The beauty of not having something

26.02.2025/10.27

I’ve told the story about not having Noelene Morris’s The Lettering Book as a child, because I knew the NZ$5 was outside my parents’ budget. Ultimately, this was a good thing and it led me to remember and create typeface designs, later becoming the first digital font designer in New Zealand. Another item came to […]

Another nonsense “SEO” word appears on the web

24.01.2025/21.44

I’ve noticed another nonsense word make its way on to the search engines: appkod. Similarly to how Semrush told users that jackyan was trending alongside Google SEO, there are weird web pages all over with SEO service appkod or similar combinations, such as Appkod SEO Agency and Instagram marketing Appkod. A Pakistani company has adopted […]

Wrapping up the year of disinformation?

13.01.2025/11.59

I thought Emerald Sky Group had removed its disinformation post, falsely claiming to be working with me and having my endorsement. It’s a blatant attempt to trade off my reputation, even though I’ve spotted articles where their lads are bragging about how good they are. Well, you can’t be that good if you need to […]

Swedish privacy watchdog: stop using Google Analytics

03.07.2023/22.28

This is good advice from Sweden’s privacy watchdog. Most countries should follow suit with their citizens’ data. IMY, the watchdog, noted (my italics for house style): ‘IMY issues an administrative fine of 12 million SEK against Tele2 and 300,000 SEK against CDON, which has not taken the same extensive protective measures as Coop […]

If you’re in the ‘New Zealand can’t’ camp, then you’re not a business leader

04.10.2020/10.04

Which club is the better one to belong to? The ones who have bent the curve down and trying to eliminate COVID-19, or the ones whose curves are heading up? Apparently Air New Zealand’s boss thinks the latter might be better for us. From Stuff today, certain ‘business leaders’ talk about the New Zealand […]

COVID-19 infections as a percentage of tests done: April 13 update

13.04.2020/11.11

I can cite these COVID-19 calculations (infections as a proportion of tests done) with a bit more confidence than the last lot, where many countries’ testing figures had not updated. I see the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has released its total test numbers now, and they show a pretty good result, too. Compared to […]

One more COVID-19 post: graphing and animating the data

06.04.2020/08.52

Russell Brown linked this COVID-19 trend page by Aatish Bhatia on his Twitter recently, and it’s another way to visualize the data. There are two axes: new confirmed cases (over the past week) on the y and total confirmed cases on the x. It’s very useful to see how countries are performing over time as […]

A couple of days before it became official: thoughts on PSA and FCA linking up

01.11.2019/06.25

Companies in FCA’s and PSA’s histories did once produce the Plymouth Horizon, so historically there is some precedent to a trans-Atlantic arrangement—not to mention the type 220 and 179 minivans and the commercial vehicles currently in PSA’s and Fiat’s ranges. This is a few days old, but it’s nice to know that these hurriedly written […]

The EU lands Google with another fine—but will Google change?

19.07.2018/12.54

Zain Ali The EU gets it when it comes to fines. Rather than the paltry US$17 million certain US states’ attorneys-general stung Google with some years ago for hacking Iphones, they’ve now fined the search engine giant €4,340 million, on top of its earlier fine of €2,420 million over anticompetitive behaviour. That US$17 […]

Where’s Bojo? He’s been outmanœuvred by David Cameron

27.06.2016/11.52

BBC Some of those Guardian readers are smart. Unlike the comments’ section on certain New Zealand newspaper websites, or on YouTube, it was a pleasure to read this one about Brexit on the left-leaning British newspaper’s site. If you’ve hashtagged #whereisboris or wondered why Boris Johnson and Michael Gove looked so downbeat in their moment […]