Have we stopped innovating in online publishing?

For a while, we’ve been thinking about how best to facelift the Lucire website templates, to bring them into the 2020s. The current look is many years old (I’ve a feeling it was 2016 when we last looked at it), which in internet terms puts this once-cutting edge site into old-school territory.    But what’s […]

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The end of the cellphone?

Motorola This is a take that will probably never come true, but hear me out: this is the end of the cellphone era.    We’ve had a pandemic where people were forced to be at home. Whilst there, they’ve discovered that they can be productive on their home desktop machines, doing Zoom and Skype meetings, […]

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Google isn’t working

I’ve done several Zoom meetings since the pandemic was declared, and two Google Hangouts. While I’m not thrilled at having to use two companies with patchy (to say the least) records on user privacy, the meetings (three for Medinge, one for another board I sit on) have been productive, and the only bottleneck has been, […]

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Is Facebook lying to customers about who has seen their ads?

Not withstanding that I can’t edit my advertising preferences on Facebook—they took that ability away from me and a small group of users some time ago (and, like Twitter, they are dead wrong about what those preferences are)—I see they now lie about what ads I’ve seen and clicked on.    I can categorically say […]

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Are you a scam artist? Facebook loves you, and protects you

The Royal New Zealand Ballet generously put its Hansel & Gretel performance from November 2019 online for free this weekend, choosing Facebook as its medium. That, naturally, attracts scam artists, putting in false links in order to charge credit cards. Many Kiwis were duped. The RNZB reported many, and so have I. All six of […]

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Cellphone? What cellphone?

It’s true. I spent time on business development, answering emails, doing tech stuff on our sites, and generally kept on top of things. I often wonder if I would have become an active Facebooker or Tweeter had they been invented and come into my orbit in, say, 2002. We all may have been too busy […]

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Could this happen one day at GM?

The MG line-up in New Zealand. Could it be part of a bigger portfolio of brands later this decade?   In the context of what has happened with Holden, and Peter Hanenberger’s thoughts on the direction of GM, I wonder how far away we are from seeing these headlines: Cash-strapped GM sells passenger car brands […]

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Peter Hanenberger’s unintended post mortem of Holden

The 2009 Chevrolet Caprice SS, sold in the Middle East but made in Australia.   I came across a 2017 interview with former Holden chairman Peter Hanenberger, who was in charge when the company had its last number-one sales’ position in Australia. His words are prescient and everything he said then still applies today.   […]

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Human-centred peripherals should be the norm

I’ve had a go at software makers before over giving us solutions that are second-best, because second-best has become the convention. While I can think of an explanation for that, viz. Microsoft packaged Windows computers in the 1990s with Word and Outlook Express, it’s harder to explain why peripherals haven’t been human-centred.    I thought […]

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GM’s Holden to abandon C and D car segments, delivering them on a silver platter to competitors

Stuart Cowley for Lucire   I haven’t spoken to Holden New Zealand to see if we’re following suit, but as far as Australia’s concerned, 2020 will be the final year for the Astra and Commodore, as Holden transitions to selling only trucks (utes) and SUVs.    Here we are, with its most competitive C- and […]

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