Articles: General Interest

Meet us re your website

We always like to meet our clients if we can before we work with them. That allows them to be sure who they are dealing with and for us, to really understand their business needs and issues.

You can see our testimonials at http://www.netaction.co.nz/about-us/testimonials/
Case studies are at http://www.netaction.co.nz/about-us/case-studies/

If you would like to meet us and discuss SEO and anything else related to your website, please contact us.

We will be travelling between Auckland and Queenstown in August and September. If you are a Tourism business somewhere in between, let us know and we will arrange to have a no obligation meeting with you. You get to pick our brains for free!

Advice & Planning, General Interest, Our Services, Tourism Market Info

Objection to Increasing Commissions on bookings

Tourism Accommodation Australia (TAA) is calling on travellers to bypass Online Travel Agencies (OTA’s) like Booking.com and to book direct in response to recent commission rate increases.

Expedia and Priceline dominate the OTA market so are now in a position where they can dictate the terms even more and have recently increased commission rates. Expedia now owns Wotif and Priceline owns Agoda and Hooroo.

TAA is making a case with ACCC (Commerce regulator) to ensure that the OTAs don’t follow the European and US trends where booking commissions have now reached 20% plus.

From recent discussions with our clients, we know how concerned operators are about increase in the amount of commissions they are now paying and looking for ways to maximise direct bookings from their own websites.

View the full article at http://www.tourismaccommodation.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/TAA-MR-Hooroo-OTAs-May-15.pdf

Or contact us to see how to maximise direct bookings from your own website.

General Interest, Tourism Industry News, Tourism Market Info

Serving Legal Documents via Facebook

Police, government agencies and prospective employers have been using Facebook and other social media sites to find information about people for some time. But it is actually also legal for documents to be served on people via social media such as Facebook (actually it has been for quite awhile).

In many cases it is easy for people to hide their physical address. But if they are actively using social media for regular posts, you can find them relatively easily if you need to!

For more information see https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/lawtalk/lawtalk-archives/issue-835/serving-documents-by-facebook and
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10561970

For legal advice on this and any conditions, check with your legal advisor.

Facebook, General Interest

Teenager Text Acronyms

A CNN report noted in the NZ Herald lists 28 texting acronyms (abbreviations) used by teenagers.

Most relate to sex and drugs so we haven’t published it here – if you want to see it go to

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/internet/news/article.cfm?c_id=137&objectid=11375622

But be warned, it could shock you if you have teenagers.

A much more complete list of all acronyms (including these) is at

http://www.netlingo.com/acronyms.php
or
http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations.asp

Something else useful for the Xmas lunch conversation!

Facebook, General Interest

The Year 2038 problem

Remember the Y2k problem where the world was expected to end because computers did not know what to do when the year 2000 was reached?

Well start preparing, a similar issue will arise if you are still using a 32 bit computer on Tuesday 19 January 2038!

Technically it is because “when the clock strikes 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038, a total of 2147483647 seconds since 1 January 1970 will have passed. Computers will then not be able to distinguish between the real time and date, and the year 1901.”

You don’t need to wait till them to have the problem hit you though – it may affect you sooner if you are trying to enter the year 2038 into any of your programmes (eg maybe financial planning etc)

The easy solution is to run 64 or 128 bit operating systems (like later versions of Windows). The majority of PC’s were expected to be capable of running 64 bit systems by this year. Not sure when exactly 64 bit systems will crash but it is way, way further into the future.

see http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=11375717 for more info.

So what use is this and why am I telling you? Just interesting and a piece of useless information that you might be able to drop into the Xmas lunch conversation to show how intelligent and well informed you are!! Hope it helps you to make small talk with that (not) favourite rellie that you never ever see and have nothing in common with!

General Interest, Operating Systems

Google Top Searches 2014

Google recently released its list of top 2014 searches – unsurprisingly much the same as the 2013 list apart from topical news items.

Most Googled terms for kiwis: –

On the ‘How to’ list:
how to dream?
how to twerk?”

Number one on the “who is?” list was Jesus.

On the ‘Where is’ list:
Where is Gallipoli?
Where is Glasgow?

Other top searches

The referendum for Scottish independence. Fifa World Cup, followed by actor Robin Williams, Malaysia Airlines, iPhone 6 and actor Jennifer Lawrence

Kiwi news searches included

Malaysian Airlines Crash, Cyclone Lusi, Ukraine News, Robin Williams’ Death and Ebola Outbreak.

Lorde topped the list of most searched Kiwis, and Mona Dotcom made the list but Kim didn’t – I guess he was in the news so much that people already knew what they wanted to about him.

For food it was pancakes, banana cake, chicken recipes, cupcake, mince, chocolate cake, lasagna, brownie, slow cooker and cheesecake

For more on the Google 2014 list and trends see
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/googles-top-2014-search-terms-may-look-familiar/
and
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/internet/news/article.cfm?c_id=137&objectid=11375297

General Interest, Google General

Rolling Stone Album Price

Just to start with something completely different – did you know that a Rolling Stones album which cost £2 in 1966 is $74 in today’s money! That’s a big change from free downloads!

I am sure there are a few of you who still remember (though you might not admit to it) those old black things called records (albums)! They were before CD’s, DVD’s, USBs, mp3s and ITunes in case you younger folk out there are wondering.

Google “LP Record” if you don’t know what they are – haha!

The Stones were (are) good but would you pay $74 now (for anyone’s music)?

General Interest, The future?