It’s not hard. They had weeks to prepare for the iPhone launch, but still Vodaphone.co.nz’s site still got swamped this morning.
Unacceptable. Completly unacceptable.
Vodafone.com.au struggled the first time I hit the site this morning, and then seemed to go into mobile mode – which was a clever way of dealing with a slashdotting. A second refresh and the normal homepage was back, but no prices on the iPhone.
If you do ant Vodahone NZ iPhone pricing, then check out Geekzone‘s article.
4th and 5th worst in the developed world. That’s where NZ and Australia stand in an ILO survey of the percentage of workers that work more than 48 hours a week. NZ scores 23.6% and Australia 20.4%.
Despite my belief, the USA scored lower at 18.1%.
But we have it easy (as I sit here preparing to take off for a 1-3 month motorcycle trip). Spare a thought for the developing world and Indonesia and Peru in particular, where over 50% of workers spend more than 48 hours a week working.
More on working hours at the interesting Indian blog a wide angle view on India, by Nita J. Kulkarni. I have Nita’a blog on my list as she supplies a very different point of view on world events.
The ILO and CNN Money (the first link) could learn a bit from Nita. I cannot find the source material for the CNN Money article from the slow and archaic ILO website. It not only should be easily findable on the ILO website, but the CNN Money article should have linked there. The top search result for “48 hours” from the ILO website‘ is a document from 1962. Yes – 1962. That’s before even I was born. I did find this though, and through perseverance I finally found the summary of the source report. After that it got silly. A summary page forthe report referred to one place to buy the report (which was the wrong place) and another for a chapter in an encyclopedia – which gave a 404 error. The store, when I found it, returned nothing for a search of the study title. I give up.
a Little bank story for kids, courtesy of the WSJ, and as told to writer Brian M Carney by billionaire and Private Equity pioneer Ted Forstmann.
Once upon a time, when credit conditions and the costs of borrowing money were normal, the bank opened at 9:00 a.m. and closed at 5:00 p.m. For eight hours a day, bankers made loans and took deposits, and then they went home.
But after 9/11, the Fed opened the spigot. Short-term interest rates went to zero in real terms and then into negative territory. When real interest rates are negative, borrowing money is effectively free – the debt loses value faster than the interest adds up.
“Now they [the banks] have all this excess money. And they open at nine, and from nine to noon or so, they’re doing all the same kind of basically legitimate things with it that they did before.”
“But at noon, they have tons of money left. They have all this supply, and the, what I would call ‘legitimate’ demand – it’s probably not a good word – but where risk and reward are still in balance, has been satisfied. But they’re still open until five. And around 3:30 in the afternoon they get to such things as subprime mortgages, OK? And what you guys haven’t seen yet is what happened between noon and 3:30.”
He later says:
“Buffett once told me there are three ‘I’s in every cycle. The ‘innovator,’ that’s the first ‘I.’ After the innovator comes the ‘imitator.’ And after the imitator in the cycle comes the idiot
and to reinforce the point:
“We’re in the third ‘I’ for sure,” he interjects an hour after first introducing the “rule.”
I’m hearing a heck of a lot of bearish sentiments from the USA, backed up by a general feeling when I was over there that times were pretty tough. While Obama provides some general optimism the power of economics is looking to tumble some serious players. Expect markets to fall more,.
NZ Left Wing election site 08Wire launched, it seems with an interesting group of backers and is based overseas. It is good to see new discourse emerge, but I see a couple of issues.
First, in the launch article they do their best to turn prospective readers off:
Some analysis is sensationalized. Like David “cut-and-paste / cut-and-paste / I’m-drunk-again! / cut-and-paste / short-spin-piece / hooters!” Farrar, or the various “fuck you!” “no, fuck you!” stoushes that now pass for broadcast-based political commentary. But it’s almost always shallow and disappointing.
Secondly, they follow the tabloid approach to showing articles – just the headlines and a sentence. That isn’t sufficient on a political website – it fails to give you anything to read when you arrive, and there are no glossy pictures to make up for it. It feels like a loony site as a result.
Better are Daily Kos (the biggest political blog) and NZ’s No Right Turn. Both are well laid out and invite you to immediately start reading when you land.
I wanted to test the bike out and so I found a lovely place to lay it down in a controlled fashion…
Well – actually I was pretty tired at this point and had very little mud mojo left.
Worse still the others had to help me right the bike – which is a little scary. I can lift (it’s technique) the 1200GSA which is a lot heavier, but the KTM with the big tank has the weight up high.
Here’s the Avon River – but sadly at this point, late in the day with the road home in sight, we had to turn back. The rover was well above the air intake for each of our bikes.
Thanks adam for walking the river – and subsequently freezing for the rest of the day.
Looks like all the prices are coming out from today.
1: they are expensive to buy prepay: $800 odd
2: Telstra will launch with the others on July 11
3: Data prices are horrific
You can get an 8GB free if you sign up for 2 years on a $79 per month plan.
Sadly the data rates are extortionate – crippled by a low limits in the ’00 MB range.
, Even 1GB isn’t a lot when you have both 3G speeds and a decent mobile browser, and that costs $100.
As one commenter to a lifehacker article article points out, 1GB is about 2000 pages, which is around 60 page loads a day. That’s pathetic.
Excess data is charged at 35 cents per MB, which is $350 per GB. Going to be a surprise to some people, and unacceptably high.
On Optus Prepay you pay $729 or $849 for the 8 or 16GB version. Then for data you need to be spending $100 to get 1 GB.If you unlock the phone they’ll charge you $80, so you get a legit unlocked iPhone for $809 or $929. That’s a lot cheaper than my Nokia e90 – Apple are serving up a new era.
As an aside the cell phone plans over here in Australia are impenetrable. I just get wildly frustrated when I look at them. I can’t find the penalty rate or what happens after you exceed your prepaid limit. But their overseas rates are the standard $15000 per GB
Telstra has this which seems very similar:
iPhone 3G™ will be available from Telstra on July 11 with a range of specially designed Next G™ iPhone 3G plans that meet the needs of any customer.
The Next G™ iPhone 3G™ plans start at $30 per month with an upfront cost of $279 for the 8GB model and $399 for the 16GB model.
Customers will receive the 8GB iPhone 3G™ model at no cost with the $80 plan, and either the 8GB or the 16GB model at no cost with plans starting at $100 per month. All plans include free Wi-Fi access at Telstra hotspots and require a 24-month contract.
I’m annoyed at WordPress. Up until now their stunning blogging application has made it wonderfully simple to get writing and posting pictures on the web. Their ethos has been true – make it free, make it simple and open to everyone. Their source code is available at WordPress.org, and their WordPress.com site hosts for free. Sure you can pay for your own domain name and so forth – but is is cheap.
Meanwhile it has been a steady march on the incfease in usability, with essentially no miss-steps. Designed and run by nerds for everyone. (Trade Me was like this – the nerds in control of usability, with MBA’s very scarce on the ground.)
But all good things come to an end. It starts with a simple tree.
That Tree was a button which called up a small dialog box, where you entered a url and description, and voila, a picture appeared in your blog. It was ever so simple that anyone could use it, no HTML required. Even if you can write HTML, it was so much simpler to use the dbox.
Now WordPress have screwed it up.
They have replaced the simple green tree button with an Add Media button row. It sucks sucks sucks.
All of a sudden my nice easy process of blogging just took a turn for the worse and a frustration leap. It takes more time for me to post, so I, and millions of others, are therefore less likely to post.
Here’s what happened, the impact and why I believe WordPress have done this and why I believe it is wrong.
1: The tree is gone – it used to be amongst the two rows of buttons, and there is still plenty of room for it. It has been replaced by the box logo (!) next to the “add media” text. Sadly you can only see this logo if you are editing in ordinary mode, and not in full screen mode.
2: Clicking that box logo brings up the world’s biggest dialog box. It covers up the screen and as it is flash, takes its time about loading as well. Here it is – actual size on my screen.
3: You have to select the url box (an extra step – before you just started typing), then paste the url of the photo, tab/click to the next box, and enter a description. Now you are done – so press enter.
4: Whoops – an error, and all of your lovely information is now gone. So sorry. Start again.
This sucks in three ways – the simplicity has gone, the box is big and slow so the usability suffers and the intent is evil. The box defaults to the top part (upload files) but notice how the bottom part is highlighted. It’s as if WordPress know that most people want to use the bottom part, but they are making you touch the top part.
The Evil Intent.
I believe the intent of this change, and WordPress are unapologetic about the change, is to drive people to load their images on to WordPress’s own servers.
I further believe that WordPress are trying to promote loading of more videos and sound onto their own servers. In short they want to beat Flickr/Photobucket and YouTube at their own game.
They will fail – after all they are not Flickr or Youtube. Moreover they are pissing off their own customers, which is a great way to get them ready to go to the next big thing, just as everyone has already moved from blogger to Moveable Type to WordPress.
Wordpress is the best blogging platform, but this moves sends the first signal that perhaps being the best and simplest blogging platform is not their core aim. If this is so WordPress, then please have a change of heart, or you will lose your core, and your corps. If this is not so, then please put the stupid tree back so that I can keep advising people to use WordPress.
P.S. I sent a support email and got a response back very quickly for more information. Color me very impressed about that, but unimpressed by the “1) The tree has been replaced by the Add an Image button on the Add Media toolbar.” comment – which is a stonewall.
P.P.S How much would it suck (and be cool) to be in a company where all of our customers’ can and do write about your service and have it read by anybody and everybody?
What great feedback for the developers…
P.P.P.S Yes I know that one reason for the new add image feature is the ability to move the position around. It sucks.
Googling for “lover” I noticed that eBay had taken out an adwords ad:
Clicking through (gee – had they started an online dating service?), I found an interesting array of… nothing in particular.
So – freshen up those ad-words eBay.
You may ask why I was searching for “Lover” – I was trying to get to ads for the latest version of crushcalculator to show website design. They may be scammers, but their web designs are pretty good.
Lance Wiggs 