the perils of social media

Fairfax bought into social media in a big way - they are now finding out that the beast bites as well as feeds. This from the NZ Herald:

"The $92 tickets for the three April shows in Auckland and Wellington sold out in minutes but within hours some had been listed on Trade Me. The bids have sky-rocketed as more tickets were listed. Last night there were almost 40 listings, with pairs of tickets costing as much as $735.

In the last week, 224 auctions for One Direction tickets have been listed on Trade Me. The One Direction concerts weren't one of the Ministry of Economic Development's events under the Major Events Management Act so it was legal to on-sell tickets" - Trade Me spokesman Mr Ford said.

May I suggest that if just one of the disaffected teenagers makes a video of their problem re this issue & posts it to youtube, it will go viral - & cause Fairfax one hell of a problem....that's all it takes....I've tried it with LG & Orcon when I had problems & no joy from customer support.....& I can tell you it works!!

read the article:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10791359http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10791359

And check this article out on the same subject from the Sydney Morning Herald:
"The power of social media is far greater than any single message. And it will be used for misinformation as well as information, for ill as well as good."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/the-good-bad-and-ugly-of-social-media-20120309-1upv3.html#ixzz1oszZ0BI4

business chinese-style

 Sunday Star Times 11 Dec 2011:

 Those touting increased business links with China and the sale of NZ farmland to Chinese businessmen may find this article an interesting read. Dubious business schemes in China have evidently "seen many people flee".

"A decade of soaring economic growth has also fuelled a fraud boom that Chinese academics say has seen more than US$130 billion spirited out of the country by corrupt officials....foreign governments had been asked to help repatriate some company owners, preferably with the money they took......A Bank of China report recently found that almost half of the country's millionaires were considering leaving."

NZ seems to be a destination of choice.

I had planned to post a link to the article, but at
 www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx
the Star Times wants readers to pay to read last year's news online - somehow I don't think so.
Where I come from it's an old custom to use even yesterday's papers to wrap fish and chips in.

taking notes for essays

Many of you writing essays will be as annoyed as I am to find that previous readers of library books have underlined or highlighted text.
To facilitate the taking of notes for essay-writing, I have devised the following strategy: as I read the book, I make notes on a sheet of paper of relevant quotes/sections which I wish to use, in brief form eg in the pictured example:
"xiii/2" means "page xiii paragraph two". The "6" below the line indicates that the words begin on the sixth line from the bottom of the paragraph (a number above the line = the # of lines from the beginning of the paragraph). I add a few keywords here: "moves from serious, silly, grotesque-pathetic" tell me that this passage is to do with the form of the film.
The quotes are from a book by Kezich.

 Using this method means that I can read all day & take notes, then sit down at the keyboard and type them out.

I can sort the notes from different books into groups - eg for my Fellini essay headings include "sound', "cutting", "recurrent images, & "themes".

When I come to put it all together I can then easily cut'n'paste in the masterdraft - keeping an eye on the word-count.
Sometimes I print the notes out & cut the most relevant paragraphs out with scissors and arrange them on sheets of paper....that's because I used to use a typewriter to write my essays way back last century.

big brother

 There are an increasing number of media reports pointing out the perils of online activities. Basically everything we do online is logged, and the information is sold to the highest bidder.
The notion of "privacy" is fast-becoming a quaint,  old-fashioned 20th century notion.

Weekend Herald Sat March 3 2012:
"Smartphone apps can gain access to your phone contacts, quietly make calls, read and send text messages, record your exact location and take photos.
And many of your actions are tracked and analysed for advertisers or app developers - even a game of Angry Birds.......
Telecommunications Users Association chief executive Paul Brislen said".......' all too often we are very quick to give [up] all kinds of data without really thinking of the implications, about where the company is based and about just what is happening with your data once you hand it over'..."

read the full article here

30 days hath september..........

If you have faith in computers & IT devices have a look at this photo - taken at the local branch of my bank last week:

there is no app for imagination

Steve Robs Kids: despite all the hype, & the jokes ("there's an app for that") - apps are basically revenue-gathering, data-collating moles...ie in old hippie terms: bullshit.
Remember - there is no app for imagination.
Steve has robbed an entire generation of their imaginations...we see not gen-y nor gen-z...we experience gen-Dumbed-down....we thought Disney was bad - this Apple is rotten.


"Apple customers downloaded more than 15 billion applications in the past three years, the company said on Thursday, releasing figures that suggest the rate of downloads is sharply accelerating.
The latest figures from Apple show that customers have downloaded around 5 billion apps so far this year, considering the company said in January that it had just passed the 10 billion download mark.
It took roughly two and a half years to reach 10 billion downloads - but much of the period was spent without the popular iPad tablet, which has driven the demand for apps.
Apple has paid developers more than US$2.5 billion ($3 billion) to develop for its online store, which currently contains around 425,000 apps for iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches, it said." stuffnz

Sunday Star Times "Digital" March 4..2012: "...more than 31 billion apps were downloaded  to mobile devices  in 2011....mobile apps will generate U$52 billion by 2016".


However, this isn't about money - it's about power...if you can control minds and hearts, then spending & voting patterns will follow.
The corporations will be able to do anything they want to achieve their ends.
Make no mistake - this is all a power game - who controls the web controls the world.

google sucks

 google is taking a very high-handed approach to its "customer service" - ie there ain't any.

They keep changing the "look"of gmail & youtube - all to their advantage & as per their agenda:  sucking up our personal data so they can "monetize" our use of their services.

I guess there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

hahahahahahah - don't even bother to try

The good thing on the horizon is that even the Roman Empire didn't last 1,000 years.

My prediction is that google won't even make it till the middle of this century - some smart folks will have figured that out & a truely user-friendly net model is about to be launched sometime soon.