LagrangePoint - Brad Howarth

Story in development - Seeking Australia's top young entrepreneurs

I've begun work in earnest on SmartCompany's list of Australia's best entrepreneurs aged 30 or under. To be eligible, candidates must be a founding shareholder of the business they are working in, and retain significant ownership - employees and people who have sold their businesses won't be considered. We are also looking for candidates to be aged 30 or younger as of April 30. If you have any suggestions, please drop me an email this week. For last year's selection, click here.

SmartCompany - Tips to guard your online reputation

On the internet, everyone can here you whinge. Which is why companies need to be vigilant about how they are being spoken of online. A letter to the editor can be ignored and dismissed, a gossip around the water cooler or in the pub has limited reach, but a decent rant or whinge online can reverberate in the most unexpected way. The examples are coming in thick and fast, and are enough to make you think twice about ordering a certain brand of pizza. In this story for SmartCompany I look at some Australian examples of brands copping a trashing, and at what options organisations have to save their reputation online.

Story in development - Media's monetary migration

So newspaper and magazine circulations, and possibly TV viewership, were declining slowly in this country before the economic crisis, and now revenue figures have plunged into freefall. Even so the traditional media here is not so badly off here as it is in the US ... but that doesn't mean it has all the answers when it comes to generating revenue from the emerging online opportunities. The simple fact appears to be that online viewers and readers are just not worth the same as their offline counterparts. How do you make up the gap when it comes to funding content creation?

In this feature I'm having another look at the monetisation issue, taking in perspectives from Europe and the US as well as Australia. If you've got something you want to ad to the mix, please let me know via email ...

News.com.au - Latest mobile marketing innovations

The second in my series on mobile advertising for the Vodafone Perspectives pages at www.news.com.au ran this week, this time looking at the latest innovations in mobile marketing (if you want to see the first story in the series, Fast track you mobile advertising, click here). This one looks at some of the more recent mobile innovations, such as QR codes and augmented reality. You can check it out by clicking here.

The Australian - Burglary blast wrecks GroovyChannel's office

I've known about the Aussie start-up GroovyChannel for a while (since they were known as SensorConnect) and the potential of their database technology, so it was good to see them emerge recently from their development phase and sign a deal with Intel to get their tech benchmarked. With the company planning a capital raising, the seeds of a story were there, but as luck would have it burglars blew the whole thing wid-open - literally - when they blasted the door off the company's safe. You can read all about it in my story for The Australian by clicking here.

Help needed on a story in development

I'm currently writing about connectivity and productivity (and the possible disconnect between the two), and am looking for someone who might have some insight into the topic. The big questions is how to ensure that increased connectivity (Blackberries, iPhones, broadband wireless, etc) contributes to increased productivity without overtaking your life. If anyone springs to mind, please ldrop me a note ASAP.

Story in development - Freedom to work?

I'm currently working on a feature looking into the positives and negatives of how technology gives us the capability to be always on. Thanks to devices such as Blackberries and advances such as high-speed cellular broadband, there are few places where we can get to now where the working world can't reach us - or where we can't reach the working world. But is all this connectivity making us any more productive, and when do we become too connected? I'm looking for speakers and case studies now, so if you have any suggestions, please drop me an email.

Men's Style - Find the upside in the downturn

This one's a little late in terms of notification ... The most recent edition of Men's Style Australia (Sarah Mutch on the cover) features a column by me on page 53 about finding the silver lining hidden amongst the gathered economic storm clouds. I'm hoping to do a few more of these, so keep an eye out in coming editions. If you want to check out the most recent one but can't make it to your local newsagent, you can see a draft version of the story here: Download Recession-proofing