Here’s a Christmas treat, an hour in to Christmas Day in New Zealand. Bing Crosby’s Merrie Olde Christmas, filmed in 1977 33 days before the crooner’s passing, featured a duet between Bingo and David Bowie. Taped on September 11, 1977, the special aired after Crosby’s death, on November 30. The set is supposedly the […]
Tag: media
Roy Axe gives a sincere look at his career
Keith Adams is well known to many motorheads out there. We probably encountered him initially at his excellent AROnline, formerly The Unofficial Austin–Rover Resource. More recently, some of us have got to know Keith as a writer for Octane, where his well researched articles remind me of some of the best motoring journalists’ work. They […]
Wikileaks’ brand of transparency is the enemy of the establishment
There are probably two things, chiefly, that fuel support for Julian Assange. First, the idea that the mainstream media are not independent, but merely mouthpieces for the establishment. There’s some truth to this. Secondly, the fact that Wikileaks is revealing, this time, things that we already knew: that governments are two-faced. While […]
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The Julian Assange affair looks like a Smith and Jones gag
In the news: Julian Assange. While the prosecutor in Sweden is denying it, the lesson here seems to be: publish a Wikileak naming anti-Taliban Afghan sources and risk getting them killed, and nothing happens to you. Publish a Wikileak embarrassing the United States, and get the whole media talking, while you’re charged with rape. […]
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TPPA could turn the clock back
During the campaign trail, people tended to ask me if I was left or right. While I cheekily said, ‘Forward,’ many a time (and had at least one imitator), there’s something to be said for abandoning what are, effectively, nineteenth-century constructs. And unless you are DI Alex Drake in Ashes to Ashes, you need […]
Putting a full site feed on a Facebook fan page is not a good idea
Even though more young women are spending time on Facebook at the exclusion of other sites, last night I decided to stop connecting the Lucire RSS feed in to its Facebook fan page. We began the fan page very late, having relied on using a Facebook group. And even then, these were promoted half-heartedly. […]
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Igovt hates my answers
I signed up to the Igovt site for the New Zealand Government today, allowing citizens a single log-on for e-government services (such as the Companies’ Office, where we have to file annual returns). In case you forget your password, you can choose from a variety of security questions they can ask you. The following […]
The “next Google” has to save the web
Spotted on Tumblr yesterday, via Dave Sparks: ‘Why Facebook Browsing Annihilates Web Browsing’, on the Fast Company blogs. The intro pretty much summarizes the whole piece: Recent research suggests that Facebook is overtaking search engines in terms of “time spent” on the web. Want to see where the trendline is heading? Take a look […]
A weekend of malware
I’m prepared to eat humble pie if one of our sites is actually distributing malware (naturally without any knowledge or action on our part). According to Google, Autocade is doing just that, as of the 23rd: Of the 3 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 3 page(s) resulted in […]
Happy birthday, Lucire
Above The first issue of Lucire in 1997. Below right Lucire’s first iPad cover. [Cross-posted at Lucire] An hour ago, we turned 13. Normally this wouldn’t have merited much of a mention, since 13’s not the sort of number people tend to celebrate. But I happened to be up, after a long day catching up […]