Sponsor's Message

It seems that we can now claim that, at CeBit anyway, ours is bigger than our cousins' across the ditch.

That's nice isn't it?

Likewise, as I mentioned on Friday, the government is pouring nearly $100K into helping host an ICANN meeting here, with the laudable goal of again raising the profile of our ITC industries in the global marketplace.

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Now news stories like these are all well and good but, while they provide lots of warm fuzzies and allow a few bean-counting pencil-pushers to say "look at us, aren't we doing well" -- I want to see the bottom line results also published with as much fervor.

Sure, it's hard to quantify the effect of NZ's appearance at trade shows like CeBit -- but how about some mainstream media team does a follow-up and finds out just how many dollars have been returned to the nation's coffers as a result of that cool half-million dollars of taxpayers money that was spent.

It shouldn't be that difficult really -- just talk to those folks who can identify that they've sold products or services as a result of the CeBit presence and get an handle on the value of those sales.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of NZ putting in an appearance at those shows where we actually gain some return on the investment and to that end, parting with some taxpayer funds to ensure such a return is a good idea.

Indeed, to my mind, this is a *much* better use of taxpayer funds than handing out non-repayable "Technology Grants" to anyone who cares to do the paperwork and write a convincing - but perhaps totally erroneous business case. The government has proven itself to be not so good at picking winners in that way and goodness knows how much of your and my money has been wasted as a result.

I look forward to seeing an openly published report on the results of the CeBit presence -- simply one-upping the Aussies is not enough to justify $500K.

Wonky wheels
One of those really tough Mars rovers has blown a motor on its front wheel.

What a damned shame -- but still, we can't grizzle, it's exceeded its designed service live by a huge amount and been an astounding success.

I wonder if someone could write a book on how to engineer reliable systems and sell it to *everyone* presently making consumer electronic equipment. Mind you the advice, if followed, could hike the price of your VCR to about $20m -- but at least it would last eh?

Has Woosh also got a wobbly wheel?
Wireless broadband provider Woosh has just announced that it's shedding staff -- this move coming after a very public indication that the market is no longer infatuated with the startup so operating capital is getting hard to find.

Telecom's revised DSL pricing (ha ha) and Vodafone's announcement that it's going to also move into the wireless broadband arena later this year must be hurting Bob's boys.

My prediction: Woosh will wane. While it may never totally disappear, odds are that in two years' time, there won't be a Woosh as we currently know it. I suspect it will be scaled back to a specialty provider focusing on a few key hi-value clients or it will have been sold to the likes of Vodafone or Telecom.

Predigested News
I'm trialing the predigested news format this week (with PodCast) so you may see some new stuff popping up from time to time -- that's if things go better than they did this morning (don't ask :-).

Tell us all and see what others have to say in The Aardvark Forums

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