Our brand new weather section was launched this afternoon - now there’s no excuse for getting caught out by the weather! With all the latest New Zealand weather reports, forecasts and updates from MetService, we offer local weather information for your region. You’ll find:

• Today’s weather, updated every hour
• Weather forecasts for the next four days
• Weather reports for North and South Island regions, cities and towns
• Information on climate, sunshine hours, rainfall and average temperature

Online, up-to-the-minute weather reports mean you’ll always have the latest information on-hand, whether you’re planning a weekend escape, wondering whether to catch the bus or walk, or just hoping for summer sunshine to arrive. So, get the latest NZ weather reports, now!

Have you ever wondered how many people will live in New Zealand in the future?

According to the New Zealand population clock, we’re currently sitting on 4,240,179.

I think it’s fair to say that ‘getting away from it all’ is a Kiwi pastime, so it’s hard to imagine our country being overcrowded, without beautiful areas of unspoilt wilderness. I hope we always stay this way - and now statistics seem to be backing me up on this…

New Zealand’s population will continue to rise at its current rate until it reaches around five million. Our permanently small population offers some opportunities (tourism, great lifestyle, a beautiful environment) but it also means limitations for our economy and society. The rate of population expansion will drop as the number of deaths overtakes the number of births annually. At present, one person is born about every 14 minutes and 20 seconds. Statistics New Zealand projections show population growth beginning to slow, with the population peaking at just over the five million in the late 2020’s. The rate of growth has been around 1.4 percent per year since 2001.

Some things you may not have known about the NZ population:

• In relation to the size of our resident population, we have a high rate of inward and outward migration
• Our population reached 4 million at 5.30 pm on Thursday 24 April 2003
• The natural increase in population (births outnumbering deaths) has been around 30,000 people every year since the late 1980’s.
• Between 1990 and 2000, life expectancy increased by 2.4 years for females and 3.4 years for males

Find more stats ‘n stuff in our New Zealand information section, or take a look at the Government-run New Zealand population project, examining issues as they relate to sustainability and development.

Hands up who believes in miracles. I know you’re out there.

Miracles have an allure, even for some non-believers. We know there’s no way to disprove them. We want the impossible to happen. And there’s something compelling about the idea that a divine entity is manifesting itself in the mundane.

Newsworthy? Maybe. Intriguing? Definitely. That the ‘Virgin Mary pebble’ made the news is great - isn’t it brilliant to have some positive news from the doom ‘n gloom merchants?

Christchurch woman Lisa-Marie Corlet hit the headlines with her tiny icon-on-a-stone. The Virgin Mary pebble was found at Kaikoura Beach with an image etched on its surface, seemingly of the Virgin Mary. Without any religious scruples, Corlet put the pebble up for sale on TradeMe with a buy now price of $50,000. After a fake bid or two and a second Virgin Mary pebble auction underway, the pebble sits at $26,900 (while you’re there, check out the ‘Pebble that doesn’t look like the Virgin Mary’ and the ‘Virgin Mary on a surfboard pebble’). Internationally, there are precedents - a decade-old toasted cheese sandwich bearing the image of the Virgin sold on eBay for $28,000. Apparently the buyer, a casino, took the sacred sandwich on tour before donating the money to charity.

When online readers were asked to give their feedback on the miraculous stone from Kaikoura Beach, one astute reader noted that the image resembled “a greedy woman rubbing her hands together in glee.” Hmm, you don’t say.

Free music downloads from a band that’s loved around the world? An exclusive online album release?

Sounds too good to be true, but world superstars Radiohead have done just that with their new album, In Rainbows.

No longer under the thumb of record giant EMI (their last album, 2003’s Hail to the Thief, was the final in a six-record deal), this experimental group have bucked the trend by shouting a resounding ‘Yes’ to music downloads. Not only can you download the new album from their site, you choose your price, flea-market style. If you want, you can pay only the cost of processing your credit card payment. No one will know how many people have bought the new album or what they paid for it, as Radiohead are not revealing sales numbers or the amount paid for each album.

Challenging the system is nothing new for Radiohead; they’ve always been innovators. Although their last three albums - Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief - all reached number one in the charts, these UK rock stars are distinctively experimental in their musical style. Band manager, Bryce Edge, says of the move:

“We’re prepared to take a risk and we might come out looking very foolish. But we believe if your music is great, then people will pay for it.”

Could this be the start of a new trend? Other artists have pulled similar stunts: Prince gave away copies of his last album and The Charlatans are planning to offer free downloads of their next album. Radiohead will release a retail version in early 2008. Fans can also pre-order a “discbox” from the band’s website, which features bonus tracks, a vinyl version of the album and a lyric booklet, as well as the download.

I wonder if any New Zealand bands will follow suit?

Cast your mind back 25 years… and you’ll see a world where the Internet was barely imagined, spam was a tinned meat product and the 87 million people who use email every day were, you know, talking to each other.

Back in 1982, a small group of geeks were wondering how to inject some emotion into their online communications. To solve their problem, Scott Fahlman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, created emoticons. Staring at the keyboard sideways, he smiled to himself. Then he typed his smile :-)

Within days, the smiley face was sweeping the ARPAnet (the Internet’s precursor) and other emoticons were being created, allowing geeks to show:

• Laughter :D
• Flirtation ;)
• Teasing :P
• Frowns :(
• Confusion :\
• Surprise :O

Today… there are countless emoticons that allow us to add some feeling to our emails, instant messages, blog and forum posts, and even to text messages on our mobile phones. As Fahlman says, it’s hard to convey meaning without body language or tone of voice, so these little faces “humanize what is otherwise a cold medium.”

Happy 25th birthday to the emoticon. Party on! <|:-)

As a New Zealand Search Directory with almost entirely New Zealand traffic (close to 300,000 user sessions; see Nielsen statistics), NZS.com is in a good position to follow New Zealand Internet browser usage statistics.

With the introduction of Internet Explorer 7.0 (commonly known as IE7) in October 2006, the browser statistics on NZS.com have shown a surprisingly gradual change from IE6 to IE7.

The graph to the right shows Internet Explorer percentages over the last five months (May 2007 to September 2007), indicating that IE7 is slowly taking over from IE6 but is taking longer than many expected. With the launch of IE7 a full year ago now, as well as the increased functionality (eg. tabbed browsing) which has been introduced in IE7, there were many expectations that it would quickly surpass IE6 in usage.

A recent blog post on Microsoft’s official IEBlog shows a change this month in the way IE7 is distributed:

Internet Explorer 7 installation will no longer require Windows Genuine Advantage validation and will be available to all Windows XP users.

With this new development, it’s likely there will be an increase in percentage uptake of IE7 over IE6. We’ll keep an eye on our statistics with interest.

The stars were out in force at the New Zealand Music Awards last night (heck, Paul Holmes even made an appearance in a stunning white suit!) but the clear winners were Auckland rockers, The Mint Chicks, and soul songstress, Hollie Smith.

Minty fresh winners
Alternative rock group, The Mint Chicks are the “rocky, poppy” musical vehicle of brothers Kody and Ruban Nielson. They outshone other NZ music stars Brooke Fraser, Hollie Smith, Evermore and Opshop to win the Album of the Year Tui for their well-received second album Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!. The Mint Chicks also won accolades for Best Group and Best Rock Album, as well as a Best Video nod for the album’s title song.

Soul songstress wins…finally
The velvety tones of Wellington soul singer, Hollie Smith, were enough to bring her the coveted Best Female Solo Artist, Breakthrough Artist and Best Aotearoa-Roots Album for her work on debut album Long Player. Smith’s 2007 winnings should more than make up for 2006, when she was strangely overlooked in the Single of the Year category for her popular and spine-tingling rendition of Don McGlashan’s Bathe In The River.

Evermore, Brooke Fraser and Opshop join the ranks
Single of the Year award went to Evermore for Light Surrounding You. They also claimed the International Achievement Award (originally from Feilding, they now call Oz home) for their single, which rose to top spot in the Australian singles charts. It was the first New Zealand song to do so in ten years!

Opshop was the winner with the masses, taking out the People’s Choice Award as voted by the New Zealand public. Brooke Fraser also got a vote of confidence from New Zealanders, winning the Highest Selling Album award for Albertine and the Airplay award for her song Deciphering Me.

For more great Kiwi tunes, check out our New Zealand music section.

Later today the New Zealand Open Source Awards are being held in Wellington. The Awards, sponsored by Google, Red Hat, Catalyst IT and a number of other local organisations, attracted over 130 entries in the following categories:

• Open Source Ambassador
• Open Source Contributor
• Open Source Software Project
• Open Source Use in Government
• Open Source Use in Business
• Open Source Use in Education
• Open Source Use for Community Organisations
• Open Source for Creativity

Thirty-two finalists have been picked in the above categories. Congratulations to all those who have succeeded in being nominated as finalists.

We’re all looking for the same thing really, aren’t we?

The quest for a partner who understands how we see the world and accepts us (ultimately loving us just as we are!) is universal. So, it should come as no surprise that significant numbers of users search for free NZ dating sites on NZS.com every month.

The growing popularity of online dating services has been seen both in New Zealand and across the ditch; apparently, over one million Australians visit online dating services each month. Online match-making can be an effective and efficient way to meet (albeit virtually) a large number of available singles. And why not? You may think dating in cyberspace is just for geeks or people without social skills… well, maybe that’s sometimes true, but there are many regular Joe’s ‘n Jane’s online who are testing the waters of romance to see what’s out there.

While it’s entirely possible to throw yourself into the online dating pool without any credentials or qualifications, online romance (like its real-world equivalent) does have pitfalls. To help you negotiate Internet dating, a number of helpful online dating guides have been published to get you started:

• Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Online Dating, by Greg Holden
• Boomer’s Guide to Online Dating, by Judsen Culbreth
• Online Dating For Dummies, by Judy Silverstein
• The Rules For Online Dating, by Ellen Fein
• Truth, Lies and Online Dating, by Terry Ulick
• The Ultimate Man’s Guide to Online Dating, by Howard Brian Edgar

Once you’re educated, take the plunge into New Zealand dating!

An update to our earlier announcement of Lloyd Jones’ placement on the Booker Prize shortlist …

Jones’ Mr Pip has missed out on the prize, which was awarded to Irish author Anne Enright for her family epic, The Gathering. While it missed out on the top spot, Mr Pip is still widely touted as the most internationally successful New Zealand book EVER, being published worldwide to critical and popular acclaim. It has also won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and the Montana New Zealand Prize for best fiction this year.

We don’t seem to be winning much lately, but this is still a great success for Lloyd Jones (and the rest of us who hang on his literary coat-tails).

Keri Hulme’s the bone people remains the only New Zealand book to win the prestigious Booker Prize.