If you are frustrated as hell at the ponderous pace of broadband adoption and speeds in New Zealand, then the New Zealand Institute report: DEFINING A BROADBAND ASPIRATION: HOW MUCH DOES BROADBAND MATTER AND WHAT DOES NEW ZEALAND NEED? is essential reading. The presentation is in classic McKinsey style, which is an acquired taste, but …
Continue reading “The NZ Institute report – the benefits of broadband”
Shipbuktu has been going along since 20 November last year, and in spite of a few complaints on this blog about slow service, they are the best way, short of flying there, to get your US-address only goods delivered to NZ. Today* I notice that they now have competition – BuyUSA.co.nz has launched. They use …
{update – From July 11th2008 you can now just go to a Vodafone store and get an iPhone 3G. And a contract.} Want to buy an iPhone in NZ? Well – the quickest way to get your hands on one is down on Queen street at Parallel Imports. You can also buy them online from …
I’m not a lawyer – but has an unhealthy precedent been set by the Mediaworks vs Sky TV ruling? If so then Mediaworks strategists and lawyers should be taken out and shot. The ruling was very strict, and allows competing Sky to use 2 minute clips from the World Cup just 3 times in a …
So as Sophie points out, Stuff confirmed the Trade Me policy on “no iPhones” this morning. Adam also helpfully points out that perhaps I was behind the times – oh the horror. But yes – Trade Me has recklessly decided to arbitrarily ban sales of the absolutely essential and patently legal to sell iPhone. This …
So the iPhone is in the UK – with O2. The interesting thing is that, like the USA, the iPhone is not coming with any 3G high speed mobile internet. Instead Apple and O2 have signed a deal with The Cloud, giving iPhone users free WiFi access at 7,500 UK locations. We don’t have that …
A nice column by Deborah hill Cone on ACP’s decision then reversal of the decision to ban Facebook use by staff. It was an uninformed move as Facebook is quite the weapon for journalists. Deborah also lets slip that NZ Herald also bans Facebook, and no doubt have all sorts of other sites on the …
a telling comment from Rod Drury: I also noticed that iPhone behavior changes once you move from the carrier network to wifi. Almost everywhere we stopped there was free wifi. As soon as the iPhone user had free wifi then the iPhone was out and being used in conversation. When I travel in the USA …
Rather amusingly, the US Foreign Trade Barriers document referred to below also has some tasty things to say about Telecomms in NZ: U.S. industry has expressed concern about the fees charged for completing calls using mobile networks in New Zealand, which are among the highest in the world. That’s a clear statement that Telecom’s under-investment …
Via No Right Turn, I perused a US document that lists NZ policies thast it consiers are trade barriers. Read the full commentary on this amazing document from Joe Hendren. It was astonishing to see the US music industry’s thoughts about NZ copyright law & policy in print: The U.S. music industry opposes a proposed …
I can’t help comparing Air NZ and Telecom. They face very similar circumstances, and yet are reacting very differently. Both are ex Government owned, now private. Air NZ is quasi-private of course. Both have a public-good role – to provide a network to the population.Both have a profit motive, and both benefit from quasi-monopoly position …
eBay is still figuring out this auction thing. For a start, all eBay neutral feedbacks are now counted as negative, as from a couple of weeks back. If big sellers start getting a bad karma ratio, then the amount of stuff they can post to sell will be restricted. They’ve also been playing with the …
Continue reading “eBay shakes the model, but still doesn’t get it”
Here at last. Trade Me have soft-launched Travel Bug. Simple, elegant and it just works. But still some weirdness with underlining in Safari. Interestingly TravelBug uses Google Maps rather than Smaps – at least for now. It’s obviously a version 1, and we can certainly expect more goodness to come down the line. Go ahead …
The top 2 stories on Scoopit right now are shills – one for ‘inpageads’ (to much text te read, but some sort of ad thing) and another for ‘Tubby‘ (an orange, usable Ferrit killer in its infancy.) It’s a shame. Scoopit had (or perhaps still has) a chance at being the Digg for NZ, but …
Three clients this year have all come in with record profits. It’s a symptom of what they are – excellent companies. BHPB made record EBITDA of US$20.1 Billion, and profits of $13.7 billion. Thats on the back of some stellar commodity prices and solid volume increases. Records in Aluminium and Stainless Steel Materials helped things …
Lance Wiggs 