Obscure Box

I know MasterChef is popular but I’m thinking someone’s cooking the numbers a bit too much on who’s watching the Channel 10 series. The Australian’s Lara Sinclair tells in “MasterChef sparks Coles sales surge” (Monday 21 June 2010) of the shows success and the impact on sales for sponsors. While advertising has boosted sales, it’s [...]

So the British Monarchy is on Twitter. The Queen has apparently been a big fan of the World Wide Web for many years so I suppose it’s no surprise that Her Majesty would also want the Monarchy to keep up with modern trends and enter the online social network marketplace. When I last looked an [...]

British author Cressida Cowell may know a thing or two about dragons but her knowledge of Vikings might need a little updating. Her series of children’s books are the basis for the new 3D animated blockbuster How to Train Your Dragon. It’s a fascinating movie that’s entertaining for all ages and I confess I shed [...]

Many style guides for news organisations here in Australia are lax of the use of commas in numbers 1,000 t0 9,999. They prefer to drop the comma and opt for 1000 to 9999. Commas are fine higher numbers with digits grouped in threes so it’s 10,000 and 1,000,000 and so on. I think the commas [...]

Not by telephone, if you’re thinking of contacting Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Just been trawling the PM’s website www.pm.gov.au and I can’t find a telephone number listed on any of the pages. None. Not a single contact number listed anywhere. Not even on the Media Releases. I can follow the PM’s Blog or Twitter, [...]