Dead cool rug
This above image is the kind that speaks for itself. Posted on the coolhunting.com website, the drop dead rug is the work of imaginative British designer Alex Carpenter. The prototype was such a hit at the 2005 London Design Festival that it is going into production shortly.
Red with a grey outline, to imitate a police chalk-line, it will retail for around j150 (NZ$424) and, apparently, comes in a selection of poses, and may even include the cause of death (not quite sure how this will be achieved).
Ain’t it offal?
“Do we really want to continue living in an economy that has offal as one of its top ten exports?” This was the question David Skilling, chief executive of think-tank the New Zealand Institute, put to attendees at a recent IBM Forum — obviously in an attempt to raise our trading ambitions to more sophisticated levels.
Pretty pricey
And now for the girl who truly has everything, and really can’t think what to throw $299 away on, there’s the Paris Hilton of mobile phone covers. It comes courtesy of Vodafone and was designed by local pretty-pretty fashion designer Trelise Cooper.
While we applaud Vodafone for donating $20 from each cover to the Breast Cancer Research Trust, why not more? This is not very generous given the small amount of material involved versus the big price. But the lingerie-inspired, Nokia 6101-sized pouch is cute; it features pink-on-black polka dots and corsetry lacing. Of course, the boys might fancy one, too … It would certainly make for interesting conversation.
Glass trapdoor opens
In her heyday, Hewlett-Packard’s Carly Fiorina was hailed as being one of the few women to breach the glass ceiling. But she may also have been a victim — albeit a highly paid one — of the glass trapdoor, according to the New York Times. It seems high-flying women are more likely to be shown the door-in-the-floor than their male counterparts.
Fiorina famously proclaimed, on her first day on the job at HP, that the “glass ceiling doesn’t exist”. Now, a chastened Fiorina concedes that the glass trapdoor just might.
Not so cool C4
Now, for cool teens, C4 music presenter Joel Defries is the ‘it boy’. But, it seems, he’s not so cool when it comes to tech gadgets. The young chap who is music-compere for the after-school C4 slot, was advertising one of Vodafone’s rather nifty new Vodems as a giveaway prize last week. But, obviously stumped for a description, he settled on calling the device a “portable internet thingy”, although he did get the words “wireless broadband” in there too, albeit rather vaguely.
Just goes to show: being a music geek does not automatically make one geeky in other areas. E-tales is less concerned about Joel’s geek status than the fact that winning the thing is only the first step here.
How is the young teen winner going to afford the attendant bandwidth costs? Lots of supermarket shelf-stacking might be involved, or else super-indulgent, wealthy parents.
No cons – just connections
People’s ingenuity when it comes to concise internet domain names is rivalled only by that in devising personal vehicle-registration plates. But some choices can prove double-edged: if you’re too clever by half you can end up conveying a negative as well as a witty impression.
We’re sure Wellington internet service provider Xtreme Networks thought hard before laying claim to “conz4u” in both the car and computer realms. At least the company got to ink in a discreet dot between the “co” and the “nz” on its registration plate — not possible with the domain name.
It all makes conz4u.co.nz not only a little repetitive but dodgy-seeming as well.
Google: feeding the mind – and body
When it comes to what attracts people to a workplace — and keeps them there — the reasons can be quite surprising.
It seems, when it comes to Google, feeding the mind — by working with smart people — is an obvious attraction, according to NZer Ben Goodger, who works at Google HQ. But three square organic meals a day, for the largely twenty-somethings who work there and who might possibly not eat much at all other than burgers and cola otherwise, also rates pretty high, says Goodger, who was quoted in The Listener recently.
Desperately seeking a Second Life
It started out life as the original pigeon-post news service and has already virtually reinvented itself once, as an online financial news service for banks. Now Reuters news service is seeking a second — or is a third? — life.
In a strange move that some might say smacks of marketing, the company is opening a news bureau in the simulation “game” Second Life. It will publish news from the outside world for Second Life members and news of Second Life for real-world Reuters news website readers.