Darren Greenwood keeps his feet on New Zealand's shaky ground and his head up in the long white cloud.
Darren Greenwood has been in journalism, not all of it IT, since the days of typewriters and long before the web spun its way around the world. Coming from Yorkshire, he can be blunt, and though having resided in New Zealand, as well as Australia, for quite some time, he insists he is not one of the 'sheeple!'
There is a well-known Maori saying: "What is the greatest treasure? It is people, it is people, it is people!" This also applies to information technology systems, whether an implementation ends up awesome or awry.
Previously the cost of mobile broadband in New Zealand was prohibitive, but now, thanks to the arrival of prepay, it has become more affordable and controllable, and so after months of deliberation, for the Christmas break, I have finally hooked myself up.
Will cloud computing and software-as-a-service solutions be hot and sexy in New Zealand in 2010 or not?
After the global financial crisis placed green IT on the back-burner, is it about to become sexy again due to the likes of New Zealand's new emissions trading scheme?
As we know, farmers are such bleaters. They bleat as much as the four-legged woolly things in their paddocks. If it's not the weather, it's the strength of the dollar! Nothing is ever right. Likewise with rural broadband.
Do you ever get the urge to be naughty, especially if you are never found out? Do you ever fancy committing a crime and not have to worry about having your name splashed all over the papers?
One year into its tenure, how has the new New Zealand Government performed on issues of technology and telecommunications?
Having one of your biggest customers roast you in the media as "slow to react to a catastrophic systems failure" and "unwilling to apologise" for it is not a good look for IBM New Zealand.
Amazon's Kindle comes to the Pacific region but not to New Zealand. Why?