The Downfall of ‘Wellywood’

11.03.2010/04.27

Necessity is the mother of all invention. I never thought some of the Der Untergang (Downfall) parodies could be topped, but I think this just happened. You may also like Cities are, or at least should be, driving globalization Steve Guttenberg shows us how a Kiwi accent is done Live from Level 3 The rise […]

The ‘Wellywood’ sign: people power gets things done

10.03.2010/06.18

That was a very interesting 30 hours. I found out about the ‘Wellywood’ sign yesterday afternoon, through Twitter, and Tweeted to say I hated it. Little did I know then that there was a huge Facebook group—6,000 strong at the time of writing—where Wellingtonians were making their voices known. And when I got there […]

Hints of Google’s privacy misbehaviours in 2007

08.03.2010/22.10

I did my last edits to this blog’s pages that had resided on the old Blogger service today, before decommissioning them from the service. After today (in theory, since the updating stalled twice as I wrote this), you will not be able to make any more comments on posts written before January 1, 2010. […]

An unplanned post about Google (Friend Connect this time)

03.03.2010/22.48

The disappearance of my Google Friend Connect gadget from the right-hand column was not part of my plans to de-Google my life: after all, it took me a while to amass the followers there (I think I had a mere 18, but some of them were friends). From my Google Dashboard, I noticed there […]

Wellington needs free wiﬁ and jobs, not a council that goes nuts with spending

02.03.2010/12.23

Funny how a media article can inspire you to send out a release, especially when you’re a ratepayer and you wonder if our City Council of élites understands how hard it was for us to make that money. In today’s case, it was Lindsay Shelton’s Scoop Wellington op-ed about Wellington City Council going nuts with […]

Back on Firefox 3·0: I have had enough of the daily crashes

28.02.2010/11.56

As of today, I am back with the reliable Firefox 3·0 on my desktop machine as well. Firefox 3.5 would generally crash daily, though I remember there was once a three-day period in January when it did not crash at all. (There were other days when it would crash two or three times, just to […]

It’s hard ﬁnding the old stuff on Google

26.02.2010/09.07

My Wired for March 2010 arrived today (things take a while to reach the antipodes), with the most interesting article being on the Google algorithm. And hold on, this isn’t a Google-bashing blog entry. Steven Levy’s article was probably written before the furore over the Google Buzz privacy ﬂap. And it points out how […]

Eric Karjaluoto begins giving away his Speak Human book

/05.53

A few authors—and not crappy ones, but those who have proven they can sell books—have resorted to giving them away online. Stefan Engeseth gave away his The Fall of PR and the Rise of Advertising online at the time of launch, while I received word that Eric Karjaluoto is now doing the same today. […]

Anyone else with a new Google results’ page?

25.02.2010/09.53

Anyone else have a different results’ page layout for Google? Only began happening this morning (NZDT) to me, though I imagine others must have this by now. Despite my fairly regular moans about technology, I seem to be among the ﬁrst to get some features. I remember getting the Digg Toolbar about two or […]

More Buzz, a small buzz, and my real and virtual lives meet

22.02.2010/12.03

My friend Pete informs me of his Google Buzz experience, and it’s not positive, either. He is no stranger to technology and is more expert than I am on these matters. He had turned off Buzz, and was surprised to ﬁnd that it was still taking his information and publishing it to his followers. […]