Kylie Minogue New Zealand Concert

New Zealand has been privy to some great international entertainment events

over the last five years – we are no longer the last place on earth that the major pop stars and sports heroes choose to tour.

Next on New Zealand’s list for the first time EVER comes the green fairy from down under, the one and only Kylie Minogue. Kylie is set to hit the stage in Auckland on December 8 this year, a pre-Christmas gift if you will?

Her show X2008 has toured across Europe and been seen by more than half a million people. With costumes kitted out by none other than Jean-Paul Gaultier (the man behind Madonna’s cone bra of the early 1990s), X2008 and its $24 million production budget surely won’t disappoint Kiwi Kylie fans.

Get ticketing information from Eventfinder – tickets are on sale from 9am, September 9.

Image from Flickr.

Use a Cell Phone to Pay

New Zealand-wide, councils have offered cell phone and credit card payment methods for parking metres for a year or so now, offering a convenient alternative to carrying coins in our streamlined, electronically structured world.

Is paying for parking via your cell phone account much used avenue for inner city parking payment in New Zealand? Or perhaps, do the transaction fees associated (50c and upwards) put Kiwis off?

Major banks in Mexico have just partnered with telecommunications corporations to launch a mobile charge service, a technological advancement tipped to go worldwide over the next year. Cell phone users are able to link their mobile phone accounts to their bank accounts, and pay for everyday things such as taxi fares and meals at restaurants, via text message.

This service is initially targeted at technophile teens, and has seen significant success already in the birth country of much of today’s technological gadgetry: Japan. Will New Zealand teens soon be able to spend their pocket money as easily as they would sending a 4-second SMS to their best friend?

How to enrol to vote in the New Zealand Elections

In a strong attempt to gain exposure to the younger voting audience, the Electoral Commission has begun a prominent campaign of advertising including TV, radio, internet, and almost any other form of advertising you can think of. While it is the Electoral Commission that are determined to convince you to vote, it’s the Electoral Enrolment Centre that facilitates that vote and helps you through the process.

To facilitate your vote, this year the methods of enrolling to vote in the New Zealand Elections have been pushed across a wide variety of different options:

• Enrol online: You can enrol online on the elections.org.nz website. The website also offers frequently asked questions about how to enrol online.
• Enrol by post: You can enrol by post by downloading the enrollment application form, filling it out and sending it by post, fax or dropping it into any PostShop.
• Enrol by text message: There are even options around requesting enrollment application forms via text message from your mobile phone.

For general inquiries about enrolling to vote you can email the Electoral Enrolment Centre on enrol@elections.org.nz or phone 0800 ENROL NOW (0800 36 76 56).

If you’re deciding who to vote for, you can look for information in the NZS.com New Zealand Political Parties category.

New Zealand Medals Per Capita

Our silver fern has once again been turned gold in the last few hours with Sailing athlete Tom Ashley winning the third gold for New Zealand at the Olympics.

This brings New Zealand’s Olympic Medals tally to 9 medals so far, with still 4 competition days to go! This is the best effort since Barcelona 1992 when we took home 10 medals total. The three Olympic Games between Barcelona and Beijing produced just an average of five medals per Games – so with a few medal hopes still to come we are likely to make 2008 our best games ever – topping the historical top tally of Seoul 1988 with 13 medals.

Per capita, New Zealand Olympic athletes now rank fourth in the world for medal wins, with just Bahrain (pop 760,000, 1 medal), Estonia (pop 1.34 million, 2 medals) and Jamaica (pop 2.71 million, 5 medals) ahead of New Zealand’s population of just over 4 million. Before the Olympic Games 2008, New Zealand ranked 6th in the world per capita for medal wins.

Image from Flickr.

New Zealand Athletes Finally Win

After a grueling week of near hits and big misses for New Zealand at the Beijing Olympics, New Zealand athletes finally win big, adding another bronze overnight last night to the Olympic Medals Tally.

Kiwis won 5 medals (2 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze) within just hours of each other on Saturday night, and our men’s cycling pursuit team came away with bronze in the early hours of this morning.

What’s next for NZ at the Olympics? Sarah Walker, the current world number one BMX athlete competes tomorrow (Wednesday Aug 20) from 1pm. Walker has been picked for gold from day one, and finally gets her chance to make her country proud with just five competing days to go for the 2008 Games

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Blue Screen of Death at Olympics

You’ve probably seen it before, that heart jolting computer monitor sight: the Blue Screen of Death. The Blue Screen (BSoD) message can pop up on computers running Windows operating systems letting a user know that a problem has been detected, and Windows will be shut down – often loosing data and anything a user is working on.

The BSoD is a common poke by techies at Microsoft’s bug-prone systems, so you may be asking yourself, why are the words BSoD and Olympics popping up together today on message boards and forums worldwide?

Yet another opening ceremony flaw has retrospectively come to light today: a projected image of the BSoD onto the roof of the Bird’s Nest stadium while veteran Chinese gymnast Li Ning was suspended on his way up to light the Olympic flame.

Images of the malfunction message have popped up on Chinese websites early this morning, and news of yet another opening ceremony mishap has spread like wild fire. This news comes in just hours after last night’s lip synching revelation, and yesterday’s fake fireworks drama.

What is in store for us tomorrow? Check back to the NZS.com blog for Olympic Games 2008 updates.

Image from Flickr.

Fake Fireworks

Olympics fans across the world were stunned and amazed by the quality of the Olympics opening ceremony on Saturday morning over the weekend – with many noting their favourite segment to be the 28 fireworks footprints leading to Olympic Stadium, signifying the previous 28 modern Olympic Games.

Breaking news this morning just revealed that those fireworks were faked – at least those which millions of viewers saw from home in the televised version. While the Beijing opening ceremony organisers did let off 28 fireworks footprints into the sky leading to the Bird’s Nest, this was not filmed, as they believed it was going to be too dangerous and difficult to have a helicopter following them so low down in the skies.

Instead, a 55-second computer generated sequence was made, taking over a year to compete, which featured camera shake and even Beijing smog to create a realistic and stunning fireworks display.

With some promising efforts from Mahe Drysdale, Emma Twigg and Moss Burmester last night, New Zealand can hope to see its first Olympic Medal in finals over the coming days.

Image from Flickr.

Olympic Keyword Searches

Olympic fever is in full swing and it’s great to see the entire nation getting behind the NZ Olympic Team as we’re all preparing for the glitz and glamour of the opening ceremony in Beijing today.

As avid followers of search within New Zealand, it’s interesting watching the flow of Olympic keyword searches, such as what people are searching for when they’re looking for information about the Olympics online – specifically information on the Olympic team.

Here’s a snippet of some of the top Olympic keyword search phrases that we’re seeing on NZS.com:

• new zealand olympic team
• olympic games
• new zealand olympic team 2008
• olympic games 2008
• olympic medal tally
• first new zealand olympic medal
• new zealand olympic medal winners
• new zealand olympic medal tally
• first new zealander olympic medal
• new zealand olympic gold medal winners

The Olympics are a global phenomenon and are one of the few events that capture the interest of the young and old. The level of people searching for background information on the history of the Olympics is something that comes across as a strong focus.

You can read more about the history and our local team on the NZS.com sports articles available; NZ Olympic Team, 2008 Olympic Games, NZ Olympic Medal Winners, Olympic Athletes and the history of the Olympics themselves.

Mahe Drysdale Leads with the Flag

Rower Mahe Drysdale was announced last night as the official New Zealand Olympics

flag bearer for the opening ceremony in Beijing tonight. The spectacular show will screen in New Zealand live from 11.30pm.

Drysdale was perhaps not seen as an option for the Olympic flag bearer duties by the Olympic Committee as just hours after the ceremony he is set to compete in his first event.

The New Zealand team’s official chief Dave Currie says “We have chosen someone who will inspire, who will never give up”. Drysdale has competed in one Olympic Games before (Athens 2004) and is a favourite to bring home a gold this year.

Olympic Flagbearer

Just two days to go until the opening ceremony, and we are still almost 30 hours away from finding out which Olympic Athlete will be the official New Zealand flag bearer in Beijing.

The flag bearer holds the high honour of leading the New Zealand Olympic team into Olympic Stadium, and will be announced at 10pm on Thursday night. Previous flag bearers for the last five Games have been Ian Ferguson (Seoul 1988), Mark Todd (Barcelona 1992), Barbara Kendall (Atlanta 1996), Blyth Tait (Sydney 2000) and Beatrice Faumuina (Athens 2004).

While Olympic favourites Rob Waddell, Mark Todd, Barbara Kendall and the Evers-Swindell sisters are some of the likely candidates, online rumors are speculating that Valerie Vili, perhaps our strongest Olympic contender for gold, will show our team the way in Beijing on Friday night.

Image from Flickr.