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 …
Category Archives: Internet Business
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 …
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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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. …
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 …
TVNZ begins to get it right, but still plenty wrong
By abandoning paid content on TVNZ OnDemand, TVNZ’s Jason Paris demonstrates that he gets it. Jason’s a smart guy, and it seems that the people have spoken – by watching ad-supported content and staying away from the paid content. Well done – a good step. Of course Jason et al are seriously constrained by obsolete …
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How to launch a start-up: HowCast sets the standard
First – Be ex Google and youTube employees, and arrange a deal with YouTube to split revenue attracted by your range of instructional wikis and videos. Next, attract $8m in first round VC funding, and cut deals with MySpace, Joost and ROO* Be sure to include a community aspect, particularly if there is a way …
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It’s all about sex
From The Economist:
Big Deals: Summary
The Yahoo and Rio Tinto deals have one thing in common, besides being abnormally large. They are both being initiated by new CEO’s where the predecessor has just departed. This makes it seem that they are trying to stamp their own mark on their companies, and that is perhaps true. It is probably likely that …
AOL Australia launches. Whatever
Apparently it is the third try for AOL to launch in Australia. Here’s the Beta website: It looks a lot like Yahoo7’s website: Can’t really see the point myself – AOL have no lock in downunder so unless the website is associated with a source of traffic then it just seems irrelevant. That’s a shame …
eBay makes fundamental changes – enough?
Massive changes today announced for eBay’s economic model, in response, I take, to the increasing power of Amazon and Google. Listing fees down 25 to 50%, especially for bigger sellers Gallery is free final value fees (commissions) are up – 8.25% under $25, which is up from 5.25% and huge. Most sales are in this …
Choose your adventure – DVD
If you have kids you may want to give this a go. The DVD is based on the Choose Your Adventure books, and asks viewers to make decisions – the results of which give 11 different endings. It’s all run by a friend from Washington DC days, who now has a startup in LA called …
Good bye Renaissance dependance
What can you say about a company that just didn’t make hay from what now are the most sought after products in the world? Finally it appears that Renaissance has lost exclusive Apple distributorship in NZ, and I have to say that I’m glad. Their service was really not up to scratch, and they lost …
Why safety is important to managers
People can die, and you can go to jail. These guys from Black Reef Mine face sentencing tomorrow for failing to ensure the safety of workers. But meanwhile Police are pondering whether to reopen the case and lay more serous charges. It is good to see legal pursuit of the mine manager and consultant geologist, …
Lance Wiggs 