Sponsor's Message

This kind of sensationalist journalism would be much better off in a sunday tabloid than masquerading as genuine news on the front page of NZ's largest daily broadsheet.

In case you haven't read the story, here's what it says in a nutshell:

Rakon is an NZ company that won an NZTE award this year. They make quartz crystals which are sold to (amongst others) manufacturers of GPS receivers. GPS receivers are used (amongst others) by the US military. Therefore, the NZ government has effectively funded the US war effort in Iraq.

Oh yes, there was allegedly one part specially requested by the US military but, according to Rakon, this was developed without any financial assistance from taxpayers.

Now have your say Got something to say about today's column, or want to see what others think?  Visit The Forums While you're here, why not visit the Aardvark Hall of Shame and perhaps make your own nomination.

Oh please! This is an incredibly long bow to draw and I can't fathom why the paper would go to such lengths of silliness to bring one of NZ's most successful hi-tech companies into disrepute.

Or maybe the goal was to throw egg at the face of the government over its technology funding schemes, of which Rakon has been a beneficiary.

Whatever the reason, this is an outrageous bit of spin, presented as a piece of investigative journalism.

Fortunately the Net has somewhat disempowered publishers who seek to stir up a hornet's nest or unreasonably spin the facts like this. I have no doubt that those writing blogs and engaged in discussion forums will examine this story and cast their own opinions on it.

Of walls and heads
Got a trendy new phone with video capabilities? Who cares?

It seems that this whole video-capable phone thing is a solution looking for a problem. Sorry, that should be an *expensive* solution looking for a problem.

Here in NZ both Vodafone and Telecom are busy hyping their video-capable mobiles with promises that we'll be able to send and receive wonderful video images that look almost like broadcast-quality.

The reality is (of course) far from that. If you want to see just how bad this mobile-phone video can be just think back to the images we saw on news reports from the UK after the recent bombings. Instead of the sharp, crisp smooth video we see on the ads we got highly pixelated and blurred footage with an appallingly low frame-rate.

Then there's the cost!

Unless you're lucky enough to be a beneficiary of Labour or National's election bribes, you won't be using video messaging with the same reckless abandon that you currently fire off SMS messages.

And now I see that the BBC are making episodes of Red Dwarf and Doctor Who available for loading onto your video-capable mobile. Who are they trying to kid?

Do you have one of these great new video phones and if so, what do you think of the quality and the price?

Go have your say in The Aardvark Forums

If you feel that this is a good thing and/or you hold a "geniune affection" for yours truly -- then you are welcome to gift me some money using the buttons provided. In gifting this money you accept that no goods, service or other consideration is offered, provided, accepted or anticipated in return. Just click on the button to gift whatever you can afford. NOTE: PayPal bills in US dollars so don't accidentally gift more than what you were intending :-)

Contacting Aardvark
I'm always happy to hear from readers, whether they're delivering brickbats, bouquets or news tip-offs. If you'd like to contact me directly, please this form. If you're happy for me to republish your comments then please be sure and select For Publication.

Other media organisations seeking more information or republication rights are also invited to contact me.

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!