Nov 11
17
Te Maori News
Social Media compiled and un-edited news and updates about Māori. Ideal for if you are too busy to be on Twitter all day, or if your other news source is irregular, then this is the news for you.
Automatically compiled on tweets about Māori and updated once a day this is the only way to get a newspaper style look and feel of the latest and relevant Māori news.
Subscribe to Te Maori News here and choose Twitter, email or vari0us other update options.
Te Maori News can be updated anytime you want, and you are able to subscribe to it via the subscribe link and social media options.
Once you have registered a new domain name, often the company you made the purchase from will place their own advertising on the landing page, until you upload a web page or site.
If you have only made the purchase for your own email, many companies still leave their advertising there. With email being popular to brand organisations, it is common for a person to read your email address and take the part after the @, then go to see what your web site is about.
What can you do to promote yourself or your future web site?
By adding an html file to your server with your own advertising material will increase your investment. Some ideas include:
- Contact details such as Twitter, FaceBook, Phone
- A brief bio of who you are.
- Email sign up form to your newsletter
- Integrate your WordPress or Google blog
- A message stating when your web site will be accessible.
I am not a web designer
A simple landing page does not require that you be a web developer. If you use a word processor such as Microsoft Word or Open Office, you can design a document to your requirements, save it as an html file and upload that.
If you are not sure how to upload a file speak to the company where you purchased your domain name from or shop around other domain name resellers. The Domain Name Commissioner has a list of all authorised New Zealand companies.
I just came across this great initiative from the experts at www.iwantmyname.co.nz which would be perfect for those of you who do not have the technical skills to add a page.
WordPress site
There are a number of free plugins that will create a custom landing page. Simply search New plugins from the admin panel. One example is the “Coming Soon Page” http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-coming-soon-page/ which is certainly a lot nicer than a plain boring text page.
It has been a busy past two weeks with major Māori initiatives and developments by New Zealand telcos and associated parties. This is a summary of those initiatives with an explanation of who the Māori groups are.
2 Degrees
2Degrees Mobile announced a Te Reo Maori smart phone, the IDEOS X3 , while at the Te Huarahi Tika Trust annual general meeting in Auckland. While I am somewhat sceptical about the motivation, it is certainly a bonus for any Māori language speakers on 2Degrees who need a new phone. It will also probably attract some new customers from other telcos.
2Degrees Mobile also announced in conjunction with its founding shareholder, Te Hautaki Trust, that they have launched Hei Rere Mai (‘So You Can Fly’), a programme to increase Māori participation in the telecommunications industry.
Vodafone
Vodafone announced that it will extend its existing graduate programme by allocating five places to Māori graduates.
Te Huarahi Tika Trust
Te Huarahi Tika Trust made a statement and submission to government that the 700MHz spectrum allocation, rather than an auction it suggests that the Trust gets 15MHz (paired), and 10MHz each goes to the three telcos.
Karaitiana Taiuru
I released “A recommendation for an updated New Zealand and Māori Predictive TXT database“ research and recommendations to update the Telecom New Zealand Maori predictive text database and to promote the use of the list to other telcos. I sent the suggestion to all the New Zealand telcos and made the list public so that any telco can use it. Only Telecom New Zealand replied.
About the Māori teclo representative groups
Te Huarahi Tika Trust a Māori interest group in telecommunications which was set up to manage a portion of spectrum used for 3G services. It advises its commercial arm Hautaki Ltd which is the part owner of 2Degrees Mobile. This was made possible as part of the government treaty settlement of Māori spectrum claim.
Its Trustees are: Daphne Luke – Chair, Mavis Mullins , Neville Baker , Sir Graham Latimer, Anthony Turoa Royal, Maui Solomon, Jacqui Te Kani.
Nga Pu Waea, a government group set up to advise on Māori interests and development opportunities in broadband, and work to ensure that marae, kohanga kura, wananga, iwi runanga and Māori health and social service providers benefit from the roll-out of broadband to rural areas. Its seven members who are elected for a term of three years are: Jeremy Gardner, Daphne Luke, Mavis Mullins, Haami Piripi, Antony Royal, Tuwhakairiora Williams and Richard Orzecki.
Nov 11
2
Smartphone in Maori language
2 Degrees yesterday announced the release of an Android phone with Māori menus. They did not mention that they have in fact blocked the development of Māori language development with smart phones for those who do not use 2Degrees and their “one” mobile phone.
Android phones use an open source system to operate. Open Source means that the software is freely used and anyone can customise it for free. It is a small and relatively simple task to create new language files for the whole Android system so anyone who uses an Android phone can use the new language on their phone or computer. This file can then be offered freely to any Android user. Most Android users are able to change their language on their phone, and in fact most languages are already supported in Android.
There are many communities of developers in the world who are willing to assist in such language projects at no charge as they are passionate about developing technologies and under represented languages. The hard part is translating words that may not exist.
Aside from the menus being in Māori language, there appears to be no effort to include Māori language predictive txt’n and Māori language spell checking, the minimum one would expect for a smart phone in their language.
Posted in Telco by .
The Domain Name Commissioner released her monthly statistics on .nz domain names for September 2011, the details and summaries are below including my commentary.
.maori.nz / māori.nz
642 registered .maori.nz names with 118 renewals, 15 new registrations
.iwi.nz
76 registered .iwi.nz names with 17 renewals and no new registrations.
Summary
.maori.nz / .māori.nz is still the 5th most registered domain from the total of 14 .nz (2LD) domains. The most popular is, .co.nz with 396,018 registrations. The least popular is .parliament with only 8 registrations of which all 8 were renewed in the month of September.
Posted in .iwi.nz Maori Online by .