Following Australian Startups and Tech Trends

Today we showcase an exciting and successful venture co-founded by Adele Whish-Wilson in 2002, Momentum Technologies Group - Live Video Streaming Over Mobile. In a recent email-based interview with Adele , she gave insights into her venture and how she is progressing with it. This is what she has to say: • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? My background was initially in psychology and communications, which led to roles in the private, community and government sectors that covered everything from supporting health campaigns to assisting in developing state government department e-business strategies. My interest in finding ways to improve ‘how things are done’ led me to take a role as a business analyst, then onto starting Momentum in 2002 – where I continue to be focused on assisting our clients find a better way to get things done. My interests are long-distance running (completed my first marathon last year, and did Oxfam’s 100km Trailwalker this year),

Today we showcase an exciting and successful venture founded by Grant Simonds from Melbourne, Australia, MComms TV - a software solutions company that specialises in live Mobile TV monitoring, digital audio/video mixing, transcoding and Mobile TV Ad Insertion for the telecommunications industry. Their products are used by network operators and content providers globally to deliver innovative Mobile TV services to subscribers. In a recent email-based interview with Grant, he gave insights into his venture and how he is progressing with it. This is what he has to say: • Please tell us about your venture/company? MComms Monitor enables video streaming operators to monitor the availability of multiple video streams on-screen and using SNMP traps. Provides a “Video Wall” for staff and customers to view available streaming content. MComms Transcode converts redundant live video streams from the internet, IPTV and analog/digital feeds into compatible Mobile TV video streams. A stream can

Telstra's CEO Mr. Sol Trujillo delivered $3.7 billion profit after tax and minority interests for the year ended 30 June 2008. Some of the key highlights of this report are Mobile services revenue grew 12.3% to $5.5 billion Retail broadband revenue grew 49% to $1.8 billion and ARPU increased 2.9%. Retail broadband customer numbers grew strongly to 3.3 million for the year resulting in a market share gain of 2 percentage points to 49% PSTN revenue was $6.7 billion, a 3.2% decline for the year compared with 4.4% in fiscal 2007. The number of retail PSTN lines has grown for 14 consecutive months. Retail sales revenue grew 5.9% for the year. Growth of 3.6% in Telstra Enterprise & Government 3G penetration more than doubled since June 2007 to 47% of our mobile base or 4.4 million subscribers, a feat unmatched by our global peer group. Optus & 3 were caught off guard, but the fight is on. Telstra continues to gain around 20,000 wireless broadband subscribers per month with 5

Today we showcase an exciting and successful venture founded by, Mark White from, Brisbane, Australia, Locatrix . It provides mobile social networking solutions for deployment by network operators and location-based services to corporate customers and application solution providers. It uses location to create and shape mobile content experiences that engage subscribers and generate ARPU. This is the engine beneath Telstra’s (Sensis) Whereis Everyone . We recently learnt about Locatrix while compiling the list of Emerging Mobile Startups in Australia . 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 a native Queenslander, completing a degree in Computer Science at the University of Queensland before embarking on a career that gravitated towards technical marketing roles here and in Singapore for US multinational companies:

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Innovation (CCI) presents findings, from the first survey undertaken by the Australian component of the World Internet Project, titled The Internet in Australia. This is definitely quite an intriguing work that reflects upon the activities of a general population affected by the Internet. Before I jump into my summary/conclusions, some of the highlights of this report for me are : Nearly 80% of home has broadband. Only 25.3 % of people use wireless devices to access the internet. Only less than an hour/week on a mobile device to access the internet. Email is the most popular means of communicating online. 82.8% of users never made an internet phone call. 20% of people use messaging daily. 59.2% of internet users pay bills online. Only 70.9% of rural households have broadband access compared to 83.0% of households in capital cities. Internet users spend less time watching television, listening to radio and reading newspapers than nonusers. Cop

The  iPhone phenomenon is global and is doing well in terms of grabbing the market share from other handsets. In Australia consumer is crying, even though it’s a hit with the general public, courtesy of 3 telcos, which have got an agreement with Apple, Telstra , Optus & Vodafone. The main reason consumers are crying is that their pricing plans are the most expensive compared to the other 21 countries where iPhone 2.0 is launched. Well, there are no prizes for guessing that Telstra's plans are the most expensive plans. Most of us haven't been able to understand why Telstra is offering plans that are not suitable for a smart device like an iPhone - it's not a phone it's a mini PC. But now it is becoming clear why this is so. It’s not widely known that Telstra negotiated hard with Apple to allow applications like Whereis (Sensis) to be preloaded on iPhone. This is the usual territory for Telstra, Being the dominant player here they get away with most of the time with

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

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 the story of another successful entrepreneur, Che Metcalfe, founder of Podmo from Adelaide, Australia. Podmo Mobile is a free mobile network for end users. Let us explore what Che has to say about his venture Podmo Mobile and his thoughts on Mobile Space and Innovation coming out of Australia. This is what he has to say in a candid interview with me : • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? I grew up in Townsville and left for Sydney when I was 17 to get Guitar lessons. After a year or so I returned to Townsville to form a band, which we took to Adelaide. We won the battle of the bands at our first gig and did a lot of big support gigs for bands like the Angels, Southern Sons and Johnny Diesel. After a tour to Sydney, it dawned on me that I may work my but off in this industry for many years and get nowhere, so I left the band and decided to study. I enrolled in a Building Design and Drafting Diploma at TAFE where I first started using compu