The world adores matt hayward

Yes sir! Australia’s most corporatised car magazine, that sticks by the Camira as a great ‘Car of the Year’ (COTY) recipient has started a blog. Great, we’ve stepped into 2001 here! Don’t get me wrong, they’ve been fairly modest about it and skipped the whole song and dance routine, but come on guys, pick up the slack! The content is great but the execution is rubbish.

Seems that now even telcos do blogs, that it’s acceptable for every Tom, Dick and Harry to put their corporate masthead on a blog. Corporate flirtation with Open Source tools (such as blogs and wikis) intended for individuals and non corporates can be disasterous. They usually reak of some beardy old management type overhearing an IT guy talking loudly about some new fangled technology in the pub.

Then Monday morning, thinking he’s all clever, he calls a meeting to get people onto it. And at that critical moment in time, the IT boffins get some wind in their sails and believe they can actually do something cool and new for once. With management endorsement, you can do anything! Pity that management type thought that blogs take only 3 clicks to setup and cost nothing. It ain’t true fella. Like anything they take a lot of hard work to get right.

Don’t get me wrong, there could be some longevity in the Wheels blog. It’s a genuinely good read. It’s the execution that sucks. Each page load is taking me about 3 minutes - literally! Who tested this thing? And this by the way is on a very, very fast corporate LAN. It must be atrociously slow on dial up. The layout’s very poor (it took me about 10 minutes to notice there were categories listed on the right) and reaks of absolutely 0 IT staff or designer involvement. Just some blog template straight off the shelf.

Fellas don’t be discouraged. But please, listen to your customers and get this right. Yes year 9 kids can do blogs and they’re cute. Corporations don’t (and shouldn’t) get such liberties).  You can find the Wheels Blog here. Oh yeah and why do you guys whinge about wanting to take back the COTY for the frog eyed Subaru Impreza,  yet boast about  not giving out a COTY because the XD Falcon was such a lemon? Get off your high horse!

It’s been a little hard not to notice. But as per usual, there’s so much going on that everyone’s typically blaseé, going about their daily life. The amount of ‘for lease’ signs and ‘closing down sales’ on Toorak Road South Yarra is unbelievable.  It was only when I was buying my coffee from one of the two remaining milk bars, that the shop owner said that the rent on the strip is just too much.

So if a tree falls down, doesn’t another grow? Well apparently no. Even one pub has shut down in the past two years (how the hell can a pub in South Yarra be low on business). If it was Chapel St, a poncy boutique would be up within seconds. Toorak Road is proving not so trendy or resilient. Even the upper crust boutiquey stuff can’t really compete with Toorak Village. Or for that matter, Brunswick St. Looks like the local shop owners haven’t really been keeping hip to the times. Frankly, I can think of about 10 vacant shops on Toorak Road for let at the moment:

- the old Potts Bakery
- two shops next to Potts.
- the old aquarium
- the old pub
- the old Saba outlet
- a vacant shop next to Beyond 2000 gifts
- the Comic Mint (now with a tenant)
- the old National Bank
- some former gift shop

Hopefully it will present a unique opportunity for South Yarra. If the shop owners drop the rent, hopefully there might be somewhere decent and not too poncy to eat. I don’t mean like McDonalds, but just a Brunswick St Fitzroy style cafe, instead of the a la Bill Granger $30 Croque Monsieur with frittata (OK I made that up) stuff the cafes are churning out at the moment. Please someone get in there and do something! The place is starting to look like Boronia before they made the train tunnel.