IMAGE: The decline and fall of the Palm empire

Created for Computerworld Australia's Mobility and Wireless section:

PCW: GPS improves road safety

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

New research has revealed that the use of Personal Navigation Devices (PND), such as GPS mapping devices, could reduce crash risk and have a positive effect on driver safety.

From data collected on 115,197 drivers of rental cars in the Netherlands in the second half of 2006, researchers from Dutch science and technology think-tank, TNO, found that cars fitted with PNDs had a 12 per cent lower rate of damage incidents when compared to cars without PNDs.

Drivers using PNDs experienced an average of 25 per cent less stops and 35 per cent less time standing still on the road. Driving distances with PNDs were found to be reduced by 16 per cent and travel time by 18 per cent, resulting in an overall reduction of fuel costs.

When TNO surveyed the participating drivers, results revealed that 78 per cent of drivers felt more alert and in control with a navigation system than without. Researchers also found that drivers using PNDs displayed behaviour that was only half as aggressive as those without the device.

Stress when driving with a PND was found to be reduced by 20 per cent, as drivers reported exerting 'little effort' to navigate unfamiliar territory with PNDs, compared with 'fair' to 'considerable' stress experienced using conventional navigation resources, such as static road maps.

The research was co-commissioned by PND vendor TomTom and Dutch insurance company Delta Lloyd, and results have now lead Delta Lloyd to offer TomTom product owners a 10 per cent discount on their Delta Lloyd auto insurance.

But Australian insurance company AAMI is sceptical.

"It is difficult to say whether PND/GPS devices have the potential to improve driver safety," said Christine Elmer, national public relations manager of AAMI. "Certainly, we have heard the opposite case put [by other media reports] - that satellite navigation devices have contributed to crashes due to inaccurate or incorrect information being given to the driver."

Associate professor Michael Regan of the Monash University Accident Research Centre agrees that the use of PNDs has its pros and cons. While several separate studies have proven that PNDs are beneficial in unfamiliar territories as they reduce both travel distance and cognitive workload, Regan said, poorly designed PNDs can also be a distraction to drivers.

"We know that if people fixate on objects or activities going on in the car for more than a second and a half, their risk of crashing increases by about four or five times," Regan said, noting on the other hand that "even a badly designed navigation system probably won't distract you much more than a paper map."

Well-designed PNDs have three critical characteristics, Regan said, including: convenient positioning in the cockpit to encourage drivers to keep their eyes on the road; a 'lock out' function that only allows the device to be operated when the car is at a standstill, so drivers don't play with the devices while driving; and voice instructions rather than complicated visual maps.

"Provided they're well designed, they [PNDs] have excellent potential to improve driving performance and to reduce crash risk," he concluded.

more

CW: The Web 2.0 advertising machine

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

If the mention of Web 2.0 social networks conjures images of tech-crazed teens navigating virtual worlds at breakneck speeds or screenshots of flowery pink blogs, think again.

According to Laurel Papworth, Online Communities Strategist of consultancy World Communities, the Web 2.0 world can offer business opportunities that far surpass that of traditional media.

Speaking at the AIIA (Australian Information Industry Association) marketing forum last week, Papworth aimed to overthrow the misconception that online communities can only generate material that is both unreliable and useless to marketing, and that they are 'for kids'.

"Social networks did not start with, and do not belong to, Generation Y," she said, listing forums, chatrooms, AOL, Quantum link, AppleLink and Usenet as examples of pre-Web 2.0 Internet discussion systems.

Furthermore, currently popular online communities are dominated not only by emotionally verbose teenagers, but by professional adults, she explained, outlining research that revealed that more than half of all MySpace visitors were over the age of 35 as of June 2006.

And while material generated by online discussion and communities can sometimes go awry, priceless marketing gems may yet surface from having a target demographic market come up with ways of marketing to itself.

U.S.-based AdCandy is a Web site set up to capitalize on the collective power of an online community. The Web site features regular competitions encouraging members of the public to submit their ideas for slogans, images, products and marketing campaigns targeted at their brand partners. Previous competitions have been held for brands such as Snakes on a Plane, iPod, Heineken and Friskies.

"Ask your consumer to create an ad for your products and services, and you'll be amazed," Papworth said. "If you want the truth in advertising, ask your customers; your marketing will be better for it."

Put in this context, the Web may at first seem like a low-cost advertising method. However, Laura Chisholm, Senior Consultant of Deloitte's e-business division, Eclipse, was careful to warn against undervaluing the cost of an e-marketing campaign.

"For a very long time, the Web has been the poor cousin to other marketing channels," Chisholm said. "It's also been called the 'cheap' channel, but the Web is now mainstream, and should be treated as a mainstream channel; it's not always going to be cheap."

A successful Web campaign, Chisholm said, should be visionary, user-friendly, integrated with business purposes and with marketing across other channels, and must have its performance constantly tracked, measured and improved.

"With sound technology and governance, true return on investment (ROI) comes from functional, easy to use Web sites with compelling content," she said.

According to Papworth, Web 2.0 communities deliver significantly improved loyalty, brand and support ROI from traditional advertising and phone support.

Compared with Web 1.0 sites, customers visiting Web 2.0-enabled sites were found to visit nine times more often, staying five times longer. Web 2.0 sites were also found to produce four times the unaided brand recall when compared with a search engine, and often offer peer-to-peer support via discussion boards, that Papworth said to be five to 10 times more cost-effective than phone support.

more

PCW: Videoconferencing offers the world to a classroom

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

Twenty-five schools in fourteen countries around the world have been given a cultural infusion with the use of videoconferencing in the classroom. The schools are all a part of the Global Run Project, which aims to demonstrate how schools can integrate education and global awareness into existing curriculum.

Now in its second year of pilot stages, the Global Run Project is a brainchild of Jody Kennedy, a teacher at the White Plains City Schools (WPCS) in New York, U.S. By facilitating communication between students of different cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds, Kennedy hopes to be opening doors to shared learning resources, and in the process, combating the post-911 rise of xenophobia in the U.S.

The project currently links schools in Western Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia-Pacific. Australia is currently represented by Merrimac State High School in Queensland, which has only recently aligned itself with the project.

"We were all working in our own little worlds, and now we're all working together and holding hands," Kennedy said. "We're sharing so much with each other - the software, technologies - the kids are just so excited."

Subjects taught via the project have been based on millennium goals set out by the United Nations, which aim to address human rights issues around the world. As such, students are exposed to sharing thoughts and music, cultural exchanges as well as the discussion of health issues like HIV/AIDS, and of human rights.

Students are also educated on subjects that Kennedy said are valued in all the partner countries, such as physical health, mathematics, science and social studies. Through videoconferences with guest lecturers, students are also able to speak with college counsellors, subject matter experts and mentors who may otherwise be inaccessible due to geographical distances.

The use of videoconferencing in a global classroom has also allowed schools to move from the traditional one-to-many teaching model where there is only one instructor for a group of students, to a many-to-many model where students contribute teaching and learning material for their peers.

When partner institution Howe School in Illinois mastered green screen techniques for use in videoconferencing, for example, its students were quick to share their new knowledge with students at WPCS. Similarly, Kennedy is preparing Sixth Graders from WPCS to next year begin providing learning material from excursions to the nearby United Nations office in New York to their peers around the world.

"Students are becoming each others' greatest resource," she said.

While Kennedy admits that international videoconferencing does present issues pertaining to time zone differences, structuring classes, and technical compatibility problems, partner schools have been able to overcome many issues through discussion and compromise.

When connecting to most schools or lecturers, for example, WPCS typically connects through IP, which Kennedy said is more cost-effective than connecting through ISDN. When connecting to the partner school in Pakistan, however, IP is unreliable, so an ISDN link is used.

Establishing videoconferencing facilities can require a significant monetary investment from a school, but Kennedy said that most setups "can be replicated with not a lot of money" Facilities at WPCS are currently funded by the community, state of New York, grants, awards and corporate sponsors.

"We're [currently] trying to figure out how to make this replicable," Kennedy said. "We share everything we have; why wouldn't we!"

more

IMAGE: Apple, Cisco make 'iPhone' peace

Created for Computerworld Australia's Mobility and Wireless section:

PCW: Super Monkey Ball finds a place in surgical training

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

A study involving 33 surgeons of varied game-playing backgrounds has revealed that the skills obtained from video games could transfer to a delicate procedure known as laparoscopic surgery.

Twelve surgeons and twenty-one surgical residents from the prestigious Beth Israel Medical Center in New York were surveyed to determine their game-playing habits and skill. Survey responses were compared to how well each participant performed in a simulated surgery skills course.

Of the surgeons who participated in the study, 15 reported to have never played video games, nine reported playing zero to three hours per week, and nine reported playing more than three hours per week at the height of their video game playing.

The latter group of surgeons was found to perform best at laparoscopic surgery, scoring 42 percent better in the surgery skills test than the 15 surgeons who had never played video games. Surgeons who reported playing up to three hours per week followed, scoring an average of 26 percent better than their non-gamer colleagues.

The study was conducted during four months in 2002 and was led by Dr. James C. Rosser Jr, a Professor of Clinical Surgery at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Results will be published for the first time in the U.S. journal Archives of Surgery this month, after an extensive peer review process by the scientific community.

While the relevance of video games in the training of surgeons has been the subject of some controversy among medical researchers, Rosser's results were hardly a surprise for the long-time gamer who the media and his students have dubbed the 'Nintendo Surgeon' and 'Xbox doctor'.

"We all know that in surgery and video games, practice makes perfect," he said. "I think that video games share so much common ground with this new type of surgery, because both are dictated by the world of the screen."

Laparoscopic surgery is a minimally invasive procedure that was introduced in the early 1990s as an alternative to open surgery. The technique is performed using a tiny video camera and thin operating instruments that are inserted through small incisions in the body.

Surgeons are required to manipulate instruments based on the video feed that is delivered to a television screen. As such, laparoscopic surgery requires a high level of visual-spatial perception skills that Rosser expects can be trained by playing video games.

Of the 60 over-the-counter games that were analysed during the study, only three appeared to significantly benefit surgery skills: Star Wars Racers Revenge, Super Monkey Ball and Silent Scope when played on practice mode. Common to the three successful games were goals that challenged players' targeting capabilities and dynamic motion.

While the study demonstrated how video game-playing surgeons could have an advantage over their non-gamer colleagues, Rosser noted that even surgeons who had grown up before the era of video games could be trained to develop laparoscopic skills.

"It's just a matter of them being willing to undergo the training with video games," he said. "We have proven with thousands of surgeons that age is not necessarily a factor if you're willing to go through a training regiment."

Since the 2002 study, Rosser has embarked on further research into the potentials of video games in training. He expressed a desire to soon develop a new genre of games that combine entertainment with education and could some day be used to develop surgical or engineering skills.

Surgery is a risky procedure that can significantly impact patients' lives, Rosser noted. "That's why we should have our arms open for any and every modality that could contribute to us being more efficient and safer," he said. "We have to now continue to study this, because if we can secure an asset like over-the-counter video games to help us be able to protect patients, we must embrace it without any penalty."

More recent research by Rosser and his team has revealed that even the simple act of warming up with video games before performing a laparoscopic procedure can help surgeons perform more efficiently and effectively. Rosser expects the new study, which was conducted on more than 300 surgeons, to go to press within the next year.

more

PCW: New breed of interactive film offers $100,000 cash prize

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

DVD video and Web-delivered content have converged to give rise to a new breed of interactive murder mystery film and game, Jack Kain. The film, which was officially launched on Thursday, will be delivered in multimedia installments until 7 June.

Acts one and two of the story have been bundled in an hour-long DVD feature, while future updates, which include fictional newspaper reports, police files, suspect profiles, still photos, video footage, and online polls, will appear on the game's Web site.

The game offers a $100,000 cash prize to the person or persons who successfully identify the 'Digit Serial Killer'. Participants begin playing by purchasing a $29.95 film on DVD or via a download from the Jack Kain Web site, which gives each player a unique game-playing code that allows users to submit their answers.

When the game concludes, each submission will be judged on how well it identifies the killer and motive. Players will also be asked to give their reasons for nominating the particular suspect, and the best answer or answers as judged by a panel of three judges, including the game's producer and founder Darren McNamara, will win the cash prize.

Jack Kain is expected to be the first of many films in this new interactive space. McNamara revealed that a sequel to the film is already in the works, with a script ready to go pending Jack Kain 1's success.

While McNamara initially found marketing the new breed of film to distributors and resellers a challenge, he said conversations with resellers have been very positive. The DVD is currently being distributed by LA Entertainment and will be made globally available in NTSC and all regions format.

A long-time fan of interactive games, TV and movies, McNamara expects successful players to have good problem-solving skills. The winner of the $100,000 cash prize could potentially be a member of the police force or a lawyer, he said, although he was careful not to discount the detective skills of women around the age of 35, who have been proven to be a prime demographic for murder mystery TV shows and movies.

more

Image: Apple offers 802.11n, and a wireless wow

Created for Computerworld Australia's Mobility and Wireless section:

CW: Hyro virtually recruits in Second Life

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

In a move to enhance its digital portfolio and attract international talent, online services provider Hyro has expanded to the virtual world of Second Life.

The ASX-listed company last week launched its virtual headquarters on a private island in the Second Life metaverse. Dubbed 'The Snow Dome', Hyro's four-level complex features a conference centre, two theatres, three separate themed meeting rooms, as well as exhibition rooms showcasing the company's past work and awards.

Also located at The Snow Dome is a recruitment hub, where visitors are able to pick up and lodge job applications, and be interviewed for a range of real-world opportunities at Hyro's offices in Australia, New Zealand and Thailand. According to the company's Chief Operating Officer Richard Lord, the company's in-game presence is expected to attract digitally savvy people who suit its expansion strategy.

"We think that the sorts of people who embrace Second Life are the sorts of people who are experienced with digital channels and see their potential," said Lord, who is known in-game as Richard Lykin. "We expect that the people we find here will have skills and insights that will be useful for a wide spectrum of projects."

Second Life is virtual home to some 3.7 million residents whose total in-game spending amounts to more than US$860,000 per day. With companies like Nike, AOL, Sony BMG, IBM, Intel and Sun staking their claim on patches of virtual real estate, Lord expects more companies to soon be entering the metaverse as well.

"I think that for our marketing customers, the challenge is about attracting customers," he said. "We need to accept that nowadays that involves going to where those customers are spending their time, so as things like virtual worlds become more popular, there will be clients for whom in-world advertising makes sense."

Besides its role in recruiting, Hyro's in-game presence presents both marketing and learning opportunities for the company. Alongside its island headquarters, the company also released advertising blimps that fly around the virtual world pointing Second Life residents towards The Snow Dome.

Hyro's virtual headquarters is also expected to improve the way that the company operates. The company plans to hold international conferences in its virtual conference centre, where employees can collaborate via streaming audio, video, and virtual face-to-face chat regardless of their real-world locations.

While the prospect of a virtual work environment may seem daunting at first, Lord expects the Second Life interface to be quite intuitive. Hyro does not currently require its employees to have Second Life avatars, or provide training for its employees to operate in the virtual world.

Lord declined to reveal the cost of Hyro's Second Life deployment, in view of maintaining a strategic advantage over companies that it is competing with for talent. He estimated the retail value of developing The Snow Dome to be in the region of tens of thousands of dollars, noting that development costs are likely to vary according to client needs.

more

Image: Telstra supercharges network

Created for Computerworld Australia's Mobility and Wireless section:

CW: Grid computes 420 years worth of data in four months

As a journalist at IDG Communications:

An international scientific collaboration has managed to whittle down the equivalent of 420 years of work on a single PC to no more than four months with the use of Grid computing.

The project, dubbed WISDOM (World-wide In Silico Docking On Malaria), ran between 1 October 2006 and 31 January 2007. With the use of computers from the EU-funded Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) project, scientists were able to analyse an average of 80,000 drug compounds each hour, in search for a drug that will combat malaria.

As the name suggests, Grid computing is the linking of many individual resources, even down to desktop computers, to make a virtual supercomputing network.

Up to 5,000 computers were used at any one time, generating a total of 2,000GB of useful data. More than 140 million compounds were processed by the end of the four months, and results are expected to speed up and reduce the costs involved in searching for an anti-malaria drug.

"Drug development is a very long process, typically [lasting] 12 years and [costing] US$800 million," said Vincent Breton, a research associate at the French National Centre for Scientific Research who worked on the project. "What WISDOM shows is that the first step of this process which is drug discovery can be significantly accelerated and made cheaper using grids. This is particularly relevant to neglected diseases which suffer a lack of R&D."

Computers were connected using existing research network infrastructure and spanned 27 countries including the UK, France and Korea. All computers ran open source grid software, gLite, which allowed them to access central grid storage elements which were installed on Linux machines located in several countries worldwide.

Besides being collected and saved in storage elements, data was also analysed separately with meaningful results stored in a relational database. The database was installed on a separate Linux machine, to allow scientists to more easily analyse and select useful compounds.

"This shows how well Grids allow researchers to share resources," Breton said. "The UK computers [which contributed almost half the computing resources] used were mainly bought to run particle physics data analysis, but in their spare time are helping find new drugs. I can't imagine that this would happen without a Grid."

Using FlexX software developed at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute and donated by the BioSolveIT company, WISDOM used the EGEE Grid to match 3-dimensional structures of proteins from the malarial parasite to ligands, chemical compounds that bind to protein receptors.

"Grids are particularly well suited to drug discovery because you can compute the probability for one ligand to fit, or 'dock', to one protein on each computer node in the Grid, giving massive parallelism," Breton said.

It takes between a few seconds and a few minutes to model whether there's a match between a protein and a ligand. The 2006-2007 WISDOM project analysed more than 41 million compounds - the equivalent of 80 years' work on a single PC - in just six weeks.

more

CW: Authoring program makes mobile marketing easy

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

New content delivery technology has been developed to improve advertising to consumers' mobile phones. Aimed at large lifestyle companies wanting to foster brand loyalty amongst the younger generation, Broadcaster enables advertisers to broadcast multimedia applications without using expensive mobile Web browsing or WAP.

The system has been developed by Queensland-based software development company Absolute Data Group (ADG), in response to consumer demand for information that can be delivered here, and now.

Using a simple content-authoring program via the Web, advertisers can quickly and easily create highly visual content that is delivered to consumers upon receipt of an e-mail or SMS request. Applications can contain product catalogues, news, event details, and games, and are accessed via a download to the consumer's mobile phone.

The application can then be viewed offline from the consumer's mobile desktop, until it is deleted by the consumer. Whenever content is updated by the advertiser, registered consumers will receive SMS notifications to update or delete the application.

ADG CEO Tammy Halter expects Broadcaster marketing campaigns to appeal particularly to the 15 to 25 year old demographic, who she said expect to be able to do everything on their mobile phones. It will also serve time-starved, tech-savvy professionals who value the instant gratification of receiving information on demand, she said.

"I guess the key angle is that it's [mobile technology] the new permanent connection to information that I want, as opposed to something that you might try and market at me," Halter said.

"Successful brands are those gaining competitive advantage by harnessing technology to deliver consistently rewarding consumer experiences," she said. "The challenge for companies today is to deliver relevant, personalised content at a time when buying impulses are high."

The average application containing audio, video and text files is expected to be about 250Kb in its compressed form as it is downloaded. According to current data pricing schemes, Halter expects an average application to cost consumers about $0.48 per download.

However, Halter notes that applications can be as big as an advertiser's marketing team wants it to be, which depends on its target market and how much multimedia content is involved in its campaign.

"The average consumer these days seems to be paying for just about everything on their phones," she laughed. "And that's why the campaigns need to be quite funky, because they [consumers] need to have to want to have these applications on their phone."

Broadcaster is priced on a campaign-by-campaign basis, offering advertisers monthly, quarterly, biannual and annual subscription options. The base annual subscription is priced at $100,000, although Halter said this is likely to vary according to the advertiser's marketing strategy.

more

PCW: Online music marketplace aims to improve consumer choice

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

Advances in multimedia capabilities of mobile phones have yielded a $17 billion market with huge opportunities for marketing and sales, but still there are too many service-imposed barriers that are retarding the uptake of mobile music videos and audio, according to New Zealand-based mobile content Web site voeveo.com.

Most mobile content is currently delivered via mobile service providers either through their Web sites, or directly to their subscribers. While it is sometimes possible to access content from other sources, network restrictions can make this very difficult and expensive for users.

"Many content users find it difficult if not impossible to access or download other content such as games, videos, audio etc from independent and competing providers," said voeveo.com's solutions architect, Jeff Mitchell.

"For the most part consumers are currently presented with the limited and approved selections their mobile operators provide," he said. "In essence it is the operator who chooses, not the consumer."

In efforts to pander to the masses, selections of music and music videos available from service providers typically only include top selling artists. This leaves out upcoming and independent artists who would stand to gain from this type of digital distribution, Mitchell said.

To provide a space for mobile content producers looking to distribute their products, voeveo.com has been developed as an online marketplace where creators and buyers of mobile content can trade online.

The site allows content producers to set their own prices for their content, and communicate directly with existing or prospective customers. Consumers pay the price set by the producer as well as a service and delivery fee by voeveo.com and any fees incurred with their mobile operator.

For use of the service, voeveo also charges content producers 27.5% of all sales.

Mitchell raised the example of British band Koopa, whose downloads by mobile phone users recently helped propel one of its singles, Blag, Steal & Borrow, into the UK top 40 charts. "This is an isolated example, but it shows what can be achieved when digital music and videos are offered for sale via wireless media," he said.

more

CW: Broadening your IT skills by working overseas

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

If the sight of bright-eyed backpackers sinking freckled toes into our sand and surf has you pining for an overseas adventure, perhaps it is time to join some 900,000 Australians who the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade reports to be living and working overseas.

The attractions of expatriate living are many and varied. For some people, a working holiday is a ticket to seeing the world without breaking the bank. For others, overseas work can be a strategic move to expand their professional experience. And there are others yet for whom overseas tax rates and booming economies can be attractive financial incentives for working abroad.

"The career benefits of working overseas are endless - professional development, seeing the world, experiencing a different culture," said Allison Martin, marketing co-ordinator of non-profit working holiday organisation International Exchange Programs (IEP).

"There are many opportunities for Australians to expand their professional experience by working overseas, and there are numerous career benefits involved," she said. "Most employers look favourably on international work experience because it shows a willingness to push yourself outside your comfort zone and use your skills in a different environment."

Sean McCarten, IT Business Manager of global recruitment firm Manpower Professional, agrees that most employers will value relevant overseas experience. However, he warns, re-entering the Australian workforce might be no small feat.

IT professionals working overseas may suffer a loss of relevant local market knowledge, McCarten noted, that can only be earned by working in the legal or tax arena, with local accounting compliant systems or with IT-specific legislation.

Additionally, as work culture tends to play a large part when recruiting staff in Australia, it may take some time for new entrants into the Australian workforce to suitably acclimatise to local companies.

"My advice to anyone considering entering the workforce in a foreign country would be to research the conditions of work in that country, company, work culture and work ethic as part of their employment search," he said.

Global hotspots

London has traditionally been a popular destination for culture-hungry Australians looking for a gateway into Europe. Although the demand for IT skills has relaxed since the severe skills shortage touted in previous years, Manpower's McCarten reports that London continues to attract a widely diverse range of IT skills and nationalities.

Increasing stock in the mobile and telecommunications industries in recent times has made Scandinavia another European hub for IT professionals, who are turning to the booming telecommunications industries of Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Norway to be a part of the growth.

Other bleeding-edge developers may aspire towards the famed Silicon Valley in the U.S., where IT opportunities are plenty. The U.S. has recently relaxed its work restrictions for Australian nationals through the provision of the E-3 working visa, which grants two- to five- year work permits to up to 10,500 Australians and their families.

Alternatively, if breaking cultural and language barriers is your kind of thing, why not follow the steady stream of outsourced jobs to Asia, where leading electronic producers and distributors like India, China and Korea are also fast becoming major players in the production and distribution of IT software.

Bangalore has been touted as the Silicon Valley of India, with companies like Google, Accenture and EMC ramping up their presence there.

As the 2008 Olympic Games approaches, McCarten also suggests that outgoing professionals consider Beijing, where some companies are offering attractive packages to attract required skill-sets.

"Job markets in Asia are very buoyant at the moment," he said, "especially for qualified and experienced IT resources."

Exit strategy

Leaving the familiarity of friends and family behind can be a big task in itself, not to mention the added pressure of settling in and finding a job. It may be worth preparing for the move long before leaving Australia by considering and equipping yourself with experiences and skills that employers value in your destination country.

Language skills are a definite asset in Asia, especially in mainland China, where Cantonese or Mandarin dominate the workplace. According to Manpower's McCarten, Chinese or Indian nationals returning to their homeland from Australia are especially valued, due to their exposure to Western business practices and the understanding of cultural differences within their own communities.

In major Asian cities, McCarten reports a demand for candidates with experience and qualifications in telecommunications, enterprise project management, outsourcing and skills revolving around development languages like Java, C++ and .NET.

In Europe, he also mentioned a skill shortage for experienced professionals with solid functional and technical exposure to ERP and CRM technologies.

McCarten suggests that wannabe expatriates have at least three to five years commercial experience under their belts before relocating. "This way, the individual will have a good understanding of corporate culture and the experience to handle change," he said.

According to Peter Noblet, regional director of recruitment firm Hays Information Technology, it's not so much about how long a candidate has spent in his or her career, as it is about the skills and experiences they possess.

"Any time is good [for working overseas] really, as long as the skills used are relevant," he said. "Suffice to say, working in their chosen field will always improve opportunities. Working for larger corporations will also do this - for example working for a large investment bank in London will usually be seen by employers as more advantageous than working for a 2-person IT shop."

Finding a job overseas can be as easy or as difficult as the effort you put into it. The brave may decide to do most of their job hunting only after settling in their new home; however, thanks to the Internet, procuring an overseas job from the comforts of Australia isn't impossible either.

Before you hit the job boards, however, it could also be worth checking to see if your current employer has overseas branches or subsidiaries. Large corporations like Microsoft, for example, offer Australian employees opportunities to work in other subsidiaries around the world.

"We are seeing a trend for overseas experience on the CVs of our applicants, and often get applications directly from overseas residents looking to migrate," said Fiona Hathaway, Microsoft's recruitment manager for Australia and New Zealand.

"We have younger employees who like to work for a couple of years and then go travelling but just as many longer serving employees also look to take up options overseas as the workforce becomes increasingly internationalised," she said.

Around five percent of Microsoft Australia's workforce is comprised of 'exports' and 'imports' to and from its worldwide subsidiaries, Hathaway said, noting that most of the overseas moves occur between Australia, EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), and the United States.

"From time to time we do have employees express a desire to travel and where appropriate we'll help them to find an opportunity in one of Microsoft's other subsidiaries," she said. "When the employee returns to Australia, Microsoft Australia obviously benefits from the experience gained by the individual overseas."

more

Image: Mobile VoIP is on the march

Created for Computerworld Australia's Mobility and Wireless section:

CW: New RMIT degree boosts IT enrolment figures

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

Enrolments in RMIT's Information Technology program are double last year's figures and counting, thanks to its newly revised Bachelor of Applied Science degree.

The new degree has been planned since late last year to reflect industry demand for IT graduates who are also well-versed in the particular business sectors that they will be serving.

In addition to their computing subjects, students of the program are required to choose a minor specialisation from areas outside of IT, including accounting, economics and management.

"There is a trend in demand in the IT area, in terms of students always getting into some part of the applications area," said Heiko Schroeder, head of RMIT's School of Computer Science and Information Technology. "This is really a market demand that we are catering to, and we expect other universities to be following us too."

The new, three-year degree is expected to increase graduates' employment prospects by providing them with a basic understanding of relevant business applications, such as banking processes and medical applications.

In addition to the business streams, RMIT is also offering a minor program in communications, which aims to equip students with the soft skills required for dealing with other cultures and outsourcing.

"Often, people studying IT are 'nerds' and don't interact well with others," Schroeder laughed. "But IT is basically a communication tool."

RMIT's new program was designed in collaboration with its active industry advisory committee, whose members include representatives from IBM, Microsoft, Telstra, Infosys and ANZ.

The school has expressed satisfaction with how this year's student recruitment has gone. However, the concern remains that universities are still not producing enough graduates to meet industry's rapidly growing demand.

"We have had a significant increase in students, but it's [the course is] not marketed very well yet," Schroeder said. "We expect future years will be even better."

more

PCW: Free wireless broadband in Canberra and Gold Coast

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

While the New South Wales state government embarks on a drawn out process to tech up its capital city, a privately-run initiative is already providing free wireless broadband to Canberra and the Gold Coast.

From November 2006, Darlinghurst, NSW-based Spin Internet has been offering its free service to metropolitan areas of the two cities. The service has been operating on iBurst's pre-existing mobile network, and provides users with 200MB of free data per month on speeds of up to 1Mbps.

According to Spin Internet's marketing manager, Bill McArthur, the service is mainly targeted at business people who want access to e-mail and a few Web sites while on the road or while visiting clients.

"We hope that they [business people] will be using the service when they're on the road," he said. "When they go back to the office, they will hopefully plug into the network and use that."

By offering the free service, the company hopes to grow its market presence while promoting the iBurst brand. The service will be funded entirely with revenue generated by Spin Internet's regular, paid-for services.

"Going back like, five or six years ago, the free ISPs were quite the rage and that's [advertising is] how they did it - when you logged in you had the built-in browser and had to look at the ads," McArthur said. "We're not going to do anything like that. We probably could, but that would be too cheesy, I think, right now."

While provision of the free service is initially expected to eat into Spin Internet's regular revenue, the company hopes to be able to attract some of its free customers to its regular paying plans that offer higher speeds and less restrictive data limits.

Public response to the service has so far been very positive, McArthur said, with current subscriptions "right where we [Spin Internet] want it".

"The risk of doing something like this is a lot of people could use it," he said, noting that a surge in popularity of the free service could potentially be very expensive for the company.

"We've committed to customers getting the service for free for basically as long as they want," he said, "but we hope that whatever that costs us, we'll make up for by getting new customers and expanding the brand a little bit."

To log on to the free service, customers are required to own an iBurst modem which costs $259.95, in addition to paying an initial set-up fee of $149.95. Excess downloads beyond the 200MB limit are charged at $0.22 per megabyte, a price that Spin Internet intends to keep high so as to encourage heavier users to move on to paying plans.

more

Image: Telstra enforces wall of silence around Balfour's resignation as CIO

Created for Computerworld Australia's Mobility and Wireless section:

PCW: From n00b to pro: teh_pwnerer tells of cult site's success

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

Cyber sports, swarming fans and gamer girls - welcome to the world of Jarett Cale, co-producer, co-director and actor in the cult hit series Pure Pwnage.

Since its accidental inception in 2004, the online mockumentary has proven to be tremendously popular with gamers and non-gamers alike. Its first season, which concluded in November last year, consisted of 12 episodes and was released with subtitles in 30 languages. Season 2 is expected to be released in April this year.

The show's burgeoning online forum is now boasting well over 30,000 members, and that's only a small portion of its loyal fan base. One download source has clocked almost 90,000 downloads of the first episode alone, but as the episode is also hosted on several other Web sites, this can only be a modest indication of the total number of people who have seen the show.

Although he refuses to give away any of his gaming strategies, Cale speaks with Liz Tay about the show, his gaming preferences, his life in the real world, as well as being pro-gamer Jeremy.

What are you and co-producer Geoff Lapaire like in real life?

We're much calmer than our Pure Pwnage counterparts. Geoff's [who plays Jeremy's brother, Kyle] always been a huge fan of filmmaking and I've always been obsessed with playing video games, and of course we each share a passion for both or we probably wouldn't be where we are!

As for our jobs/hobbies, well, Pure Pwnage is our job and a more than full-time one at that! We've been very fortunate with the show's success and it's given us the opportunity to work full-time in a field we'd have never dreamed we could just a few years ago. Our hobbies before Pure Pwnage were making fun videos with friends and playing games, and now that the video part became our job, I'd say our hobbies are playing games :)

For how long have you been working full-time on Pure Pwnage? Do you ever suspect that your on-screen persona is taking over your life?

We've been working full-time on Pure Pwnage for two years now, and it's gone by amazingly quick! I've no worries about Jeremy taking over my life, but my girlfriend claims to have noticed a few idiosyncratic changes. I think she's just a big n00b though, lol.

What is a 'pro-gamer'? Do you guys consider yourselves pro-gamers?

A 'pro' gamer by most standards means someone who makes their living competing in video game tournaments, of which there are surprisingly many who do.

This term has also been adopted by many gaming communities to simply mean the best players of that particular game, which is the sense in which Jeremy uses the term. The joke being that many gamers like to fantasize about being 'pro', call themselves 'pro', but they don't actually make any money.

When Pure Pwnage started, Geoff and I were really into a game called Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour which had a lot of the latter type of 'pros'. As for being 'pros' ourselves - certainly not in the literal, money-making sense, but absolutely in the sense that the Zero Hour community used the term!

How much of Pure Pwnage do you think models real life, and how much of it is a joke?

It's hard to quantify something like that, but the popularity of the show in gaming scenes suggests that a lot more of it models real life than a non-gamer would believe.

Before Pure Pwnage it was hardly uncommon for me to game 8+ hours every day and often long after the sun had risen. A large percentage of my daily conversations had to do with gaming, much of which contained gaming terminology that doesn't normally leave a computer screen. It's a tough life sometimes...

Who's involved in Pure Pwnage? How did you recruit the characters FPS Doug, Dave and your on-screen love interest, Tagi?

With regards to producing the show, it's mostly just Geoff and I. We've since brought on a few people to help with things like running the store and maintaining the Web site, etc.

We also receive a tremendous amount of support from our fanbase. Our forum community, subtitles, teamspeak/IRC chats, even the live screening events -- they all get a lot of volunteer help and we couldn't do many of the things we do without them. We have an amazing audience!

Doug has been a close personal friend of ours for many years. He's also a hardcore gamer and also interested in acting and filmmaking, so it was a natural fit for him to become involved in the show. His look is just perfect for the role and his performances would be understated to call them memorable.

Dave we met in Toronto just before his inclusion in the show, which was largely a spontaneous decision that we're very happy to have made. He's an unbelievably popular character given his brief appearances.

Tagi is a drama student who was the first person to get a role in Pure Pwnage by actually auditioning! We put out some ads in local papers to find actors and the last person we met with was Tagi. She had this adorable personality and what we felt was the perfect girl-next-door-playing-an-mmo [Massive Multiplayer Online] cuteness. We knew we had our 'mmo grrl' about two minutes into the audition.

How do you come up with ideas for each episode?

It's a strict rule of writing down any funny ideas you may have. They often come while in the shower, laying down to sleep at night, riding the subway, etc. Whenever you least expect it, you'll get this great idea and it's important to write it down. Then we compile our 'ideas list' and start to flush out the events of a particular episode.

The story arc for the season, and series, has been loosely decided from the beginning, but each episode's particular content is often related to what's been happening in the gaming scene, or what made us laugh out loud while we were buying milk at the grocery store the day before.

What's it like to be an Internet celebrity? Do you hear much from your fans?

It's incredible. I'm often stopped in public by an excited fan who just wants to chat about games for a minute, or get an autograph, or just let me know how much they love the show.

To our mostly tech-savvy fans, there's little difference in the medium in which they receive their entertainment. They don't see 'the Internet' as being a place with nothing but amateur user-created content or some illegimate form of entertainment. To them we are as big of stars as anyone on TV or in films, and their behaviour when they meet us is what you might expect from anyone meeting a cast member of their favourite TV show.

We also receive hundreds of messages a day from fans through the various channels they have to contact us and it's all just so inspiring. The live episode screenings bring the feeling of fame to the next level when we're swarmed by several hundred fans fighting for autographs. Surreal is the perfect word to describe it all.

I hear Jeremy gets marriage proposals from his female fans. Is this true? What's your love life like at the moment?

Jeremy has had a couple marriage proposals from female fans, but for the most part they just want his babies :)

I do have a girlfriend right now who is also a gamer. She's my dream girl - cute, laid-back, and loves playing games. I could overlook things like poor taste in music, or an obsession with shopping, but I could never be with a girl who didn't like playing games.

What were your influences for making this show?

While we're fans of many filmmakers, actors, musicians, etc., and they have influenced us to pursue a career in entertainment, Pure Pwnage itself was born more out of accident. We were shooting some test footage using a borrowed camera in order to familiarize ourselves with our editing software and the result was a mock preview for a show called Pure Pwnage that wasn't intended at the time to be made.

We put the video online onto a C&C [Command & Conquer] fan site we frequented at the time and it was very well received, so we decided to go ahead and actually make a first episode. The downloads kept growing exponentially and we realized the show had gone viral, so we decided to dedicate the majority of our time to producing more episodes.

If we can credit any influences for the show itself, it's probably the poor quality of so many professional 'Hollywood' television and film productions that convinced us we could make a show out of a dorm room that people would watch!

What are some of your favourite games, past and present?

Geoff's been a big PC gamer since we were kids. In fact, he's the one that introduced me to Command & Conquer! I didn't get my first computer until high school, so my old school gaming was all done on consoles.

I got an Atari 2600 for Christmas when I was really young, but it wasn't until the original Nintendo Entertainment System that my life was officially changed forever. I'll never forget the magic of endlessly playing Super Mario Bros. in my living room as a kid. I'm a huge Miyamoto fan to this day. I remember when the Super Nintendo was released and spending countless hours every day for weeks doing time trials in F-Zero, just to shave fractions of a second off of my Mute City times :)

I was always very competitive in school and sports, and that affected my approach to gaming. It was never about relaxed fun for me, it was about finishing it as fast as possible, getting every item, and being better than all my friends. I've since owned nearly every console out there, and kept an up-to-date PC.

These days I'm a huge fan of RTS [Real-Time Strategy] and the notion of gaming as a sport, but still spend a lot of time with my Xbox360, Wii and especially DS.

Do you prefer console or PC games?

Each has their own strengths. The keyboard and mouse setup of the PC lends itself well to RTS and FPS, but doesn't allow the fluid platforming or fighting experience of a console. The PC will always have fancier graphics (as it should, given it's many times more expensive), but the console will always have the accessibility and for many genres, the better controller.

The main advantage of earlier PC gaming was that you could go online and compete with people who aren't in your living room, but that advantage disappeared in the last few years and I find myself playing more and more console games again. I'd feel like I was missing out if I didn't play both!

How do you feel about the growing popularity of gaming amongst the general public?

While I'm definitely in the 'hardcore' gamer category, I love to see people who have normally avoided gaming start to enjoy and appreciate it. The DS and Wii are making good progress in this area, and even my mum plays games now. I think this bodes well for the future of gaming as a spectator sport, as right now gaming just doesn't have the public acceptance to bring cyber athleticism to a mainstream and respected level like say, football.

As more people become familiar with the idea of these games not being just a 'toy', but instead a great platform for real competitive sport, we'll see it get the attention it deserves from the public and the developers. It'll be a while before we see stadiums filled to see the latest big video game match, but I certainly wouldn't rule that out. Just take a look at the StarCraft scene in South Korea!

So, how do we pwn like you do?

Teh_Masterer would be unholy mad if I shared the secrets of the Gamer Army!

You've mentioned in other interviews that you will only make three seasons of Pure Pwnage. Where will you go from there - have you any other shows in mind?

Eventually we plan to make films, starting with a feature length Pure Pwnage movie, but we've also got some great ideas for other television shows. It's impossible to say what our first non-Pure Pwnage project will be, it's too far away and we don't spend much time thinking about it. Right now we're just focused on Pure Pwnage and making it the best show we possibly can.

You've come up with some awesome lines in Pure Pwnage - what is your favourite quote from the show?

That's too tough! It's like asking a parent who their favourite child is! :) But the truth is, I really don't have a favourite line. To pick out just one would do the others injustice - and that would remind me of ghey.

more

Image: Txt 'fun' for a successful mobile service

Created for Computerworld Australia's Mobility and Wireless section:

PCW: ACCC investigates cost reduction for mobile terminating access services

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

Motions are underway for the development of an updated network and cost model for the supply of Mobile Terminating Access Services (MTAS) in Australia, which is expected to come into effect 1 July this year.

The model governs the costs involved in how providers of fixed-line and mobile services allow their customers to call mobile subscribers. The 1 July 2007 update is expected to reign until 30 June 2009, replacing ACCC's current MTAS Pricing Principles Determination, which has been in effect since 1 July 2004.

Currently, cost is shared between the carrier supplying the outbound call and the mobile carrier receiving the call, where the outbound carrier pays the recipient carrier a regulated price for the mobile termination access service.

In accordance with the 2004 MTAS Pricing Principles Determination, the ACCC-regulated price was adjusted in stages from 21 cents per minute in the last half of 2004 to 18 cents per minute from January 2005, 15 cents per minute from January 2006, and finally, the benchmarked target price of 12 cents per minute from January 2007.

As the 12 cent per minute pricing was initially introduced as an upper limit estimate, ACCC is now considering a reduction in price in accordance with a "bottom-up" economic approach being developed for the Australian market by international consultants, WIK-Consult, who were engaged by the ACCC for this purpose in June 2006.

The four incumbent mobile network operators, Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and Hutchison, will be among those who will be affected by the new model, which ACCC Commissioner Ed Willett expects will promote competition in the mobile carrier market.

The ACCC is now calling for submissions from interested parties on issues raised by a discussion paper released last week. Submissions are due by Friday 16 March 2007.

more

PCW: Txt 'fun' for a successful mobile service

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

Social interaction, rather than function, is the force behind young adults' burgeoning use of text messaging, claims a new study conducted by the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University in Canada.

Currently, more than one trillion text messages are estimated to be sent each year by users across the globe, with more market growth of wireless communications expected in the future, the study found.

According to researcher Nick Bontis, associate professor of strategic management at the school, young adults aged between 19 and 25 comprise roughly three-quarters of the mobile text messaging market.

Under the right pricing model and marketing strategy, young adults could perceive text messaging as a fun means of instant social interaction at a perceived economical cost, the study found. Bontis explained that text messages priced at a maximum of $US0.25 per message can be considered inexpensive.

"Young adults care about social or fun [aspects]," he said. "Business people care about value or price."

One potentially successful marketing idea is to introduce product placements in virtual worlds, Bontis suggested, mentioning as an example the v-girl.com mobile game, which advertises in-world by clothing its virtual girls in particular brands, or depict them using certain products.

Bontis also mentioned Virgin Mobile as an example of a company with a marketing strategy that successfully targets young adults. "Virgin Mobile," he said, "is all about young, flexible and being hip."

Of the young adults surveyed for the study, almost half had used text messaging. These text-messaging users were found to send an average of 50 messages and spend approximately $US46 on mobile phone services per month.

"As the market continues to develop, telecommunication companies would be smart to focus on the fun of using text messaging and the low price of the medium as they build their marketing growth plans," Bontis said.

more