I’m off tomorrow (Wednesday) on the Brass Monkey – an annual event where… well damn it – let me bow tothe description writen by Mod from the incomparable Mod’s Motors: This weekend some of the more fanatical of New Zealand’s motoring aficionados will begin their annual pilgrimage to Central Otago’s stunning Maniototo plain. Like Saul …
Author Archives: Lance Wiggs
Let’s make it happen
On Tuesday last week I was lucky enough to listen to an interesting range of cool people give 5 minute talks on the topics of their choice. (ok – only one person hit the 5 minute market exactly, and he had a giant clock on his chest) It was Webstock‘s 3rd birthday and exit from …
Tuesday Three: 3 ways to improve your business
Introducing a series of posts where I’ll be suggesting three simple (or not so simple) ways to improve your business. Here’s the first installment: Reduce the big costs – and the little ones List your major suppliers in descending order of spend, then figure out ways to reduce price and quantity for each of them. …
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Well done Trade Me, but the threat remains
There’s an interesting article over at eBay strategies, which talks about how eBay lost the market for classifieds and mentions that Amazon is taking out the top end. (If you work at Trade Me then you should have eBay Strategies in your RSS reader) I’ve mentioned it here before, and it bears repeating: Trade Me …
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I’ve joined Equip – a Better by Design consultancy
Better By Design is a NZ Government sponsored program that seeks to help high growth companies become design-led – and thus turn into great companies. The end goal of Better by Design is for New Zealand companies to generate more export sales by selling better-designed products and services. It all came out of a 2003 …
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Red Bull is a tobacco company
A scary article in the NZHerald on how a Brooke Robertson lost 55 Kg of weight by abandoning foods and solely drinking Red Bull. “I managed to wean myself off it by being in hospital for that long but I had severe withdrawals – sweating, nausea, shaking. It was an addiction. The doctors stated that.” …
Let’s deliver mail once a week
From this great illustration of the average US Postal Service residential customer’s mailbox we can glean some interesting facts. Amongst them is numerical evidence as to why I don’t check my mail very often. There are almost 200 billion pieces of mail delivered to the (and Wolfram Alpha couldn’t deal with any of this) 111 …
It’s a long way down
If you have not already subscribed or started following Boston Globes‘s Big Picture – then go ahead and do so. They are a newspaper that has carved out a photographic niche that reaches worldwide. Here’s a recent stunner:
A friend has chickens
Why are Harcourts not yet on Trade Me?
There’s a fun discussion happening over on the Unconditional Blog – which if you have not found it yet is well worth following. I commend Alister Helm for not only his writing, but also for balancing the real estate industry (and their archaic ways) and the dot com approach to things. However Alistair write a …
Let there be light
A simple idea – cover a 55,000 sports stadium with solar panels, and use them to power (75% of) the lights. This is in Taiwan, ready for the World Games, and, more importantly, Rugby sevens. When there is no match then the power is fed into the grid – to the tune of 1.14 Gigiwatt …
Make it easy for me to leave you – unsubscribing
Like Rowan, I’ve been unsubscribing from a lot of list emails recently. Let’s see what we can learn from the process. The Good The best email subscriptions are easy to unsubscribe from – requiring a simple click from inside the email, which bounces to a web page with a confirmation message. This is exemplary – …
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Stuff – remove the TVNZ video on Bridget Saunders
I’d heard about the Close Up interview with Fairfax’s recently departed Sunday Star Times About Town gossip columnist Bridget Saunders. It looked like it was a bit of a hit-job. The last place I would have thought to see it was on Fairfax owned Stuff. I found the link to the video from the homepage …
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Negative political tactics make you look dull
I admire democracy – after all the alternatives are much worse. I also believe that a robust ‘loyal’ opposition is a necessary part of a healthy democracy. But it all falls apart when an opposition chooses vindictiveness and obstruction over constructive opposition and collaboration. Two recent examples: The US Republican party apparently plans to add …
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eBay UK stacks it high and watches it fly
eBay have taken a leaf out of 1-day‘s playbook and have launched a Daily Deal on their UK website. The idea is simple – offer a compelling deal from the homepage, drive traffic to the site each day and sell the bargains by the thousands. Meanwhile once you arrive at eBay.co.uk each day, why not …
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Lance Wiggs 