How is SunLive going? I hear you all ask. Well, I'm pleased you asked, because it's going pretty darn well, thanks.

Readership is growing steadily every week and more people are realising its not just daily news, but constantly updated. That's seven days a week.
Even better, the news is posted as it happens, so you can read it fresh, not a day or two later.
A classic example, last week when the rockslide on the Tauranga-Rotorua Direct Road trapped motorists and closed the road for days – SunLive had the story posted almost immediately and travellers were warned that the road was closed. SunLive continued with followups throughout the day; including aerial pictures and video of the rockfall scene. Many SunLive readers responded, thanking us for informing them so promptly, so they could amend their travel plans.
Other media, of course, didn't have the story till the next day.
Same deal this week, with the closures of SH2 and SH29 on Wednesday morning. That, combined with the Direct Rd closure, meant the only highway in and out of the Western Bay was via Te Puke and Rotorua. Our readers were notified within minutes of the news breaking and those tuned into SunLive were able to re-route their day.
At last count, SunLive was getting 30,000 page impressions a week, and growing. Not bad for a news website that's only been going a couple of months.
We expect this will keep climbing as more people become aware of the excellent free news service; and we welcome you to contribute to it.
Make it your homepage, so you can get an update of the local news each time you go online. Free registration allows you to post comments on stories and blogs and opt for regular breaking news alerts and RSS feeds of news as it happens.
We've had some great feedback from not just locals appreciating these updates – especially on issues such as traffic hold ups and events that affect our daily lives – but also from many ex-pats all over the world who have flicked up that they can get free, instant and balanced news reports about what's going on, back home.
If you know any friends, relatives or business colleagues overseas or elsewhere in NZ who would like to keep up with the play in the Bay, flick them www.sunlive.co.nz so they can stay in touch.
We also have a very sexy little PDA version:
www.sunlive.co.nz/mobile.aspx
If you pop that address into your phone and save it in favourites, you can access all the latest local Bay of Plenty news anywhere, anytime.

Now listen up, you slappers
In other news, the smacking debate continues to fester. We've an interesting poll taking shape on SunLive. Check it out, bottom right corner of the home page. Click to have your say.
Meanwhile, that irritating Orange bastard, the one with most of his facial features botoxed to oblivion, has been telling us what to do again – it's odd that someone with no hands could be so pushy on the smacking referendum.
What has really incensed me is the long list of 18 other languages that this referendum, and the voting system, panders to.
That includes Somali, Punjabi, Vietnamese, Gujarati, Farsi and two versions of Chinese.
That's nuts. I can understand that New Zealand should offer some advice in English, Maori and perhaps a couple of Pacific Island languages. But if you don't speak English fluently enough to understand the voting process, you should not be making decisions on New Zealand law. It's that simple.
This is not racist, it's purely practical. Racist is going to someone else's country and expecting them to jump through hoops to communicate with you. Anyone coming to New Zealand and participate in our democratic processes should understand this: It will be in English or Maori, get a grip on the language or sit on the sideline.
The only information in a different language that should be part of our democratic process should translate to: 'Come back when you've learnt English.”
The part that really riles most NZers is this orange specimen is spending $9m of our hard earned cash on the smacking referendum.
He's the latest in a procession of make-believe people who preach their sanctimonious messages at us. Whatever happened to the real people? We are bombarded at every turn with phoney cartoon characters.
The bank has us over-run with piggy banks; the Tauranga council has the obnoxious Mr Huff, so far removed from reality that he likes paying rates and insists the rest of us enjoy it; the know-it-all broadband guy; the nasty beaver in the tampon ad; and the Energiser battery man. Don't you just want to slap him?
It's about time we stood up against figments of marketing imaginations.
A good start would be declaring open season on Toilet Duck.