LagrangePoint - Brad Howarth

Hulu exec added to Media 2010 line-up, while Viocorp wants to tell you about the Future of Television

Am looking forward to the Media 2010 event happening in Sydney on February 19 - even more so that Simon Gallagher, the director of international business development for the US online video serivce Hulu, has been added to the line-up. Hulu has been creating waves in the US by demonstrating the capabilities of the internet as a distribution platform for long-form video content, much as BBC's iPlayer has done in the UK, or the ABC's iView has done here.

Meanwhile at lunchtime today (Friday Jan 29) local web video specialists Viocorp are hosting an online seminar title the Future of Television, with presenters including ABC managing director Mark Scott and Beyond CEO Mikael Borglund. More details here, or you can go ahead and register here.

AIMIA Awards tickets on sale now

If you've been to the AIMIA Awards before, you'll know it's a great night out. If not - then here is your chance to attend your first! Especially if you live in Melbourne - on Friday March 5 the Amys are making their way to the town of my birth for the first time in who knows how long. 122 entries will be battling it out across 25 categories (trust me, the after-party is worth the wait ...), including new ones such as Best Online Video and Best Sports. There's also a People's Choice Award for AIMIA members to vote on. You can check out the full list of finalists by clicking here or purchase tickets here.

Registration for AIMIA TradeStart mission to the Hong Kong International ICT Expo closing soon

For most of this decade AIMIA TradeStart and Austrade have run trade missions to the International ICT Expo in Hong Kong. I've been able to tag along to the last five, and everything I've seen has told me it's a great way for technology and digital media companies to get an introduction to the markets of Hong Kong and greater China. The next event runs from April 13 to 16, but the application deadline is February 13. Click here for more info.

Audinate gets another $4 million

Significant venture capital raisings have been pretty thin on the ground here in Australia in the past year, so its great to see digital audio networking company Audinate raise an additional $4 million from its backers Starfish Ventures and Innovation Capital. I've written a few stories about Audinate - originally a spin-out from NICTA - including this blog entry for ZDNet Australia, and in this feature for CIO Australia. Let's hope it's the first of many such announcements this year ...

Congrats to Solar Gem, winner of the Australian Innovation Shoot-out in US

Congratulations to the team at Solar Gem for winning this year's Australian Innovation Shoot-out at Microsoft's Silicon Valley Campus this week. Solar Gem makes low-cost solar energy generation systems for use in isolated (off-grid) locations. The company has already been receiving strong interest from around the world, including an installation at a hospital int he Democratic Republic of Congo. ComputerWorld has covered the story here.

SMH.com.au - Out with the GUI, in with the NUI

One of the highlights of last year's XMediaLab event in Sydney was the presentation from August de los Reyes, the principal designer of user experience in Surface Computing at Microsoft. August took us on a journey through the possibilities of computer interfaces once you get rid of the usual interfaces of screen, keyboard and mouse. The possibilities are intriguing.

One of the steps along the way is Surface technology - a table-top interface that uses movement across its surface as the principal means of interaction. There are a number of developers creating Surface technologies, but at the moment it looks like Microsoft may have the lead when it comes to bringing this technology to market.

Surface is just one stage of the journey towards what might be called Natural User Interfaces - an evolution of the current Graphical User Interface that promises a far more natural interaction - as the name suggests. You can read some of August's thoughts on the topic in this story for SMH.com.au by clicking here.

$196 million Commercialisation Australia grant scheme explained - c/o SmartCompany

I've had a few entrepreneurs ask me if I know much about the new $196 million Commercialisation Australia grant scheme - and the answer until now was no. Hence I was happy to see SmartCompany publish this Q&A that covers off a lot of the details of the new program.

Whether you agree that government grants are the answer to solving the funding drought for start-up Australian tech companies or not (I think it is solving only part of the problem - more funds need to be pushed into early stage VC - but that's another story) a lot of Australian businesses are going to be clamouring for these funds - the pain that was caused by the cancellation of the Commercial Ready program two years ago is proof enough.

From the archive - CustomWare breaks into the US market

One story that never saw the light of day last year was this piece that I wrote in November on Robert Castaneda and his systems integration business CustomWare. The Sydney-based company signed the lease on an office in Palo Alto that month, adding Castaneda to the growing ranks of Silicon valley-based Aussies. You can read more about his story by clicking here.

CRN - Aussie Salesforce partners puzzled by Chatter & iTnews - BMC CEO: Clouds need management too

Here are another two from the 2009 vault that never made it on to LagrangePoint. The first is a story from CRN on the response of several Aussie business partners to Salesforce.com's Chatter social media software. Chatter brings a Twitter-like live feed into the Salesforce.com platform, the idea being to provide real time information on business events back to users. Whether it will be a benefit or a huge distraction is yet to be determined ... (maybe a little bit like Twitter itself ...). You can read more about it by clicking here.

The second story was from the same event - a piece for iTnews based on an interview with BMC CEO Bob Beauchamp talking about the complexities of managing a cloud environment. You can read that one by clicking here.

Australian Anthill and MitchelLake wants you to make a million

Australian Anthill and MitchelLake are assembling an expert panel in Sydney on February 09 to help up-and-coming entrepreneurs not just to make their first million, but also their very first dollar. The Venture Capital by Design panel includes Mike Zimmerman (BuildingIQ), Chris Hitchen (GetPrice), Ilkka Tales (MoGeneration), Rob Fitzpatrick (NICTA). Should be an interesting session - early bird tickets are on sale now for $45.Click here for more details.