Cringely gives Facebook till 2014 to peak—and he may be right

Bob Cringely wrote (found via Stowe Boyd): Facebook is a huge success. You can’t argue with 750 million users and growing. And I don’t see Google+ making a big dent in that. What I see instead is more properly the fading of the entire social media category, the victim of an ever-shortening event horizon.   […]

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The pre-blocked Google Plus Circle

I might be Google-sceptic, but I’m not so daft as to risk clients and the Medinge Group, both groups having various things in my Google account, opened either in the days when Google was not being evil (many, many years ago now) or before Google acquired that company. So, I made a public profile, to […]

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Are you receiving me, over?

I’m putting this out there in case others have experienced something similar: is the New Zealand internet constantly down?    I’ve had the same email address since 1995. Yet, this year, a noticeable number of New Zealanders have telephoned here, saying that their messages have bounced. Even one team member has said that, if she […]

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Ad networks: you might have asked them not to track you, but they do

Looks like Google isn’t the only guilty party when it comes to advertising cookies.    Andrew Carr-Smith sent me this link from Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society (CIS), which has been tracking how the advertising networks track us.    This is slightly different from my earlier situation, which did not involve the ‘Do […]

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The Murdoch apology does not let us off the hook

Above is Rupert Murdoch’s apology for the actions of the News of the World, to run in the UK in the wake of the resignations of Rebekah Brooks and Les Hinton.    They’re great words, and they’re straight out of the PR 101 playbook.    Some might say they’re a trifle too late, as was […]

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A few more swashes for JY Pinnacle Italic

JY Pinnacle Italic will be re-released as a Pro version shortly, and above are some of the extra characters we’ve added.    I know the swash k still needs work, and it will be fixed up by the time of release.    Pinnacle always had a decent bunch of ligatures, but if you have the […]

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I wanted to grow up and be the Dean Martin version of Matt Helm

As a child growing up in Wellington, there were a few TV series that shaped my beliefs about being grown-up in the occident. The first I’ve written about before: The Persuaders, which is in part where this blog gets its name. I’ve probably mentioned Return of the Saint elsewhere, not to mention the plethora of […]

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Has it really been 20 years? Billy T.: Te Movie débuts August

I still have a lot of the Billy T. James shows on video cassette, and I’ve avoided many of the compilations, since I just don’t feel right seeing the sketches in an order that Billy himself might not have had a say in. Silly reason, I know. However, this does feel right: a film about […]

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The dystopian future has arrived, and it’s called Ryanair

This was too priceless to share only with my Tumblr readers. It’s an excerpt from a review of Ryanair, sent to my friend Nadine Isler, who has since published (with permission) on her site: Entering the cabin, I was greeted by a blindingly bright yellow ceiling that would be more at home on the back […]

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As News of the World closes, we might be getting better at making business accountable

So James Murdoch has announced the end of the News of the World. It’s no biggie: as others have discovered, a domain name for The Sun on Sunday has been registered, and if this is by an agent of News International, it simply makes sense for the Murdoch Press to consolidate its tabloid brands and […]

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