LagrangePoint - Brad Howarth

SmartCompany - Marketing's video revolution

Have no doubt about it - video is swiftly moving from being a novelty to a mainstay of the internet. The decreasing cost of video production has combined with the increasing penetration of broadband to make the internet a legitimate and rapidly growing delivery channel for the moving image, and it's not just amateurs and cutting-edge professionals that are taking note. The internet has made video a viable marketing medium for a much broader range of companies, and many are now dipping their toes in the water. You can read more in this story at SmartCompany here, then check out some of the emerging providers, such as BizTube.tv, Viocorp, Insomnia and Bullseye.

Entries open for 14th annual AIMIA Awards

This year the AIMIA Awards feature 24 categories, including Best Advertising or Marketing, Best News Media or Reference, and Best Emerging Exporter, to be presented in Sydney on Friday, March 7. Entries are open now, and close on Friday, November 9. If you're interested in learning more, click here.

Story in development: Making money off Facebook

So it seems that Facebook is worth US$10 billion ... well, maybe not in real money, but perhaps in the currency of Bubble 2.0. Real or not, Facebook is seen by many businesses as a way of extending their brands and improving their overall marketing mix ... Hence I'm hot on the trail of any local small and medium businesses that are making money as a result of Facebook (or MySpace, or any other social media site, for that matter). If anyone knows of any, please contact me offline.

Next - Software-on-demand strategy a boon for developers

Anyone who's been reading these posts for a while will know that I have a strong interest in the so-called 'on demand' computing model, where applications are delivered across the internet, rather than hosted on a local PC or server. The leader in this field for some years now has been Salesforce.com, which has evolved from offering a customer relationship management application to being a complete provider of an on-demand computing framework. Last week saw the company hold its annual Dreamforce event in San Francisco. While I wasn't able to attend, I was able to speak via phone to Salesforce.com's co-founder and chief technology officer, Parker Harris. You can read the results of that conversation here.

The Australian Financial Review - Sacrifice some, save many

About a year back I interviewed Colin Resnick and Gil Thew for a story in  The Australian Financial Review's Boss magazine on business doctors - those consultants who go into ailing businesses just before the liquidators in an attempt to turn them around. For various reasons, including a change of editor, that story never made its way into the mag. Hence I was pleasantly surprised to pick up the AFR today to find the story sitting in the Enterprise section on page 52. You won't easily find the story on the website, so I have posted the uncorrected draft version here: Download business_doctors_draft.rtf

Trying again .. GQ - Sinking Feelings

Apparently the PDFs of the GQ Australia climate change story Sinking Feeling didn't quite work, so I'm trying again by chopping the file into four JPGs. Alternately, you can still pick it up from the news stands - look for the Australian edition with Jessica Alba on the cover ...

 

 

Melbourne Domain event - October 4

Anyone with some free time in Melbourne on the evening of October 4 might consider popping along to the second Domain event of the year, to be held at Port 1010 at the Docklands. This time I'm interviewing Peter Williams, CEO of Deloitte Digital and Innovation. The last event, featuring Destra CEO Domenic Carosa, was well attended, so get in early with your RSVP.

APPLEBOX goes live

A little while back I wrote a story for ZDNet's BuilderAU site on Melbourne-based developer Simon Gilligan, who was doing some interesting work with Web 2.0 technologies when constructing an online catalogue for his new DVD rental business, APPLEBOX. Simon now reports that the site, and the store in the Melbourne suburb of Fairfield, are now up and running.

Live from VMworld 2007

Am currently in San Francisco as a guest of the software infrastructure company VMware, at its annual VMworld conference. In the past few years the topic of the virtualisation of server and desktop hardware has gone from being a relatively obscure concept to one of the hottest topics in the tech industry, with the potential to significantly reorganise the way that large corporations manage their computing resources.

The other strong topic of discussion here is green computing. By allowing companies to consolidate their server hardware down so that their applications run on fewer machines, Vmware's technology leads to significant reductions in the consumption of power.  I hope to post a few more thoughts on this topic over the next couple of days.

Next - Russians latest leap into Space

I've spent a lot of time writing about the path that Australian technology companies take when exporting into the US market. But this is the first time I've written about one selling into Russia. But that is exactly what Melbourne-based business intelligence software maker Space-Time Research has done. Russia boasts a population of nearly 150 million people and an advanced business culture, but is usually ignored by Australian technology exporters due to language difficulties and perceived issues around security. None of these were particularly big barriers for Space-Time Research though. You can read the full story in Next here.