Abandoning any attempt to be progressive, the producers of the relauched Miss Universe have launched a website today where "You can decide who is the most beautiful woman in New Zealand ... vote as many times as you wish". After a quick glance, I've already cast my vote. The whole site gets Most Annoying Flash Graphics.

More Friday afternoon stupidity from my inbox (don't you wish that you were on these PR mailing lists?): Electronic Arts has now put "chart-busting" songs featured in EA game on iTunes ... including the SIM-lish version of Lily Allen's 'Smile'. No, I'm not making this up. Yes, it is immediately available on iTunes NZ, which is fantastic news.

Lastly, a missive has arrived from ISPANZ in the wake of "entrepreneur" Rod Drury's call for the government and councils to pay for a national fibre optic network (heck, it worked for Singapore), calling for the government to "take immediate steps to fix internet peering in New Zealand".

Peering is when different ISPs freely swap local data at a local or regional exchange, so you don't have to circle the country, or the globe, to land on the website you want. Telecom withdrew its support for peering in 2004, after supporting it for the previous six years. So now any ISP that's not Xtra has to pay to peer, or send your data the long way around, says the horribly-named ISPANZ (aka The Internet Services Providers Association of New Zealand). Actually, this last idea isn't so silly. And if I were ISPANZ I'd keep pushing hard over the next couple of months as Theresa enters her lame duck phase.