Easier to write about the past ones

My dad made quite a few predictions, not because he was psychic (in fact, while he was never vocally against it, like Confucius he wasn’t a fan of it), but because he was a keen observer of people, natural phenomena, and the rise and fall of institutions. Off the top of my head: when Rob […]

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Did you know that in the last three decades, media have changed?

Sights on exporting: when we first licensed Lucire to a foreign country, in this case Romania, in 2005. Karen Carreño modelled, photographed by Yann Dandois. Mirella Lapusca and Valentin Lapusca created the Romanian edition.   Over the weekend, one of the Lucire crew had to write to a PR company to be included on something […]

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In an overly narrow niche, no one hears you

When I posted about Autocade Year of Cars 2025 on Vivaldi Social, a chap in Germany, who clearly disliked cars, had a go at me. I pointed out that there were probably more EVs covered in the book than petrol- and diesel-powered cars, but the cynical chap wasn’t having any of it. There should be […]

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What really killed the old, cool web

Richard MacManus’s Cybercultural I’ve mentioned as a must-read if you want to explore the history of the web. And today, Stephen Judd showed a collection of links, among which was this 2017 entry by Amy Hoy, ‘How the blog broke the web’. Hoy traces the origins of the blog back to a web diary (web […]

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No one is an island, not even when on an island

With the dismantling of the US by Lone Skum and others, Mike Masnick wrote in Techdirt: ‘And now we’re watching Musk, Trump, and their allies destroy these foundations. They operate under the dangerous delusion of the “great man” theory of innovation—the false belief that revolutionary changes come solely from lone geniuses, rather than from the […]

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Duck Duck Go is probably scared of Mojeek

Duck Duck Go serving a page after using the !lucire bang. The second result is a frameset that has not been linked to in over two decades, a sign of Bing being a Wayback Machine.   As some of you know, I used Duck Duck Go as my principal search engine between 2010 and 2022, […]

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The case for Brand Aotearoa

Originally published in Scoop   During our mid-year travels, I was surprised to learn that Aotearoa New Zealand doesn’t have the profile that we think it does. We’re not riding the wave of The Lord of the Rings: few abroad remember the connection two decades later. No one I encountered recalls 100% Pure, and if […]

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Where is brand Aotearoa?

Five New Zealand customs' officers seated on a boat.

One thing holding back exports from Aotearoa New Zealand is the absence of a true, authentic national brand. I said this even back in the days of the 100% Pure campaign, which was much lauded. I cynically asked: can we really claim this when France and Germany outspend us on the environment as a percentage […]

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Carry on designing

Journeys through time are fascinating. Earlier this week, I looked at some of the websites we liked from the Jack Yan & Associates links’ section. In many cases, it was a trip down memory lane, as some sites still had their 2000s layouts. Sadly, this could mean that a few of them will disappear in […]

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Bringing the JY&A links’ pages into the 2020s

After 21–2 years, we’ve redone the links’ pages on the Jack Yan & Associates website. The old template dated from 2002, and, oddly, while cellphone browsers from a decade ago could by default enlarge the type to suit, modern ones can’t. (I’m still waiting for the software developers to incorporate the Bitstream technology from the […]

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