LagrangePoint - Brad Howarth

A new use for punctuation

Thanks to Iain Ferguson for pointing out this somewhat useful guide to getting the most out of your e-mail. There is an old saying (well, not that old really, in context) that you should never send e-mail when you are angry. Well, now you can .... click here to see what I mean.

Next - Around the world, on loyalty points

For Scott Petty, ascending to be head of a US$1 billion division of a $3.2 billion company has not come without sacrifice - not the least of which has been relocating his wife and kids to London. I was lucky enough to have a good chat to Petty, the head of services for South African technology company Dimension Data while I was their guest in South Africa. That story appeared in the Next technology section of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers today.

Petty wasn't the only interesting character I met while over there - am still working on stories regarding black empowerment, rapidly growing African mobile phone usage, a free university for the underprivileged, and a former superstar dot-com entrepreneur who now makes independent movies. Those stories will make their way into print in due course ... hopefully.

One way to settle an argument ....

Went along to a demonstration of Samsung's Blu-Ray high-density DVD equipment yesterday. As you'd expect, the new format offers stunning picture and sound quality over traditional DVD equipment. Samsung is planning on bringing its gear into Australia in October - apparently ahead of rival Panasonic. Now it is up to the industry to the film industry produce titles that are recorded in the new hi-res discs, and the public to stump up the $1500 odd dollars that it will take to purchase the device that plays them.

One of the other questions that lingers over Blu-Ray however is whether indeed it will be the dominant hi-res format. Stacked up against it is HD-DVD - a similar but incompatible format that has the backing of Toshiba and Microsoft. To date Blu-Ray seems to have the better backing.

What was interesting about the day tho was the comment from a Samsung representative. When asked what would be the dominant format, there is one group that will determine the answer above any other - the porn industry. Just as porn helped drive sales of early DVD players, it is expected to play a big role in driving sales of hi density formats.

Seems you just can't fight human nature.

Next wrap-up

After a bout of illness and a trip to Africa, some things have had to slide, and one of them is keeping up with blog posting. The last few weeks have also been busy ones for me in terms of contributions to the Next section of the Sydney Morning Herald and Age newspapers.

Polaris is an Australian company that I first came across earlier this year while researching a series of newsletters for CeBIT Australia 2006. Beginning as a distributor of telephony products, earlier this decade the company moved into hard core R&D, and now holds patents relating to the remediation of a problem in telephone headsets called acoustic shock - a formal term for the high pitch shrieks that occasionally hit a telephone operators hearing that can lead to permanent hearing damage. The company has now been rewarded with two significant contracts from Telstra, which are helping to take it into foreign markets. You can read that story here.

Another local company that is making it on the global stage is Perth-based PIVoD. This company started out creating systems for controlling the multimedia information that you see in museums and libraries, but has subsequently adapted its technology for operating the multimedia features of meeting rooms. Now thanks to a partnership with the US network equipment maker Cisco Systems it has sold five of these systems into the US, with more deals expected soon. You can read about its success here.

Not all business deals run so smoothly though, as Beach Hut Media recently found. Beach Hut, which provides systems for streaming and tracking multimedia content (such as advertising) onto the internet and private networks has found itself in dispute with its two largest partners, Fujitsu Australia and Coles Myer. The result is a statement of claims totalling $120 million, and a resolute 'no comment' from the two defendants, which you can read about here.

A much happier time is being had by purchasers of data storage equipment, with the price of storage plummeting by as much as 50% for some technologies in the past year. Such drops have been hugely beneficial for mid-sized buyers, who can now afford systems that would have been well out of their price range not so long ago. One recent beneficiary of such price drops is Informatel, who is witnessing genuine business gains as a result of installing storage equipment from EMC. You can read about that one here.

And finally, the Queensland-based developed osCommRes is finding early commercial success with an open source e-commerce platform that it built almost by accident. Company founder Damian Hickey began building the system in his spare time, when he found that no other available platform could cater to the complexity of a services-oriented business - in this case the yoga school operated by his wife. You can read about that one here or the final edit version of the story here: Download oscommres_edit.rtf .

Sliding towards irrelvancy

Thanks to Stuart Washington for pointing out this somewhat disturbing vision of the future of journalism and media: http://albinoblacksheep.com/flash/epic. In a world where increasingly the process of news gathering can be tailored and automated, and content gathered from a plethora of amateur sources, what role will there be for the professional journalist?

Live(ish) from Soweto

I'm currently in Johannesburg, South Africa, as a guest of Dimension Data. Given I've arrived a full day ahead of the other internationals who are attending this conference, the folk at Dimension Data were kind enough to organise a tour of one of the last places I thought I'd be dropping in to this year - Soweto.

Soweto - the name conjures up images of brutality, poverty, pain and suffering. It was a touchpoint for all that was considered bad about old South Africa - a shantytown where the huddled masses lived in appalling conditions. A place of beatings and massacres, of violent crime and oppression.

No doubt, those impressions exist for a reason, but they are becoming increasingly removed from much of the reality of much of life in Soweto today. Don't get me wrong - the shanty towns and harsh conditions still exist in many parts , and crime is still a big problem, but this city of 3.5 million people is slowly reinventing itself. There are even some parts of Soweto today that might by Western standards be considered affluent.

What is most striking about Soweto is the contrasts it presents - the gap between the haves and have-nots is wide. Shanty towns with no electricity and sewerage stand just 200 metres from plumbed and electrified houses. One region of brick-veneer McMansions with manicured gardens overlooks a slum area of former mine worker housing. The poorest of the poor here really do have next to nothing.

But there is also a real pride amongst residents in Soweto. While many residents talk of wanting to pull themselves up and into better accommodation, there is general reticence amongst many to leave entirely. Indeed, some who could afford to move on have deliberately stayed, in plush houses in the more affluent areas of the township. The word Soweto in know way bears a stigma for many of its residents.

The highlight of the tour was a visit to the former home of Nelson Mandela. The modest house is crammed full of artifacts from Mandela's life, including the boots that he wore when he walked out of prison after 27 years of incarceration.

An inconvenient falsehood

Thanks to fellow journalist Matthew Powell for keeping the astroturfing discussion going, and pointing out this recent news report from the ABC network in the US. Check out this link for an example of astroturfing in action ...