LagrangePoint - Brad Howarth

Congratulations to the iAward winners

Congratulations to all of the winners of last night's AIIA iAwards, particularly NICTA CEO David Skellern, who picked up the CSIRO Tony Benson Award for Individual Achievement in ICT. David was one of the entrepreneurs behind the wireless technology developer Radiata, which was sold to networking hardware giant Cisco for US$295 million in 2000. For a full list of winners, click here.

Australian Anthill Issue 22 out now

The 22nd edition of Australian Anthill has just hit the streets, with a cover story on how to cope with six life of death business scenario, as well as a feature on how to get the most out of your bank, and even a piece from advertising mogul Harold Mitchell. And of course, there's my regular column. Enjoy!

You've got to be kidding ...

Every so often you read something in the newspapers that literally makes you choke on your Cornflakes (and I am correct in my use of the world literal). On page 16 of today's Australian Financial Review there is an article by my old boss Neil Shoebridge that discusses Channel Seven's deal to distribute TiVo personal video recorders (DVR) in Australia next year. The deal is somewhat remarkable, in that in the US it has been the network TV operators that have been seen to suffer most from the TiVo's ad-skipping technologies.

What is really remarkable is the following quote from Seven's commercial director Bruce McWilliam: "I don't think anyone [with a DVR] will want to fast forward through the ads."

No, of course not, why would we ....?

What planet is this again ....?

If the current media revolution is telling us one thing (and reality it is telling us many things) it is that people hate being shouted at. And yet this is what network television has been doing to us for decades (once again, sometimes literally). So I ask you - who out there, when given acess to an easy mechanism to eliminate the hours of banal advertising that is choking network television, will not take that choice?

The story also quotes Seven's director of digital media Rohan Lund as saying that TV viewing is 20 to 25 percent higher in those households, and that brand recall from advertisements in DVR-equipped households is actually higher than in those without them. These figures are backed by the research company Millward Brown. My own experience of having a Foxtel iQ is counter to this, but then I am only a sample of one.

Maybe then what the networks need to do is stop stuffing their schedules with 30 second ad spots and just run them all at 30 times normal speed. Apparently brand recall would not suffer, and we'd all be better off.

Seeking venture capital war stories

The gulf between Australian entrepreneurs and venture capital providers never seems to narrow ... Right now I'm working on a project looking at this gulf - why it opens, and what can be done to close it. If anyone out there in the entrepreneurial community has had direct experience with venture capital providers (either here or in the US) and has a story to tell (good or bad), please drop me a note to let me know ...

Ross Dawson's Top 5 Aussie Web 2.0 companies

A couple of week's back I attempted to list as many Web 2.0 companies as I could. It was more an attempt to flush out those I hadn't thought to include, and in that respect it worked well. Now Ross Dawson has taken a more in depth look at five leading examples of Web 2.0 in Australia, in support of his forthcoming Web 2.0 in Australia event (at which I will be a panelist). Not wishing to steal his thunder, you can check out his list here.

Wrap-up of AIMIA Second Life event

If you, like me, wanted to be were unable to get along to the Second Life discussion held by AIMIA in Sydney last week, you might want to check out moderator David Holloway's excellent summary. You can find it on his blog site here.

AFR Boss - Digital Mix

After years as the poor cousins of the marketing industry, being digital is finally hip. In this piece for AFR Boss I had the chance to speak to five of Australia's digital marketing big thinkers (Richard Lord at Hyro, Jennifer Wilson at HWW, Cliff Rosenberg at Clear Light Digital and Ian Smith at Yahoo!7 - Monique Talbot at Tempest Media and Tony Faure at ninemsn were also featured). Each was asked to talk about one of the big issues facing digital marketing as it moves from fringe to mainstream. You can click through to the home page here, but getting hold of the article will require a subscription - or you can check out the unedited draft version of the article here: Download digital_hot_shots_draft.rtf .

Google to get its own Salesforce?

A few weeks back I met with Salesforce.com's president Jim Steele in Sydney to chat about the current status of his company. Salesforce.com has been enjoying substantial growth, driven in part by its evolution from being a developer of an on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) package into a developer of a platform for delivery of internet-based computing applications. That story ran in Next, and you can read it here.

One thing I asked in the interview was whether in the future Salesforce.com's biggest competitors would not be Oracle, SAP and Microsoft in the CRM space - but they would be Microsoft and Google in the on-demand application delivery space. Already we have seen Microsoft take steps down this path with its Office Live services, and Google is nibbling away at the consumer end with basic-function on-demand applications for word processing and spreadsheets. These are early days, but you can be assured that both companies are developing strategies to deliver a much broader offering of on-demand software across the internet.

The shift towards on-demand computing seems inexorable now - the analyst company Gartner is certainly backing it -  the market for on-demand software reached $US6.3 billion ($A7.7 billion) in 2006, and is forecast to grow to $US19.3 billion by 2011. You can read another of Gartner's more recent reports here. The fact that Salesforce.com's AppExchange platform for hosting on demand applications is growing so rapidly demonstrates strong interest from both the application developer and user communities. That interest is rubbing off on local developers such as NETapplica, SqwarePeg and Internetrix.

So it was interesting today to see this story in The Australian talking about Salesforce.com and Google teaming up - even suggesting that the larger may eventually acquire the smaller. I'd originally imagined the two competing as leaders in on-demand computing, but seeing them united against the common foe, Microsoft, probably makes sense.

One of the other questions that I asked Jim Steele was whether Salesforce.com would ever offer a cheaper version of its CRM software that was ad-supported. He was not keen on the idea, feeling business users had different standards to consumers, and suggested that Google might find itself struggling to meet their requirements for support. Would be interesting to speak to Jim again should Google do as suggested and reach once more into its seemingly limitless acquisition funds ...

Out of the country

Just a quick note to say that I am out of the country on business until the 29th (am in Prague now for the BMC UserWorld conference, then heading to the UK for a couple of days). Best way to contact me in the interim is (and generally is anyway ...) by e-mail.

Help needed ....

Am working on half a dozen stories for a bunch of publications, and am busily hunting leads and ideas on the topics listed below ... Anyone with a good suggestion, please drop me a note via e-mail - cheers:

- Black hat search marketing - seeking anyone with information on black hat search optimisation - the bad, the ugly, and the downright naughty.

- Big green businesses - am looking for any examples of businesses of decent scale that have done something exceptional for the environment in Australia.

- Alternative energy - this feature is trying to paint a picture of the alternative energy market in Australia - it's current status and future potential.

- Australian broadband for SMEs - focusing on what SMEs should look for in a service provider, as well as illuminating the complex state of Australia's broadband infrastructure.

- Funky TVs - am looking for examples of the latest in television technology to spruce up your abode.