I thought political division got you nowhere in New Zealand
Share A week and a half ago, I appeared on Back Benches to talk about Winston Peters MP’s “two Wongs” joke, and confined my comments to that. My response, ‘There are still people who enjoy watching...
View ArticleWhen the parties uploaded their opening statements to their YouTube accounts
Share This is when each political party uploaded their opening broadcasts to their official YouTube accounts. Ideally, they should have gone up on Saturday night, when they were broadcast on television,...
View ArticleBrand Kim Dotcom: what has changed?
Share Equal access: an audio recording of this blog post can be found here. It’s disturbing to see so many Kim Dotcom jokes post-General Election, with plenty of Kiwis happy to ridicule the bloke...
View ArticleLittle Big Man was antiestablishment, as is big man Little: straight talk is...
Share The Hon Andrew Little MP has had a good first week as Leader of the Opposition. Some are saying what a breath of fresh air this straight-shooter is. He’s been an MP for three years. And in the...
View ArticleNational and Labour in the General Election, summarized for non-Kiwis
Share Would this be the easiest way to explain how the two major parties were during the General Election this year to those overseas? First, National; second, Labour.
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A year of random thoughts: 2014 in review
Share For the last few years, I’ve looked back at the events of the year in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. (In fact, in 2009, I looked back at the decade.) Tumblr’s the place I look at these days for these...
View ArticleTime for a rewatch: Reza Aslan interviewed on CNN about Muslim violence
Share Found on my wall today. While it’s over three months old, the responses from Prof Reza Aslan of the University of California Riverside address a lot of the comments that have surfaced...
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FCC rules in favour of ’net neutrality (at least we think it has)
Share I’ve gone into the reasons I support ’net neutrality elsewhere, but it was nice to hear about this on the wireless: even though we still don’t know the specifics, as the FCC has kept this to...
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YouTube switches on my search history again, all in the quest to get more...
Share Check your YouTube settings: even if you switch off your search history, Google may turn it on again Here I was, telling friends that 2014 marked the first year in which I didn’t have to call...
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Facebook forced me to download their anti-malware, and my own antivirus gets...
Share When Facebook says it cares about security, I laugh. Every day I see bots, spammers and click-farm workers plague the site, and despite reporting them, Facebook lets them stay. It will make a...
View ArticleOrganizing this planet in the 21st century
Share As he has done so many other times since we encountered each other in 2001, Simon Anholt has articulated my thoughts on governance and politics much better than I can through his ventures. I...
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No surprises as Facebook slips to third in Alexa, but tech press misses it
Share Above: Facebook’s latest move: ensuring that notifications for messages go to its own app. If you choose not to install it, tough. (Actually, you can reach your messages if you had bookmarked...
View ArticleHappy and glorious
Share As one of HM the Queen’s loyal and humble servants, I wish her a happy 90th birthday and include this YouTube video of one of her most memorable moments of recent times. A bit of the ‘Dambusters...
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A farewell to Tim Kitchin
Share For the second time in two months, I found myself announcing to the members of Medinge Group another passing: that of my good friend Tim Kitchin. Tim passed away over the weekend, and leaves...
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All I really know is who I won’t vote for
Share One thing I love about New Zealand is that we’re not mired in an election cycle years before the event. We’re three weeks or so out from our General Election, and only now am I feeling things are...
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YouTube under fire for child exploitation videos—with ‘three unpaid...
Share The Murdoch Press has rightly kept its pressure up on Google, with a cover story in The Times, ‘Adverts fund paedophile habits’ on November 24 (the online version, behind a paywall, is here)....
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It can’t be that hard to rank media meritoriously, if only the big players...
US Department of Defense Keen to be seen as the establishment, and that means working with the military–industrial complex, Google is making software to help the Pentagon analyse drone footage, and...
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The decline continues: Facebook pages no longer accept YouTube links
Many of you know that I no longer use Facebook for my personal stuff. However, there are still work things to do, although I’ve noticed Facebook pages get more and more useless by the day. Here are the...
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In line with what I discovered in 2011: Google tracks your location even...
The Associated Press had an exclusive this week: Google does not obey your opt-out preferences. I could have told you that in 2011. Oh wait, I did. And I pointed out other instances where Google...
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Autocade hits 14,000,000 page views, and we start a YouTube channel
Above: Behind the scenes of the Škoda Karoq road test for Autocade. I hadn’t kept track of Autocade’s statistics for a while, and was pleasantly surprised to see it had crossed 14,000,000 page views...
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