If there was ever a doubt that the online world was the new frontier, it has been well and truly blown out of the water over the past few days. Sitting down to watch a little TV on Christmas Eve, I was ready for the bombardment of Boxing Day sale ads, but the new angle this year was the fact the big outlets were promoting the fact that the specials would begin online on Christmas Day!
While the Paymark crowd reveal how much goes through the Eftpos systems on a daily basis at this time of the year (which were record numbers this year too) we don't find out how much gets spent online, and it would be interesting to see how many people took the opportunity to do so. I'm all for avoiding the Boxing Day crowds in town, and would happily do it online, I would hope I've got better things to do on Christmas Day than go online shopping.
And this big push highlighting the fact you can go 'retail shopping' online on Christmas Day, once again reignited the debate over whether shops should be forced to close on certain days of the year. While I am 100 per cent behind the push to allow opening over Easter, I am just as much against letting them do it on Christmas Day.
Another big news story that would have meant less in recent years was the hacker group disabling the servers for the gaming systems Xbox and PlayStation. This is all kind of beyond my Sega Master System so I wasn't affected; if you were I hope you weren't too confused, especially if you had a new system thinking you had set it up wrong.
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On a kind of similar vein to shopping on December 25, it was interesting to see the coverage from the US with the Christmas Day basketball. It got a heap of media coverage here, obviously highlighted by Rotorua's own Steven Adams performing so well, but it is a massive tradition to attend the NBA Christmas Day games. I am a huge sports fan, but I could think of nothing worse than this kind of thing on Christmas Day ... Let's stick with the Boxing Day cricket test aye? And hasn't that been a pretty spectacular affair. Brendon McCullum continues to assert himself in the history books, not just in cricket circles, but New Zealand sport as a whole. And while I am totally over the 'woe is me' Christchurch stories, it is nice to see them have test cricket back.
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While I work both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day outside of Rotorua, I will be having my first New Year's Eve night without work commitments in a few years. I'm looking forward to it. I hope you have a good one planned and hope it is a safe one. Catch you in 2015.
• Paul Hickey is the host of the locally based 9am-3pm show on The Hits Rotorua 97.5FM. Follow him on Facebook at The Hits Rotorua and on Twitter @paulhickeynz.