interweb

Categories under interweb

  • No categories

The story Bill English doesn’t want you to see

Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, September 22nd, 2009 - 43 comments

On Wednesday last week, Labour released new information on Bill English’s housing allowance rort. Naturally, the media raised the issues with English. TVOne and TV3 ran stories that night. They weren’t particularly harsh stories. They didn’t really editorialise. They didn’t even say English should give the money back or resign. Later that night, in a fury […]

Apps.gov

Written By: - Date published: 3:26 pm, September 17th, 2009 - 1 comment

‘In these tough economic times, the government must buy smarter,’ said Vivek Kundra, the US federal chief information officer, as he unveiled the Obama administration’s new government storefront for cloud computing applications and services. It’s not ok for the government here to blame it’s lack of ambitious policy initiatives on the recession. What Obama is […]

Flood Maps

Written By: - Date published: 10:42 am, September 7th, 2009 - 62 comments

Marty G’s last post just reminded me of this – visualise who goes under as the oceans rise with Flood Maps. And yeah, before you start, 14m is a big big rise. Just let it serve as a warning to all you Aucklanders to swap out those incandescent bulbs.

Our Political Blogosphere

Written By: - Date published: 3:45 pm, August 25th, 2009 - 11 comments

Denis Welch educating the broader public about the New Zealand political blogosphere on RNZ’s 9 to Noon today with Lynn Freeman. A pretty fair synopsis and well worth a quick listen. (9:19 mins total)

Ultra-fast broadband? Eventually, but not now

Written By: - Date published: 8:46 am, August 25th, 2009 - 17 comments

For what seems like the fiftieth time, we’re being told to expect an announcement from Steven Joyce on the shape of the Government’s ultra-fast broadband investment programme. It’s been nine months now and he hasn’t managed to produce anything solid, let alone get the legislative process underway. Before the election, we were told that $1.5 […]

Secret moves to censor the net

Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, July 16th, 2009 - 34 comments

Does it seem odd to you that on March 20th 2009 the Minister for IT & Comms, Mr Steven Joyce, said the following: “We have been following the internet filtering debate in Australia but have no plans to introduce something similar here. … The technology for internet filtering causes delays for all internet users. And unfortunately those who are […]

Beginning of the end

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, July 10th, 2009 - 3 comments

American news report from 1981 about the coming age of “newspapers by computer”. Classic.

Is it any wonder the papers are dying?

Written By: - Date published: 4:34 pm, June 18th, 2009 - 19 comments

Taken just now from the front page of Stuff.co.nz: Here’s something a little more substantial you might enjoy.

The Standard now largest NZ political blog?

Written By: - Date published: 2:47 pm, May 24th, 2009 - 110 comments

No, not because we’ve overtaken Kiwiblog in readership just yet (although ours is growing at a healthy 10% a month) but because I don’t think we can call Kiwiblog a political blog any more. 1) A blog is meant to be writers giving their views on issues; a web-based log of their thoughts, if you […]

The crisis of credit visuali[s]ed

Written By: - Date published: 2:02 pm, May 22nd, 2009 - 3 comments

I just came across this. It’s the first part of a video by a US organisation called A New Way Forward. They’re organising nationwide video screenings of the extended version as well as town hall meetings and demonstrations to demand that their government “break up the insolvent banks and never again let them get so […]

Virtual tour of the White House

Written By: - Date published: 12:44 pm, May 21st, 2009 - 3 comments

Floor plans, photos and explanations, even a comparison of the real west wing with the set from the TV show The West Wing. Cool.

Another one bites the dust

Written By: - Date published: 10:34 am, April 28th, 2009 - 52 comments

And so another of John Key’s “big ideas” is shown to have been costed by monkeys. Treasury study suggests fibre plan will fall short: A study commissioned by the Treasury has warned it would cost between $5.3 billion and $10.4b to connect three-quarters of New Zealand homes with fibre-optic cable using the Government’s preferred active […]

Econopocalypse

Written By: - Date published: 12:33 pm, March 31st, 2009 - 1 comment

My pick for word of the day.

Update: Shepard Fairey v AP

Written By: - Date published: 2:48 pm, March 27th, 2009 - Comments Off on Update: Shepard Fairey v AP

Over at his site Shepard Fairey, the creater of the Obama “HOPE” poster, has an update on his legal wrangle with the Associated Press. I’m sure a lot of people are wondering about my case with the AP over the Obama HOPE poster. I can’t talk about every aspect of the case, but there are […]

Healthy Homes, Healthy Kiwis

Written By: - Date published: 4:37 pm, March 17th, 2009 - 42 comments

Well I’ll be, it seems Labour is finally starting to act like an opposition. They’ve set up a campaign website on home insulation – Healthy Homes, Healthy Kiwis – and have started a petition calling on the Government to commit to a home-insulation retrofitting programme. It’s not a bad looking website, and they’ve even managed […]

Shepard Fairey

Written By: - Date published: 4:12 pm, February 24th, 2009 - 2 comments

Good Copy Bad Copy (repost)

Written By: - Date published: 2:06 pm, February 24th, 2009 - Comments Off on Good Copy Bad Copy (repost)

I posted on this in the early days of The Standard but now might be a good time to check it out if you haven’t seen it already – the copyright, piracy, free culture documentary “Good Copy Bad Copy”. You can (legally) download the hi res version from bittorrent here – if you do, consider […]

Clare Curran on s92(a)

Written By: - Date published: 10:40 am, February 20th, 2009 - 17 comments

Yesterday, Labour’s communications and IT spokesperson, Clare Curran, sought Parliament’s leave to introduce a Bill to attempt to fix s92(a), the ‘guilt by accusation’ provision in the Copyright Act that is about to come into force. Any MP can deny leave and National did so. Following that, and her comment on the blog yesterday, we […]

The Standard and s92a.

Written By: - Date published: 6:20 pm, February 19th, 2009 - 40 comments

I’m not going to go over the whys and wherefores of this clause of the new copyright act. No Right Turn, Just Left, Public Address and David Farrar already have. I have a lot of sympathy for the intent of this clause. Many of the people I come into contact with do creative work, including […]

Obama’s elf

Written By: - Date published: 5:01 pm, February 18th, 2009 - 11 comments

I’ve tried all day not to post this, now I’m giving in to get a good night’s sleep.

Protest against copyright law

Written By: - Date published: 12:29 pm, February 18th, 2009 - 17 comments

Creative Freedom NZ has organised a protest against the “guilt by accusation” copyright law tomorrow in Wellington: When: 12:00, Thursday 19 February Where: Parliament forecourt Wear: Bright colours, with a black placard. Please head along and show your support for natural justice. [Hat tip (in fact nicked verbatim from) No Right Turn] [Update, time has […]

That’s strange

Written By: - Date published: 2:49 pm, February 17th, 2009 - 13 comments

An hour ago No Right Turn posted a piece citing what was apparently a Ministry of Social Development press release, which he says was “confirmation that the government is planning to slash 500 to 1000 people from the Ministry of Social Development”. He gives a link to scoop for the presser. But Scoop has since taken it down […]

Worrying, or what I did with my holidays

Written By: - Date published: 12:47 pm, January 26th, 2009 - 59 comments

I’ve meaning to write a wee post thanking Young Labour for inviting me along to speak at their Summer School the other weekend. I’m told it’s a bit of a tradition at these summer schools to have some speakers from outside the party to give a different perspective, which is a bloody good idea. Falling […]

Watch Obama’s inauguration live

Written By: - Date published: 11:58 pm, January 20th, 2009 - 6 comments

The embedded stream below is meant to work even outside the US. Fingers crossed. If you find/know of another good live source drop the link in the comments. [UPDATE: 10:30am Live stream below removed – replaced with recorded oath and address] YouTube’s “inauguration” channel is here, but it’s probably not live. Might be good to […]

I hope so too

Written By: - Date published: 7:13 pm, January 18th, 2009 - 22 comments

Here’s a cool interactive feature from the NYT – “I hope so too”:  The New York Times asked more than 200 people in 14 states (half red, half blue) to identify their greatest hopes for what Barack Obama might accomplish during his time as president. Their answers do not represent any kind of scientific sample—they […]

Internet campaigning

Written By: - Date published: 2:39 pm, January 12th, 2009 - 2 comments

There have been two interesting pieces from the Guardian recently on the way UK Labour are beginning to embrace the opportunities of the internet for political campaigning. The first is here and describes Labour’s spoof of an online meeting of the shadow Tory cabinet (pictured above). The second is here and details UK Labour’s new ‘broad […]

Streetview sleuthing

Written By: - Date published: 4:42 pm, January 9th, 2009 - 2 comments

Nikki Kaye might be right to fear Google’s watchful eye but police in Massachusetts have used streetview to solve the alleged kidnapping of a 9-year-old girl by her grandmother. A Massachusetts-based officer used the phone company’s GPS records to narrow his search then used Google’s streetview to take a guess at the likely hideout – a hotel, hundreds […]

Police nurture a unwise form of direct democracy

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, January 7th, 2009 - 27 comments

 The Economist has an fascinating article “Rioters of the world unite“. It is partially about the demonstrations, protests, and outright riots in Athens and other parts of Greece at the end of last year. It is also partially concerned with a rising trend in new ways to not organize, and still be politically effective.  The […]

Estonians to vote by mobile phone

Written By: - Date published: 2:05 pm, December 15th, 2008 - 23 comments

Last Thursday, while our new government was making it easier for businesses to fire employees, politicans in Estonia were making it easier for people to vote. In Estonia’s 2011 parliamentary election people will be able to vote via mobile phone. The system apparently “requires that voters obtain free, authorized chips for their phones” which are used […]

Red ink

Written By: - Date published: 11:01 pm, December 12th, 2008 - 26 comments

Hilarious. Jon’s got a serious point though. Newspapers worldwide are in trouble. Many predict they will soon have to be handed out free to commuters in an attempt to keep circulation high enough to run on advertising. Here in New Zealand, the major newspapers’ circulation fell 4% in the last year alone. APN and Fairfax, the duopoly which […]

Merriam Webster word of the year: Bailout

Written By: - Date published: 3:39 pm, December 3rd, 2008 - 8 comments

It often provides an interesting take on what’s on people’s minds. The top ten was filled out by: Vet Socialism Maverick Bipartisan Trepidation Precipice Rogue Mysogeny Turmoil  Here’s the link.