Conservatives: ‘The Chinese’ are coming! It’s the yellow peril!

30.08.2014/08.50

We hear from certain parties that proclaim that they want one law for all New Zealanders, yet they’ll resort to targeting ethnic minorities anyway. A few weeks ago, Winston Peters had his ‘two Wongs’ joke, easily dismissed as being as passé as a Rolf Harris act. I see the Conservatives are now doing the same […]

When the parties uploaded their opening statements to their YouTube accounts

26.08.2014/05.25

This is when each political party uploaded their opening broadcasts to their ofﬁcial YouTube accounts. Ideally, they should have gone up on Saturday night, when they were broadcast on television, as that was when those of us online were hunting for them. (TVNZ did not have these up on demand on the night, either, but […]

‘Planet Key’ is good old-fashioned Kiwi satire

23.08.2014/05.24

Fed up with the Electoral Commission barring Darren Watson from expressing his valid view with his satirical song ‘Planet Key’, I made a spoken-word version of it for my Tumblr a week ago, with copyright clearance over the lyrics. I wrote: Since the Electoral Commission has imposed a ban on Darren Watson’s ‘Planet Key’—in fact, […]

I thought political division got you nowhere in New Zealand

/03.00

A week and a half ago, I appeared on Back Benches to talk about Winston Peters MP’s “two Wongs” joke, and confined my comments to that. My response, ‘There are still people who enjoy watching Rolf Harris, just as there are still people out there who enjoy listening to Winston Peters.’ And, ‘We have […]

Caveat emptor: Facebook’s click farm problem is worsening

22.08.2014/14.13

Many people will remember this video, which exposed Facebook using click farms to inflate customers’ likes (I would have used Veritasium’s original, but YouTube won’t show embedding codes at the moment): Facebook Fraud Exposed: Does Facebook Advertising Lead to Fake Likes? from Reputation911 on Vimeo I won’t repeat what they exposed, as […]

The 2014 General Election: the impressions the parties have left, so far

05.08.2014/04.01

A Kiwi friend, based in Australia, and I were discussing the General Election yesterday on the phone. First, I told her, you wouldn’t know one was on. It’s like Christmas when the global financial crisis hit: people weren’t in the mood. Secondly, minor parties like Internet Mana are probably doing better than the […]

Has Facebook admitted its servers ran out of resources?

02.08.2014/15.05

Those of you who follow this blog know that I believe Facebook’s servers are reaching their limits. In June 2014, when there was a 69-hour outage for me—and at least 30 minutes for most other Facebook users—I noted I was recording a marked increase in Facebook bugs before the crash. And the even longer outage […]

When referring to your Australian ofﬁce might not be a smart thing to do

/07.56

There are some companies that do not realize that we live in a global community. And there are at least two who have done themselves a disservice by referring our account or enquiries to their Australian representative. We left Rackspace in 2013 although, for most of the 11½ years we were with them, […]

A familiar call after two mayoral campaigns on Wellington’s knowledge economy

01.08.2014/01.32

The latest Victoria University study, expressing that there is a shortage of creative people, sounds very familiar. Dr Richard Norman highlights in a Fairfax Press editorial that knowledge economy companies are ‘struggling to capitalise on opportunities for growth because of limited local talent … ‘Many of these companies are well-seasoned and high-earning—a third […]