The USA tends to allow more things in business than we do in New Zealand or Australia. For example, our laws on food are strict, and strictly enforced. Similarly the legislation and Commerce Commission hold companies to account for their behaviour. In the USA they are a bit more laissez-faire. Food is under regulated and …
Author Archives: Lance Wiggs
Ticketmaster has auctions. sort of.
Here is one for Westlife. A lost opportunity for Trade Me perhaps, but ticketing is a tough market to get into as it is all about tying up the suppliers of the tickets. However, given that, Trade Me (or whomever) still has the ability to enter the market by offering the same service at a …
Hope: Si Se Puede Cambiar
Like Bill Clinton, from Hope Arkansas, Barack Obama is bringing positivity to his first campaign for president. This video is stunning. Si Se Puede Cambiar is the US Spanish translation of Obama’s “Yes We Can Change”. I you have not seen Obama in action, then here’s a 2 minute snipet: Below the fold are the …
Judgment Day is here: negative housing equity
SST reports on several stories of negative equity situations happening in Auckland. That’s when the value of a house is less than the money owed to the bank. “One home had mortgages to ASB for $723,000 and Finance Assist for $150,000. It sold for $535,000. … “The mortgage was to Property Finance Securities (in receivership) …
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Blog post aggregation is pretty harmless but doomed
The gaystars site is actually pretty straight – it is full of RSS excerpts from blogs similar to this one. It also does not have any ads, nor does it have any obvious “contact me” I wondered at first whether it was part of some elaborate scam to prey on the homophobia of Z-list bloggers. …
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Sayōnara Kiri te Kanawa
Yes it is obvious that Kiri is in a different league to Hayley Westenra, but for Kiri to say: “They are the new fakes for the new generation coming through but they can only perform with a microphone and they’ve basically never have any formal training. and “I’ve had a 40-year career but these people, …
Lance is not a Gay Star – Blog spam
yup. I get a bunch of links to this blog from something called Gay Stars, which has the domain name AdultSexBox.com. I have no idea why. I’m not gay, (I’m clearly not good looking enough as I haven’t been hit on by a guy for years) and sadly I’m not an adult sex star (umm …
Fairfax & Trade Me results
Not bad – strong profit growth of 40% versus last year, with Trade Me and Digital leading the way. Trade Me showed $32m in EBIT, which is for the 6 month period to December 2007. That, apparently, puts them at tracking to hit the $60m required to complete the $50m earn out to March 2008. …
Lights on or off – Safety versus Environment
Does the safety of turning your lights on during the day outweigh the cost? According to Hamish Piercy – no. Apparently lights on increases fuel consumption by 2%, which is a huge number. (Frankly I dispute it, and want to see the evidence) and Hamish’s research says that: “However, on closer examination he said there …
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The Joneses listing is cancelled
Bugger. That was an obvious short on the housing market, in spite of a very interesting game changing revenue model.
The TSA has a blog
The USA’s Transportation Security Agency has a blog – and it is a pretty good one as well. Check it out. The TSA are the folk that man the security checkpoints and examine your. They have a great post talking about theft by TSA officers, and a page about shoes.
Surveillance society
When will they ever learn – police officers these days should expect to be on video at any time. Indeed I feel it would be a better thing all-round if police were required to continuously record their activities on video.
Advanced motoring tips #115
via Jalopnik
Indicating on roundabouts
Roundabouts. (called traffic circles elsewhere) It’s simple: (and for the person on Dave Moore’s Drivetalk that complained about a car moving into them from an inside lane as they were exiting a roundabout – it’s your fault, people screw up at roundabouts all the time and you need to be looking out for that. Try …
World Press Photo winners
via NZHerald, some stunning photography from the winners of the world press photo competition. Sadly, both the NZHerald, and the world press photo site (which has better size and range of shots), use flash to display the photos, preventing the photos from being displayed by others. It’s all about copyright, which seems retrograde to me …
Lance Wiggs 