The beautiful game

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The beautiful game it may be, and the results so far have been nothing short of spectacular, but it plays havoc with your sleeping patterns! I imagine sales of coffee and various other caffeine drinks have probably gone through the roof as we here in New Zealand support and cheer on our teams through the night. Imagine the problems next round - the 11.30pm games are all gone and it's 2am and 6.30am starts all the way.

Isn't it fantastic though to see the way that the rest of the world has embraced the achievements of the All Whites? And it's great to know that the next time I'm in the USA people may actually have realised that New Zealand is a country in its own right!

Aside from the All Whites and their success, the vuvuzela has to be the other big story of the World Cup. Love them or hate them, we're all talking about them and have learned a new word.

New Zealand Post is celebrating this spectacular event with a much quieter memento - a superb pure silver, New Zealand legal tender coin - released as part of an international programme to commemorate the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™. Check it out at nzpost.co.nz/fifa

It won't make the same noise as the vuvuzela, but it may be worth a little more after the tournament's over!

To be in to win one of these fantastic coins leave us a comment here with your best tip for staying awake for the key matches and keeping awake the next day! (Remember to complete the email address field so that we can get in touch with you if you win, it won't be displayed publicly).

Lost in transit?

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

In this day and age ordering over the phone and internet has become so common that we rarely think anything of it, except when something doesn’t turn up.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about how customers now often put ‘safe delivery’ and ‘speed of service’ up there with ‘cost’ and ‘quality’ and recommended that if you’re sending out products to customers that you offer them a tracking service.

Easier said than done I hear you say. But actually, it is easy – did you know we have a free API which allows customers to track their delivery directly from your website? It’s the same API that we use to power our iPhone app and Google Gadget, and it’s there for you to use on your website too. All you need to do is click here to go to the developer section of our website where you’ll find details of how to use it along with some useful case studies.

While you’re on the developer pages, why not submit your comments and ideas for more developments via the forum? Or feel free to drop us a comment here that we can pass on.