For start-up companies in the technology industry, times have never been so good. At no time before have start-ups had so much access to cash and incubator programs, and it seems there is no shortage of entrepreneurs with good ideas to take advantage of them. In this story for The Australian, published late last year, I take a look into the state of play for start-up funding, and the significant gap that then exists in the funding market once a company has gotten started …
ICF announces 2012’s top seven intelligent communities
Each year the Intelligent Community Forum searches the world for those communities that provide a model of economic and social development in the 21st Century using information and communications technology. The Top Seven for this year have just been announced – although unfortunately none of the nominated cities are from Australia (or indeed, from the southern hemisphere – although the State of Victoria was nominated in 2004). The nominations celebrate those communities that are using information and communications technology to power growth, address social challenges and preserve and promote culture, and this year’s seven include three from Canada, two from the US, one from Finland and one from Taiwan. In June, one of the Top Seven is named ICF’s Intelligent Community of the Year. Last year’s nominees included the US city of Chattanooga, whose CIO Mark Keil visited Australia last year to discuss his city’s adoption of high-speed broadband.
The Australian – Raymond Kurzweil solves problems in his sleep
Last November I had the pleasure of being invited to speak at the Creative Innovation 2011 conference as part of a line-up that included Edward de Bono. Also on the list was Raymond Kurzweil, a US serial entrepreneur and noted futurist, so it was great to have the opportunity to speak to him while he was here in Australia.
I first spoke to Raymond more than ten years ago when I was working for The Australian. At that time Kurzweil had been researching the conjunction of technologies that will lead to the creation of true artificial intelligence and potentially even the ability for people to copy their minds into machine.
That concept of singularity is still a key focus for Kurzweil, but his interests spans a broad range of topics from 3D printing to life extension. You can read more about his current thinking in this special report written for The Australian’s website.
SMH IT Pro – Gig City ‘an inspiration’ for regional towns
While debate about the cost and appropriateness of the National Broadband Network is clogging city media, in regional Australia the main question is one of ‘when can we get it’. That has certainly been the case in Victoria’s second largest city, Geelong. So keen is Geelong and its surrounding councils to get in early on the NBN that its representatives have attended events such as the Intelligent Community Forum, and late last year Geelong was instrumental in bringing to Australia Mark Kiel, the CIO of one of the world’s first cities to adopt gigabit-speed Internet connections (pictured, standing to the right alongside City of Greater Geelong’s Rod Macdonald – pic courtesy of the Geelong Advertiser). Chattanooga in the US state of Tennessee has taken a leadership position on broadband in an attempt to build its economy, and its gamble appears to be paying off.
I had the chance to chat to Mark while he was in Australia, and the story appeared on the Sydney Morning Herald IT Pro site in November last year. High speed broadband has brought prosperity to Chattanooga in terms of helping secure business investment and is leading to a new wave of entrepreneurial activity in the city, as well as providing direct benefits in terms of improved services. You can read all about it by clicking here.
SmartCompany: Australia’s 25 best business blogs
With BlogPulse now estimating that there are more than 170 million public blogs in existing around the world today, ranking any group as ‘best’ is always going to be fraught with danger. At least in limiting our scope to ‘business’ and ‘Australia’, we were able to narrow the field – somewhat. Selecting Australia’s 25 best business blogs for SmartCompany was no easy task. Blogs were selected on the basis of traffic, content (quality and frequency of posting), usefulness, accessibility, subject-matter competency and quality of audience. Take a look at the 2011 list and let me know what you think.
Live from #Tech23: Social Media – Centryc, Friendorse and Roamz
The final session of the day kicked off with a presentation from David Aicken from Centryc Solutions. His company helps the managers of theme parks and festivals to learn more about their customers. Centryc’s Metag enables customers to register their wristbands with social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter, and swiping their wristband automatically updates their status and provides them access to offers based on their activity. It is already being used at Luna Park.
The second presentation was given by Bronwen Clune from Friendorse, a service that lets customers ask local questions and get local deals. The company is built on the idea that 80 percent of spending happens within 5Kms of a person’s home, and the solution focuses on creating demand by asking people what they want. In the US the site as launched Zipurb, where it is working with a media company, and is also working with a media company to boost its presence in Australia.
The final presentation was given by Jonathan Barouch, who capped the day of well with an informative and entertaining presentation on his company Roamz, which pulls data from across the web and delivers it to users at the right time and in the right place. The engine can look at one piece of data and match it up against other pieces of social content. Roamz is even backed by Sydney chef Tony Bilson.
Live from #Tech23: Digital Media – buildAR, Filter Squad and Hyperlocalizer
The first presentation from the digital media panel was given by Rob Manson from builAR. Rob took the audience on a journey through the possibilities of augmented reality and the buildAR platform. He demonstrated cultural implementations, interactive ad campaigns, education concepts and new forms of entertainment, such as Walls360.
The second presentation was David McKinney from Filter Squad. The company has built a range of apps to help consumers find content, such as Discovr Music and Discovr Apps, and has achieved more than 1 million downloads – 250,000 in four days, without a cent spent on marketing. His own background includes promoting one of his own songs into the UK Top 40 just using social media. They’ve also kicked the butt of Yahoo! along the way. The company is now working on the world’s first personalised music magazine that delivers content to you based on exactly what you like.https://wp10880.wpquasar.dev/wp-admin/post-new.php
The final presentation from the group was from Tony Surtees from Hyperlocalizer, who talked about his company’s ability to create highly relevant media using a handful of people. The model has already been proven at Prime Media with 45 sites run by just two people for three years, which also increased user dwell time and television ad sales (in the US the local advertising market is worth US$50 billion and increasing in a down market). Existing Joomla apps can be easily integrated to improve functionality, and the company is finding new clients internationally.
Live from #Tech23: Powering productivity – Agworld, iAsset, Navisens and The Early Warning Network
The first presentation after lunch was from Agworld, a cloud-based platform for the agriculture industry. The Agworld platform uses zero-typing data capture in the form of the pen and replaced this with a digital pen, connected to a data capture system, to store data.
The second presentation was from Scott Frew (someone I have known for about 15 years since he ran the value-added distributor LAN Systems) from iAsset. Frew’s new company provides a platform for managing channel-based sales. The company already has customers around the planet, including Telstra and NetApp, and can be integrated with ERP tools and even Google Earth to visually represent assets. The system can also manage training to ensure that channel partners are skilled up appropriately.
The third presentation was from Dr Ashod Donikian from Navisens, which uses personal sensors to monitor the location of people in environments where methods such as GPS don’t work, such as underground. The technology can provide the location and status of personnel to prevent overcrowding in certain sections of a mine, or to determine the locations of workers in emergency situations. The technology is also suitable for use in battlefield situations. The wearer carries a device with a range of sensors, including inertial sensors, which offloads its data whenever it is connected to a network, and the output can be connected to whatever transmitter is appropriate.
The final presentation was from The Early Warning Network, which provides an early warning service for severe disturbances and disasters in real time. People receive notifications through multiple media to an accuracy of about 10 metres in real time. The company has multiple users already, with hundreds of thousands of alerts issued in Australia every month.
Live from #Tech23: Comnsumer web – Specialist Link, Thereitis.com and ZeroMail
The first presentation of the group was from Alison Hardacre at Specialist Link, which links patients and practitioners to deliver better health outcomes. The service was developed in conjunction with Monash University and enables patients to choose their appropriate practitioners, and then manage their conditions and share this data with practitioners, and between practitioners. Hardacre says most software available today is developed for GPs, not specialists, and rarely goes beyond basic booking and invoicing. By incorporating more functionality, the Specialist Link service can save specialists 12 minutes admin time per patient.
The second presentation was from Guy Sewell at Thereitis.com, which promises a new way to search and experience images online. It takes images from websites and rearranges them show them in a 3D grid to make them easier to view and sort. The application is designed to support e-commere companies by reducing abandoned shopping carts and increasing impulse buying.
The final presentation before lunch was from Bart Jellema at ZeroMail. Jellema promises to integrate the many different buckets of information that consumers have – email, newsletters, social media feeds and so on.
Live from #Tech23: Communications/Mobile group – goCatch, InterfereX and Vtalk Holdings
The first presentation after the morning tea break was from goCatch, a company that has developed an app that lets taxi drivers connect directly with users, who can see exactly where taxi drivers are at any time. In a highly entertaining and informative presentation Andrew Campbell and Ned Moorfield took listeners through the problems that plague both taxi drivers and users.
The second presentation was from Dr Mark Reed from InterfereX, who took the audience through a presentation on his company’s solution to mobile coverage and data bottlenecks. InterfereX’s technology can improve data rates and coverage through better network planning using advanced mathematics to manage interference between cells in a network.
The third presentation was from Dan Nolan of Vtalk Holdings, who talked about his company’s development of a voice-over-IP telephone system designed to work with a business’s existing telephony system. The company’s proposition is that many businesses are failing to adopt VoIP because it is too complex – Vtalk aims to take that complexity away.
It might have been the extra coffee ingested at the morning tea break, but the presenters brought a lot more energy to the room. Interestingly this helped to spark a much greater level of chat on Twitter, with posts reflecting the energy of the presenters.