Five or ten years, your Kiwi passport is not a valid government-issued ID, says Facebook

Sometimes you wonder if the big players on Silicon Valley exist in a parallel universe.    Google, of course, is a firm that makes little sense to me: one that usually says one thing and does another, in almost every encounter I have had with it. And you know they can’t be that smart if, […]

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Ikea tries to shut down its biggest fan site, showing us how the company thinks within

In an age of social media, you would think it was the most stupid thing to try to shut down the biggest online community you have.    Ikea has done just that, on IP grounds, against Ikea Hackers, by getting their legal department to send Jules Yap, its founder, a cease-and-desist letter after her site […]

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The Rongotai years

This came up today at Victoria University where an old client of ours asked about my 2013 campaign. I remembered there was something about education that I wanted to address at the time.    One of the stranger emails during 2013 came from a former classmate of mine at Rongotai College. A brilliant guy at […]

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Google tracks your searches, and uses them, even when your web history is turned off

My dislike of Google is no secret, and, as a precaution, I have every known Google tracking setting turned off. I even block the Doubleclick and YouTube cookies. However, I have to manage a page at Google Plus—and Google cleverly tracks you through its Plus service.    It doesn’t lie about it: When you use […]

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Open the shop and strip away the jargon

I’ve been reading this Grauniad interview with Rory Stewart, MP, referred by Jordan McCluskey. I’m told that Stewart, and Labour’s Frank Field are the two worth listening to these days in British politics. On Stewart, someone who can speak with a Scots accent and has lived in Hong Kong must be a good bloke.   […]

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Google pays out US$17 million over Doubleclick privacy hacking

When surfing, there are precious few people who, like me, de-Googled their lives. There’s the odd blog post here and there, but, overall, those of us who took the plunge are few and far between. It still puzzles me, given the regular privacy problems that I find on Google Dashboard (Google supporters will argue that […]

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Getting ready for global

I’ve known of this for some time through Medinge: the globalizing of The New York Times. This has meant the retirement of The International Herald–Tribune name, one which brand experts are divided on.    On the one hand, the NYT doesn’t have it wrong. There are global newspaper brands already, namely those that have taken […]

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Vodafone sends me invoices and spam (and I’m not even a customer)

I recently posted this apt quotation on my Tumblr: It’s marketing 101—[Vodafone New Zealand] seem to breach the rules quite regularly and you’d have to hope that these significant fines are a signal to them that they can’t continue to do that. It’s from Sue Chetwin, CEO, Consumer New Zealand, on how Vodafone is cavalier […]

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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 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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