I’m not a huge fan of tennis, although I do class it as a sport (unlike cricket). However, on the rare occasion I do manage to show enough interest to peer at the TV screen when a tennis ball is…
Grunty tennis chicks here to stay?
Category: In the news
Plucked from the headlines, online and in print
Marketing: how not to do it
I have never been a fan of Slingshot’s method of marketing but I’m even less inclined to think kindly of them after the recent news that they were regularly breaching Telecom’s security to gain an edge in the poaching of customers.…
Dear Oprah, got any holiday plans?
It looks like Oprah’s trip of Oz has been a big boost for our neighbours, with web traffic to the australia.com website up 120 percent in America after her first Down Under episode screened last week. Maybe we need to…
Fountain attempts to drown passing woman
In my Online column this week, I linked to the infamous “stupid woman falls in fountain as she walks and texts at the same time” video (click here and scroll down). Now the news is out that the aforementioned stupid…
Censorship: does it really help?
The news last week that the Dire Straits song Money For Nothing had been banned in Canada came as no great surprise but did leave me feeling a bit sad. And it was the confirmation that we are so ridiculously…
A cautionary tale of flatmate woe
You can’t help but feel sorry for the Queenstown bloke who came home from holiday last week to find his new flatmate had trashed his house. The roomie from hell moved in before Chrismas and the landlord/homeowner buggered off on…
Pope pleads for proper names
Listen up Posh and Becks: the Pope has had enough of parents opting for trendy, silly names. I never thought I’d see the day, but here I am agreeing with a man in a frock. Who’d have thunk it? Pope…
Million-dollar confusion
Okay, I’m confuddled. It seems a nice bloke from Christchurch (well, I’m assuming he’s a nice bloke, but in actual fact he could well be a total arsehole … but for the sake of this post let’s just continue to…
Living (and dying) online
These days we do so much of our living online I suppose it should come as no surprise that people are now choosing to die online. Bill Zeller chose to end his life in a very public way: he went…
Silver Fern Farms Te Aroha: disgusting behaviour
Silver Fern Farms is quite rightly getting slammed in cyberspace for their actions in docking the pay of their workers who observed the two minutes’ silence during the memorial service for the Pike River miners. Sure, there have been some…