An old slant for Labour

I noticed this on April 28 and Tweeted about it, tagging the New Zealand Labour Party at the time. It still hasn’t been fixed as of today. That’s supposedly Commercial Type’s Stag Bold Italic in the headline, but someone has slanted the italic. Is this a signal that Labour leans to the right more than […]

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Facebook forced me to download their anti-malware, and my own antivirus gets knocked out

When Facebook says it cares about security, I laugh. Every day I see bots, spammers and click-farm workers plague the site, and despite reporting them, Facebook lets them stay. It will make a statement saying it would no longer kick off drag queens and kings, then proceed to kick off drag queens and kings. So […]

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The demise of Auto Katalog, and little to fill the void

It’s sad to read the news that Motor-Presse Stuttgart will not publish the Auto Katalog annual this year. That means last year’s, the 57th, could have been the ultimate edition.    There are complaints on Amazon.de, and I was all ready to buy a copy myself—typically I would have an order put in through Magnetix […]

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Facebook blocks you from reporting bots, fails to provide rationale

It appears Facebook doesn’t want bot reports after you hit a limit. In fact, I’ve been banned for a day for reporting them.    This makes no sense. Facebook gives you a warning to slow down when you hit the 40s. But you can’t get any slower. The fact is Facebook has made the reporting […]

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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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Check your Google Feedburner feeds: are they serving the correct sites?

A month or so ago, our Feedburner stats for Lucire’s RSS feed delivery tanked. I put it down to the usual “Google being useless”, because we would have expected to see the opposite. The take-up of Feedburner feeds has usually slowly grown since we started this one in 2007, without any promotion on our end. […]

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Facebook and Instagram have not only jumped the shark, but Richie Cunningham has left home

Social networking is bound to change in 2014 as some of the main services out there have jumped the shark.    You may say they jumped them ages ago, but the lack of innovation inside Facebook and its subsidiaries is beginning to hurt them.    After having campaigned for six months for the Wellington mayoralty, […]

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What Is a Brand? Well, there is one we’ve relaunched …

My good friend and colleague Stanley Moss has written a new book, What Is a Brand?, which provokes some thought on the question in the title.    Those who know Stanley and have followed his work know that each year, he issues a Brand Letter, which closes with various definitions of branding.    If there’s […]

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Tinkering time

I’m hoping no one has noticed that we are shifting servers, because seamlessness is the sure sign that it’s all been done properly without any effect on our clients, their clients, and our audiences.    Thanks to Nigel Dunn at Xplosiv.ly—Nigel and I have worked together both at this firm and, now, between our firms—all […]

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A fresher Lucire (the web edition) for 2013

When Lilith-Fynn Herrmann, Tania Naidu, Julia Chu, Tanya Sooksombatisatian and I redesigned Lucire in 2012, we went for a very clean look, taking a leaf from Miguel Kirjon’s work at Twinpalms Lucire in Thailand. I’m really proud of the results, and it makes you happy to work on the magazine—and just pick up the finished […]

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