Discussions about the media, journalism and news.
I’m pleased to announce that automotive writer and historian Keith Adams is now collaborating with me on Autocade—and doing an incredible job. Keith has been as good as his word: not only has he fulfilled his promise to work with me on Autocade, he has got so much into the spirit of the site […]
Read More… from A great first few days collaborating with Keith Adams on Autocade
I said it in 2009, and apparently, so did a diplomat whose note was leaked via Wikileaks: BYD might not stand scrutiny in a non-Chinese court over its vehicles. When I raised it, a few BYD fans (agents?) came commenting, trying to pick holes in my post, though they were unable to deny that […]
Read More… from Two years on, the mainstream media wake up over BYD’s ethics
It’s shows like The Apprentice that have kept me away from watching TV. I was surprised to learn, in conversation last week, that TV viewership is up, while print is down. Shows you can’t base too much of what the general public does on your own experience. I estimate my magazine and book […]
Read More… from It’s about content, especially when reality is more appealing than reality TV
A few new words and meanings—45,437 to be exact—have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, report the mainstream media. LOL is one, which I have always taken to mean little old lady, and have almost always used it in that context. Turns out that that was what the acronym originally stood for, […]
Read More… from LOL, Wag, flat white added to Oxford English Dictionary
A while back, I came across Benjamin J. Heckendorn (a.k.a. Ben Heck) and his Commodore 64 laptop. This is a quite a fascinating machine, considering the actual “portable” 64 Executive was a heavy beast that could kill if hurled at you. While Ben took the 64’s odd colour, keyboard and 64C’s motherboard, his is structured […]
Read More… from And now, Ben Heck makes an ‘Atari’ Xbox 360 ‘1977 edition’
Tomorrow, it will be one month since the Christchurch ’quake. It’s tempting to argue scale—the Japanese earthquake and tsunami versus our own—but at the end of the day, people are people, and our nations have both been hurting. We have become united, through disasters that emphasized that we live in an emerging global community. […]
Read More… from Some positive news a month on from the Christchurch ’quake
Today marks the 15th anniversary of Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei, a German show I have followed for just over a half of its run. I’ve watched it through budget cuts and some naff storylines of late. It’s of some interest to chart the course of the show over these many years. […]
Read More… from Alarm für Cobra 11: a 15th birthday celebration
Autocade’s third birthday is on Tuesday, though today I had to introduce something that goes against the principles of MediaWiki: the prevention of public user registrations. Despite adding an Akismet anti-spam extension last week, spammers, evidently using non-blacklisted IPs, continued to add false content with their links on to the site today. I […]
Read More… from Autocade’s MediaWiki software gets locked down
Earlier this month, I gave a workshop talk to the Leadership and Development Conference for the New Zealand Chinese Association in Auckland. I’ve just uploaded the speech notes, and as I did so, I wanted to append a few more thoughts. The topic was identity—not just branding, but personal identity. My self-critique […]
I’m not enough of a bastard to only dis Google, because they have made a pretty good move today. Google’s new algorithm, it is claimed, will weed out content farms, one type of site that has annoyed us here regularly. These are sites that just pinch others’ content automatically. Because search engines pick […]
Read More… from Google’s new algorithm will likely weed out content mills