.nz site has been subsumed into the Stuff site. It’s all about making sure the traffic goes to one place (Stuff), and beating the total traffic and visitors at NZHerald. I was inside Fairfax Digital at the time, and felt the team did a great job with the design, and it is sad …

Earthwise Valley scam

I’m adding my little google juice to Dave Farrar at Kiwiblog and Fair Go. Earthwise Valley is, astoundingly, still in operation. It deserves to be shut down. Kiwis should picket this place, hostels should paste warnings on their bulletin boards and the fair trading act should be invoked if possible. Here is one visitor’s recommendation: …

The iPad and our Kiwi websites

I’ve picked up an iPad (and hopefully several more for some other folks) here in San Francisco, and decided to test it out on a host of sites. Some pass, some fail and some need some work. This is a page mainly full of screenshots, and mainly of interest to those that work on the …

Our power prices have gone up – so switch to us

I’ve been travelling for the last 10 days in the USA – and for another week as well. That, and Pacific Fibre’s launch, explains a little about the paucity of posts here, but it also means I missed out on the recent news about sharply increasing energy future prices. The sharp rise in energy futures …

Getting the basics right – airline bookings

I’m booking a flight back from Seattle to San Francisco (actually San Jose) and can’t let the opportunity pass to learn from the best – and the worst. Here are some screens that came back after a search for flights this Saturday – conducted just now at 11am or so in a coffee shop in …

Federated Farmers – Withdraw that press release

A strange piece written by Federated Farmers appeared on infonews just now. It’s aimed at influencing those observing the free trade negotiation happening in Melbourne. It starts out tough: Federated Farmers believes American dairy farmers have nothing to fear but fear itself, if New Zealand and United States enter into a free trade agreement. 1: …

Electricity company puts prices down!

PowerKiwi, a company that I am a co-founder of, today dropped prices for Flowerpower for most Powershop customers. Pricing for electricity varies by location, annual usage and the type of meters you have, but we are pleased to be able to do these special, pre-winter season, prices. Prices will, sadly, rise during the winter period …