Howie's Hot Five

5. The New Pavlova Palaver – Flat White

Is the Flat White a New Zealand or an Australian invention?

Two sides of the Tasman 2 Stories…

Flat and Fabulous…and Australian  Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Kiwi Flat White Goes Global Source: Stuff/Dominion

Recent Sydney M Herald article sweats with Aussie pride at as ‘New York catches Flat White Fever’…
“Flat white…is says Australia’
In Tribeca Hugh Jackman has shares in a cafe called the Laughing Man ‘try our flat white’ he says.

In Williamburg Australians go to a hip cafe and say ‘Mate I’ve been here eight years and I haven’t had a decent flat white the whole time’.

BUT.. The New Zealand version covered in a Stuff Article in 2010 centres on how Kiwis are ‘steaming the London with their flat whites.  And mentions the DKD Auckland cafe who claims to have invented the Flat White… He was interviewed on Radio NZ a few months back and he said.. “We were sitting around thinking guys won’t want to order a Latte so let’s make up a name…ah flat white’…seem easier for them say.

4. You step up to a normal phone, reach out to dial …and nothing!

Great story in the LA Weekly about a guy who got arrested in Santa Monica, wasn’t allowed to make a phone call until he was transferred to LA County Jail … was freaking as he was a diabetic so needed to get bail… eventually got to a payphone… reached out to dial a number (collect) paused…and nothing.

Cos he now relies on his cell phone the guy hadn’t memorised a number in years… and fixed phone lines getting rare in the US …and you can’t place a collect call to a cell phone! This guy got lost in the system for five days.

Source: LA WEEKLY

3. Kickstarter does 3 $1 million projects in two weeks…

Arts festivals, self-published books, recording time, shipping container performance space…they’ve all raised pledges online via the site Kickstarter…

This is social media at its most brilliant. Simple. as. that.

Facts:

• 44% of projects on Kickstarter succeed.
• 89% of pledgers have funded a successful project
• We are talking complete strangers in most instances seeing a project and say ‘i want to support that’.
• A lovey illustrated book project on ‘where babies come from’ but covering all the possibilities (adoption, surrogate) for parents to read children raised $35,0000…only wanted $9500…but caught pledgers imaginations.
• Most recently; The Stick and Double Fine Adventures…and this guy raised $1million in one day….(Raised $2 million in total – pledgers get to see the game being made and get input)… a ‘point and click old fashioned computer game…

Source: Venturebeat

2. 

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Created by: Paralegal

1. Rip-off hotels in hip cities have been put on notice…
The Idea:  Airbnb connects people looking for places to stay to those with floor space, rooms and entire apartments or houses to rent.

Success Point: Obama Democratic Convention in Denver when ‘everyone young’ wanted to be be there.  People listed their accommodation on AirBnB and this really sent them global.

They’ve just this month rolled out in Russia… and 5 million guests nights have been brought throughout the world thus far.

AirBnB currently has 100,000 listings in 19,000 cities in 192 countries

(n.b. HH5 has just used AirBnB to book New York and Berlin!)

5. Pinterest…yep it’s the next big social ‘thing’…

This is truly phenomenal… and tipped already as 2012 hottest start-up.

Simple Definition: You can create a pin-board of all the wonderful beautiful thing you find on your internet browsings.  e.g. Wedding Planners love it as it helps them sell their services … allows you to share your inspirations.

It’s VISUAL and females and creatives love VISUAL…go it!  (new shoes, new hairdo’s, new kitchens, artworks). So enter retailer, clothes designers presenting their wares in a sexy storyboard format.

Just the facts:
Number of employees: 12
Raised $US$38 million from October 2011
58% of users are female
97% of pinterest fans are females (followers of Pinterest boarders)
Users: 10 million monthly unique visitors
Daily users growing at 145% per day

Big fact: Pinterest is generating more referral traffic to websites than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined!

Source: Pinterest

4. A taxi service just for the little darlings…

Remember the school bus…you take it home then go and read a comic in your before dinner…hmmm, think again… and welcome to…

Fleurette Kids Taxis just transport kids – and aimed at ensuring your little darling gets from ballet to hip hop dance classes on time… simple as that…oh and guitar classes on Tuesdays and Gym class on Wednesday etc. (very Auckland we feel)

3.  Howie’s Hot Five Tip… laptop fans…

By fans we mean that whirring sound that keeps your baby cool. So during humid weather some laptops start to really make a horrible endless whirring sound and heat up something horrible.

Ok first up – DON’T use your laptop on a cushion or anywhere it can pick up lint…you see if fan whirring is likely simply to be a build up of dust and lint evidently.

Second, if you fan is really whirring and your laptop is getting really hot – buy a can of compressed air from local computer shop and get their advice on applying it… (even better use airbed compressor foot pumps to GENTLY blow out all the shite that gets trapped…you’ll save yourself have to buy a new laptop because of a meltdown)

This computer guy is great!

2. Are you Vaguebooking me…you are aren’t you…

If you use say, Facebook you’ll definitely know the ‘art of vaguebooking and it’s IRRITATING…

To vaguebook is to make a deliberately vague update in Facebook aimed at prompting friends to go ‘why, what’s happened’.

Here’s some real life examples:

‘I’m so mad right now!’

‘I’m confused right now’

‘Why only me?’

1. Sony UK music hikes Whitney Houston prices…

I wonder why one downloads….

Last week Sony Music raised its prices on all its Whitney Houston catalogue within hours or her death. (lovely pack of basxards eh?)

But wait, they now say it ‘was a mistake’.

And now for the mash-up so Whitney can be enjoyed by the under 21 set…here goes…

5. French Parenting vs American Technology…

Ok, big news for the high paid, aspirational American parents this week has been a story in the Wall Street Journal about the French having superior parenting skills (aren’t all  better parent books best sellers – remember the Tiger Mother (new yorker article) phenom last year, word, parenting= money). So last year it was Chinese parenting is superior… this year…

If you’re too lazy to read the book…here we go:

• French kids relaxed and quiet – American kids noisy and whine
• French kids eat what parents eat – American kids have sensitive likes and dislikes
• French kids sleep through night from 2-3 years old – American kids don’t …ever
• French kids hear ‘no’ and don’t collapse – American kids etc

Single proposition:
French are less ‘perfect child obsessed’ and don’t angst over parenting skills and philosophy – French kids adapt to grown up world – e.g. in the evening it’s allowed for parents to say this is adult time.

Meanwhile on the other side… Don’t Cry Baby, Mum and Dad are always watching …  at a very recent technology this was unveiled.

Yep… High Definition baby monitoring to your I Phone …24/7 baby!

4. The Most Annoying Tweet Ever Written…

‘Who gives a tweet’ is a year’s worth of analysis by guys from M.I.T and Georgia Tech.  They got 43000 crowd sourced responses along lines of +ve -ve and neutral etc.

People don’t care what you are having for lunch or that you are cleaning your house etc.

For many twitter is now a real-time news wire… e.g. a recent strong earthquake in San Fran – twitter beat all traditional news outlets by a full 9 minutes.

Currently 40% of tweets aren’t worth reading..Source: The Atlantic

3. Dinner for one please James…

Fact: More people live alone now than at any other time in history.

40% in Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, San Fransisco, and Minneapolis  = live alone
50% in Paris
60% in Sweden
and.. fastest growing ‘living solo’ populations are China, India and Brazil.
… and it seems to encourage more social interaction not less….friends neighbours, restaurants, classes… and it gets better – survey of older ‘lone rangers’ found they had more outgoing life than their married peers.   (15 million between 34-65 live solo)

AND…thank God/Allah for technology!

Source: The NY Times

2. Our App of the week…

Ok, we don’t have a scanner of a faxy thingy…but we have jotnot… for just $2.50 we purchased this app that allows us to scan a book page or even better that rare time you need to sign and then email a page…

N.b. magic is that once you load a page up on the pc screen it’s so easy to read!

Source: NY Times

1. Ok…we can’t resist the Lana del Ray conflab…

This week announced Lana baby won’t be touring ‘anytime’ soon… so we’ve found someone who can fill in for her…admirably… This young singer threw up her version of Video Games and whoa…it’s taken off

And here she is interviewed and playing Video Games on Irish Radio One…

5 Are you and Owl or a Lark - beware!

Lark – morning you’re wide awake baby!
Owls – night time is the right time dude

So you’d think  you’d give a Lark a test in the morning  – yeah good for maths tests BUT… to think outside the box an Owl’s optimum thinking creative time is in the morning…and a Lark it’s in the evening.

So for Larks – give them puzzles, or creative problems at night

Listen to the BBC interview here (go to time segment 13:30)

And to really get provocative, that august periodical Psychology Today after sampling a large population of young Americans concluded that Owls on the whole were the more intelligent members of the population…

“more intelligent children grow up to be more nocturnal as adults than less intelligent children.”

And get this finding:

 Those with a childhood IQ of less than 75 (“very dull”) go to bed around 23:41 on weeknights in early adulthood, whereas those with a childhood IQ of over 125 (“very bright”) go to bed around 00:29.

Source: Psychology Today

4. What Australians really think of us…

We’ve been reading the Sydney Morning Herald regularly for nigh on 20 years (everyday in last 8 years thanks to the ‘Internets’)… and my God! the Aussies print regular stories with the subtext ‘what a strange, fuddie-duddie , cute bunch of wee things those kiwis are …here’s the latest from this week. From the ‘travel section’.

Heading: Topless woman sparks police visit to beach

Lead: A pair of boobs at Opunake beach in New Zealand sparked an official police visit to the normally peaceful stretch of sand yesterday afternoon.

Last Line: “I can only say this: Our main concern is that you swim between the flags whether you are clothed or in the nude.”

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

3. 16-year-old Kiwi lauded in this month’s Fast Company

It’s the second time this young man from Wellington has been interviewed in Fast Company – the last time was to report he’d been the first inductee into a Digital Life Academy for young digital thinkers.

Why! Because by 16 years of age he’d founded to interesting-kick ass websites:

They Don’t Teach You This In School – a video website featuring one minute videos with leaders and thinkers that asks them simple question on what they wished they’d known when they were younger.
and
Duo – a site where you and a friend or a group of friends can post notes, phone numbers, photos, messages and anything that represents memories of your friendship. (He created this as he had never ever received a handwritten letter)

2. The year of the vending machine…

For those of you who went to Rhythm and Vines and are off to Splore you’ll have a chance to re-charge your smartphone at a kiosk outfit called ‘Recharge Pod’

In France you can now get a fresh baguette of bread from vending machine  – clever baker has installed one outside his shop so he can keep selling fresh even while he sleeps.

And now in Spain fishmongers have established a vending machine that sells fresh seafood including sardines, anchovies, hake and shrimp! The same outfit has been asked by fishermen to sell fish bait out of their vending machine for those early morning risers… this is the future!

Japan: Asahi have vending machines that sell beer and wifi
China: vending machines that allow you to buy snacks paying via smartphone
India: Vending machines dispense fresh milk to cut lines while waiting in shops to be served
USA: vending machine now available to mix custom milkshakes to order

USA: This Swap-o-matic vending machine allows you to donate or swap stuff you don’t want for stuff you want…

Source: Springwise

1. You’re watching a hip TV show and…

A very cool tune comes on and you go – damn who sings that, what is that… you ask around and get nowhere – well here’s where to go TUNE FIND – the largest online directory of music heard on TV shows.

Season 2, Episode 3 of How to Make it in America;  Cam gets his own apartment away from his Puerto Rican family and as the camera pans out across Hudson River this is the soundtrack that captures his utter excitement…

Ok , this week we were going to rant about Lana Del Ray – joke or genius …but suddenly she seems old hat so onward with…

5. At last, how to email and text sarcasm…

As we were always over all those twee   )  etc  or simply inserting ‘joke!’ after that brilliant piece of sarcastic wit…

so now we have ‘Arial sarcastic’ font.

Welcome to Arial sarcasm font and also welcome you to the Official Site of the Sarcasm Font Movement

In brief:

• Bold
• Italic
• 

4.  300 million Skype video calls every day, so?

Well according to the likes of NY Times Skype is now changing our family domestic rituals. e.g. for past two years a family has celebrated Hanukkah from three different cities via Skype. …just tip of iceberg at how families now rely on Skype video to stay in touch; and meeting new grandchildren, wives and seeing grand kids sing – along the way.

• 300 million Skype video calls per day
• 900% increase since 2007
• Peak time; Sunday morning
• And senior citizens starting to use it to chat over coffee with others in the same town
• New gadget on market ‘telyHD’…small Skype camera unit that turns your and your grandmas TV into instant Skype HD TV

Source: NY Times

3. Gyms losing their GRIP as 21st Century religion?

What is it with Gym memberships?

Go to Trademe and you’ll see ‘Please! I need to sell my membership! Please somebody!’

In the UK punters are saying ‘sue me, so what’ and the courts are starting to side with them…

Question: what other service industry gets you to join for several years and then refused you to leave without severe penalty?

The UK Office of Fair Trading are about to kick butt…

All started with bad PR around a pregnant woman and her unemployed husband….about to made homeless and couldn’t afford the gym membership!  Outfit in UK called LA Fitness got such bad PR members writing in hundreds saying “cancelling my membership so sue me!”

Stop Press: gym memberships longer than 12 month are unfair….says UK courts

Stop Press 2: Commerce Commission in NZ suspects thousands are joined up to gym contracts that contravene Consumer Contracts and Consumer Finance Act

Sources: The Guardian  and Stuff

2. Five Top Deathbed Regrets…

A nurse in palliative care in India has had long career in nursing patients who on average have only three weeks to live.  So here are the number five most common regrets she hears:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard (This came from every male patient she nursed!)
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
5. I with I’d let myself be happier (Many of us don’t realise happiness is a choice and we stay stuck in same patterns and habits)

Source: A Rise in India Forum

1. Imagine John Lennon Jumping…

The Wall Street Journal had a column ‘Five Hours In’… which asked the simple question of a native in a major city: If you had five hours to show off your city through your eyes what would you do?

So to kick off 2012 and HH5-No.1 here’s our Five Hours in Auckland…

Ok, we’d meet our guest outside the Old Post Office in Ponsonby, Why? Cos I live nearby… and it has a great view of the city and the harbour from the Bridge around And from there we’d wander along Ponsonby Rd. for…

5. Breakfast at Good One cafe…

A great place because it’s very local – and off the beaten track and it’s a perfectly formed and quiet little joint… BTW a Howie’s Hot Five trend prediction for 2012 is that silence will start to make a roaring comeback… (we are sick of concrete, wooden restaurants that ping the ear drums to pain – and with music used as a constant aural wallpaper accompanied by cell phones with text messaging alerts set to 11…)

Good One – 42 Douglas Street Ponsonby

4. Quick inner city spin… on bikes

In the perfect world there’d be a City-wide bike hire station in Ponsonby Road – anyway we’ll bike from Ponsonby Road through Western Park and along K Road to St Kevin’s Arcade – bit grungy but something for everyone – ideally we’d go into the second-hand record shop and buy a record cover from the Howard Morrison Quartet 1960′s

3. Cycle, walk over Grafton Bridge ending up at Petals Cupcakes…

After quick cycle across Grafton Bridge (reserved for buses and bikes only) and we’d nip through the Domain and pick up some cup cakes for our later beach spot stop from Petal Cupcakes 8 Teed Street, Newmarket…  from the packaging to the taste these are hands-down the best treats in Auckland – superb. Cup Cakes are a fad…Petal Cupcakes are here to stay… 

And we slip into Little and Friday for a takeout – just because like Good One – this is a perfectly formed business without trying hard… Little and Friday 12 Melrose Street, Newmarket

2. Pah Homestead …72 Hillsborough Rd  Hillsborough (we’d drive here)

The ultimate gift to Auckland City – talk about soul! Evidently this is the perfect example of Italiante architecture in 1877 and now houses the TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre.

And it’s full of New Zealand contemporary art with revolving exhibitions… A Philip Trusttum Survey is on until the end of next week… fantastic!

And if you have children let them loose on the garden  and lawn full of modern sculptures. This is a very special Auckland Highlight. HOWEVER…it loses points for its cafe… imagine a building full of contemporary art and a cafe that looks like a school classroom – very unimaginative … and food just ‘ok’ for the prices.
Click here for Pah Homestead – Wallace Arts Centre

1. Thorne Bay Beach, North Shore – we’d end our trip with a dip
and a cupcake on the beach…

Simply one of the best inner city beaches I’ve visited anywhere the world. (Only beaten out by Impanema and Bronte) just north of Takapuna (so nice drive – 7 minutes – to be exact over the Auckland Harbour) and we can swim there anytime because being a cove you don’t have to worry about half a hectare of mud between you and the water if you time the tide wrong…

Final one for the year…so we couldn’t resist a couple of ‘best of’ recommendations…

5. 39 years and 4 kids later…

You are now (finally) a lawyer my good Sir.

For those of you thinking what the hell do I do with my life… meet Duncan McKee.

Big Duncan first walked into the gates of Victoria University when the Vietnam War was still going…  He went to too many parties and drifted off…met his wife at a party (her husband had died in a car accident and had one child ), they fell in love and went on to have four kids -and he kept bashing away at his Uni studies  – missing one exam to help in the home delivery of his second child.

This week at 57 years of age he finally graduated with an LLB.  He said he was one of the only students to take notes with pen and paper…

Source: Stuff

4. Three Simple Steps to Make Money from Your Passion…

If you’re feeling a bit bewildered with jobs and vocations give Zen Habits.com a visit…

‘Zen Habits is about finding simplicity in the daily chaos of our lives

(people follow this blog to simplify their lifestyle…cool man)

And we liked a column from this week’s Zen: Living off your passion...
(N.B. It’s the end of the year (tether for some) and combined stats from NZ, Australia and the US that put those who hate their job anywhere between 60-80% of the workforce)
3 Steps to live off your passion

1. Separate passion from reality  - First up brainstorm your idea  or passion projects in a positive way.  Most people do the opposite cos as humans our first reaction is to ‘critique’ an idea or get negative….instantly come up with all the reasons it won’t work.
So whiteboard your idea positively as a serious business concept… in a totally non critical way.

2. Be the Expert you already are;  Big barrier is a belief that you don’t know something well enough to get paid for it… Wrong! If you dig something so much you have actually diligently kept at it – you know more than most.  Find what you have specialised in and identify why people want this and pay for it.

3. Do the impossible;  We are conditioned to think you can’t build a career out of what you love… proof is so many people in jobs they simply persevere with … and some who completely hate their jobs. 

Big idea: Surround yourself with people who are already doing it… living off what they love doing!
2nd Big Idea: You have to get paid – $1-$100 that’s what takes it from a hobby to your life’s vocation.

Source: Zen Habits

3. Self publish or be damned…

The Book: The Mill River Recluse

The Plot: A Wealthy Vermont Widow who bestows her fortune on town residents who hardly know her.
Rejections: 100 publishers

Decision: Digitally Publish herself….just to get some readers and feedback you understand.

Price: 99 cents (very strategic price this- enough for readers to take a punt on)

Outcomes: Success? 400, 000 sold, on several best-seller lists and attracting requests from foreign publishers, movie studios and audio book publishers.

Self publishing success is taking off with 12 authors selling over 200, 000 copies and 30 authors over 100, 000 copies of self published books via Kindle…. with e-book sales forecast to hit $2 billion in 2013.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

2. The Night Circus

Our book of the year – and there’s been several ( The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides is one other) but the one really stealing our heart is….

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern! 

The book came about in 2005 due to the National Novel Writing Month – where you challenge yourself to write 50,000 words in one month – ‘no plot no problem’ approach.

Erin’s book was rejected by 30 literary agents…. then when she got an agent the book sold in a week and the buzz started up she got an unheard of 7 figure advance and a first printing of 175,000 …it’s now sold in 30 countries.

The Plot – magic and romance in 19th century England… centered around an incredibly elaborately designed circus.

“The circus arrives without warning.’ (the first line) … and she doesn’t mess about from there it’s ‘inventive and haunting… and very ‘filmic’ so the rights have been snapped up and everybody’s waiting… it’s just very well written!

1. The Ukulele Album …

Who would have thought one of the original leaders of ‘grunge’ (so old fashioned that term now) would put out a Ukulele album… my album of the year … or the one I kept returning to amid the deluge… For me this was sparse and emotionally brittle and one I found I played as an album (rare)

To quote Pitchfork “You either instantly know you need 35 minutes of this (Ukulele songs) in your life or are already backing slowly away.” “They are casual, sweet, and disarmingly unaffected…”