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I want to be alone
Sometimes you want a little conversation while riding the bus; sometimes you want a little privacy. You know how it is, you’re listening to Eno or some early Depeche Mode, while having a little quiet think, and someone just doesn’t get the “I want to be alone” message. Having your iPod ears in place should be a giveaway but, sadly, some folk need a stronger message. Well, here’s one way of getting the “talk, don’t talk” message across, courtesy of the always amusing BoingBoing website.
What can we say? The message says it all.
Wot, $750m for a server?
With all the excitement about Sam Morgan’s $750 million-plus sale of Trade Me it has been hard to elicit a balanced view – or, dare we say it, a cynical view. But, here’s one from a local businessman in the tech area: “That’s not a bad price for a server and 50 staff. Tell you what, I’ll give you two servers and no staff…”
This might not be what the analysts are saying, but it is certainly a down-to-earth perspective on the big sale. And, perhaps we need to hear such heretical views – it’s not so long ago that the dotcom bubble burst.
Our man also compared the Trade Me sale to the recent Australian sale of the Myers department stores, for A$1.4 billion (NZ$1.6 billion). “At least with that you’re getting about A$400 million worth of stock and maybe some buildings. The other’s just a website.”
Time will reveal the true worth of these things.
2 bk f%d txt quk
Any activity that involves texting is a hot-button one these days. So, it was with interest that E-tales read in Viva, the NZ Herald’s fluffy lifestyle supplement, that at least one restaurant, Auckland’s The Java Room, is now taking bookings by text.
It all caused a bit of a stir at Viva, around the question of whether one books using txt spk, or whether proper English – with punctuation – is the correct way to go. The thing is young texters don’t bother with commas etcetera, anyway… that’s one way you know you’ve entered a whole new world here. But, at the same time, the newer phones can translate text-speak into proper words, so proper English, if not proper punctuation, is making a come-back via the back door.
Fronde or foe?
Software developer Synergy has come up with a brand name, Fronde, for its new customised transaction-processing application. The company says it trawled through 800 possible names before settling on Fronde. Most of the alternatives had unfortunate associations in one language or another. This is a common problem when developing new brand names.
Apparently, Fronde is one way of referring to popular culture in Europe, which is, obviously, good. Not so good is the fact that, in relation to the French Revolution, it also means “civil war”. Happily, in New Zealand it is associated with the fern-leaf, which now often replaces the kiwi as our national symbol. But even here things can get problematic: there is a distant etymological link to the use of a strip of vegetation as a sling to heave stones at an enemy.
This meaning may contain a germ of truth, however, should you take the view that business is war by commercial means.
Granny gets there first
The study of bureaucracy is a fascinating occupation and, it seems that even when it comes to the internet, bureaucratic quirks remain.
An international Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has been formed as a result of discussions that took place at the recent World Summit on the Information Society organised by the United Nations. Naturally, the IGF has set up its own website. Which is fine, but its handle is so clumsy: www.intgovforum.org.
What was wrong with plain old www.igf.org? It was already taken, apparently, by the Royal Society for the Relief of Indigent Gentlewomen of Scotland. We kid you not. You have to be quick to beat a Scots granny to a guid domain name. And, no, we don't see the logic of the abbreviation either.
Perils of public humiliation
After telling his daughter to clean up her room once too often, Steve Williams, from the north of England, snapped and decided to shame her into action. His response? He set up a website featuring photos of her untidy room, called www.shameit.com. But our Steve didn’t reckon with the vicious reaction public humiliation can engender. Dad’s action certainly provoked a reaction from young Miss Williams, just not the one he’s hoped for. His daughter’s response was, with the help of some of her Dad’s friends, to produce her own website featuring photos of Dad in his younger years doing the silliest of things – Dad getting drunk; Dad dancing and drinking; Dad drunkenly dancing with a handbag… You get the idea.
Texting – the new smoking
It’s kind of good news, really: texting is the new smoking. According to a recent report in the Sydney Morning Herald, teens now see smoking as “old technology”, says British anti-smoking group Action on Smoking.
Smoking was always as much about rebellion as inhaling – hence the old stories about smoking behind the school bike sheds. (What are bike sheds in this age of school drop-offs by car?)
Apparently, the rise in teen mobile phone ownership has coincided with a drop in the number of youthful smokers. The thing is pocket money only goes so far and, we reckon, of the various reasons given, the fact that lots of kids now use texting to arrange their social lives is probably the killer (or non-killer, in this case) mobile use here. It seems smokos are no longer the essential social get-togethers they once were – at least as far as teens are concerned.
According to Action on Smoking, mobile phones meet a lot of teen needs: “maturity, individuality, sociability, peer-group bonding, rebellion and adult aspiration.”
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