Following Australian Startups and Tech Trends

We published an extensive report on Australia's local search market in April 2008. At that time we found there are 18 local players in this space. Now within 3 months, this list has grown from 18 to 25. All these players are competing in this market worth $235 million as reported last year (2007). It is expected to reach $532 million by 2010. We have now further updated this list and the following are the players competing in this space: AussieWeb Local Search Brownbook ClickFind dLook Docoloco FreeConnect HotFrog Google Maps Local Search Solutions Local.com.au Nook NineMSN - My Local OurPatch Phone Book Rave About It RAYV Start Local Street Directory True Local VirtualMap Yellow (Sensis, formerly YellowPages) Vouchorgrouch Womow WhitePages (Sensis) Yahoo!7 ReachLocal As f ar as the top p l ayers are concerned, this h asn't ch a nged much since we reported l ast time. So, the top 5 players in this market according to their market share/business listing s are . 1. Yellow, My...

Today we are delighted to bring you a new venture from Sydney, Stripe - Australia’s first mobile radio subscription service and the first digital radio network to launch in Australia. It utilises broadband and 3G networks and allows you to listen to any Stripe radio station from your computer and most 3G mobile phones, wherever you are in Australia!. Their music stations are all genre-specific and commercial including 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, disco, country, metal, rock, hip hop, Japanese pop and many more, all accessible from your 3G mobile phone. We will soon be covering their venture in more detail as part of our interview series , in the meantime this is what Stripe Management has to say in their press release. In a move which is expected to increase the take‐up of 3G mobile services in Australia, Stripe will launch over 30 new radio stations, Australia wide. The Stripe service will allow the Australian public to access 40 stations by Christmas and 100 by the end of 2009, via the int...

The Pearcey award is a NSW State award, aimed at encouraging and rewarding fresh and innovative talent in the IT profession. It is awarded to an individual early in their career who has demonstrated innovative and pioneering achievement and contribution to research and development. The Award will be held on Thursday 11th September 2008 during an afternoon/evening Pearcey Foundation function at the Westin Hotel, Martin Place, Sydney. The award is named after Dr.Trevor Pearcey, who in 1948 built Australia's first and the world's fourth digital computer, CSIRAC, in Sydney. It is the oldest surviving computer in the world. The Pearcey Foundation's objective is to reinforce the recognition, knowledge and appreciation of outstanding individuals and their contributions to the development and growth of Australia's ICT professionals, research and industry. The NSW Pearcey committee is encouraging fresh and innovative talent in the ICT profession to step forward and gain recogni...

Today we showcase an exciting and successful venture founded by, Alex in 2006 from Melbourne, Australia, Mostyle ! - comes from “Mobile” + “Lifestyle” - a telco-independent mobile ecosystem that not only provides the tools to build a mobile site but offers the distribution, community and multiple enablers for the monetising of mobile content through advertising or micropayments. In a recent email-based interview with Alex, he gave insights into his venture and how he is progressing with it. This is what he has to say: • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? I have a Computer Science degree from RMIT University and am nearly done with a Master of Entrepreneurship and Innovation from Swinburne University. Over the past 10 years, I’ve been working in different areas of mobile gaming and entertainment, dealing with content, portals, industry building and development. My range of professional experiences has mainly been with Nokia (Mobile Entertainment Platform)...

Today we showcase an exciting and successful venture co-founded by, Mark Harbottle in 2008 from Melbourne, Australia, 99designs - it connects thousands of designers from around the world with clients who need design tasks completed fast, and without the usual high cost and limited choices you get from most traditional design firms. In a recent email-based interview with Mark, he gave insights into his venture and how he is progressing with it. This is what he has to say: • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? I’m 34 years old. I have a degree in computer systems engineering. I started my wo rking life as a programmer, but I eventually found I was much better at online marketing, which back in 1995 was an area not many people had explored. I’ve worked with pure internet businesses for 13 years now. The first 4 years after I graduated I worked with one of Australia’s first internet companies, and the last 9 have been spent working on my own businesses. I started...

Today we showcase an exciting and successful venture co-founded in 2000 by Ex-MD, Mal Jago, who now has a digital consultancy business Earworm Consulting, from Sydney, Australia, Coastal Watch - provides accurate surf reports for beaches around Australia and live streaming vision. In a recent email based interview with Mal, he gave insights into this venture. This is what he has to say: • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? Spent 15 years as a Foreign exchange Dealer before a sea change in 2000 into Coastalwatch • Please tell us about your venture/company? Surfcams at beaches to provide surf reports and conditions to surfers/boating/ Surf Life Savings • Who are the people behind this and how it started? Chris Lane- Surfer and IT guru wanting to avoid getting up at UNi and wasting his time getting to the beach and find no waves. • How long it took before it was up and running? 1-2 years established 1998. • What services it provides for consumers or customers?...

Today we showcase an exciting and successful technology business co-founded by Keith Lang, from Canberra, Australia. plasq - Best known for “Comic Life”, is a software company that creates applications for Mac and PC. It’s a bit over 3 years old and gained recognition in the Mac community when Comic Life was bundled with all-new Macs for a year. plasq has also won various awards for its software and works hard to design fun, intuitive and creative visual applications. In a recent email-based interview with Keith, he gave insights into his venture and how he is progressing with it. This is what he has to say: • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? Keith Lang, Co-Founder of Plasq. I’m a musician by training, with a Bachelor's Degree in Classical Music Composition. I was involved in audio software for quite some time, on the musician's side of things, before getting involved in the software side. • Who are the people behind this and how it started? Rober...

Today we showcase an exciting and successful technology business co-founded by Aram Mirkazemi, from Tasmania, Australia. Morfik - a commercial vendor of professional software development tools. Morfik was established to address the need for an integrated high-end development tool that empowers software developers to leverage their existing skills to build Rich Internet Applications without the need to master Web technologies such as HTML/CSS/HTTP/SOAP etc. In a recent email based interview with Aram, he gave insights into his venture and how he is progressing with it. This is what he has to say: • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? I am a professional software developer with many years of entrepreneurial experience in developing commercial CAD systems and Web Application Development tools. My interests are Rapid Application Development (RAD), Integrated Development Environments (IDE), Rich Internet Applications (RIA) Using Ajax and emerging technologies, ...

Its now becoming clear to me that the recent acquisition of EDS by HP is about 3 C’s - Consulting, Cloud & Computing. The IT industry is rapidly moving towards cloud computing, which is explained here in lay men terms, courtesy of Google and Amazon. EDS brings software development, management and consultin g practices, which HP doesn’t have as their software consulting business never made big. So this is a no brainier that by getting EDS its sending the message in marketplace th at they want to eng age in consulting , IBM is the target here. In addition to this the main/re al aspect of this deal is about Cloud Computing – which has 3 basic pillars , Software As A Service (SAAS – Made Popular By Salesforce), IAAS – Infrastructure As A Service (Made Popular By Amazon), PAAS – Platform As A Service, which is an emerging trend where Google and Amazon are leaders. Microsoft is way behind in this space but they are trying with no success yet(Yahoo’s massive search infrastructure ...