Friday 25 January 2008

Cairns dot com dot au


The Cairns Post will next week officially launch their new and improved website.
They paid a kazillion dollars (I'm joking) for the rights to own cairns.com.au, retiring the old cairnspost.com.au and news.com.au/cairnspost, which both redirect to the new site.
Looks like they are now also uploading more news from the print edition onto the web, which is a good thing as more and more of our community look for what's going on in our community online.
With the new URL domain name, the Post are also aiming to attract broader web traffic and will include tourist and local information as well.
This is in direct contrast to our Cairns City Council that removes Council Minutes only after a short period online, and a Council website that has error messages for missing or relocated pages on a regular occurrence.
So, good on you Mark and the web team behind this new improved look and feel.
But please ditch the awful non-native palm trees in the header. That's the trick developers do after finishing a shitty 5 story high-rise. They plonk a row of palm trees at the front and think it looks postcard "tropical".

Why not plant Lilley Pilly - of which there are a great variety. White Cedar (Melia azedarach); Weeping Bottlebrush (Callistemon viminalis); Native Willow (Agonis flexuosa); or even Melaleuca lanceolata (White bottle brush flowers). These are drought tolerant trees and provide better shade.

I recall there's been attempts to remove Christopher Skase's Oil Palms (Elaeis guineensis) from Africa, on the Port Douglas entry road, that he famously imported. While I'm not against these per say, can we please celebrate our own natural flora and fauna first?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I see the Cairns Post new website maintains the Post's long, glorious tradition of incisive, independent and investigative local reporting. Doubtless its foreign news coverage will be as 'balanced and fair' as that of its more lucrative sibling, the rapidly Zionist, war-mongering Fox News.

Incidentally, when dot com dot au websites were first available for sale, i seem to recall there was a restriction on the registration of city terms such as 'cairns'. Unless I'm much mistaken, for the great unwashed - the likes of you and me - it simply wasn't possible to get those domains at any price.

Did News Ltd ever pay at all for the privilege of cairns.com.au? If so, how much? Was there an open and competitive bidding process? Or was the name reserved for Mr Murdoch's Empire, like the tribute one customarily pays to an overlord?

These questions may have quite mundane answers - but finding out would be a worthwhile journalistic exercise.

Perhaps cairns.com.au could let its new readers know?

Anonymous said...

Non native coconut palms? Puhleeeze. Coconuts grow on beaches worldwide, where the coconuts wash up on the beach.
So now even the trees have to be politically correct before they get the MM stamp of approval.
Can't wait until this sort of Nazi-ism get control of the city council. No doubt all offending trees will be lopped, along with non-native animals and non-native persons. -- Including Kiwis ;)

Anonymous said...

LOL. Those are not coconut palms. Take a look at them. They are Alexandra palms, native to the region.