The death of the Queen Mother brought a huge rise in traffic to the official British monarchy website, with it jumping more than 2500 places in the hitwise.co.nz rankings.
The official Royals site site has links on the front page to either the main site or to the Queen Mum tribute site where you can read about her life, send a message of condolence or even download a poster of her.
The BBC News website, which showed the ceremonial procession and the funeral by streamed webcast, also recorded increased traffic, along with the Westminster Abbey site.
Meanwhile, back in New Zealand, it’s election year. The Alliance site doesn’t make any mention of the party’s recent split, However, the Green Party’s site is very green, reminds me of a line from the old Tom Lehrer song Pollution – “don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air” (or in this case, don’t drink the water and don’t eat the chicken) – but it does mention the Alliance split.
You might need sunglasses to cope with the bright red background on Labour’s site and the soft-focus photo of Helen Clark really doesn’t even look like her. Apart from that, you can check out what’s happening throughout the country that the Government’s feeling proud about by clicking on the on-site map. Act’s site is available in both Chinese and English and looking at the Southern Sting-like colours in the party’s logo made me wonder if Richard Prebble, Rodney Hide and Gerry Eckhoff are planning to become the travelling cheer squad for our champion netballers. And of course there’s the National Party’s site with Southland’s own Bill English and family smiling out at us from the screen.
If you can’t wait until the election to vote, here’s your chance to make a difference.
M&Ms is running a worldwide promotion where consumers can go to the company’s website and vote for a new colour for M&Ms. Make your vote count!