The headlines, it’s all about the headlines:
Stuff eases past NZHerald
Stuff finally has more domestic browsers than NZHerald – it’s been a long chase, and kudos to the editorial and development teams at Fairfax for the result.
Both sites are winners here however – the number of people reading their news online has steadily risen over the years, and the competition has made for better products for everyone.
Blame the invisible man
Part of the blame for the underinvestment by Telecom, and under0-reaction by the NZ Government has to go on the National Party’s Maurice Williamson:
A rare written question from National Party communications spokesman Maurice Williamson to Communications Minister David Cunliffe in May… …asked Mr Cunliffe how New Zealand’s {broadband} ranking compared with its position in 2000
The written question was one of only a handful levelled at Mr Cunliffe by Mr Williamson since he took back National’s communications portfolio in August 2004. Since the last election he has made no media statements on IT or communications policy, maintaining a low profile that led Mr Cunliffe to dub him “the invisible man”.
This is not what we expect from the loyal opposition. Why the heck were National not all over this one – pounding the table in reaction to the pent up demand from a frustrated New Zealand?
Why?
Is the froth back? Pubs and social networking
Via Micropersuasion:
The endless dot-com parties are back. So are the countless trade shows/conferences that regurgitate the same “new paradigms” the last 10 events did – with no end in sight. And yes, the ridiculous BS press releases are flying into my Gmail box. This is why I don’t speak at or attend very many Web 2.0 conferences anymore. I don’t have the heart for it. I would be stirring the big pot of Kool-Aid.
The froth is certainly here.
Still – the survivors from the last dot com bust were businesses with a solid reason for existence, delivering a service that is hard to replicate and offering a clear advantage versus old (bricks or web 1.0) businesses.
Amazon, eBay and Google all had that
Xero, Stuff/NZHerald & Trade Me have all that as well.
But the social networking sites – well I see them as pubs and nightclubs.
Like pubs and nightclubs, people gravitate to the latest and coolest site, which is dictated to by their particular group of friends & demographic.
The cool people/super nerds/teenage girls discover the new clubs & sites, and drag the less cool along. However, those less cool drag their even less cool frinds, and pretty soon you are mainstream and beyond.
Then one of two things can happen. The site (or pub) can turn into an institution, or the super cool people simply leave for the next destination.
The signs are there for either path, but the cynic in me (that force is strong in this one) is wondering whether we have about had enough social networking for this decade.
The signs are increasingly there.
Scoopit – death throes or growing pains
Scoopit seems to have stalled a little while back, and is now taken over by a combination of spammers and people that are bearish about housing markets. It needs some more moderation love, which is hard to justify on what is most likely low traffic numbers.
What to do? The readers are worried…
Gannett and Tribune hook up
Metromix is a series of local sites based around newspapers – run by US newspaper/TV outfit Gannett, who publish 90 newspapers, including USA Today. Gannett is worth just under $14 billion, including debt, Tribune about a billion less.
Tribune owns a few dailies – including the LA Times.
So why is this interesting?
Well Gannett, through their local sites website, Metromix, seem to be cracking the transition from local offline newspapers to local online news, even attracting the 21 to 34 year olds.
Gannet are now embarking on a JV with Tribune to roll these sites out across the USA.
Check out the LA site – it is not Stuff or NZHerald….
Red Sox 4-0 – win
A great story – and even more amazing is this story on the Red Sox pitcher that bought them home:
Don’t feel sorry for yourself, don’t sit at home and think about it,” Lester said of his months of chemo and doubt last winter.
“This year, I’ve tried to just have fun, treat it like a game, like a kid’s game.”
Microsoft Profit up, but Vista sales declining?
Interesting snipet from Slashdot (home of the Mcrosoft vs Apple vs *nix wars)
Microsoft is not directly mentioning Vista demand while they brag about how much money they made last quarter, because sales fell. “[Microsoft] shipped approximately 28 million copies of Vista in the latest quarter ended September, or 9.3 million copies per month.
I hope the market reads this, or a version of it, as I doubled and redoubled up on my short position on Microsoft when it rose from $30ish to $35ish the other day.
Meanwhile Slashdot also passes on that Apple makes over $800 per iPhone – someone reverse engineered the value from the future income portion of Apple’s last disclosure. See – that’s what proper financial disclosure gets you.
Leopard. The Install in pictures.
Well my cunning plan of having Leopard sent to me failed – it didn’t show up in time before the goods inward at work closed on Friday, and so I went out and purchased another copy at 6:20pm on that night.
All is not lost – my parents will now be the proud owners of Leopard – Family version. At least they will be if it turns up at work before I head to NZ later this week.
So here is the whole sordid install story. Relax and look on in amazement as you’ll see hundreds of thousands of backup years, the actual moment of death of Tiger, not one but two spinning balls of death and, of course, plenty of refreshing eye candy.
The Install
Oh good – the bike courier has arrived with Leopard
Goodbye Tiger, let’s start the Leopard install process…
Telecom’s $1.4 billion investment
It’s great news. Score plus one for Paul Reynolds, who is making all the right moves as he embarks on the Telecom turnaround.
I’m running on the promised ADSL2+ here in Perth, and it is fast enough for most purposes, with an upgrade path to 20 MB per second ahead for TCNZ.
Sadly – that 20 MB is in 2011, whereas it should have been right now. But it will still put us ahead, in 2011, of where everyone except Finland, Korea and Japan are today.
(yup – I can see the bad in almost anything)
US State – enforcing Iraq postings
The US State Department (foreign service) is enforcing postings in Iraq – there is no turning them down it seems, else you lose your job. That’s scary for 250 or so people who will be informed on Monday, and have just 10 days to reply. The only excuses allowed are medical it seems.
I know a few folk in the US State Department, which has traditionally attracted the best and brightest, from both sides of the partisan fence. This is terrible news for them, for the Department and for those recruiting aspiring diplomats.
The correct answer would have been to wildly increase the incentives to increase the numbers of people that want the postings – even (especially) if the required pay matched or exceeded those of the contractors hired to protect them.
Red Sox 3-0
Can the RedSox actually win another ‘World’ Series championship?
The Red Sox had a 1918 to 2004 losing streak that makes the All Blacks woes seem trivial.
Intriguingly and cleverly this season the Red Sox bought (for over $100m) on board a star Japanese pitcher – Matsuzaka.
Matsuzaka added to the fortunes of the team on the field, but is also boosting followership in Japan, which no doubt the Red Sox team and MLB are capitalizing on with merchandising and TV rights.
US Housing crisis
A great post by Krugman, on his blog. This picture from Schiller tells pretty much everything you need to know to decide whether or not there is a US housing bubble.
There is a bunch more on his blog – and if you get it then you’ll know why I am short EQR (Equity Residential)
Here’s another taste – that green swell is a wave of subprime mortgages about to be rolled over, probably into adjustable rate mortgages (floating) and at very high rates. That spells doom for tens of thousand of US homeowners.
Youtube nz, australia launch
As Mauricio predicted, we now have downunder local versions of YouTube. Does this mean better delivery as well? or is it just a branding thing?
If so, then the branding needs work.
I’ve always looked at Youtube as a repository of video rather than a browsing site. This changes little for me, though perhaps the browsing will be more relevant now.
Meanwhile we still have that little lack of broadband issue to deal with.
Oh – and the top video on the Aussie site is Free Hug Guy. It seems you now have a free place to stay when you are in Sydney…
Al Gore unleashed
if you want to see what Al Gore could be like as a US Presidential candidate, then look at this camera phone video. He is passionate, and calls Bush on the blunders before 911.
It’s an utter transformation – the cumulation of the change that we partially saw in An Inconvenient Truth. Has the Nobel emboldened him? Is the timing right for some Democraic backbone? Or is the world better off with Al continuing to evangalise on global warming,
via Celsias
Lance Wiggs 