NZOG’s CFO apparently not only wants to shift a bunch of money, but he also has an email address in Kazakstan. Who knew. Sadly the chances of a random person on a spammers email list being from New Zealand is much higher than, say, Nigeria. Good day, It took me a lot of time to …
Category Archives: NZ Business
How to save money by being more green with no pain
Change your printer and your AC unit. That’s pretty much all a small design firm did in California, along with swapping their SUV for a Prius. They first tried a bunch of other stuff to reduce emissions, and only replaced the printer and air conditioning when they had to. The results were startling: they reduced …
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Big data – what will you use it for?
I was speaking to a colleague today in Australia – he was upset that Telstra increased his data plan to 50 GB without changing the price. His point was that he only uses 4 GB per month, but Telstra gave no option for him to reduce his cost by reducing his cap – the next …
Time to fix the jury service
There is a good article and excellent discussion on the jury service issue over on Kiwiblog. The system is broken it seems, with a paltry 15 of those called to service actually showing. There are many that complained that the jury service fee is pathetic, especially for those who run their own businesses and cannot …
Where does the NZ Government get money?
I am doing some work after the previous post on tax spend, and here are a few top line results so far. I want to end up with spreadsheet, as Rowan did a couple of years back, where you can enter your income and see the spend. However income tax is only one of several …
Telecom some ideas for your prepay recharge screen
This is Telecom’s prepay information screen. I’ve been looking at it a lot over the last two days as both my T Stick and iPad needed recharging. It was a frustrating experience, and the T-Stick just failed again yet the screen gives no useful information: Please – can someone redesign this? Here’s what I’d like …
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Show me the receipt please
This is a great idea – from 3rd Way and via npr. Taxpayers would receive a receipt for their tax detailing where there money was spent. A person earning $34,140 would get something like this (minus the red notes) And yes – it’s amazing that almost 10% of the tax is spent on military, that …
Xero, MYOB and GST
My latest Businessday column is up over at Stuff. The cost to New Zealand businesses of complying with the changeover to 15 per cent GST and the other tax changes will be at least $275 million, according to my rough back-of-the- envelope calculations. The upcoming changes should have us all concerned, and small businesses in …
How to avoid upgrading MYOB to cope with GST change
MYOB demonstrate again why I have switched to Xero. To cope with the GST change you either need to upgrade, or follow the instructions on their website. The instruction pages all start with the boilerplate text: “The quickest and easiest way to handle the 1 October GST and tax changes is to update your software.” This …
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Wugly stuff
I received this spam through the contact me form: Name: Wuglies Convenor of Judges Email: moderator@thewuglies.co.nz Website: Dear Web owner Congratulations!? Your webpage has just been nominated for the inaugural Wuglies. Bought to you by Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, The Wuglies exist to raise awareness of plain Jane and wugly web sites. Our driving cause …
Name suppression – the judge’s findings and how to do it properly
Whale Oil failed in his case (at least so far) and is up for some eight thousand of dollars in fines and fees. To me it was clear that his actions were breaching the law, but it’s the considered opinion (Thanks Kiwiblog) of Judge Harvey that really matters here: “The remaining nine charges having been …
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It’s time for video evidence as the standard
Two Justices of the Peace (one of whom I know) found lawyer Keith Jefferies guilty of driving while using a phone in Wellington recently. But the constable Bevan Sheffield-Cranstoun had no physical evidence to back his assertion – there was no video, no call transcript and no photo. There was only his word, as the …
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YouTube Instant
Yet another classic Stanford undergraduate story. Google releases Google Instant, and so Feross Aboukhadijeh creates YouTube instant. Try it. Very shortly afterward Feross received a tweet from YouTube CEO Chad Hurley offering him a job. That’s smart – other students have stuck it out and formed companies – like Google itself. More on Venturebeat To …
The Yike Bike
I’ve just had a go on one of these amazing Yikebikes. They look beautiful, and that to me is why so many people want one. It’s up there with Apple products in its ability to attract desire. Riding it is relatively intuitive – In my short but quick burst on the bike I found that …
Writing should be free – Businessblogs
Let’s play spot the difference. Businessblogshub.com is a US website that aggregates and pushes out business writing from people wanting PR. Businessblogs.co.nz does the same here in New Zealand. Can you see the difference? It’s buried a bit, but if you dig around you will see that the US site is free for contributors to …
Lance Wiggs 