LagrangePoint - Brad Howarth

Check out Mordy Koots - the first movie-on-game 'mogie': www.mordykoots.com

At tonight's Up Close and Digital event in Sydney writer and producer Jim Shomos previewed Mordy Koots - a new series created for the web featuring Kenny stars and directors Shane and Clayton Jacobson. What makes Mordy Koots interesting (beyond its genuine entertainment value) is that this made-for-web series has been created by inlaying live action footage into computer games footage. In this case the footage is from the game Blazing Angels, although Shomos says the final release will be using a more up-to-date graphics engine from another game.

It's a brilliant concept, and has allowed the team to save many thousands of dollars that could have been spent on locations, and devote its attention to characters and the script. Look out for future variations - GTA4 is just crying out for the same treatment. The final release will be appearing on ninemsn in early December.

iTnews: NSW Government looks below Microsoft's Surface

Microsoft's Surface technology is one of those technologies that you need to experience to understand, but once you have seen it in action, you can immediately see the potential. The idea of a touch-responsive flat-screen mounted into a table top calls up visions of sci-fi movies, but it really works, and is being used by an increasing number of organisations for displaying and interacting with virtual maps, objects and other data.

It has also caught the eye of NSW Government Minister for Commerce Jodi McKay, and may get the attention of NSW taxpayers should she and the public service find suitable uses. You can read more about it in this story for iTnews.

AFTRS launches post grad in Multi Platform Content

Peter Giles from AFTRS dropped me a note recently to say that the school has launched Australia's first posr-graduate course in multi platform content. According to Giles the course is practically focused and combines traditional skills of media with those of the online world, and includes units on business, technology and prototyping and documenting new services and formats. If you want more information click here.

Tech23 presentations up on iPitch

I missed the recent Tech23 day in Sydney, which by all accounts was one of the best events for start-ups held in Australia this year. Rachel Youens recently put a number of the presentations on the iPitch website. So if you want to check out companies including Simmersion, QMcodes, Hiive Systems, Myzerr, Angusta, and Personal Audio, click here.

ZDNet Bootstrappr: Has Particls disintegrated?

Particls was one of the high-fliers of the Web 2.0 boom, a company that would develop technology to help us make sense of the masses of data on the internet and help us find the stuff we liked. The company had great technology and solid support from the Web 2.0 community, but never real found a business model to support itself.

Now the websites of Particls and its parent, Faraday Media, have disappeared from the web, and all seems quiet on the Particls front. You can read the latest by clicking here, and I hope to have a further update soon.

There is a big difference between giving people what they want, and making them want it enough to pay for it. The sad truth is that most start-ups fail, and for a wide variety of reasons. In the US this is well understood, and failure is a good thing provided that the lessons learned are retained and reused. Here the attitude is less forgiving. It is entirely likely that Particls (or some form thereof) will be back again in the future, as a stronger model. After all, the problem it is trying to solve has not gone away.

Reminder: ADG/AIMIA Up Close & Digital event on tomorrow night

Just a quick reminder that the Australian Directors Guild and AIMIA NSW event Up Close & Digital is taking place at the Australian Technology Park tomorrow (Tuesday) evening, kicking off at 6.15pm. I'm hosting the evening, where you'll hear from a panel of speakers including SBS' head of online Marshall Heald, Showtime's director of legal affairs Anthony Mrsnik, ninemsn video product manager Christopher Smyth and Mordy Koots producer Jim Shomos. There'll be a Q&A and networking drinks afterwards. If you ever wanted to know what it might take to get your video content out to the wider world, you'll want to come along. More details can be found by clicking here.

ZDNet Bootstrappr: The key Topik is always money

Many great start-ups are begun with no real consideration of how they will make money. Twitter is a great example, because several years in the question of how it will ever turn a profit still hasn't been settled.

In some cases the founders aren't looking to ever get rich, and if the burn rate is low enough a company can continue on for many years. In other cases, the company gains enough attention quickly enough that a big competitor decides to buy it before it becomes a significant threat.

It's unclear which future awaits Australian information discovery tool Topikality, which has created a service to scour the internet for information that you are interested in. It was the subject of my Bootstrappr blog at ZDNet this week, and you can read about it by clicking here.

CRN - NetStar lines up for Vblock kit

The alliance between Cisco, VMware and EMC is starting to move beyond being a marketing alliance, with the announcement of Vblocks, a new set of infrastructure products and services designed to bring cloud computing into data centres. Well, it's been big news at least for the for local network services company NetStar Australia, and you can read about it in this article for CRN by clicking here.

SmartCompany - How to make your business innovative

The recent visit by Cisco CTO Guido Jouret to Australia provided a revealing insight into the way that his company manages its innovation cycle. Cisco is renowned for its rapacious appetite for start-ups - and more recently for some very big ones. But it is also a sizeable investor in its own crop of start-ups, acting as an incubator in its own right. It's criteria are pretty stuff tho - Cisco looks for each start-up to generate around US$1 billion in revenue five years after releasing its first products. It's the sort of ambition that many Australian start-ups would do well to emulate ...

You can read more about Cisco's strategy in this article at SmartCompany, as well as hearing from local companies includeTechnology One, Dyesol and GeekIT.

SmartCompany - How to make your business innovative

The recent visit by Cisco CTO Guido Jouret to Australia provided a revealing insight into the way that his company manages its innovation cycle. Cisco is renowned for its rapacious appetite for start-ups - and more recently for some very big ones. But it is also a sizeable investor in its own crop of start-ups, acting as an incubator in its own right. It's criteria are pretty stuff tho - Cisco looks for each start-up to generate around US$1 billion in revenue five years after releasing its first products. It's the sort of ambition that many Australian start-ups would do well to emulate ...

You can read more about Cisco's strategy in this article at SmartCompany, as well as hearing from local companies includeTechnology One, Dyesol and GeekIT.