Joel, a Pākeha man, stands outside the beehive and smiles

Meet Joel MacManus, the journalist that Wellington actually deserves

It’s been a very weird week in Welling­ton where we’re think­ing actu­al­ly Chris Bish­op has done good for once with the Dis­trict Plan? Very strange posi­tion to be in. Obvi­ous­ly, city coun­cilors who want a city for the liv­ing and future have pushed for this for a very long time, but I don’t think it […]

Dan at the head of the FishHead

How time flies! Five years since we hit the launch par­ty, Fish­Head mag­a­zine is going from strength to strength, no doubt because they’ve been smart enough to solic­it a bunch of Welling­ton­ista con­trib­u­tors (I wrote in the very first issue, cur­rent ‘istas Tom Beard and Tom Goul­ter and gone fishin’ Hadyn Green are all reg­u­lar colum­nists). […]

This fish is still fresh, even after two years

Hap­py sec­ond birth­day to our favourite Welling­ton print media, Fish­head! Thanks for the fun reads, the great par­ties , and for giv­ing our city a mag­a­zine and fan­tas­tic quiz host/Jam MC. Their sec­ond birth­day issue is out now in shops every­where. Here’s to lots more!  

Who’s the coolest of them all?

So, the news is out — on the front page of the Dom­Post, an adver­tis­ing colour sup­ple­ment, and ban­ners all along the Gold­en Mile: Welling­ton is the “coolest lit­tle cap­i­tal in the world”.

Who’s the coolest of them all?

So, the news is out — on the front page of the Dom­Post, an adver­tis­ing colour sup­ple­ment, and ban­ners all along the Gold­en Mile: Welling­ton is the “coolest lit­tle cap­i­tal in the world”. Yep, that means Welling­ton has beat­en out oth­er lit­tle cap­i­tal cities such as Vat­i­can City, Dili, Kab­ul and Apia to be the […]

Wellingtonista Radio Show ep 02

Last week saw the qui­et but con­fi­dent debut of the Welling­ton­ista Radio Show on The VBC. You can lis­ten to an edit­ed ver­sion of the show here Wellingtonista_Show_EP01 (right-click, save as), and hope­ful­ly we’ll get our pod­cast­ing steez togeth­er and start pub­lish­ing the shows as umm.. pod­casts.

I’ll be pre­sent­ing the sec­ond show, same time: 7pm — 9pm, tonight.

Tech info after the jump…

Wellingtonista Radio Show

Just a wee heads up: I’ll be pre­sent­ing the very first Welling­ton­ista Radio Show on The VBC tonight. The VBC is the stu­dent owned and operated/community LPFM radio sta­tion broad­cast­ing on 88.3FM, based at the Kel­burn Cam­pus of Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty of Welling­ton, in New Zealand.

Ponoko make the Grey Lady

Ponoko in the NYTLocal start-up and Friends-of-Welling­ton­ista Ponoko (among oth­er con­nec­tions to us they’re also part-spon­sor of our awards this year) have their pic­ture at the top of an inter­est­ing arti­cle in the tech sec­tion of today’s New York Times. The arti­cle talks about the rise of inter­net-aid­ed design and mak­ing and describes Ponoko thus:

Ponoko, a com­pa­ny based in New Zealand, allows cus­tomers to upload designs for flat shapes that can then be snapped togeth­er like Ikea fur­ni­ture. Mak­ing a pro­to­type can be as sim­ple as cut­ting shapes out of card­board. Users then cre­ate a dig­i­tal ver­sion and send it to Ponoko, which cuts the pat­tern out in met­al or wood with a laser.

There’s a fair head of glob­al buzz build­ing up around Ponoko, whose poten­tial extends far beyond the Times’ fair­ly neu­tral descrip­tion of what can be achieved with them today.

And as for us: well, we were very excit­ed to note what looks like a pro­to­type of the high­ly sought after 2nd Annu­al Welling­ton­ista Award tro­phy vis­i­ble on the table between Dave and Derek. So maybe this means we’ve made the Times as well?

P pipes seized from dairies

Any­one else find it amus­ing that every sin­gle dairy in Welling­ton today had the Domin­ion Post’s “P pipes seized from dairies!” sto­ry on proud dis­play out in front of their respec­tive shops.

(And is there a tech­ni­cal term for those wire-frame things that hold the big one-page head­line ban­ner for the day?)

Numero Uno? Numero no no!

(Issue two is out now, but I have been slow. All judg­ments below are based on the first issue. I’m not buy­ing anoth­er one to see if it’s improved.)

When I saw the first issue of Uno on the shelves at the super­mar­ket, I was hop­ing it would be the Welling­ton equiv­a­lent of Metro — on a good day, not all “Why your kids’ school will give you can­cer and nev­er let them buy a house” Lis­ten­eresque. But it’s not. It’s real­ly, real­ly not. Instead it turns out that Uno is every bit as adver­tis­ing-copy dri­ven as the Welling­ton Guide — with­out the advan­tage of at least being Welly exclu­sive. I sup­pose I should have known bet­ter give that Welling­ton’s offi­cial vil­lain of 2006 is on the cov­er. After the jump, more rea­sons not to waste $9.95.