Following Australian Startups and Tech Trends

The 25th participant is The Fame Experiment Founded By Mark Schumann in 2008, The Fame Experiment , was developed to investigate the answer to one simple question, Can the internet be used to generate enough exposure for one person to experience public recognition? It works on the idea that one person if seen over and over again in a multitude of places, could experience public recognition, or become famous . The aim is for this person's image to be everywhere, and for that image to become embedded in Internet users' thoughts so that to see this person in public will trigger an I know you moment. Mark describes , that there are two phases: Phase 1: is about getting the word out about the Fame Experiment. If users have a website, a blog, post on forums, or even email others, it is easy for them to participate. By selecting the Earn Fame Points link after logging in, they will be given a choice of special code that can be placed on their website, blog, forum or email signatu

The 24th participant is Adimade Co-founded by Jake Lawton and Nat Graf in 2008, Adimade - is a video-sharing website focused on User Generated Advertising or UGA. Put simply, Adimade is YouTube for brands. Adimade brings together the talent of the YouTube community with businesses seeking a new way to interact with young consumers. Nat describes: Adimade runs ad creation projects on behalf of our project partners. Users create videos; submit those videos to Adimade, then users share and vote for the best clips. The project partner selects the best clip from the finalist’s videos, and is free to use that video for any advertising and promotional purposes. Adimade gives the amateur video creator the chance to get paid for the entertaining and clever videos they create. By submitting an entry to one of Adimade’s ad creation projects, video creators have the opportunity of getting paid for their work, funding their next film project and getting their work seen by the people who count

The 23rd participant is 3eep 3eep - is a social media enterprise. It delivers technology and commercial services to clients who want to establish their own social media businesses and create social networks in their communities. 3eep’s focus is on local sports communities. Let us learn more about 3eep and the people behind it: • Who are the founders behind this and how it started? Who are the founders behind this and how it started. The founders of 3eep are Rob Antulov, CEO, who was the former head of strategy at Fairfax, and Nick Gonios, COO and Head of Community Development, who has spent time with HotHouse Interactive, Microsoft and Fujitsu. • How long it took before it was up and running? From our initial thoughts about building a sports-oriented social network to launching our first beta version took about six months. We launched our partner Platform product within 4 months of that. • What stage of your start-up is, stealth mode, beta mode or fully functional? 3eep is still in

We are happy to announce that CeBIT Australia has come on board and is the major sponsor for the Australian Startups Carnival 2008 . We would like to thank CeBIT Australia and Transaction 2.0 . Our special thanks to Mr Gilad Greenbaum Director(IT) of Hannover Fairs , for supporting us in this initiative. All the prizes are sponsored by CeBIT Australia 2008 . The first prize is valued at $2,650 + GST, which consists of: One pod exhibition package for a start-up in TechRamp Pavilion . The package includes one Transaction 2.0 conference ticket and automatic entry to the TechRamp competition . Opportunity to present in the conference (subject to judges panel). 2nd and 3rd prizes are valued at 200 dollars each. We are giving 200 dollar discount on tickets for Transaction 2.0 conference at CeBIT Australia, 2008, priced at 595 + GST We are delighted to have CEBIT Australia 2008 coming on board for this online Startups Carnival. Winners of the competition will be declared on Sunday, March

The 22nd participant is Me2mobile Me2mobile is a new entrant in the area of enabling Mobile Interactivity. It is a self-service portal that allows ordinary users to produce interactive mobile applications that were once provided by traditional mobile media companies such as mobile operators and mobile marketing companies. Let us explore a bit further how Me2mobile is progressing: • Who are the founders behind this and how it started? The founders have extensive experience in the mobile industry and have been involved in the mobile content area for the last 8 years. The founders are moonlighting entrepreneurs at present but will be announcing who they are once initial seed funding is secured and the business is launched. • How long it took before it was up and running? The concept was conceived around 18 months ago when the founders realised that a lot of smaller businesses and entrepreneurial individuals faced massive barriers to setting up interactive mobile services. We saw an

The 21st participant is WhatYah WhatYah , founded by Ashley Smith in January 2007, is a place to catalogue, share and review your movies, TV shows & games with friends. He created it after he realised that sharing movies, games & TV shows between friends should be easier. The idea is that you should be able to search a database and be able to know exactly what your friends own. With WhatYah you can then organise to trade or share titles and even get together to make a social event. Ashley tells us a bit more about his startup, WhatYah: How long it took before it was up and running? From planning to public beta testing it took approximately 14 months What stage of your start-up is, stealth mode, beta mode or fully functional? In stealth mode at current, planning on starting marketing within the month. What is the main objective/mission behind your venture? To assist friends with sharing their content legally, as well as being able to catalogue all of their media they can write

The 20th participant is Community Enabler Founded by Rob Anderson, Community Enabler , trading under the banner of Cagora.com which is the flagship website , is a project tentatively called the Social Networking Challenge which will launch in March 2008. It is a Social Enterprise that is setting out to do its bit to make the world a better place by fostering Community Building and empowering Business Entrepreneurs and Social Entrepreneurs to achieve their goals. It is run as a Profit Business, but will be launching Not For Profit initiatives such as The Social Networking Challenge which is designed to create a word-of-mouth Tipping Point harnessing the viral connectivity of the Blogosphere and major Social Networks such as Facebook and MySpace. Rob describes the service in his words: It has a shortcut way for people to browse and search the Social Networks for People and Groups. The same interface to enable people to browse on one page thousands of Bloggers, Podcasters and Videocaste

Continuing our coverage of bringing more surprise entries, today’s surprise entry entry is WOMOW . Founded by Fiona Adler and Brad Bond in 2006, WOMOW stands for Word Of Mouth On the Web and it’s an online business directory of word-of-mouth recommendations to help people find the best local businesses. All businesses are entered and rated by users who describe their experience, including what they particularly liked or didn’t like about the business. WOMOW helps users find the very best local businesses, using real information from real people. And for businesses, WOMOW is the only place where they can be promoted based on merit (not on how much they spend). And if businesses provide poor service, we believe people should know about this so that they can choose other alternatives. WOMOW gives consumers a voice and evens out the playing field for businesses. Let us explore a bit more about Womow and see how they are doing. This is what Fiona, one of the founders, has to say: How i

The 19th participant is Confer Founded by Rod L'Huillier Confer - is a social news-sharing site especially aimed at an Australian audience providing a platform for content recommendation and news sharing. The content is completely community-driven via member submissions of links to blog posts, news stories or even videos that they have found interesting. Members can also vote on submissions to democratically determine the front-page news and most popular content. The site also allows for discussion of submissions and members also have their own personal profile page with networking features. It aims to be a platform for sharing discovery and engagement in Australian content, particularly from the Aussie blogosphere, and for localised discussion of news and issues be they global or local. Confer in short: Social News Sharing - Content Recommendation Content discovery via community contribution Discussion - Have your say on local issues Collaborative filtering via voting Independen