Author Sim Ahmed

Niklas Roy, the self-described inventor of useless things, talks to the Semi-Permanent crowd about the colliding worlds of engineering, design and artistry.

We kick off this assault of creativity and thinking with a presentation from artist and illustrator Sandra Dieckmann.

Cyber security isn’t always as exciting as watching Angelina Jolie “hack” into a mainframe, a la the 1995 hit movie Hackers. Getting the public interested and aware of online best practice is a difficult task, but one that NetSafe has tackled well with a series of videos tying in with Cyber Security Awareness Week.

New Zealand companies looking for a slice of that sweet, sweet Kiwiana can now show off their Zillund-ness with a .kiwi internet domain name. For instance idealog.kiwi instead of idealog.co.nz. The generic top-level domain (gTLD) has been given approval by the world wide web naming authority ICANN.

The FujiFilm Finepix X100S looks as if it fell through a crack in spacetime leading to the 1960s. This is a camera designed to imitate the beautiful “space age” cameras of the era. But with a $1,800 price tag, it’s a pretty hefty premium to pay for looks. Is the X100S a hipstery fashion accessory or a handy little camera in its own right?

The community of tech aficionados who participate on the Geekzone forums are some of the harshest critics of Telecom. It’s interesting to see then the country’s largest telco tap into this pool of switched on geeks to help design a new consumer modem it plans to sell to the wider New Zealand.

Following several overseas breaches into high profile Twitter accounts overseas (and one closer to home) Twitter has finally given users a tool to protect their accounts by introducing two-factor authentication.

A sold out Digital Day Out kicked off this morning with Catherine Bates from Tourism New Zealand talking about the strategy the organisation is taking to sell New Zealand to the world using The Hobbit.

The number of tablets in New Zealanders’ hands has almost tripled, with 19 percent of Kiwis owning one according to the latest TNS Mobile Life report.

Lazy robots and steampunk curios win Media Design School seven awards at the Los Angeles Movie Awards over the weekend.

Tui is breaking years of tradition by adding some colour to its usually stoic black and orange billboards, in honour of duck shooting blokes everywhere.

Hitting the front page of Reddit is usually like hitting marketing gold, bringing with it the sweet sweet traffic generated by the never-sleeping internet horde. DraftFCB has had a taste of that delicious Reddit link love for its ‘Say Yeah, Nah’ alcohol responsibility TVC for the Health Promotion Agency – although many denizens of the online community are left confused if what they’ve watched is actually a beer commercial in disguise.

Snakk Media (which listed on the New Zealand Alternative Stock Exchange back in March) has opened a New Zealand sales office, run by former APN group sales manager Rowan Spinks.

All it took was an afternoon alone with the Sony Alpha 99 camera for me to fall in love with it (or at least like it as much as a man can like an inanimate object, without it being creepy). Sony completely hits it out of the park with this flagship full frame delight and as soon as I get a raise or win the Lotto (the latter is more likely) I’m buying into this system.

DraftFCB continues its ‘Ease up on the drink’ campaign for the government with a new take on an old problem in the New Zealand drinking psyche: peer pressure.

This Sunday saw the inaugural Chromacon illustration and animation convention hit Auckland City, bringing with it a host of talented illustrators, designers and world creators.

As someone whose illustration prowess goes only as far as drawing shaky stick figures, I was awed by all the artwork crammed into Aotea Square. Not so awed that I couldn’t ask a few of the illustrators who caught my eye a question or two.

If you’ve had dreams of managing The Beatles but haven’t quite figured out where to begin your management career (or how to build a time machine), Indie Music Manager is the game for you.

Google New Zealand’s latest financial statement to the government shows the search giant paid $165,000 to the tax man in 2012.

Australian digital agency Bullseye Digital has given itself a new coat of paint with a retro–vintage makeover to make the staunchest hipster proud. With the new look comes a new attitude, which includes aspirations for growing the company in New Zealand.

Microsoft surprised the world last year when it unveiled the Surface RT, a tablet manufactured by what is traditionally a software company. I was blown away by its beautiful design and dissimilarities to the iPad. In a field of Apple clones, the Surface RT is refreshingly its own device. Microsoft launched the Surface RT in New Zealand earlier this year and for the past few weeks I’ve been giving it a test drive.