Twenty three great ideas

A few weeks ago more than 40 of Australia’s most exciting innovators showed off their products at Tech23. Twenty-three of those business were selected to give a four minute pitch to industry leaders in front of several hundred spectators at a Sydney auditorium.

A few weeks ago more than 40 of Australia’s most exciting innovators showed off their products at Tech23. Twenty-three of those business were selected to give a four minute pitch to industry leaders in front of several hundred spectators at a Sydney auditorium.

All the inventions were great – the highlights included Heard Systems; a bovine pregnancy detector, We Are Hunted; a music charting system that tracks a work’s popularity across the Internet and Posse; a ticket seller that harnesses a band’s fan base to fill venues.

The intriguing thing about two of these companies is they rely on communities. The fact both these businesses come from the music industry isn’t surprising. This is a sector where social and peer power has been long understood through sales charts and fan clubs.

With all of us having grown up with Top 40s and music videos we have an intuitive understanding of how these communities work.

An advantage all three businesses had were passionate, informed presenters who believed in their product and who could explain the benefits in 240 seconds. Those 23 presentations showed was just how important a good pitch is to communicating how a great idea is going to change the world and make investors happy.

Another thing that stood out was how a well done Powerpoint enhances a speaker while a poorly done one distracts and irritates the audience. Interestingly only one of the three pitches mentioned had a memorable overhead shows how a passionate speaker who believes in their product trumps even the most elaborate presentation.

In some ways it’s another variation of the rule of threes in that you have a three second pitch, a 30 second pitch and the three minute extended version. Indeed the ReadWriteWeb site has an extended rule of threes, describing how an “insanely great” service is being spoken about after three days, three months and three years.

While you can’t control what people will say about your business three years after hearing about it, you should be able to get across what your business does in three seconds.

Funny enough, that’s pretty close to how long it takes to read a 140 character SMS or Twitter message. Can you describe your business in one tweet?

Why innovation rises during a recession

Steve Lohr in the New York Times looks at how innovation rises in downturns. Are the various stimulus packages a roadblock to innovation?

Steve Lohr in the New York Times reports R&D budgets increased for 900 of the United States’  1,000 largest corporate spenders on research and development.

What stands out is how patent applications rise during economic downturns with an increase of 25% in the 1929-32 period. Steve goes on to point out;

The Depression years yielded fundamental advances in technologies of the future like television, nylon, neoprene, photocopying and electric razors, according to the Thomson Reuters analysis.

A similar trend is true around later, far shorter recessions, when basic work on personal computing and later Internet-related technologies were done.

In this respect, economic downturns are necessary as they clear out the old, inefficient industries and allow new ideas and businesses to take hold.

While governments had to do something to avoid a massive depression when the capital and trade market froze in late 2008, is the propping up of debt laden industries like banks, housing companies and auto manufacturers  going to act as roadblock to new ideas and businesses?

Just a thought.

The Depression years yielded fundamental advances in technologies of the future like television, nylon, neoprene, photocopying and electric razors, according to the Thomson Reuters analysis.
A similar trend is true around later, far shorter recessions, when basic work on personal computing and later Internet-related technologies were doneThe Depression years yielded fundamental advances in technologies of the future like television, nylon, neoprene, photocopying and electric razors, according to the Thomson Reuters analysis.
A similar trend is true around later, far shorter recessions, when basic work on personal computing and later Internet-related technologies were done.

Thoughts on Windows 7

With the release of Windows 7 Microsoft has formally buried Microsoft Vista. But should Windows users rush out for the new version.

“From today, when we say Windows we’re talking about Windows 7”, announced Jeff Putt, Windows Consumer Lead of Microsoft Australia last week. And with that, Microsoft formally buried Windows Vista at their Sydney Windows Seven launch.

We won’t miss Vista, it was slow, clunky and irritating to use. Like Microsoft’s previous OS disaster, Windows ME, it was a hybrid of new and old technologies that managed to satisfy few users.

Vista’s poor reputation effectively broke the upgrade cycle where businesses and consumers replace their computers roughly every five years. Rather than taking their chances with Vista, PC owners decided to stick with their ageing XP boxes.

So Windows 7 is being held out as the saviour of the computer industry as Microsoft’s customers are expected to rush into long overdue upgrades. Some commentators predict the new operating system will reinvigorate PC sales that have been battered worldwide by the Global Financial Crisis.

The reality is probably a bit more complex, there’s no doubt the combination of the global downturn and customers putting off computer purchases hurt the industry, but to expect a surge of sales may be optimistic.

Most computer users are a cynical bunch who have heard all the hype before and won’t be rushing out to buy anything just because some bloke on the web tells them it’s the greatest thing since Wordperfect 5.1. The days of crowds waiting to buy the latest operating system are long gone, at least in the PC world.

While it isn’t worthwhile queuing up on a cold morning for Windows 7, the new program is a vast improvement on Vista. In a hopelessly unscientific experiment, I installed a complimentary copy of Window 7 Ultimate supplied by Microsoft on my wife’s cranky, Vista supplied laptop.

The results were good. Boot up time was reduced by 34% to 55 seconds while Internet Explorer loaded twice as fast and Word 2003 documents opened a whopping 300% faster.

For the record, the machine isn’t exactly a powerhouse being an Acer Extensa 5220 Celeron 2GHz CPU with 512Mb of RAM ­– exactly the sort of machine that should never have been supplied with Windows Vista in the first place, which was part of Vista’s problems.

So my experience with Windows Seven has been so far favourable. If you have been through pain with Vista, it may be worth upgrading although you will probably find driver and software problems won’t be solved by the new program.

For XP systems it almost certainly isn’t worth the upgrade to Seven as the process requires a fresh install, substantially increasing the cost, time and risk involved in making the move.

Overall, XP machines are best replaced outright as many are well past their retirement date as owners have held off being forced into buying Vista machines.

If upgrading or buying Windows 7 systems is on the horizon then you should start preparing now. Get a few Windows Seven machines and test them in your office; monitor how they go with your critical line of business systems, check they connect properly to your network and start getting familiar with the quirks and differences in the new system.

While Windows 7 isn’t flawless, Microsoft have learned from the mistakes they made from Vista, it is faster and so far seems less irritating and more stable. If you are struggling with Vista, or your Windows XP systems are on their last legs, the upgrade will probably be worthwhile.

All about Windows 7. ABC 702 Weekend computers, November 1 2009.

This Sunday, November 1, Simon and myself will be looking at Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system. Is it an improvement on Windows Vista and is it worth upgrading to? We’ll be answering all your questions on the new program.

This Sunday, November 1, Simon and myself will be looking at Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system. Is it an improvement on Windows Vista and is it worth upgrading to? We’ll be answering all your questions on the new program.

Tune in at 702 on your AM radio or stream us online from the ABC Website.

Your comments and questions are welcome so call in on 1300 222 702 or SMS on 19922702.

It’s all about trust, baby

Imagine losing all your contacts, emails and calendars – you know have a meeting with an important client next week but you can’t remember which day and you can’t ask the customer because their contact details are gone.

Imagine losing all your contacts, emails and calendars – you know have a meeting with an important client next week but you can’t remember which day and you can’t ask the customer because their contact details are gone.

That’s been the fate of a million Sidekick mobile phone owners in the United States over the last two weeks when the servers storing the Sidekick data went down.

The Sidekick is an unusual mobile phone that saves all its data “on the cloud”, a big group of servers run by the device’s designer, Danger, who were bought out by Microsoft in early 2008. Unlike other phones and PDAs, the Sidekick doesn’t synch with your own computer and stored data may get wiped if it can’t find the cloud servers.

This is exactly what happened a few weeks ago when the Sidekick cloud stopped. Owners of the Sidekick, a phone that’s never been sold in Australia, have been through a harrowing fortnight hoping their data will be recovered which Microsoft now believe can be done.

Sidekick’s outage is a major embarrassment for Microsoft who are pitching their Azure cloud product as alternative to other cloud services provided by competitors like Amazon and Google and the failure certainly deserves to be one of the technology disasters of the decade.

The question now is how badly this outage will affect cloud and software as a service providers. These service rely on customers trusting data and critical business applications to a third party and the Sidekick saga doesn’t inspire confidence.

It would be a shame if this is the case, as cloud services offer a lot of advantages to smaller businesses. In many ways they offer the same advantages big business have had through outsourcing services at a fraction of the price and complexity.

We need to remember that all technology breaks. People press the wrong buttons, unexpected software bugs appear and sometimes things just break or go wrong. Every business needs a contingency plan if things stop working.

While a data backup regime is a critical part of a contingency plan, you still need to consider other aspects such what happens if the power grid fails and leaves your without electricity for three days, if bushfires and floods stop workers getting to the office, or what will happen if you forget to pay your phone bill and suddenly you have no Internet access for a week.

Technology is complex and we have trust a lot of things are reliable and sometimes some of our partners aren’t as trustworthy as we’d like.

So have fall back systems just in case your trust in technology, partners and vendors is misplaced and test them regularly.

The value of communities

Businesses are just as much a part of the community as individuals. Cherishing and growing your businesses community of friends and supporter can reap big dividends.

Sydney’s Growthtown evenings are an irregular gathering of entrepreneurs discussing challenges facing fast growth businesses, and always a stimulating night with founders telling how they dealt with issues as diverse as setting up US operations, finding investors and exiting a successful venture.

Last week’s event featured Marketing Angels’ Michelle Gamble explaining how she uses the brand pyramid to help her clients and Kylie Little, founder of Essential Baby, describing the journey from a business idea to exiting from a big business buy out.

Kylie’s story of Essential Baby’s early days resonates with anyone who has started a business after the arrival of a baby. It’s always a relief to find you’re not the only one who thought it’s possible to run a business while your blissful cherub sleeps contently for most of the day.

In many ways, Essential Baby’s story describes the dream exit for many entrepreneurs, or at least most venture capital funders, with the website being bought out by Fairfax.

Interestingly, Kylie’s tale about what happened after a big organisation bought her business has some similarities to Lars Rassumussen’s experience of Where 2 Technologies’ absorption into Google.

The cultural shock of moving from an independent start-up to being part of a bigger organisation is huge and the problems can’t be underestimated. So there’s a lesson on being careful what you wish for.

One part that shone through both Kylie and Michelle’s presentations was how important communities are to a business. It’s often easy to think businesses are stand-alone entities, proudly independent of the world around them.

In reality every successful businesses relies on groups of supporters, be they customers, suppliers, financiers or just simply fans. Businesses need communities just as the community needs them.

Communities aren’t just generated by Twitter followers, witty blog entries or clever search engine optimisation, it takes credibility, honesty and doing the right thing by those around you.

So who are your communities and what are you putting into them? You may find those groups are your business’s most important assets.

ABC Nightlife, 16 October 2009. The future of computers

Paul Wallbank and Gartner research director Robin Simpson join Tony Delroy for a special ABC Nightlife computers on 16 October from 10pm to look at where computers are going over the next five years.

Is the desktop computer dead? Will we all be using smartphones or laptops, and what happened to netbooks? Will Windows 7, OSX or Chrome dominate the computer world, and does it matter if all our data is saved on the cloud?

We’ll be answering these and many more questions on the show so tune in your local ABC station or listen online at Nightlife’s website. We love listeners comments, questions and opinions so please call in on 1300 800 222.

ABC Weekend show, October 4 2009. Conficker, iPods and data allowances

For the October 2009 Weekend we had a look at the Conficker worm which a year after it’s release continues to plague Windows users and has moved Microsoft to offer a $25,000 reward for the heads of those responsible. Details are on the PC Rescue website. Our callers had questions about excess downloads, strange icons and getting data off iPods.

The 702 Weekend computer spot for October 2009 Weekend had a look at the Conficker worm which a year after it’s release continues to plague Windows users and has moved Microsoft to offer a $25,000 reward for the writers. Details on the Conficker worm and how to avoid it are on the PC Rescue website.

As usual, we had a wide range of callers ranging from recovering info from an iPod, strange desktop icons and excess Internet usage and how to avoid it.

Choosing an Internet plan

Alan is finding his Internet connection is always being shaped. That is, his speeds are dropping once his household exceeds their plan’s data allowance. James called with the same problem.

The simple solution to this is to choose an Internet plan with a higher download allowance. For instance, if you are being capped halfway into the month on a 12Gb limit, then you should look for a 24 Gb plan.

When choosing a plan be careful you aren’t locking yourself into a longer term plan as that 24Gb may be enough now, but you may have the same problem of exceeding your allowance in a year or so.

The good thing is both James and Alan are on capped plans as the alternative are excess use plans where you are charged for the usage that goes over the monthly allowance. This is like writing a blank cheque to your ISP and we strongly recommend people avoid them.

We have a rundown on what you should look for at the PC Rescue Choosing an Internet plan page. It’s a useful checklist for avoiding nasty and unexpected Internet surprises.

Unwanted downloads

Having unexpected icons appear on the desktop is a good reason to be concerned and Jan called about a link for McAfee antivirus appearing on her desktop.

The reason for this is probably from a software update. Many packages will now include downloads for other products as part of a marketing deal and that’s probably what happened in this case.

Although Jan’s computer is probably safe, it’s worthwhile downloading and running Malwarebytes just to make sure the system is clean.

Recovering an iPod’s music

After her dad cleaned up the family computer, Nicola found she’d lost her iTunes music. She wondered if it were possible to get it back.

Because the music is still on her iPod, she can copy the music off the device and into a folder on her computer. From there, it’s relatively simple to get the import the music files back into iTunes.

A good guide to doing this is on the makeuseof.com website’s How To: Move Music from iPod to PC in 5 Easy Steps where Mark O’Neill shows you how to go about getting the files off and organising them.

The next show is November 8 and we’ll be looking at what’s in the shops for Christmas. Hope you can tune in then.

The new global businesses

The business of going global is even easier than before. Services like Magcloud, Createspace and remote access tools are making it easier than ever to get a product out to the world.

It’s old hat to point out the internet is changing business and globalisation is making the world smaller. But last Tuesday I saw three businesses that showed just how profound these changes are.

That Tuesday morning Mark Fletcher’s Australian Newsagency Blog had a post about the Strange Light Magazine, a collection of photos around Sydney during the recent dust storm.

Some notable points about Strange Light – it was self-published in 31 hours using HP’s Magcloud, the photos were all sourced from Flickr and Derek Powazek, the publisher/author, did everything from San Francisco.

Publishing on demand using services like Magcloud and Amazon’s Createspace is worthy of many blog posts in themselves. Derek’s story of Strange Light on his own blog is a terrific step-by-step guide to creating a self-published magazine. Notable are his points about obtaining permissions and proof reading.

It isn’t one-way traffic between California and Sydney, Australians are also doing business in the US without leaving home. The same day I read the Strange Light story, I had a coffee with Andrew Rogers from Sydney’s Anchor Systems, who set up a new data centre for US-based developer management system, GitHub.

All of GitHub’s hardware is in the US and their new data centre equipment came completely bare, without operating systems or software. Andrew’s team was able to build, configure and test the systems from their Sydney office.

The fact GitHub were prepared to accept a quote from a business 11,000km away and have full confidence the job could be done from across the world shows just how distance no longer matters to forward-thinking enterprises.

Finally, that day I managed to catch up with an old contractor who now runs a remote support business for homes and small offices. You call him and he logs into your computer to fix the problems.

Nothing particularly special there except he operates out of Thailand. So he gets to run an Australian business from a Phuket beach hut. He has business he enjoys without sacrificing the lifestyle he wants.

These entrepreneurs are showing how the globalised economy is really working. Each are using freely available tools that allow individuals and small teams to offer their talents across the world.

You might want to have a look at the tools which are revolutionising your industry, you can be sure your competitors around the corner and around the world are already doing so and might soon be offering innovative new ideas to your customers.

ABC 702 Weekends, October 4 2009

Protecting yourself from the Conficker Worm

This Sunday Simon and myself will be looking at how to protect your systems from the Conficker worm which has been causing problems for millions of Windows users.

Tune in at 702 on your AM radio or stream us online from the ABC Website.

Your comments and questions are welcome so call in on 1300 222 702 or SMS on 19922702.

Protecting yourself from the Conficker worm

Nearly a year after it was identified, the Conficker computer worm continues to plague Windows users, infecting systems controlling everything from fighter planes to bus lane fines. We look at how to protect your computers from this threat.

Nearly a year after it was identified, the Conficker computer worm continues to plague Windows users, infecting systems controlling everything from fighter planes to bus lane fines.

The problem has become so great, a consortium of vendors have set up the Conficker Working Group to deal with the malware’s spread, and Microsoft are offering a $250,000 reward for the identity of the writer.

It’s not a problem that should be understated – the worm’s main use appears to be as a controller of botnets, networks of remote controlled computers used to launch attacks on other systems or to hide the tracks of scammers and password thieves.

Update your systems

Given the risks and embarrassment of being infected, avoiding this worm and others like it should be a priority for your business. First of all your Windows computers should have the latest updates as Conficker relies on some old security bugs that Microsoft patched last October.

Run an anti-virus

Naturally, you should be running an up to date anti-virus. Most widely used AV programs will do the job, including Open Source detectors like Clam AV and freeware programs.

Note though that the licences for freeware programs like AVG and Avast! are specifically for home use only. If you are running those on your office system, respect the developer’s right to make a living and buy a commercial licence, they are actually cheaper and more reliable than many of the better known brand names.

Restrict your users

Finally, make sure your users log on in Limited User mode. The reason why Windows computers are more prone to viruses than their Mac and Linux cousins is because most users run their Microsoft systems as the powerful Administrator mode which is the equivalent of leaving your car doors unlocked all night.

I’ve some instructions on setting up Limited User Profiles for Windows XP systems on the PC Rescue website. If you have an office with a Windows 2003 or 2008 server, your IT department or consultant will be able to do this through the network, which is a lot more secure way of doing things.

Be warned that some programs won’t work unless they run in Administrator mode. If you find this is a problem then you should consider replacing that software as the vendor has shown they are either incompetent or are prepared to put their customers at risk to save a few dollars.

Either way, you don’t need suppliers that have no respect for their customers.

Your computers are too important to your business and shouldn’t be exposed to these sorts of embarrassing and expensive risks. Get your IT people to make sure the office systems are locked down properly.