Sometimes you just have to take a short break from work, as my cousin Richard did so for us while we were Skyping about Lingopal last night. So to ease your mind, relax and enjoy a brief interlude:
Author Archives: Lance Wiggs
NZHerald’s shopping tab – it’s complicated
NZ Herald launched their new shopping tab yesterday, and as I dug into it the cast of players got larger and larger. It got so complicated that I decided that making a video would be the most efficient way to explain it all. After the experience all I can say is that Bernard Hickey is …
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Does your logo mean what you think it means?
A great warning to those that buy logos – from last Sunday’s Postsecret. I always recommend not listening to any of the spiel from the brand and logo designers when a new logo is introduced. Forget about the rhetoric – what does this look like? What does it look like upside down? What will engineers …
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Has Infratil become a dodgy investment?
No – I’m sure Infratil have not changed their excellent approach to infrastructure investing, but their advertising strategy sure makes you think. I’ve been seeing their advertisements in Facebook. They may be cheap ads, but we cannot help judging them by the company they keep. No – not the friends whose pages that I see …
Chanui Pure Ceylon 120 Value Pack
We’ve just launched a new range of tea at Chanui – and it is pretty interesting. (Well it is for me anyway.) Chanui sells a range of premium teas across supermarkets in New Zealand. We have seen plenty of response from competitors when we came in above them in quality, but this time we decided …
Brand dilution: not Grandma’s biscuit
Eaten on Air NZ just now. It wasn’t very good.
A reskinning is not a panacea: Dick Smith
Dick Smith just reskinned their site. Well they have at least since the last time I went there. My summary is that this is nice but will add little to their site statistics. The look has changed slightly but the real work has yet to be done. Here is the Australian one: and the NZ …
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Woo Hoo I’m Gold – Thanks Virgin Blue
Excellent news from Virgin Blue in my email inbox just now. It was a bit of a surprise, as I have not flown with them for a while, and I thought that my status would be expiring if anything. and yes – turns out that was a bit of a mistake. A big mistake. I …
Your application is ready for sale
Your application is ready for sale, originally uploaded by LanceWiggs. Dealing with the app store for Apple iPhone applications can be a little painful at times and for some, but when the process works it is great. My hats off to them for managing over 100,000 apps – and of course for releasing the latest …
Governance of tax issues for directors
I’ve just run across this nice cheat sheet by the ATO – a tax governance guide for directors of large companies. It’s got some handy hints for directors of smaller companies as well. I maintain that at least one person on each board needs to understand this stuff well, and that everyone on the board …
Never buy the Warranty: Repair it yourself
This is the second in a series on Warranties – the first was Never buy the Warranty – Repairing is cheap So now let’s look at the option of self-repair. These days most people have never learned how to take things to pieces and put them back together again. But that’s pretty much all the …
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Never buy the warranty: Repairing is cheap
Well done Magnum Mac Wellington My MacBook Pro 17 died on Friday. It failed to restart after running the software upgrade for the magic mouse. I tried the usual tricks (Apple has a good knowledgebase) and then twittered the failure and headed for Magnum Mac, Mac in hand. I’ve been there plenty of times, but …
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Be good and be different – but do it the right way
I’m reading Zag – a little book with the thesis that to succeed you not only need to be good – but you need to be different from everyone else that is good. It’s a nice way to look at things. Unfortunately for author Marty Neumeier he picked one bad example – a hazard when …
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A lesson in volatility
This year to date my US-based stock portfolio is up 44%, well above the benchmark S&P500: Yippee! Actually – not so fast. Last year my highly levered (lots of options) portfolio went down a stunning 66%. I got caught out selling my shorts too early (I was short Citibank amongst others) and bet on the …
Goodbye Trade and Exchange
Michael Carney picks up that Trade and Exchange has finally given up on publishing in print. They ceased to be relevant a number of years ago, and will not be missed today. However Trade and Exchange were the Trade Me of their day. They seized an opportunity to grab and extend the classifieds market away …
