LagrangePoint - Brad Howarth

Software, sand and the Curse of the Pharaoh - #imaginecup 2009

Today was the culture day of the Imagine Cup 09, with participants, judges and guests bussed our the the Great Pyramids of Giza for a gander at the only remaining Great Wonders of the Ancient World. The event has been running well, apart from numerous participants succumbing to a variety of stomach complaints (known collectively as the Pharaoh's Curse) but that hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of the 440 students here. Judging continues today, ahead of the announcement of the winners at a ceremony in the desert tomorrow evening.

The overall quality of the finalists this year is much higher than last year, with slicker presentations, a heavier emphasis on user interface, and a much tougher grilling from the judges around the business elements of the projects they are presenting. I'd expect some experienced entrepreneurs would have wilted under the pressure that many of these students have faced, particularly the grilling handed out to the Russian team. It's a big ask for a student - to form a team, invent and build a project in around 7 months, and prove out a business model to support it. For those here who didn't make the finals, it has provided a great set of lessons in how to position themselves for the commercial world.

A sad day for the Commonwealth - Imagine Cup 09

Well unfortunately Australia's entry into the Software Desine category of this year's Imagine Cup in Cairo, Team eGreen, didn't proceed through to the final round, despite what I thought was an excellent presentation. While it was an exceptional effort that saw the three person team from the University of Canberra get as far as the finals, they also had big shoes to fill, with Australia's 2008 entrant, Team SOAK, winning the category globally.

 

Team eGreen - Xharmagne Caradang, Andrew Parsons (Microsoft), James Thompson, Dat Tran (mentor) and Donovan Ryan.

Team eGreen's idea was for a technology driven ratings systems for products, which would account fully for that product's carbon emissions, including its transportation to the point to purchase as well those emboddied in its manufacture.

It was among a large number of interesting projects that got bounced by the judges, including a group from South Africa, iSign, that had developed a system for converting sign language to speech and back again. Another team from the Palestinian Authority, Weather Prediction, had to receive special permission to cross the boarder into Egypt, and presented a system for accurately predicing weather using neural network computing. Another project from the Ukraine, Baby Guards, developed a software system for monitoring pre-natal health, coming from a country that has both one of the highest mortality rates and lowest fertility rates (thanks in part to Chernobyl and the odd Russian incursion) in the world.

While the Aussies were unable to convince the judges that they should move on to the semi-finals, teams from other Commonwelath countries were more fortunate, including ones from the UK, Canada and Sri Lanka. But by the end of the evening this group had also been knocked out of the final six, leading to commisartory drinks amongst the Commonwealth nations. The finalists are teams from Brazil, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain and Taiwan, and the winner in the category will be announced on Tuesday evening.

My tip - Polska! Polska! Polska!

Live from the Imagine Cup 2009 - Cairo

For the next few days I'll be reporting from Cairo, Egypt, where I am a guest of Microsoft for its annual Imagine Cup student developer challenge. I was also fortunate enough to attend the event when it was held in Paris last year.

Imagine Cup brings together students from all around the world who compete in teams to build software-based projects, many of which contain the germs of new start-up businesses. The theme this year is the United Nation's Millennium Development goals, and hence the projects revolve around themes such as infant health and relief from hunger and poverty. More then 300,000 students participated, and there are more than 440 here in Cairo.

The Australian team, Team SOAK, won its category in Software Design in Paris last year, and now Canberra-based Team eGreen is hoping to repeat that feat with a system for helping consumers understand the 'green-ness' of the products they are buying. We should find out later today whether it will move on to the next stage of the finals.

Also gathered here are a bunch of the world's most important people when it comes to technology-based non-government organisations, many of whom I'll be speaking to.

Right now however I'm waiting on the opening press conference, including a presentation and Q&A with Microosft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie. Will keep you posted on further developments ...

ZDNet Bootstrappr: Doing for AV what VoIP did for telephony

I hate cabling. Any day that I have to fiddle around at the back of my home hi-fi system is not likely to be a brilliant day. The problem is a lot bigger for people involved in concert audio systems, and it is their problems that Sydney-based start-up Audinate is looking to solve, by replacing traditional analogue cabling with computer networking technology. It's no simple task however, but you can read about what they are doing in this blog post on ZDNet's Bootstrappr page by clicking here.

New site for Australian mobile industry info

There are few people more embedded in Australia's mobile marketing and advertising community than Emily Freeman, and she's been a great source of ideas and comment for me when writing about the sector. So it is great to see that she is also turning a little of her time into keeping others informed about what is going on in the industry. Freeman describes her new-look Mobilista site as "an online meeting place for the Australian mobile web & mobile content industry, with a particular focus on advertising & marketing ...In the coming months I hope to publish more case studies, white papers, opinions, rate cards and any other resources I can source or produce". Guest writers are more than welcome.

MEGA intake now open

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Orange Dot, a company that is developing a mobile phone for the visually and intellectually disabled, which was a graduate of the MEGA program for aspiring mobile projects. You can read all about them here. MEGA is currently finalising its intake, with information nights coming up in both Sydney and Melbourne on July 9th. Organiser Justin Brow tells me that the topic is along the lines of "Get your mobile idea to market - hear from three folk how they took their ideas from the ether to the market".

"One of the best aspects of mega - really - is the connections participants get with heaps of dead-set legends in the Australian industry."

If you want to know more, contact Justin here: justin@mega.org.au This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Pathfinder Business - A sea-change in the world's IT

The latest edition of Pathfinder Business is now available, both online and in print, to registered subscribers. You can see the whole edition via the website, but you'll need to register to get the password. This edition includes a feature from me on the evolution of the world's software industry, with a particular focus on the opportunities that cloud computing is presenting for software developers from anywhere in the world to compete on a more equal footing in any market:

"As a result, the balance of power in the world's software industry is slowly shifting away from Western Europe and North America and towards a larger group of countries who will be playing a key role in the industry's next incarnation."

This interview called upon data and opinions from a plethora of sources around the world, including Gartner, Google, NEC, SmartPath, Salesforce.com, Ovum, GoGrid, as well as a bunch of folk whose comments I wasn't able to include - so I've included one of the emailed responses in this post. If you want to know more about the scaling hosting environment Scalr, click here, , the enterprise open source cloud platform abiquo, click here, or about the open source cloud project Eucalyptus Systems, click here (for comments from its CEO, Woody Rollins).

The second of my recent studies on cloud computing will soon be appearing as the cover story for CIO Australia.

There are also stories in the latest edition on the fate of the Indian outsourcer Satyam and Australia's infrastructure investments.

Punchcard: 3D modelling for the rest of us

I love the idea of a 3D web - one where the real world is represented virtually, and where environments such as Google Earth contain software representations of their real world counterparts. While the idea of virtual tourism is probably a little corny, it would be great to go for a 'walk' around the neighborhood of the hotel you are staying at before you even get there, clicking on the front doors of various buildings to see what's inside.

So I've written quite a few stories over the past three years on the emergence of online tools for creating virtual environments and objects, including this one for The Guardian last year. Australia has a strong cadre of emerging 3D specialists, such as VastPark, ExitReality and Mycosm, so it was good to be able to add another one to the list this week - Adelaide-based Punchcard, and its VideoTrace modelling tool.

What sets VideoTrace aside from other tools is its ease of use - you can create models by simply tracing the outline of an object from one of more frames of video - and its level of detail when creating models. It's also my latest entry on the ZDNet Bootstrappr blog, and you can read about it by clicking here.

Men's Style - Wireless hi-fi, saving the planet, and Tim of the silver Gunn

When I was in New York earlier this year on AIMIA and Austrade's digital media trade mission I took the opportunity to set up a few interviews with folk who I thought might be interesting. One of them was Tim Gunn, former head of the Parson's Design School and mentor on the US reality TV series Project Runway. Tim's a lovely guy, and probably knows more about style as it applies to fashion than most other people on earth. Well, more than me anyway. He did however pass on a number of tips, and they can be found in the article 10 Gunn salute on page 59 of the winter edition of Men's Style Australia.

In the same edition is my column on options for hooking up your home hi-fi wirelessly. It's still nowhere near as easy as it needs to be, but there are finally hopes that maybe oneday the tangle of cables behind your DVD player will finally be no more.

But my biggest contribution to the winter edition is series on a bunch of companies that have shown a little leadership when it comes to thinking about the environment. The article talks to companies including Intrepid Travel, Ausra, The Green Pages, Fosters, Liption, Hewlett-Packard, Scouts Australia and even the law firm Minter Ellison, along with a couple of others. The goal was to find companies that had made some positive steps and shine a little light on them. You can check out what they had to say in The Innovators from page 65.

Unfortunately none of the content is up on a website, so if you're interested, you'll just have to wander into a newsagent (in Australia) and pick one up.

ZDNet Bootstrappr: Memory Box splits up backup headaches

When I first heard about Memory Box Backup I struggled to see how a splitting your files up and storing them on a hundred different machines could:
    a - Be practical
    b - Be secure, or
    c - Be more reliable than traditional forms of off-site back up.

It took a long conversation with managing director Trevor Glen to nut it all out, and even now I have to take it on faith that wiping out dozens of nodes in their network won't noticeably impact the integrity of the data it stores. Anyway, you can read my interpretation of the Memory Box technology in this Bootstrappr blog entry for ZDNet by clicking here.