Internet Items
Budget 2005:Biz portal to lift business performance. $9.9 million over four years to develop the existing www.biz.org site into a world class business portal. It will be supported by telephone, email, fax and face-to-face advisory and mentoring services. Funding is made up of $6.0 million operating and $3.9 million capital funding from Vote Economic, Industry and Regional Development.
Budget 2005: One-stop Online Access to Cultural Information. The government will invest $3.6 million, over four years, to develop an internet portal for NZ's cultural sector. The cultural portal will offer a co-ordinated web presence for government cultural agencies, government funded cultural organisations, and other cultural entities. It will include research on NZ culture and cultural identity through access to the Dictionary of NZ Biography, NZHistory.net, and Te Ara: the online encyclopaedia of NZ. There will be links to organisations including Te Papa, the NZSO, the Historic Places Trust, the Royal NZ Ballet, and Archives NZ. The portal will provide access to NZ broadcasters and links to local and regional cultural institutions such as art galleries and museums.
NZ home to world's top tourism website. Tourism NZ's www.newzealand.com site has been awarded the internet world's version of an Oscar - a "Webby". The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences has recognised the site as the top tourism site in the world.
Deep Impact Nears Comet - http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/ - Slowly, carefully, Deep Impact is preparing for the next phase of its mission. On 4 July, the heavily instrumented spacecraft will fire a high-speed projectile designed to smash into its target (Comet Tempel 1) at 23,000 mph and create a crater that the probe will study from a safe distance. Scientists hope the impact will yield useful information about the make-up of the comet. This site provides lots of information about the mission, the spacecraft, and how to incorporate the experiment into learning programmes. It will probably carry some spectacular images as well, as the distance closes and the impactor approaches its target.
Ashes and Snow and Elephants and People - http://www.ashesandsnow.org/index2.html - You can find some of the most breathtaking images ever taken of Asian elephants and people at Ashes and Snow, and that's just the start.
Starship Dimensions - http://www.merzo.net/ - These scale drawings of spaceships derive from just about any work of SF, as well as models of real spaceships. Compare and contrast. A real treat for anybody who loves SF.
Contact for Enquiries
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
Pastoral House
25 The Terrace
PO Box 2526, Wellington
Tel: +64 4 894 0100
Fax: +64 4 894 0720
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