“about 20 percent of online daters admit to deception. If you ask them how many other people are lying, however–an interviewing tactic that probably gets closer to the truth–that number jumps to 90 percent.” So quotes an interesting Scientific American article on online dating. (via here) My experience was that people do lie, though I …
Category Archives: NZ Business
Synergy is now Fronde
I understand the need for Synergy to change their name – Synergy is a pretty generic word and in use by companies is pretty much every other country. Fronde is a French word meaning Sling, and the revolutionaries that are described using the word were, how do I put this, strongly anti-government…. Here’s a nice …
Sunday Star Times redesign
Interesting blog post about the redesign of the Sunday Star times – from the persepective of an American designer who was involved. It’s a little old (Sept 2006) but still makes for a good read. It’s always refreshing to see how the Kiwi ‘can do’ attitude is seen in the rest of the world.
Microsoft, Privacy and Kiwi Police
Very interesting situation where Microsoft refused to deal with a police request because they are “a foreign company and not subject to NZ laws”. What terrible PR. And what hogwash. NZ privacy laws are a lot stronger than the US laws, especially when it comes to trading information between businesses. But when the NZ Police …
Wikipedia and Kiwi Foo Camp
Fun little discussion on Wikipedia about whether the Kiwi Foo Camp wiki page is spam or not. The questions are around whether or not the page is promotional, and whether or not you would expect to see it in an encyclopedia.
Private Equity in NZ
NZHerald has a piece on private equity (PE). Several things stand out. Firstly there are apparently no NZ based PE funds looking for investors at the moment, secondly you can apparently get into PE with $10-20k and thirdly PE will get you returns of 20-30% per year. There may well be funds being raised – …
Wishbone
Great little success story from Wishbone. $10m turnover, 100 employees, 13 stores, great supermarket distribution and, most importantly, a great product. (Terrible, out of date, single page website though) Their business model is interesting – they manufacture yummy ready to cook food, and sell it through 3 channels – supermarkets, takeaway stores (either ready to …
Yellowlife
Yellow pages launched Yellowlife, which will spam you with advertisers junk if you register big life events with them. (marriage etc.). Sorry – it’s a tool to help you plan big events. It’s a good idea in principle, and it is good to see a new site laucnhed. I do have three issues though… 1: …
More leaks than a…
So much for confidentiality – Most if not all of the Yellow Pages bidders have been identified by three(!) insiders. At least 9 companies are bidding, apparently, and KKR, CCMP Capital Asia, Pacific Equity Partners, Carlyle, Bain Capital, Providence Equity Partners, CVC Capital and TPG are eight Private Equity firms interested along with Sensis – …
Telecom post Theresa
So Theresa finally retires from Telecom NZ. finally. But sadly not until June. She is proud that there has been ‘almost no involuntary turnover in the top 100 in Telecom’ and is ‘proud of culture of Telecom’. I wouldn’t be. Sure it was a tough hand-over – inheriting under investment in infrastructure, and antediluvian CDMA …
shill bidding on eBay
Shill bidding on eBay is, anecdotally at least, a big problem. eBay’s recent decision to hide the ID’s of other bidders has not helped the community policing. Slashdot has some interesting comments on the issue – including one chap that has the following advice: 1) Never bid on camcorders, computers, automobiles, or any other high …
NZ online traffic rankings from alexa….
Very cool summary of NZ site rankings from Projectx, or you can just look at the laest results on Alexa 1: Trade Me isn’t that far behind Google. In the USA eBay is number 5 after Yahoo!, Google, Myspace and MSN. 2: 6Park is bigger than Skykiwi, which was news to me. It has all …
Telecom overvalued?
Yes says Goldman Sach’s local branch, but if you use the “what’s it worth to a takeover buyer?” approach (see Marty Whitman) then Telecom is probably undervalued. Imagine the extra value that could be dredged from Telecom by an operator that understood where the internet is taking telecommunications…
Sleeping your way to the tourism dollar
Rob Fyfe mentions some airlines are toying with economy class bunks. It is something that AirNZ has to make work if we are to attract increasing numbers of tourists to New Zealand. The space of an economy class seat is used poorly right now, but a combination bunk and perhaps stand up seat for landing/taking …
Impact of comcom chasing Credit Card MSF’s
NZ credit card interchange fees, which dictate the minimum merchant service fee (MSF), are under attack by the commerce commission. That seems to be a great thing – these days the infrastructure and transactional costs should be trivial. The ComCom is also chasing merchant rules that prevent merchants from charging surcharges to credit card users …
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Lance Wiggs 