John O’Sullivan, the leader of the team that pioneered the high-speed wireless network, has finally been officially recognised and rewarded by winning the Australian Prime Minister’s 2009 Prize for Science. Apart from the prestige, the prize comes with a AUD$300K (~US$280K) grant.

The prize was announced last night, some 20 years after O’Sullivan started work on using “Fourier Transforms” to reduce signal echo in radio communications.

The end results of his work were patents awarded to his employer, the Australian Government-funded research organization CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation), for the 802.11a,g and n protocols. That’s right, every time you access the Internet or a LAN via WiFi, you can thank O’Sullivan for making your life a squillion times easier.

Earlier this month it was reported that the CSIRO had entered into an approximately US$185 Million out of court settlement for patent infringement with 14 of the world’s largest tech companies. There’s still more to come as new organisations license the technology but other than today’s prize O’Sullivan won’t see a cent.

It’s because of this it’s great to see O’Sullivan recognised for his achievements.

image source: Innoblog

So, the web is abuzz with Asher Moses’ story in the Sydney Morning Herald about Apple shopping the iTabletPadPod around Aussie media organisations. The story has even made top spot on TechMeme.

Let’s look at what Moses says after having spoken to unnamed sources:

• Apple Tablet coming
• Next year some time, probably pre-June
• Small enough to fit in handbag, too big for a pocket
• Apple is speaking to all media, including newspapers, about content deals
• Quotes the Bill Keller (Editor of the NYT) video where Keller was caught speaking off the record about an Apple tablet
• Says Fairfax Media’s (the company Moses writes for) Director of Marketing is “interested to see what Apple comes up with”
• Apple is working on a new album format (um, iTunes 9 + iTunes LP?…)

So what has he really said?

I mean, anyone could have inferred the “facts” of the story without having spoken to anyone, based on other rumours that have been floating around for the past year or so.

Let’s be clear, I’m not calling bullshit on this one. I have no doubt Asher has, in fact, spoken to someone at a large media organisation (Fairfax?) .

It’s just his story isn’t news , it’s a summary.

Now, if someone could get a video of Rupes and Jobsy having coffee and a chat, while entering in paid subscription details for WSJ content to be delivered via iTunes to an Apple iTabletPadPod, I’d call THAT news.

Anybody?

The latest version of the Remember The Milk iPhone app is now available on the App Store, the biggest addition in this version being support for “Smart Add“.

What that means is that you can now add tasks quickly and with as many properties as you like all in one line by using the Smart Add syntax e.g., “Pick up the milk tomorrow”, “Order stationery #work”, “Return books in 2 weeks @Library”, and more.

On top of that, Smart add saves you time by allowing contextual adding - e.g. tasks added to your today list will be due today, while tasks added to Smart Lists inherit their criteria. So, for instance, if your Smart List shows all your high priority tasks that are due today and located at the office (due:today AND location:office), any tasks added to this Smart List will automatically inherit all these properties.

It’s amazing how the team from RTM have managed to take something as mundane as task management and make the process incredibly simple and user-friendly. It’s also amazing that despite the best efforts of tech heavyweights like Microsoft and Google, RTM has managed to not be swallowed up but, rather, continues to be a market-leader through sheer usability and innovation.

Earlier this month, Australia’s highest circulating advertising and marketing magazine B&Tand crowdsourcing site DesignBay launched a competition to find a logo and tagline that could represent Brand Australia.

The competition was launched in response to the Federal Government’s recent announcement that it was looking for an agency to develop a new brand identity to embody Australia in the 21st century. The government, through the Australian Trade Commission, has set aside a budget of $20 million over four years to promote Brand Australia internationally.

The winning entry will receive a $2000 prize, with cash prizes also given to second and third-placed entrants. A public vote together with the expert opinions of industry professionals and those of B&T’s editorial team and DesignBay staff will decide the winning entry.

I’ve been keeping track of the competition over the past week and a half and it’s been interesting to see the logos come in. Looking at the site today 158 logo designs have been submitted. Some are shockers, but some are pretty good.

DesignBay founder Alec Lynch said: “Australia’s brand is important. We want to find the best logo and tagline ideas that Australia’s creative talent and the world can come up with and we’re going to offer them, for free, to the government. We want to give people the opportunity to contribute to Australia’s brand and we want Australia’s brand to be the best it can be.”

If anything, you know that a crowd-sourced design will almost certainly help Australia avoid the embarassment the London 2012 Olympics organisers faced when their logo was launched. Actually, it’ll probably help us avoid some of our own past embarrassments…

Anyone in the world can enter, but the comp closes at 5pm (Sydney time) on October 29 (this Thursday) so you better move quickly if you want to submit a design.

More details here.

Just saw an ad on TV for Tooheys new cider, 5 seeds.

Amazing thing was that at the end of the ad, during the product shot, they’ve got the strapline and the address of a Facebook page, not a website.

It’s not the first time that a major consumer brand has used social media to sell its wares. That’s not my  point here. What’s amazing is that rather than use social media as the supporting act to an ordinary mass-media + website strategy, Tooheys is promoting Facebook as the primary source of information and interaction with the new brand.

No doubt many of you will be thinking “um, yeah…and?”, but this is a huge step forward for big business.

Congratulations to BMF for getting the TVC pitch, including the Twitter and YouTube components, over the line. Now if only they could fix up their own website..FFS how many click and redirects do you needs?

UPDATE: Turns out the digital component of the campaign was done by Holler. Good work guys.

Anyway, i digress, check out the add below:

What’s going on with the whole Gov 2.0 movement?

What was once a trickle of activity has turned into a flood and suddenly open government data has become the coolest thing for coders to play with since…well, since whatever they used to play with earlier in the year. Check out some of the activity below:

-

So, first of all is the Mashup Australia competition running until November 13^th. Create a mashup using any of the Government data sources listed on the site and you can win up to $10,000 in prizes. Nice.

-

Next, the Open Australia Foundation and Google are running a hackfest on November 7-8 to create mashups from Government data that can be found at http://data.australia.gov.au (not sure why they don’t let you use all of the data sets that Mashup Australia has).

FYI - the OpenAustralia Foundation runs OpenAustralia.org to promote parliamentary transparency making it easier for Australians to find out what their representatives are saying on their behalf.

The good thing about the hackfest is that the data sets you can use on that weekend are a subset of the data sets you can use for the Mashup Australia competition, so any project from the day can go into the running for the $10,000 Mashup Australia first prize too. Nice x 2.

-

Finally, The Government 2.0 Taskforce is running a competition to find the best idea(s) for using public sector information in a nonprofit/charity setting. They’re also awarding a cash donation of $5,000 to the charity/not-for-profit organisation of the winner’s choice.

The winner will also get help from Connecting Up Australia to scope their idea as a project proposal that the Taskforce will consider funding from their “Project Fund”.

The Taskforce is promoting the use of data from Mashup Australia’s data sources, which makes sense when you consider that Mashup Australia is a Taskforce Initiative.  What that means, however, is that once again anything you do for this competition is not only in the running for the $5000 prize for your favourite NFP, but can also go into the Mashup Australia comp.   Nice x 3

Be quick on this one though – Deadline is 5pm 30th October (i.e. next Friday)

After a long and somewhat painful wait to see what would fill the Commercial Ready gap, the Rudd Government today unveiled details of the $196 million Commercialisation Australia initiative.

In announcing the initiative, which was formerly known as the Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute, Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research said:

The radical new program for commercialising research will take a completely new approach to innovation assistance. It will tailor assistance to applicants’ needs, not fit the applicant to the program.

Commercialisation Australia will open early in 2010 and will help researchers, entrepreneurs and innovative firms turn the best ideas into internationally competitive commercial realities, and create high-skill, high-wage jobs.

Commercialisation Australia is specifically designed to boost early stage commercialisation by leveraging private sector capital and expertise.

Successful applicants will have access to:

• a case manager who will guide them through the commercialisation process and facilitate access to volunteer business mentors, including CEOs, and other support;
• specialist advice and services to build the skills, knowledge and linkages necessary to successfully commercialise their ideas, and
• support of up to $250,000 for proof of concept activities, and repayable funding of up to $2 million for early stage commercialisation activities.

Not exactly “details” in the sense that I use the word, more of a high-level overview, but still it’s good to see that things will get moving again early next year and that they appear to be headed in the right direction.

As part of the establishment of Commercialisation Australia, Senator Carr has also announced a call for expressions of interest for board membership of Commercialisation Australia and registrations of interest for the roles of case managers and volunteer business mentors.

Further information on Commercialisation Australia, the call for nominations and registrations of interest can be found at www.innovation.gov.au/CommercialisationAustralia.

For many people - the natural extension of the growing ubiquity of broadband and popularity of cloud-based services will be the proliferation of web-based OS’s.

The idea of a thin-client is something companies like Citrix have been doing well for years now. In the past, however, it has taken on-premise or data-centre hosted servers and the skills of a leading System Integrator (like Ensyst, perhaps… to make that all happen.  But that’s all changing…

Sydney-based YooDos has now thrown its hat into the ring and wants a shot at the 1.6 Billion Internet users that will no doubt be demanding more and more mobile computing solutions.

So what is YooDos?

Based on cloud computing and virtualization technology, YooDos has developed a web-based operating system that allows programs and applications such as the Office Suite, PDF Viewer, Zip Tools, Media Player, Games and many other applications that currently run on the Windows Operating System to work in your browser. It also allows users to manage all their files, documents, movies, music and folders online in the same way that Windows does.

The end result is that users are able to access their own personal computer no matter where they are in the world.

Founder and CEO Khoa Dang had this to say about YooDos’ goals:

We aim to open new doors internet users around the world by providing access to a Cloud OS which can provide powerful applications for both business and public user and allow them the mobility to work anywhere in the world with a just a web browser.

While competitors include some of the largest tech companies in the world as well as start-ups like Cloudo, Xcerion, and G.h.ost, Khoa and the team believe that they can make a dent in the market.

Signup is free and there’s a detailed (if slightly long) demo video you can find here.

Go check it out.

I popped into Coming to America (#c2a)  today and it was a really good event.

It was put on by Mitchel Lake and MC’d by Rand Leeb du Toit, who did a great job of keeping things moving while adding his own interesting anecdotes.

The panel in Silicon Valley (who joined the room by video conference) was made up of the following people:

• Ben Keighran from BluePulse
• Matt Symons from Accenture
• Ryan Junee from Google (ex Omnisio)
• Tristen Langley from Southern Cross Venture Partners
• David Cannington from Sensear

They did a top job of going through the pros and cons of the 2 pitches and the advice they offered was right on the money.

I was looking around the room as the panel members were speaking and various people in attendance that have great experience in the startup and investment space were nodding their heads in agreement with their comments.

Interactive TV (sorry I don’t have a link) was the first company to pitch. They’re really trying to capture that TV as the communication and entertainment centre of the home, segment. I don’t have a lot of experience with hardware-based solutions, but the demo of streaming content was seamless, even on a dodgy unwired link. If the finished product is as good as they say it is, then there’s massive potential provided they can address the big issues around either getting to market directly or partnering with a telco.

Perkler was the second team pitching. We’ve covered Perkler a couple of times already at TNA, so many of you will already know them. For those who don’t, Perkler are the Yellow Pages [Enter appropriate analogy here] of Loyalty Programs. The idea is a little different to things like coupon sites as they’re focusing on “entitlement shopping” or things you’re entitled to as part of loyalty programs, rather than just ad-hoc discounts.

it’s great to see their business progressing so well and that they’re getting such interest from the market. CMO Justin Barrie’s pitch was smooth, covering all the key components and his answers to the panel’s questions show that he and the team are right on top of what they need to be doing.

One nice touch was the fact that they are trying to raise $700K which is going to be made up of $200K from the founders. I’m pretty sure that anyone who’s sold on the business value wouldn’t mind putting the additional $200K in themselves, but it’s a nice sign of founder confidence that they’re willing to wear a significant amount of financial risk as well.

Looking at the type of questions/comments the panel members were making there seemed to be a trend around:

• The need to understand distribution for your product/service and to have a reasonable distribution strategy.
• The need to be able to identify the big picture but to focus on the markets that you’re capable of winning first. Mick Liubinskas from Pollenizer calls this Focus! (actually more people than Mick call it focus, but he’s a massive proponent).
• A need to understand unit economics of what it is you’re doing. How many buyers, how much is each one worth, what’s each one cost to get etc. It’s basic stuff but can often be overlooked when looking at the big picture and not the detail.
• The need to go to the US and start meeting people there if your goal is to be funded and to do business there.  Matt Symons suggested using a 2-stage approach: go over once to take meetings and to meet people without asking for money. @BrianMenzies suggested this very thing to me as well, several months ago, so if he’s saying it too then it’s definitely sound advice. The basic rationale is that at early stage investment levels, the team is just as important as the product/service, so you need to go there and start developing relationships so people will want to work with you. On top of that it’s a good way of getting feedback and setting a line in the sand and saying, “this is what we’re doing now, this is where we want to be at in 3 months”. If you can be there next time you meet in 3 months then you’ve just demonstrated an ability to execute.

A big congrats to Phaedon and the Mitchel Lake team for putting on the event and for getting such a quality group of people to attend. Also a big thanks has to go to the panel and the pitching companies for their contributions.

Lastly, I had to sneak out quickly when it ended so to all the people who were there that I didn’t get to say hello to, my apologies. I look forward to catching up with you all soon.

Earlier this week, Tradeslot was named the “Hottest Company” at the 2009 ANZA Gateway to the US Summit at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, CA.
 
Pitching alongside 9 other Australian-founded companies Tradeslot, from Melbourne, captured the Guy Manson Award for its real-time combinatorial auction platform that dramatically improves the efficiency and profitability of B2B transactions for both buyers and sellers.

If, like me, you went “huh?” when you first heard “combinatorial auction” then let me explain (courtesy of Tradeslot’s definition)

“You have to give it to the guys who came up with combinatorial auctions, the idea is quite revolutionary. Combine the competitive pressure of an online auction with the flexibility of a negotiation. In other words, create good revenue and happy customers. Great idea. And it stayed just that, until the technology caught up and that’s where we come in.

Still lost? Try this five step recipe (proven in our kitchens):

1. Gather pre-qualified buyers in a web portal
2. Let them express exactly what they are after (in terms of price, volume, quality, payment terms, shipping modes, bundling of goods… no limit really)
3. Let the system determine (in real time!) how you would allocate whatever you’re selling (the good, license, permit …)
4. Play the result back to buyers.
5. Let them improve their offer until they get exactly what they are after.

Then go back to (3.) and (4.), until every one has fine-tuned their offer and the deal is locked in.”

The site currently has a strong focus on carbon emission trading, but that’s not the only area they play in. In fact, the technology is built to help with B2B auctions of any kind. One other example is a Timber Sales Platform Tradeslot created for the Victorian Government.

A quick look through the team sees a wealth of business experience including Chairman Andrew Barlow, founder of super successful Aussie startup Hitwise which recently sold for around $300M.

The site is a little clunky, but the technology and business opportunity is anything but that. There’s not the same scope for scale as other auction systems, simply because you need a set of pre-qualified buyers, but if Tradeslot can deliver the 40% revenue uplift for businesses auctioning goods or services that they say they’re already showing, then this will be one serious player in the very near future.