18 August 2004

New portal a hit with visitors

Waitakere Online, the city’s new electronic gateway for residents, businesses and visitors, has attracted a lot of visits in its first month.

Launched at the Wellbeing Summit on 16 July, 1500 visits have been recorded in the past thirty days, making an average of 50 visits per day.

With an average stay of 12 minutes, the statistics indicate people are using the site on a daily basis. People were also more likely to visit during the week, with over 1300 visits occurring Monday to Friday.

Those 12 minutes may be to check the weather, pick a restaurant, find a local business or look up tourist attractions, all of which are some of the services offered on the new site.

Chair of the Editorial Board for the website, Councillor Greg Presland, says the success is due to the involvement of the community in its creation and design. “This portal has, with the benefit and assistance of input from local people experienced in IT, been designed to provide a simple yet elegant electronic gateway into Waitakere City. I hope that for many local residents it will become their homepage of choice.”

Comments from users of the site are being continuously received through a feedback tab on the site, which can be visited at www.waitakereonline.co.nz.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>