Perth-based Boozle is a site with the following admirable goals:

to ensure alcohol consumers always get the best price available, and to ensure retailers are rewarded for providing the lowest prices.

The process is simple. You select the type of alcoholic beverage you’re interested in, enter your postcode details, and Boozle goes and finds the cheapest alcohol in and around your suburb. Sweet!

On top of that there are reviews of various drinks which can help the thirsty web-surfer decide whether it’s worth trying that new type of beverage or to stick with the old favourite.

The site is currently free for users and the retailers, but you’d imagine that they’d move beyond an advertising-based model once they get the required traction and a large enough community of users.

Co-founders Darcy Byrne and Luke Mahe managed to get a bit of press when they first launched a couple of months ago, but since then they’ve grown their database and now have pricing information from over 4000 stores around the country, including Woolworths Liquor, BWS and Cellarbrations.

Speaking of the team, they’re a perfect example of how the Internet allows people to work in new ways. There’s no traditional office enviornment here. Byrne gets to live and run the operation out of his parents house, while Mahe is a web developer who makes a buck as a web developer at Google’s San Francisco office.

There are a few competitors in the space, Boozewatch and Grogwatch to name a couple, but neither of them seems to do the job as well as Boozle, or to have as good a range of price information.

It will be interesting to see how the site continues to grow and how the guys handle the tough task of trying to get up to date pricing information out of smaller, non-chain, stores.

That having been said, even if they continue as is, there’s huge value in what they’re doing.

Perkler, a Manuka ACT-based startup just recently went into PUBLIC BETA and we were able to get an email interview with co-founders Justin Barrie (Chief Marketing Officer) and Dan Bisa (CEO)

•What are perkler.com’s co-founders doing when they’re not working on perkler.com?

…So to find the iPod I went to every website of the loyalty programs I am a member of. Searched each of their sites and came up with nothing…”

Justin: Firstly to get live and get users in there. In the lead up to Christmas we hope everyone gets their virtual wallet set up to get the most from this time of year. Presents, holidays and general frivolity can add up - Perkler should help people make some pretty good savings and find things they love.

Dan: Users (or ‘perklers’) will always get free access to the community - solving the consumer problem was and is our driving force. For us, clients are the program providers. Retailers, marketing companies and big points program owners. Our hope is to facilitate a community that not only helps consumers but aims to improve the loyalty market in general. More targeted, relevant perks. Better value and true recognition of loyal consumers. But to create this change we want to work with program owners, not against them.

It is the only way to make things better. By partnering with us, becoming our clients, they get better touch with their members and potential members and everyone wins.

…It is the only way to make things better. By partnering with us, becoming our clients, they get better touch with their members and potential members and everyone wins…”

We’ve built a pretty comprehensive back-end that will cope with online program management, member touch tools and data analysis - we think this places us well to get a significant number of clients on board.

Check Perkler out and sign up now for a public beta!

Posted by Paul “The Pageman” Pajo

Sydney company Cognitive Development have built one of the first white-label social networking platforms to focus on the sometimes forgotten Australian SME Tech scene.  Named Rapport, the product allows companies with tighter budgets to capitalize on the social media movement by offering a pre-packaged but highly customizable social networking system for their brand or company.

“Our aim was to create a powerful marketing tool using social networking technology so that companies restricted by time or money can compete with their bigger competitors, particularly in a time of possible recession,” said Cognitive Development co-founder Stuart Inskip.

The reason it is so cheap relies on the fact that customers don’t have to pay for the entire development cost of the network.  They use the existing Rapport architecture, then pick and choose which features they want within it.  In cutting out development cost’s, it drastically drops the overall price of building a company focused social network.

This product could not come at a better time for SME’s struggling to get their brand out into a swamped and increasingly expensive market place.

The fact that a Sydney Based Company has been created to solely focus on social media for the Australian SME sector is a strong sign that the social media space in Australia is maturing and gaining commercial importance.

The cool thing is that each network can be tailored to fit the business it is being built for be it, Bars and Clubs, Open Learning, Retail or Fan Groups.  In doing this it offers companies the chance to get maximum value out of their marketing and business objectives at a very competitive rate.

I am yet to see what the interface will look like or how it will act. A guess would be that it is something similar to Ning, but aimed at a more narrow, commercially focused demographic.

Rapport will definitely fill a niche for companies looking to capitalize on social networking within the baby-boomer or late Gen X demographics.

What will be interesting however is how companies focused on the Gen Y audience will use the Rapport platform to pull that demographic away from the big social networks like facebook.  This audience is now so deeply entrenched within these social network that it will may prove a hard obstacle to achieve. If these SME’s don’t have an incredibly enticing value proposition for this generation, the jump maybe too difficult to make.

For those who don’t recall, we did an article on Graham and his experience building the Oz Weather iPhone App, a little while back. It was (and still is) a great resource for people considering moving into iPhone app development.

Now, Graham has gone and completely opened up the books and put it all in a post over at the Ajnaware blog.

He covers the costs, the sales volume, the revenues and the projections.

Interesting bits include:

• The cost of development was equivalent to approx. $15500
• The ad supported web app brought in approx $50 in revenue whereas the native iphone app at $2.49 has brought in approx $2500 in revenue (post GST and Apple’s 30%)
• To get to number 7 he’s sold 1586 units in 14 days.
• Break even point, if the current rate of approx 140 units per day is maintained, would be 2-3 months.

I won’t put anything else because I highly recommend you pop over and check out the original blog post, yourself.

Kudos to Graham for being so open. Hopefully others will follow his lead and help the developer community decide whether or not developing for the iphone is a useful way to spend their time.

Just spoke to Virigina Choy from Pretaweb after hearing about her involvement in the launch of Australia’s first Open Source Business Cluster last week.

According to Virginia:

The aim of the cluster is to more effectively market, deliver and provide support for Open Source technologies to business and government agencies

The founding members are

• Digital Armour Corporation;
• Syntonic Corporation; and
• Pretaweb

Combined, the 3 companies employ over 40 people and provide a range of skills around Open Source technologies including:

• Website development, Content Management Systems, e-commerce
• ERP, CRM, Business Intelligence
• Networking, VPN, VoIP
• Managed Services, email filtering, system security, site audits
• Data Storage and backup

The cluster’s members remain independent entities but provide:

• a range of complimentary skills and resources to offer end-to-end open source implementation.
• a single point of contact for business and government to obtain advice and quotes for a broad range of OS solutions.
• comprehensive support and maintenance to keep the systems running optimally.

The initiative is supported by a $10K establishment grant from the NSW Department of State and Regional Development, which has embraced Open Source Software and Open Standards in recent years, as well as Google Australia, who lent their Sydney offices for the cluster launch last Friday.

Those interested in joining the cluster should email Virginia at pretaweb dot com.

A quick reminder that BarCamp Sydney is on tomorrow

Details are as follows:

Date: Saturday, 15 November 2008
Venue: UNSW Roundhouse
Time: 9am - 5pm (8:30 registrations - but you can come and go as you please, i.e. you don’t have to be there for the whole 8 hours if you have other stuff to do)

You can register yourself on the wiki here:

There’s more info on the barcamp site and in a previous story we ran about the day.

Try to get there if you can - As I write there are already 157 people registered, so it looks like it’ll be another bumper day!

In the hunt for property but angry at how Real Estate Agents feel the need to suppress prices on some of their ads?

Robert Reith from Home Price History sent us through a nice little hack for finding out hidden prices from properties listed on both RealEstate.com.au and Real Estate View.

Turns out that both of these sites like to share their info with Google Base…not a bad idea in general, but not a good idea if you want to keep prices hidden.

Just go to either of these sites and when you find a property with hidden pricing information, pop over to Google Base, click on the ‘Housing’ link, then put in the address and Hey Presto! the property is displayed with the missing price.

Here’s an example of a place advertised without a price at 200 Cecil St South Melbourne

And here is the Google Base version WITH price

For people looking to collect information about property (and use services like Home Price History) the ability to bypass real estate agents will be a godsend.

Nice catch, Robert! Maybe use the Google Base API and build an automated service into the next release of Home Price History?

Now that would be sweet!

Paul has been pumping out the stories lately, so it’s only fair that we introduce him formally.

“Paul Pajo is an experienced Project Manager, Project Discovery/Integration/Proponent, OD/HR Consultant, and Web Integrator. With over 12 years in Technology Adoption Paul is experienced in delivering, Content Management/Delivery Platforms, BPO (Financial Accounts, Content & Office Management) solutions. Some of his specialties are: Trans-National partnerships, executive search, prototyping and pilot project facilitation of new business models in both post-conflict (Afghanistan) and First World (Dubai,UAE) countries. Also BPO between Central Asia and Middle East, government liaison, arts & media management consulting, e-commerce and new media. He is currently the Chief Evangelist for desiremesh.com - a solution+revolution company”

Welcome aboard, Paul!

The Commonwealth Government’s new Climate Ready grants scheme was introduced in July. It aims to give companies matching funding to cover R&D, proof-of-concept and early-stage commercialisation for processes, products or services which address the effects of climate change.

I’ve been preparing an application based on my project to develop software called Rocksolver which will mimic the way a stone mason builds a dry stone wall by doing the hard 3D geometric manipulations. In the application my focus is on demonstrating that the software will make an industrial process more efficient by allowing the builders of sea walls, for instance, to use unprocessed rock instead of pre-cast concrete blocks. Weight-for-weight, unprocessed rock used as a building material produces 10% the greenhouse gas emissions of concrete, hence my attempt to get Climate Ready funding. I missed the first round of funding and the second round closes soon.

Last week I submitted my draft Climate Ready application to AusIndustry to get their feedback. It looks like the AusIndustry people are the gate-keepers who filter the applications so the final selection committee only sees the stuff that looks like it might have a chance. I received the feedback this week and it’s reasonably detailed, fair and thankfully won’t require me to do too much more work. Mostly they’ve picked me up on the places where I haven’t quoted sources of technical information, which is fair enough. I’ve got until the 26^th November to respond to the feedback, gather all the remaining required documentation (a letter from an accountant saying the company can match funding, proof of ownership of IP, etc) and submit the final application to be eligible for the 2^nd round of funding.

The process so far has been time consuming but the application and AusIndustry’s feedback have certainly made me focus on the hard realities of commercialisation.

Ian Cumming and Scott Woodhouse, co-founders of Travellr, were kind enough to give TechNation Australia an email interview. Here we go:

Please tell us a little something about yourself, your hobbies, what you do when you’re not working on your startup?

Ian: This year I’ve been getting into diving - the water is really cold in Tasmania where we live so it takes a bit of determination to get in the water - but it’s so much fun! I also love to ski and spent my Australian summer with some mates at Niseko on the north island of Japan skiing massive powder runs non-stop every day! Best of all I love traveling! This year I’ve been to Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, the USA, and will be heading off the the UK for New Years. I’ve made some truly amazing friends traveling and had some of the best experiences thanks to meeting locals!

Scott: Outside of Travellr, I’m a marketing consultant at In-tellinc - a Hobart-based tech incubator specialising in early stage startups. Like everyone at Travellr, I’m a big fan of travelling, and take time out for it as much a I possibly can (I’ve already blown this year’s leave out of the water almost two-fold with trips to the UK, Greece, France and the US…..will have to do some some serious negotiation for Christmas). My biggest love is whitewater kayaking, and I’ve toured the US and Canada twice paddling remote steep creeks and rivers. That said, some of the best whitewater in the world exists here in Tasmania….GO TASMANIA!

Any new games/sports you’re currently on that you think the world should know?

Ian: I think that everyone should know about bigstereo.net, my favorite music blog ever!

Scott: Um, the last computer / video games I played seriously date back to the late ’80s on my Atari 2600. If you’re looking for specifics, I guess that California Games, Dig Dug and Enduro Racer are hot favourites that I would’ve recommended to people around that time.

Ian: Travellr is a new online travel startup that will change the way travelers find the best advice and local knowledge about anywhere in the world. Travellr is a service that allows travelers to connect with like-minded locals and past visitors to get the most insightful, relevant, and personalized answers possible.

Scott: Travellr has five core people based in Hobart, with a growing network of advisors and correspondents scattered accross the world. We’re funded by local investors, including Ian’s company Insight4 - a software development firm, and In-tellinc. Right now we’re working hard to finish and launch the private beta by December, raising additional funding to assist with an aggressive product development and marketing strategy, and planning our move to San Francisco in early 2009.

Ian: The concept behind Travellr started out as an idea I had last year while I was travelling overseas. I bounced the idea off Scott and together we developed an initial business and marketing strategy around the idea of a building a service for travelers to be able to ask questions about anywhere in the world. We developed an early stage prototype at the start of the year and then raised some funding and applied for an AusIndustry COMET grant to get the idea off the ground. Last month we took Travellr to Silicon Valley as part of ANZA’s ‘Gateway to the US’ program (http://www.anzatechnet.com/) where we pitched to VCs and investors at Plug and Play Tech Centre’s Fall DEMO event (http://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com). We are now busy working on launching our private beta for December this year!

Scott: When you’re travelling, you just can’t beat local knowledge - it’s invaluable. And when you find it, it can totally make your trip. But unless you actually know someone who lives where you’re travelling, it can be very difficult finding qualified information that’s specific to your questions. Sure, you can trawl through review sites, forums, social networks and the like, but it’s a lot of effort, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll even find what you’re looking for. All you want to do is ask a simple question. This is the problem we’re solving with Travellr.

Scott: Initially Travellr will target backpackers and ‘flash’ packers (professionals who backpack), but the service solves a universal problem and we can see it being adopted by all people who travel. In the current economic climate, as people’s shrinking budgets cause them to research their travel more closely, a service like Travellr becomes increasingly valuable.

Ian: We’re still in the development stage of the project so you’ll have to check back with us in a few months to find out our uptake.

Ian: We’ve raised some initial early stage capital with assistance from AusIndustry’s COMET fund (http://www.ausindustry.gov.au/) and local investment, which has enabled us to put together marketing, technical, and business expertise to build the business. We’ve also sought out a some key travel and tourism advisors to help us out and provide additional insight to the team. We are currently looking at raising additional capital via angel investment to assist us with future product development and implementing our initial marketing strategy.

Scott: For Travellr, the biggest and most critical milestone is reaching critical mass - growing the community to a point where people can receive high-quality answers to their questions both a) quickly enough to be useful on the road via a mobile device, and b) from well-matched locals who share similar interests and characteristics. This high standard of user experience requires strategic distribution of users, not only by geographic location, but also according to profile.

Scott: There’s no question that online travel is a crowded (and competitive space), but by focusing purely on travel questions and answers, Travellr sits in a niche. There are a small handful of sites such as GeckoGo, STA Travelers and Lonely Planet that allow users to ask questions, but these guys play predominantly in the travel social network space, offering everything but the kitchen sink, including itinerary and media sharing, blogging and reviews. For them Q&A is essentially bolted on as an afterthought, and as a result is poorly implemented. And to be honest, who wants (or has time) to join yet another social network? I don’t want to post photos, make friends or share my itinerary - I just want to be able to quickly and easily ask locals questions to get information that’s valuable to me!

Ian: I like to think that entrepreneurship is the art of turning a great idea into an even better business.

Scott: Having the guts to believe in what you’re doing and fully committing to it.

Scott: Nothing really, other than maybe taking time to hang out in the US sooner. Pitching Travellr in Silicon Valley is definately the best thing we’ve done for the project to date. It was a good kick in the pants, and forced us to consolidate our core-value proposition, business model and message to investors. The progress we’ve made with Travellr since making the decision to take it to the Valley has been nothing short of remarkable, and we’ve been able to bring back a lot of energy and insight from the experiences we had on this trip.

Ian: Always be open to advice and criticism from others as this is free feedback that will help you improve your idea!

If you want to learn more about Travellr or just chat with Ian and/or Scott, try to bump into them at the upcoming Sydney BarCamp on November 15 at the UNSW Roundhouse.

interview and posted by: Paul “The Pageman” Pajo