Following Australian Startups and Tech Trends

Today we showcase the story of another successful entrepreneur, Martin Dougiamas, Founder, Lead Developer and Managing Director of Moodle Pty Ltd Moodle is an open-source course management system (also called a learning management system). It's a completely Free web application that educators can install and use to manage all their online learning. The business model is based on services around the free software. It has 2 portals/sites, the open source community is at Moodle.org the business side is at Moodle.com Let us explore what Martin has to say about his venture Moodle and his thoughts on IT, Education and Innovation coming out of Australia. This is what he has to say: • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? I'm 38, live in Perth with my young family. Until I was 12 I lived in central Australia, learning via School of the Air (in those days we used shortwave radio). This probably had some influence on what I do now. • Who are the people behind

Today we are showcasing another venture from Melbourne, Australia, Docoloco Co-Founded by Melbourne boys, Chris Mander and Johnny Cussen, Docoloco - is a community powered online recommendation engine that helps locals find, share and follow the best local businesses. In laymen terms, people can use Docoloco to find recommended local businesses and services, recommend the places they love (or love to hate) and ask friends and other locals to share their recommendations. Chris Mander, describes: Today local businesses use Docoloco to: list their business, features and products online free of charge, appear in the top web results on Google, use their loyal customer base to generate new business and attract new customers. Tomorrow businesses will use Docoloco to: find out a whole lot more about who their customers and competitors really are and deliver highly targeted ads to a local audience. Let us explore bit more about Docoloco and Chris's journey as an

Today we cover a new startup MomentVille . If you are planning for a wedding then you might want to look at this site. Founded by Geoff Evason, MomentVille is a free, stylish, and easy-to-use personal wedding website builder. Its main aim is to help people share, plan, and remember life’s special moments. Geoff describes: I was looking to build a wedding website. I was unable to find one that was free, fun, and easy to use. I also disliked the fact that most wedding websites charge excessive prices simply because there is a wedding!. So the core team built MomentVille from the ground up making sure it was free, easy and fun! Let us learn a bit more about Geoff, his journey as an entrepreneur and the changing landscape of innovation in Australia. • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? Geoff has experience in a range of companies including startups, and medium and large companies. Geoff’s major interest is in using technology to help make life better. He belie

The 26th participant is SwapAce.com Founded by Joseph Renzi, SwapAce.com is an online marketplace that allows people from all over the world to swap, sell, meet, and buy almost anything in a secure environment. It allows you to barter for goods and services; negotiate until you get the deal you want; and make offers to multiple ads without the risk of having to buy everything. It creates and connects communities – both geographically and by interest. This enables you to meet like-minded people and trade within a special interest group. SwapAce.com also has personalised features which allow users to create a list of items they want and when someone posts something on SwapAce.com that is on your list, will suggest potential matches – increasing your chance of success. Let us learn more about SwapAce.com from Joseph, this is what he has to say: • How it started? A gap was identified in the eBay net-based buy and sell model, so I set out to offer net users a unique village marketplace

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 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