Two big reasons not to use Gmail

03.10.2020/09.14

I was absolutely shocked to learn this is how Gmail works. If I read this correctly, #Google lets more than one person use a single email address (in this case, over 200!)? How daft! Why would they do that? pic.twitter.com/KtTO6PnDEI — Jack Yan 甄爵恩 (@jackyan) September 27, 2020 PS.: This was the image linked […]

CSR is already woven into Māori leadership

23.04.2019/10.01

I was fascinated to read a New Zealand Herald story on the Māori asset base, though it wasn’t the financial part that hit me. What was more significant were the principles behind Māori businesses. About 15 years ago, when chatting to a woman representing a Māori winery, I said that she had an amazing […]

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: the signs were there for years, if one only looked

20.03.2018/09.14

Facebook’s woes over Cambridge Analytica have only prompted one reaction from me: I told you so. While I never seized upon this example, bravely revealed to us by whistleblower Christopher Wylie and reported by Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison of The Guardian, Facebook has shown itself to be callous about private data, mining preferences even […]

Zuckerberg wants to fix Facebook: too little, too late

14.01.2018/11.21

WTF: welcome to Facebook. (Creative Commons photograph.) Mark Zuckerberg’s promise to fix Facebook in 2018 is, in my opinion, too little, too late. However, since I ceased updating my Facebook profile last month, I’ve come across many people who tell me the only reason they stay on it is to keep in touch with […]

Being an optimist for a better post-Google, post-Facebook era

15.12.2017/13.55

Interesting to get this perspective on ‘Big Tech’ from The Guardian, on how it’s become tempting to blame the big Silicon Valley players for some of the problems we have today. The angle Moira Weigel takes is that there needs to be more democracy in the system, where workers need to unite and respecting those […]

New Zealand slips to 17th in latest Good Country Index

11.12.2017/08.29

Above: Simon Anholt, giving a talk at TEDSalon Berlin. Out today: my friend Simon Anholt’s Good Country Index, with the Netherlands taking the top spot from Sweden, which drops to sixth. New Zealand is in 17th, failing in prosperity and equality, and in cultural contribution (previously we had been 5th and 12th). On the plus […]

I don’t do paid blog posts here (so don’t ask)

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I know we all get these emails from time to time, but they still annoy me. If ‘Peter’ had visited this blog, he would know that every single post since 2006 has been my own, unpaid, unsponsored thoughts. Why would I change that now? You may say it’s a fair question, and […]

Trading identities in the 2010s: when corporate branding and personal branding adopt each other’s methods

14.10.2017/13.31

Above: Brand Kate Moss was probably seen by more people when the model collaborated with Topshop. In 1999, the late Wally Olins sent me his book, Trading Identities: Why Countries and Companies are Taking on Each Other’s Roles, a fine read published by the Foreign Policy Centre that argued that countries were trying to look […]

There’s still a place for blogging—in fact, it might be needed more than ever

23.04.2017/13.24

My friend Richard MacManus commemorated the 14th anniversary of ReadWrite, an online publication he founded as a blog (then called ReadWriteWeb) in 2003, by examining blogging and how the open web has suffered with the rise of Facebook and others. It’s worth a read, and earlier tonight I fed in the following comment. I […]

A farewell to Tim Kitchin

19.01.2017/10.07

For the second time in two months, I found myself announcing to the members of Medinge Group another passing: that of my good friend Tim Kitchin. Tim passed away over the weekend, and leaves behind three kids. I always admired Tim’s point of view, his depth of thinking, and his generosity of spirit. […]