What makes a good startup?

After my stint on Radio New Zealand Saturday Morning with Kim Hill this morning, I was asked to provide a list of the attributes of what I consider to be a good startup. You can listen to or download the audio: Here’s my shopping list of criteria for good startups: 1.  Market a)   Global b)…

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Digital Literacy at NetHui

InternetNZ held NetHui this year, a multistakeholder conference in which we tried to take the Internet out of the server room and to the nation.  After all, just about everybody is a stakeholder in the Internet, and there are big opportunities to be uncovered in getting together to discuss how the Internet is governed and…

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The Online Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language

The Online Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) went live today at http://nzsl.vuw.ac.nz/ This online dictionary is the culmination of over twenty years of work, and I’m proud to say that I’ve been involved since the beginning. The dictionary is an extensive resource for people who use or want to learn NZSL. Videos accompany…

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InternetNZ Council Candidacy

Last year, I was elected to the InternetNZ Council for a one-year term, as the result of the early resignation of Chris Streatfield. After one amazing but short year in office, I’m pleased to offer my services again as a councillor. In the last year I have Made significant contributions to the development of the…

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Bright Ideas Need Scintillating Teams

I was invited to speak for five minutes at the Bright Ideas networking event last night. Here’s what I said: You’ve heard of them before – Orville and Wilbur Hewlett and Packard Jobs and Wozniak Page and Brin Mitchell and Youens Even Zuckerberg had a team behind him, even if he screwed most of them…

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Urgency

Parliament passed the Copyright Amendment Act into law under urgency last night, effectively forcing Internet Service Providers to police people allegedly infringing copyrights, with the ultimate sanction being a $15,000 fine and disconnecting the offender from the Internet. The whole idea is stupid and irritating on many levels, but to me, the worst aspect is…

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Ubuntu Maverick on a Thinkpad X201

I finally upgraded my Thinkpad X201 from Kubuntu Lucid to Maverick over the weekend.  I’m pleased to report that the process was nearly flawless using KPackageKit.  Despite segfaults in KPackageKit which didn’t seem to deter it, the upgrade process went very smoothly and took about an hour. I’ve only encountered three minor problems: There were…

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