Now in its 5th year, the Wine Box Auction and Exhibition are positive, unique events that bring the wider art community together to benefit RealPeople @ Mosaic.

Nationally recognized artists generously contribute their support, time and artistic skills to create stunning artwork out of wine boxes, acknowledging the importance of RealPeople @ Mosaic to the wider Hawkes Bay community.

This year’s Wine Box Auction will be held back in its original home, the RealPeople @ Mosaic Gallery, with an exhibition of all the boxes opening there on July 19th.

In the previous Wine Box Auctions, works of highly prized collectable art have been created by the outstanding caliber of the invited artists. Many continue to contribute to the event annually despite commitments to their own exhibitions. This year’s group of artists also includes several exciting newcomers and, as ever the range of materials and ideas has created a truly exciting art event that now sits firmly within the New Zealand Arts calendar.

For more info visit www.wineboxauction.co.nz

Auction Date: 30th July 2010
Time: 5:30pm
Location: Realpeople @ Mosaic Gallery, 429a Gloucester Street, Taradale.

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Employees at a Copenhagen Carlsberg warehouse have ended their five-day strike over a cut in their daily ration of free beer.

The strike in Denmark followed the company's decision to introduce new rules for employees on beer drinking at work.

Their daily beer ration was cut from three bottles to one.

The workers' union says they have now ended the strike and agreed to meet with management to find a solution to the matter.

Source: NZPA

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After reading the article my first thought was "I hope my staff don't strike on me when I cut back on their daily beer rations at work" (kidding) and secondly was "is there not an obvious middle ground to this situation?".

One group wants 3 beers a day and the other groups only wants to give 1 beer away a day and they are searching for some middle ground. Now I'm no mathematician nor am I a master negotiator but I am thinking I proposing to them I fly over and mediate their negotiations and point out where the obvious middle ground between 1 and 3 is.

These products are not however what this post is about rather just a lead in to the real bit of techno gadgetory that I want to discuss.

A while back I had a mate send me over an eye-fi card from the states (http://www.eye.fi/). Eyefi is an SD card that you put in you camera which has built in wireless. This means that as long as I am in range of a wireless network I can be flicking images from my camera to shutterfly, facebook or even just my own Mac.
Right of the bat I know some of you are going to be saying "well why aren't you using you iphone for that" and my response would be "because I want to take decent photos".

I can see this being such an excellent tool. Businesses who have a social media marketing plan and do it should be all over technology like this. If you don't have a social media plan talk to Mogul and they'll get you on the right track.

The problem is Eye-fi is not available in NZ, however I have just lost my card (I think my 11 month old put it in the trash) and I am about to put in an order for a couple more. If any one would like me to grab them one at the same time let me know what type you want and I'll get it over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdBd14rjcs0

Now that you know what cloud computing is, here's a media release about our new Cloud computing service:

IT services company CodeBlue has launched a Cloud computing service with high-availability servers starting at just $200 per month.

This price point means CodeBlue’s Cloud servers cost around the same to implement as traditional in house servers - but cost less to service and support. They also provide significant benefits such as high availability, automated backup and disaster recovery, and the flexibility of being able to ‘dial up or dial down’ server capacity according to demand.

CodeBlue Hawke’s Bay manager says while there’s been much hype around Cloud computing, savvy business owners have been waiting until there’s a strong and obvious business case for moving to locate their servers in the Cloud instead of on their own premises.

“CodeBlue’s Cloud service is the first to offer Cloud computing at an entry price point directly comparable with on premises servers,” he says.

“This has never been done before. It provides a powerful incentive for customers to now adopt the new Cloud computing model, knowing they will reap not only service and support savings, but also major service improvement benefits.”

The CodeBlue Cloud service is designed for both small and medium sized businesses. Cloud services are often complementary to existing on-premises servers - CodeBlue helps customers decide which servers to keep internally, and which to operate in the cloud to get the right mix for their business.

“Our approach is to find the most cost effective and pragmatic strategy for customers. This typically involves using existing on premises servers for local file and print and running standard Microsoft Office applications. Higher demand applications such as accounting software, ERP systems, sales and service systems, CRMs and Intranets are all candidates for application servers running in the Cloud,” says Marcus Smith.

Smith says CodeBlue is unique in not having a vested interest in either Cloud or in house solutions. “We’re agnostic. We’re interested in the lowest costs and highest service levels - and we’ll use whatever technology we can to help customers achieve that objective.”

He says a major advantage of Cloud computing for small to medium sized businesses is that it makes highly sophisticated technology affordable. For example, CodeBlue’s Cloud servers are fully virtualised using VMware at an enterprise level. This means 99.99 percent availability. If a server goes down, another server automatically takes over without the user noticing any change. CodeBlue prices Service Level Agreements lower for virtualised servers, whether it’s in the Cloud or on premises.

“There are hard, quantifiable savings from adopting virtualised servers,” Marcus Smith says. “The Cloud allows businesses to benefit from these savings - without the expense of implementing a virtualised server environment internally.”

The Cloud also enables Backup and Disaster Recovery to be handled automatically at much lower cost than with internal systems. Another big advantage is that if customers require more server capacity for periods of peak load they can simply ‘dial it up’ on a pay as you use basis. This means customers don’t have to buy server capacity for peak demand which then is underutilised at non peak periods.

“For us Cloud computing is just a means to an end. CodeBlue’s success is based on our promise to customers that we will reduce their overall IT service costs while at the same time improving services levels – all for a fixed monthly cost. As technology moves ahead we’re continually finding new ways to achieve our customer promise and Cloud Computing is an important new tool in our customer value delivery process,” Smith says.

John went to Napier Boys' High School and is now a third year PhD student at Victoria University. His world-leading research involves the growth of infinitesimally tiny nanoparticles and is using his skills to work with a precious metal called palladium, which is used in a car's exhaust system to remove toxic gases. Palladium is incredibly expensive and currently has limited use due to its price tag to $11,000 a kg.

John’s has developed a process to change and manipulate the size of palladium nanoparticles to achieve better performance than conventional palladium and at a fraction of the cost. He has received worldwide recognition from the scientific community as it is the first time anyone had shown such control over the growth of palladium nanoparticles, fully tracked the growth of palladium nanoparticles and learned how to change their structure.

John’s research is already in trials with a UK precious metals firm and by all accounts he hopes that the technology can be commercialised and on the market within five years.

John gave a fascinating interview on the Radio New Zealand earlier in the month and it is well worth listening to (http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ourchangingworld/20090827). During the interview he pays tribute to his Napier Boy's High School teacher Phil Berry who during his 7th form physics classes gave him the desire and drive and provided the foundation for what he is doing now. Good on ya Phil - I do appreciate the often thankless work you teachers do.

It's great to see these type of people growing out of the Hawkes Bay and it's great that we have a place where we can enjoy their successes together.