Ping this
photo by Light Night
Last year we visited Auckland for 2 months to get an idea of what it would be like to live there. Both my wife and I have family in New Zealand and we’re giving it serious consideration. During our ‘07 holiday visit I checked in with my brother in law about the local real estate market. He’s invested in several properties in the Auckland area, has done real estate training and is a sharp guy. I asked him if he felt home prices in New Zealand would be dropping like they were back in the US. His reply was that the NZ real estate market was well insulated from the US economy and that he felt prices would continue to rise. I’m a guest in his home, his country.. who am I to argue?
I’m no expert but I saw this coming 2 years ago from the growing stream of news on blogs and on social bookmarking sites like Reddit / Digg. That’s knowledge of the crowd for you. No one in social media is surprised by the financial collapse. What happens in banking in one country affects banks and overseas. These are international companies. When Lehman Brothers fails in New York, it also fails in London, Hong Kong and Auckland.
While taking public transportation around Auckland I’d talk to the bus drivers about areas they considered to be hot markets for buying homes. Who better really? One of the bus drivers told me she and her husband were getting ready to buy a home. I told her about the coming sub-prime fallout and that she might want to wait a year. I might be getting a warm NZ hug the next time I ride her bus.
With huge projects failing and housing markets reaching 26 year lows, the NZ economy is in recession.
New Zealand is a fantastic country and has excellent investment value. Prices will come back eventually and our long term plans still include NZ. Especially if Obama should lose this election – NZ here we come! Recession or not.
Popularity: 44% [?]
Ping this
mashup by hindenbush
The Saudis have long memories and recall how high prices can cut into consumption; it happened in the 1980s and it’s happening again now. Any threat to oil’s leading role as a source of energy is a big worry for a country that sits on reserves of some 260 billion barrels. “We are concerned about the permanent destruction of demand,” says a senior Saudi official. “Those who buy hybrid vehicles are not going back to SUVs.”
via Businessweek
Popularity: 41% [?]
Ping this
Slacker Uprising, Michael Moore’s new film is available for download as of today. Great news, however for those of us living abroad – denied..
SORRY!
Unfortunately, the lawyers tell us we are only allowed to offer the film to people residing in the United States or Canada.
Luckily there seems to be a backdoor. For those of you overseas here are direct links to download the film. Show support and buy the DVD. Schools can request a free DVD.
DOWNLOAD AS MPEG4
Suitable for Quicktime. File size: 650 megs
DOWNLOAD AS DivX AVI
File size: 1350 megs
DivX Torrent for Bittorrent
*Update – Thanks to Carol on the ExpatsforObama list for this tip. You can also access the free download through iTunes.
Popularity: 39% [?]
Ping this
Changes include:
- fix for bug where client falsely reports ‘downloading’ when illegal characters are present in a file name
- fix to bug where sometimes shared folder renames would result in leaving of a share
- improvements to installer/preferences pane
- client now notifies you on a change of quota(!)
- wink2k compatibility
- improvements to ‘move dropbox’
- fix to some vista install issues
- fix to issue where dropbox would ‘retouch’ a file, irritating applications like xcode, etc.
- OS X tray icon is now centered properly =O
- a few other minor fixes/stability improvements
Grab the download for Mac and PC
via Dropbox forum
Popularity: 41% [?]
Ping this
Ashod from MeBeam has launched Icondial, a VoIP service that let’s you call any telephone in the World from a webpage. Give it a whirl.
Can you think of a few business applications for Icondial? The service can be widgetized – see my contact page here for an example.
Popularity: 40% [?]
Ping this
+
= 
Dropbox is a great service but it only backs up data in your Dropbox folder. Like me you probably have existing folders you’d like to backup without moving everything under your dropbox folder. Solution, symbolic links. SymbolicLinker is a cool plugin for creating symbolic links using Finder from the right click menu. Place the links in your Dropbox folder to backup the corresponding files and folders.
Popularity: 78% [?]
