The native people of New Zealand, the Maori, have a tradition of tattooing called Ta Moko. It has become famous probably because it is often on the face, and also for its striking designs. Recently there has been a resurgence of people wearing Moko on their face, with some quite prominent figures starting to wear them.

There are a few websites that have explanations of the cultural background of Ta Moko and also a few with some practitioners of the art form.

You can find out more about our unique Maori culture in the NZS.com directory.

Here are some sites for space nuts…

• Check out the New Zealand Spaceflight Association (NZSA) site for current space news and events. The low $50 annual subscription gives you access to regular meetings and their two-monthly magazine ‘Liftoff’.
• A team of New Zealand radio amateurs are constructing KiwiSAT, a New Zealand designed and built orbiting satellite which they aim to launch within a few years. KiwiSAT will include a scientific research package and enable global amateur radio communications. Donations are accepted to help with the extensive costs of this exciting project.
• Rocket Lab is based in Auckland and is launching suborbital research and commercial payloads into space from 2008. The A-tea series of rocket is designed to carry 25 to 70 kg to an altitude of 150 to 250 km.
• Stonehenge Aotearoa is located in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand, just north of Wellington, and is built on the same scale as the original Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, in England. This isn’t simply a Stonehenge replica, though; it’s been specifically designed as a practical open-sky observatory for the Southern Hemisphere and is used to teach the calendars of time and seasons. It combines modern scientific knowledge with ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Celtic, Polynesian and Maori starlore.
• Have you seen some strange objects in the sky? Do you have missing time? Take a fascinating look into the world of UFO’s at UFOCUS NZ, a UFO research, support and resource network.
• Stepping into the future, the Star Wars New Zealand (SWNZ) site looks to encourage Star Wars related hobbies and provide fan information for Kiwi Trekkies. New Zealand also finds itself with a mention in Memory Alpha, the Star Trek encyclopedia.

Alrighty, I’m outta time - beam me up!

Something that caught my eye (and my inbox!) was this little ditty ‘n’ dance, otherwise known as the haka. But this is a haka with a difference - it’s performed by a team of hybrid gingerbread All Blacks.

These funky dancing biscuits are brought to you by the Baking Industry Association of New Zealand, in aid of the annual Bakery of the Year competition. This nationwide bake-off is open to all Kiwi bakeries, from cafes that bake their own breads, to specialist baking outfits and instore supermarket bakeries.

If you’re a bakery, register to earn a coveted place in the top ten of New Zealand’s best bakeries. And if you’re a punter, you can be in to win a $500 travel voucher just by casting your vote! To sample some baked goodies before making your decision, take a look at our New Zealand bakeries category.

There’s no escaping earthquakes in New Zealand. Even the Chatham Islands is susceptible to them. Small earthquakes happen every day in New Zealand, but most are not felt. Larger earthquakes (above about Magnitude 3.0) are recorded by GeoNet and usually make it onto their website within a few minutes, showing the time, location, depth and magnitude. This lets you know whether it was a small earthquake close by, or a whopper a long way away. You can even help them with their research by telling them if you felt it or not.

What’s your style when looking for information online? Do you prefer to search and view results, or would you rather browse from a categorised selection of listings?

NZS.com is a search engine and a directory, which means you can browse as well as search for New Zealand websites. With the fad for instantly gratifying search (seen by some as an easier option), it’s easy to forget that browsing can be a great way to find exactly what you’re looking for. We offer a clear, intuitive, easy-to-navigate directory structure, with thousands of categories. We’ve got everything from outdoor education and personal chefs, to dairy farming, wedding venues and adventure tours!

It’s best to browse when…you know a little about your subject matter. Think of it like going to a library section where there’s a whole shelf of books on a particular topic. Say you’re looking for reiki (you know what reiki is and you want to find a local practitioner). You browse to the main Health category, click on the Alternative Health subcategory and, voila, there’s a Reiki category listing all New Zealand reiki practitioners.

It’s s best to search when…you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, or you’re unfamiliar with your subject matter. Let’s say you search for ‘reiki’ (it’s something you’ve heard of, but you have no idea where you might find it). Your search results tell you there are many relevant listings. You can also see that there’s a whole category devoted to Reiki in the directory, where you can browse all available listings in one place.

So you see, searching and browsing offer two different paths to the same end. The NZS.com directory combines the two - so you can enjoy the best of both worlds!

I’ve just received my regular copy of the DNC (Domain Name Commission) newsletter, which updates New Zealand domain space news and statistics on a monthly basis.

How many domains are registered in New Zealand? As at the 30th of June 2007 there were 281,365 domains registered in the .nz domain space, with a net increase of 4,904 domains, of which 88% were .co.nz domains.

Interesting statistics, when you consider that the current New Zealand population clock (from Statistics New Zealand) is running at 4,185,485.

That’s one domain for every 14 people in New Zealand and one domain for every five households. If you don’t have a domain, are you missing out on what the Jones’ have?

When is a good book more than just an entertaining read? Well, it had to come out sooner or later that I’m a book geek from way back, but not only do I love a good read, I like to think it’s possible to make positive change happen in the world.

Good Books is an online New Zealand bookstore with a difference. When you buy a book, all profits go to Oxfam to help fight poverty and social injustice around the world. Oxfam helps people in over 100 countries worldwide, creating opportunities for communities to improve standards of education, health and living.

This is a great way to add to your book collection or give a gift, while knowing that your dollars are going towards a worthwhile cause. It couldn’t be simpler really and there’s no difference in price to you, the shopper. What’s more, delivery is free anywhere in the world and Good Books stock over 2 million titles!

If they don’t have what you’re after, you’ll find all the New Zealand bookstores you could ever want in our New Zealand bookshops category.

By now, Internet junkies and casual Web surfers alike will have heard of a lil’ thing called PageRank.

PageRank is a tool used by Google to rank all pages on the Web. The higher your PageRank, the better. A high rank indicates that the great G views your page as more important than a page with a lower rank. The Google-meister describes PageRank as: “using [the Web's] vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value.”

How does it work?
In a nutshell, Google reads all the inbound links to a page. For instance, if page X links to page Y, Google sees this as a vote, by Page X for page Y.

Sounds like an online democracy?
Well, these elections aren’t 100% democratic. Google doesn’t just go by the number of links to a page; it looks at the importance of the page that has cast the vote. Votes cast by pages with a high PageRank have greater weighting than those cast by pages with a lower PageRank. Google also takes into account many other factors: how long the links remain active, the rate at which your site is gaining links, click throughs to your site from Google searches and the stickiness of your site (how well you can retain your visitors).

And the winner is?
After analysing a page’s inbound links, Google assigns the page a rank out of 10. To see the PageRank of your site and others, simply install the PageRank reader on your Google Toolbar.

So what can I do to get a better PageRank?
The good news is that you can do things to improve your PageRank:

• Fill your site with useful, informative and interesting content that users will want to share
• Exchange links with other quality sites - getting highly ranked sites to link to yours will improve your ranking, so make sure you’re swapping links with well ranked sites. Note: if you link to sites that have been delisted by Google, your site may also be removed from Google’s index
• Submit your site to online directories, like the NZS.com directory
• Let people know about your site by adding your Web address to your business stationery, email signature, press releases and advertising
• Maintain your site, as letting your site become inaccessible for periods of time may affect your rank

Get your rank rocketing today!

Many of the NZS.com team were happily glued to their televisions on Saturday night for a tense All Blacks win against Australia and, on the same night, the match that some are calling the best game of netball ever played, with the Silver Ferns beating Australia in a cliffhanger double-overtime victory.

Our congratulations to both teams; we’re wishing you the best for the World Cup!

If you’re looking for more news on the All Blacks and up-coming World Cup you can find all you’ll need in our dedicated category of All Blacks websites.

Have you ever worried that the government is losing its transparency or isn’t fully democratic? In a move that will keep the New Zealand public in the political loop, Parliament’s full proceedings are now broadcast live online.

Parliament will be sitting for around 17.5 hours each week, with debates and question time available to view via a number of remote-controlled cameras in the parliamentary chamber. The antics and heated debates of our favourite politicians should make for some good viewing!

This new service doesn’t come free, though, with a price tag of some $4.1 million to set up the broadcast and ongoing costs of $1.7 million every year. The new technology development brings New Zealand up to speed with the rest of the world (60 nations already broadcast similar material).

To watch the live broadcast from Parliament, just visit the site and choose from broadband (high speed / low speed) or dial up connection, make sure you have QuickTime or Windows Media Player, and you’re away laughing. If you’re new to the political game, there’s also provide plenty of information on how Parliament works.

This is a great way to find out what really goes on behind the Beehive doors, so take a minute to tune in…