Mailbox is a green option to the council tip

Send it by mail

Here’s one for Apple fans and posted on the “wonderful things” boing-boing website – a picture of a recycled Kiwi letter box, and, yes, it is made from an old Apple G4 tower. It was snapped by a Flickr user in its new, very green guise on an Auckland roadside.

It maybe a has-been Mac but it is still right-on there, man. Having lately been angsting about what to do with some very old, defunct electronic hardware, and finding the council tip is the main, very ungreen, option available, E-tales was thrilled to bits with this Mac aficionado’s recycling choice.

And he or she scores cool points too.

You read it here first

E-tales was interested to read that Telecom has got itself a slapped wrist for claiming the winner of its Xtra Broadband competition earlier this year would win a space ride.

No, no, no, said the Advertising Standards Authority, the promised ride – in a Russian MiG fighter jet, not a space shuttle or similar – was only into the stratosphere.

Back in February, E-tales made the same observation when we wrote that the 85,000ft the jet would take the winner up to was certainly a ride into the stratosphere – but not into space. The ASA concurred, adding that the competition adverts’ made a claim likely to exploit consumers’ lack of knowledge about space travel.

For the record – again – according to the United States Department of Defence, space begins at 81kms (50 miles) – 85,000ft is just under 26kms. The department awards all pilots who fly above this altitude astronaut wings.

The Xtra marketing department was obviously a bit spaced out on this one — but their prize certainly wasn’t. Which is probably why the competition winner, wisely in our view, chose to take the less stratospheric, but probably more enjoyable, alternative prize offered — of a trip to the Maldives.

It's not rocket science

Still not on rockets and, in this case, a boo-boo by the New Zealand Software Association, which should surely, of all organisations, know the importance of keeping one’s website up to date?

One of our E-talers, while searching for (gasp) a phone number, found himself confronted with a “contact us” page that contained only postal and email addresses. Undeterred (we’ve seen worse), our intrepid reporter gallantly clicked on the “about us” button, hoping against hope to find a phone number, or even a name.

Sadly, the NZSA hasn’t updated its site lately and the executive team’s page has “expired”.

Crazy World Cup soccer

You can’t keep a good frog down. Crazy Frog, of the most-annoying-ringtone-ever fame, is in the running to become the Brit World Cup croakster – along with some singing sheep and song by a doubtful former pollie.

A long Brit tradition, poppy football songs are usually catchy, occasionally filthy and probably provide a little maudlin solace when the footie-obsessed nation fails to win the coveted cup yet again.

Crazy Frog has produced a cover of iconic operatic rock band Queen’s We Are the Champions. Definitely living in hope with that one, we feel. It’s in competition with a flock of sheep, hailing from the picturesque but chilly Lake District, the “Baarmy Sheep”, who bleat to the tune of English anthem Land of Hope and Glory­. This one comes courtesy of the Cumbria tourist board.

The bookies’ favourite, however, is Tonedef Allstars’ sing-along-a-tune, based on the ancient but much-loved BBC World War Two comedy Dad’s Army.