Following Australian Startups and Tech Trends

This has been an incredible experience and journey for all of us. This is the first time in Australia that a carnival showcasing profiles of new business ventures from different domains was covered online. In a world that is becoming flat day by day, as explained by Thomas Friedman, we will see more and more new ways of doing traditional things. Our local VCs on contact couldn’t understand what we were doing, just showed the state of affairs to our VCs. Today we are happy to announce the winners of this carnival. We have already published the feedback and how Judges have marked the participants. If you have missed that please read it here , as it will describe how we have marked all the participants. We have declared our first prize and now updated the page with 2nd and 3rd prizes. We do acknowledge that in comparison to the first prize 2nd and 3 prize winners don’t get much value. But this was our first event and we tried our level best (it was an understatement) to get as many

We are happy to announce that we have successfully showcased 28 Australian Startups in IT/Media/Telecom/eCommerce/Social Networking/Marketing/News/SAAS. We also covered 3 surprise entries that missed the competition by a whisker in registering for the carnival with extended dates :-). This carnival was possible because of all the participants who participated, our elite panel of Judges who have put a lot of time, effort and energy from their personal time with sheer passion to mark all the participants. Our sincere thanks go to  the Judges and all the participants . We would like to thank our sponsors, CeBIT Australia 2008, which is our major sponsor, Smart Path, Cagora, and BuiltWith. Without their support, it's very hard to keep going a long way. We do appreciate and thank them for their encouragement and participation. Judges were assigned the difficult task of marking these startup's profiles. Judges marked them under four major categories : Originality Simplicity Tec

Continuing in our coverage of bringing more surprise entries, today’s surprise entry is Booktagger Co-Founded by Jeremy and Rebecca LeBard, Booktagger is a niche web 2 social community for book lovers. Each Booktagger profile is a graphical representation of your physical bookshelf on the internet. The bookshelf can then be shared with friends, family and others searching for the next good read. Booktagger.com is the first offering, trading under the entity name Amity Agency, which specializes in the creation of niche web communities. Jeremy describes : We hope you'll congregate into book clubs and share reading experiences. Or maybe you'll catalogue all your books and track to whom they've been lent. We are a stand-alone site with a Myspace application due for release shortly. Jeremy gives us more insights about their startup: • How it started? Booktagger started off like any good journey, with a woman. Rebecca, an avid reader and fellow internet addict, could not fin

The 28th participant is 88 Miles Founded by Myles Eftos, 88 Miles - is a simple time-tracking application, aimed at the SME market. Let us explore more about on various facets of 88 Miles from Myles. This is what he has to say: • How it started? 88 Miles was founded and developed by Myles Eftos. I developed this for my freelance and consulting business because I realised that I couldn't accurately account for his time when working for clients. • How long it took before it was up and running? A beta was out within 2 months - the final version was launched after about 6 months. • What stage of your start-up is, stealth mode, beta mode or fully functional? 88 Miles is fully functional • What is the main objective/mission behind your venture? To provide a sustainable, un-obtrusive time tracking system that will be useful to other small companies. • What services it provide for consumers or customers? Punch-in and Punch facilities, timesheets, reporting, full REST AP I and integr

The 27th participant is OurWishingWell.com Founded by Joseph Renzi, OurWishingWell.com is an online gift registry that allows hosts of any occasion to list items that they need/want and invite guests to view the registry and request contributions toward these gifts. Hosts can list any item – from homewares, honeymoons, a holiday or a house deposit. Guests can view the registry and contribute any amount towards any gift on the list. It allows multiple guests to contribute different amounts to larger/significant gifts that would otherwise not be possible. This is Joesph's 2nd venture entry in this carnival, first one was SwapAce.com . He tells us a bit more about this intriguing venture: • How it started? It started with his team in 2007. The successful site has now expanded into other sites such as; BabyWishingWell.com, BirthdayWishingWell.com and BestFundraiserWebsite.com. • How long it took before it was up and running? The site took less than 6 months to develop before it was

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