A few days ago I thought I'd post some bollocks on Rod Donald, a politician for our Watermelon (Green) Party...

It's already up to number three on Goggle! Somebody up there loves me....

DPF is moving to Qantas.... and I'm a long time bitcher on the state of Air New Zealand so I'd better have my say.

I'm not too fussed about the whole Airpoints thing as much these days to be honest.... Fares are now becoming so checp that it's easier just to buy them- Taes and levies make up a huge proportion of the fare anyway and Airpoints doesn't pay for these.

What is important to me are those Status credit things. Reason being is that Air NZ is a shitty little South Pacific Airline and in order for me to get anywhere around the world I'm likely to have to travel with both Air NZ and one of their Star Alliance partners. Now I've got a Koru Club membership, but that doesn't mean DIDDLES when you are flying on a Singapore Airlines SGN-BJS sector. I'm big enough and ugly enough to look aftermyself down the back of the plane, but, I appreciate a nice shower at either end.

Hence the need for Status credits- a Gold status level lets you use Star Alliance Lounges internationally. Now Air NZ have markedly cut back on my ability to earn these credits and they are still tied to the Airpoints system. I would ike to see them seperated from the Airpoints system and still earnt on Smart Saver flights. Another option would be to set up a policy that Koru Club members earn credits and maybe even airpoints on all flights. We have after all plumped up with a decent cash commitment to the airline in terms of loyalty and we are probably the group of customers that they would like to be most loyal- I probably do about 30-40 flights of mixed domestic and international a year. Status credits are a threshold based loyalty system. They expire anually and aren't worth anything if you don't meet the threshold. I believe that they are the key mechanism to ensuring loyalty from SME business travelers in this hot market.

I'm having an aggregatorial day today... some interesting stuff in the ether though.....

From Dare

A friend of mine, Justin, had an interesting idea at dinner yesterday. What if Google ends up building the network computer? They can give users the storage space and reliability to run place all their data online. They can mimic the major desktop applications users interact with daily by using Web technologies. This sounds far fetched but then again, I'd have never imagined I'd see a free email service that gave 1GB of free email.

Seems everyone is taking the Red Pill.....

http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/7285.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/gad

maybe the lawyers forgot to talk t the webmaster....

http://linspire.com/lindows_products_license.php

Seems that yet again Tech Ed New Zealand will fill one of NZ's largest conference venues to capacity.

I'll be there! Will you? Let me know in the comments and we can catch up.... talk some politics and have a beer maybe.

The Keynote looks fantastic... a great surprise to pull out of the box... checkout what you're missing.

Deviating from the usual TechEd keynote, we are very pleased to bring you Dr. Joseph MacInnis, one of the world's foremost explorers and innovative thinkers. Dr MacInnis was the first man to dive under the North Pole, was a consultant to the Titanic discovery team and the discoverer of the world's most northern shipwreck.

http://pluralsight.com/blogs/mike/archive/2004/05/25/415.aspx

at least I think it's funny.

Was wandering around the Green Party Website today as stumbled upon their 'Spokesperson for Rainbow Issues' Mr Richard Davies...

Reckons he has

five degrees from Cambridge, Oxford & London Universities (BA, MA, Dip Th, Dip Ed, Dip ESOL).

Methinks that Mr Davies might do well to enrol in a 'How to tell the difference between a degree and a diploma' course. By my reckoning he's still a few short of his five. Maybe he can scrounge a few more of the back of an Organic Cereal Box somewhere...

... and what's all this Rainbow shit! Why can't they just call it like it is- it's gay rights! Good on them for having a spokesperson on it but 'Rainbow Issues'!?! Give us a break!

You know, that funky search tool that Microsoft just purchased....

get it here

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=09b835ee-16e5-4961-91b8-2200ba31ea37&displaylang=en

Compare the Sue Kedgely release

With the Official Food Safety Authority release

She is a fruitloop! I'm too busy working to really have a decent go at all of her claims but to take but one:

Even then, mussels and oysters were found to contain elevated levels of heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium and lead.

Seafoods have always and will always have high levels of these metals because the environment in which they live has high levels of those metals as a result of quite natural phenomena. Even the Greenie web sites note this.

Grrrrrr......

Such good content but no bloody capital letters!

http://tatochip.com/archive/2004/07/19/2678.aspx

http://www.brains-N-brawn.com

Chris Johnson is raving about his Smartphone2 (Qtek 8080).... all I can say is DITTO...

My Pocket PCs stay on my desk these days...

Sometime soon I'll post my grumbles about the Smartphone platform... but, I could NEVER in 1,000,000 years go back to haveing a dumbphone for a mobile....

When pretty much everything sounds fantastic... Trance sounds the most fantastic...

We drew the curtains and darkened the room. Justin played for hours. Dreamily I would once in a while say things like, "Could you do the 2nd Area again? That's my favorite."

After many of my langorous gasps and moans, we stopped playing, and tried to analyze the gameplay experience. "I don't know exactly what the game designers intended with that trance vibrator thing - but it had to be this, right?"

http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2002/10/26/sex_in_games_rezvibrator.html

A very cool 'Your Potential Our Passion' Flash app from MS.

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/innovation/yourpotential/main.html

I have mixed feelings about the 'Your Potential Our Passion' thing.... I really love it as a feel good marketing series and cncept but it's been overused in silly places here in NZ... Like playing the advert at a rugby match...... what a waste. But this flash app is VERY cool..... love to know who did it and what they spent on it? No hints in the code unfortunatly.... :-(
It even has subtitles for disability accesibility!

Check out this piccie of a fully frozen PC still running Windows!.... I used to do a lot of work with these industrial style PCs... VERY cool shot.
http://blogs.msdn.com/mcreasy/archive/2004/07/13/181857.aspx

No time to rip all your CD's? LoadPod will do it for you!  (Assuming you have an iPod and at least 50 CDs and are willing to pay $1.50 a CD and live in an area they service - which now includes Seattle).
http://blogs.msdn.com/mcreasy/archive/2004/07/13/181868.aspx
Now what I want to know is will they rip Vinyl!... that's what I want done!.... Thinking about hiring a student to do it!

That is all... back to work for me!