iTnews: Young Australians prefer blogging to voting, study finds

As a journalist at iTnews:

The Internet could be the key to engaging young Australians who have turned their backs on traditional political processes, researchers say.

According to a study conducted by the Whitlam Institute, young people are more likely to exercise their democratic voice by blogging rather than enrolling to vote.

The researchers suggest that young Australians are not apathetic, but could feel alienated and marginalised by traditional, institutionalised politics.

“It is clear that young people want to 'make a difference'; the emphasis for this is reinforced by other findings,” said Eric Sidoti, who is the Director of the Whitlam Institute.

“The review finds that for young people, there's been a generational shift in Australian politics … It's no longer about political loyalties, it's about political choice.”

Sidoti explained that young Australians tend to be distrustful of politicians, and malcontent about the hierarchies in traditional institutions of democracy.

Current civic education programs may therefore be counter-productive in cases where students have little or no control over the processes and outcomes, he said.

Meanwhile, the relatively open platform of the Internet has been found to be far more popular with young, politically-minded Australians.

Sidoti named the not-for-profit Web site, ActNow, as an example of a site that allows young people to mobilise online around issues that concern them.

Other sites such as TheyWorkForYou.com and OpenAustralia.org have emerged as a means of holding elected politicians to account.

Also, during the lead up to the 2007 election, several Web sites emerged to compare candidates on issues -- including GetUp, which allowed voters to print their own how-to-vote cards according to the issues that were important to them.

“I'm no soothsayer but clearly the Internet is having an increasingly significant role to play,” Sidoti told iTnews. “It allows for far more voices to directly enter the public sphere.”

“There is a wide range of views online, covering all political persuasions,” he said. “The low cost of online publishing allows smaller groups/parties to compete with larger and better resourced organisations.”

Sidoti highlighted the difference between traditional Web sites and blogs, which allow politicians to engage directly with the online community through Web 2.0-enabled comments.

He noted that politicians so far have been entering the blogosphere cautiously, led by Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett and the Greens’ party blog.

Sidoti lamented a lack of research about how young Australians engage in the nation’s democratic process.

The project, titled ‘Young People Imaging a New Democracy’, is expected to help fill that void and produce a clearer view of the kind of democracy young Australians want.

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iTnews: Australia lags behind Dell's APAC growth figures

As a journalist at iTnews:

Dell has reported a successful fiscal second quarter, boasting a revenue growth of 25 percent in Asia Pacific and Japan, and 11 percent worldwide.

Global revenue in Q2 was US$16.4 billion, which is said to be driven by a 19 percent increase in worldwide product shipments.

According to Steve Felice, Dell’s President of Asia Pacific and Japan, the company now takes second place Asia -- behind Hewlett Packard -- in the Asian PC market.

Despite the current economic slowdown, Felice is optimistic about Dell’s prospects and expects to continue expanding its coverage of products, countries and market segments.

“Clearly, GDP positions have come down from six months ago,” Felice said, adding that while revenue growth has not been as robust in recent times, Dell’s results still are ‘healthy’.

“In general, our outlook hasn’t really changed,” he said.

“Our statement has been cautionary in terms of economic change; these [economic] conditions can signal potential problems going forward, but we haven’t experienced any problems yet.”

In the Asia Pacific and Japan region, Dell has been most successful in India, which in Q2 reported a revenue growth of 59 percent and unit growth of 63 percent.

Dell’s China business also performed above the regional average, reporting a revenue growth of 33 percent and unit growth of 38 percent.

Australia lagged slightly behind the regional average, generating a revenue growth of 19 percent and unit growth of 15 percent.

However, Felice denied there being any particularly weak markets, commenting that Dell’s ‘strong’ growth in Australia is led by SMB and enterprise purchases.

“Australia has had a very strong quarter,” he said. “We’ve won quite a few government panel contracts that have driven that growth, and we’ve had quite a lot of general commercial business as well.”

Looking forward, the company is expected to invest in expanding its services offerings.

The recent launch of its new Vostro A range of notebooks and desktops also signals a focus on, and investment in, developing targeted products for emerging countries.

“In terms of aggressiveness, I think we’ve taken quite a bold step in introducing these products,” Felice said about the new Vostro A products that were designed based on customer feedback in Brazil, Russia, India and China.

As the global economic slowdown pressures businesses to reduce costs, Dell also will focus on reinforcing the benefits of simplifying IT.

Felice highlighted IT’s potential to increase productivity and cut costs, and expects the scalability of products like Dell’s building-block data centres to appeal to cost-conscious businesses.

“What we’re doing now, as always when customers have cost concerns, is stress the importance of scalability, and I think that’s why we’ve been so successful in the enterprise space,” he said.

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iTnews: Ultra-fast, next-gen RAM could yield PCs that boot instantly

As a journalist at iTnews:

Scientists in Germany have developed next-generation Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM) that is said to operate as fast as fundamental speed limits allow.

By storing large amounts of data at high speeds and preserving stored data even when powered down, the technology could enable instant-boot computers and mobile devices, researchers say.

Today’s PCs typically operate on either Static or Dynamic RAM modules (SRAM or DRAM) that store digital information by means of electric charge.

SRAMs and DRAMs provide fast access to information. However, in case of power interruption, they lose their stored information, and are thus termed ‘volatile memory’.

“Volatile memories [such as] SRAM [and] DRAM lose their information upon power-off,” said Hans Werner Schumacher, who is researching MRAM at Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB).

“That is why you have to wait some time during your PC is booting. During that time the PC is reading the information from the hard disk and writes it into the non-volatile chips on your PC.”

Schumacher mentioned Flash memory as an example of non-volatile memory. Flash memory currently is used in some mobile devices such as phones, cameras, and an expanding range of ‘netbooks’ led by the OLPC and Asus’s Eee PC.

MRAM is another example of non-volatile memory. Current, first-generation MRAM modules use magnetic field pulses to program magnetic information, and are used in automotive and industrial applications.

Instead of using a magnetic field, second-generation ST-MRAM (spin torque MRAM) prototypes use a ‘spin torque’ current pulse to program magnetic bits.

A positive current switches the magnetization to one direction (digital state "0") and a negative current to the other (digital state "1").

Normally, the magnetization has to undergo several precessional turns before reliable magnetization reversal takes place, so ST-MRAM is estimated to be a factor of 10 slower than the fastest SRAM technology.

However, using a new technique known as ‘ballistic switching’, Schumacher and his research team were able to achieve reliable magnetization reversal in a single precessional turn.

Researchers expect future MRAM based on ballistic spin torque reversal to achieve write clock rates well above 1 GHz.

“In our work we show that one can optimize the programming of the bits by proper selection of the parameters of the current pulses used for programming the bits,” Schumacher told iTnews.

“This allows [devices] to reliably write the bits by pulses of only one-nanosecond duration. Using this technique future ST-MRAM [Spin Torque MRAM] could operate as fast as the fastest volatile memories.”

Compared to first-generation MRAM, ST-MRAM can be scaled down to very small sizes, thus promising high storage densities comparable to DRAM and Flash.

“In the future ST-MRAM has a very broad field of applications,” Schumacher told iTnews. “They are fast, have a high storage density, and are non volatile … present memories do not offer this combination of features.”

“Here, first gigabit prototypes have been produced. However these ST-MRAM are not yet in production.”

“Like in all new technologies some technological issues still have to be solved before market introduction,” he said.

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iTnews: Has security become a non-issue for enterprise Open Source?

As a journalist at iTnews:

A two-year-old piece of Open Source code is likely to have far fewer security flaws than proprietary code, according to security expert Bruce Schneier.

Now, at a time when Open Source is gaining momentum in Australia, Schneier’s perspective could contribute to increased uptake in the enterprise, education and government sectors.

The recent Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report portrayed a ‘very strong’, ‘rapidly growing’ local market for Open Source in both private and public sectors.

Produced by Open Source consulting firm Waugh Partners, the census listed property and business, education, health, retail and government as industries that are most serviced by Open Source currently.

Sixty-one percent of census respondents were found to service organisations of 200 or more employees, suggesting that Open Source now reaches beyond small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), to larger organisations.

However, the report highlighted ‘lingering misconceptions’ about the availability of Open Source vendor support, which could contribute to slow commercial and government uptake of Open Source solutions in Australia.

According to Renee Hoareau, who is the Executive Officer of the Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association (VITTA), a lack of suitably-skilled network administrators has hindered the uptake of Open Source in schools.

“This is something the open source industry really needs to address,” she told iTnews. “More affordable training and certification for school network technicians is required.”

Skills shortage aside, however, Hoareau expects there to be ‘no technical reason’ why Open Source would be unsuitable for schools -- especially since Open Source software forms the basis of mission-critical environments in international companies such as Yahoo and Amazon.

Still, the security of Open Source software has been a talking point for some organisations in the past.

A report published last month by security vendor Fortinet suggested that enterprises are underestimating the security risks of eleven popular Open Source applications.

However, according to Hoareau, concerns about the public availability of source code seem to have vanished in the face of simple human management.

“Maintaining a secure environment involves following strict policies and careful procedures,” she said. “The most secure system in the world can be breached by a trusted person being careless with their password or security tokens.”

“Good school network security depends on good network management,” she said. “I would think Open Source applications pose no greater security risk for schools than any other type of software would.”

Russian security vendor, Kaspersky Lab, agrees that Open Source software is unlikely to be any more vulnerable to attacks than its proprietary counterpart.

Although Open Source code allows cybercriminals to find vulnerabilities more easily, vendors and developers are able to identify and fix flaws more easily as well, Kaspersky’s virus analyst Sergey Golovanov said.

To cater to clients who use Open Source operating systems on their servers and workstations, and those employing mixed corporate networks, Kaspersky Lab started developing security solutions for Open Source platforms ‘years ago’, Golovanov told iTnews.

“Obviously, in such a network all nodes have to be protected, so a security company must be able to offer the full range of solutions,” he said. “It is essential that we provide them with adequate protection for their IT infrastructure.”

But while Open Source could be a viable alternative to most proprietary software and applications, the effectiveness of Open Source antivirus and anti-spam programs is ‘a completely different story’, Golovanov said.

“There’s no way these [Open Source antivirus programs] can be effective today,” he said, noting the difference between Open Source programs that allow public access to source code, and free antivirus programs that are offered at no charge.

“The thing is that today antivirus is more a service than a complete product –- any antivirus [program] is almost useless without proper and regular updates. As an example, we provide updates approximately every 30 to 40 minutes, and we have to keep our antivirus labs working 24/7/365.

“And due to the fact that Open Source antivirus [programs] are created and supported by enthusiasts when they have free time, there’s no way an Open Source antivirus [program] can have regular and reliable support,” he said.

Max McLaren, who is the General Manager of Red Hat Australia, sings a different tune.

He highlighted SELinux, which was developed in collaboration with U.S. National Security Agency in 2004, and is distributed with commercial support as part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4 and all future releases.

While it does not perform antivirus tasks per se, SELinux -- or Security-Enhanced Linux -- enforces mandatory access control policies that reduce the ability of user programs and system servers to cause harm when compromised.

SELinux also is aligned with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria and involves role-based access control (RBAC), mandatory integrity controls and type enforcement architecture.

“We’ve had a number of Australian government organisations choose Red Hat because of that,” McLaren noted.

Currently, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been adopted in security-critical applications such as: the U.S. Army’s personnel records management system; the U.S. Navy’s IT environment; the IT infrastructure of Italian City of Marsala’s Town Council; and Europcar Australia’s desktop and server environment.

“The perception in the marketplace is that there is a concern about unsupported software,” McLaren said.

“I think customers feel confident [in Red Hat software] when they understand the difference between unsupported and supported Open Source,” he said, adding that Red Hat Enterprise Linux employs the ‘same level’ of testing as proprietary software.

McLaren described similarities between SELinux and Microsoft’s User Account Control infrastructure that has been introduced with Windows Vista, adding that ‘imitation is the best form of flattery’.

But according to Bruce Schneier, Open Source security is so far beyond that of software giant Microsoft that the comparison is moot.

”Comparing the security of Linux with that of Microsoft Windows is not very instructive,” he told iTnews. “Microsoft has done such a terrible job with security that it is not really a fair comparison.”

Echoing the comments of Kaspersky’s Golovanov, Schneier argues that Open Source code often undergoes a far more rigorous evaluation process than proprietary vendors can afford.

Proper evaluation requires the time and expertise of security experts evaluating a piece of code multiple times and from different angles, said Schneier, who is a globally-recognised security technologist and author.

“It's possible to hire this kind of expertise, but it is much cheaper and more effective to let the community at large do this,” he pointed out. “And the best way to make that happen is to publish the source code.”

“There's no reason to believe that open source code is, at the time of its writing, more secure than proprietary code,” he said.

“A two-year-old piece of open source code is likely to have far fewer security flaws than proprietary code, simply because so many of them have been found and fixed over that time.”

But if the industry consensus is that Open Source software is, in fact, secure, then why do public security concerns still exist?

Mani Padisetti, who is the Chief Operating Officer and Director of Open Source services and support provider Digital Armour, pointed a finger of blame at ‘smaller proprietary software manufacturers’ who he expects to be intimidated by the Open Source licensing model.

“There are bigger vendors like Microsoft who are okay with Open Source, but there are also some smaller proprietary software manufacturers that still have the concern that Open Source will kill them, and they don’t want there to be any uptake of Open Source at all,” he said.

"I’ve sat in on a number of meetings where proprietary vendors have said that Open Source is unsupported freeware and not secure, and that’s just not true,” he said.

Digital Armour was founded in 2000 as a Sydney-based IT support and service consultancy that catered to the SME market.

Two years into its business, Digital Armour decided to focus primarily on Open Source systems to better suit customer demands.

‘We have sold support primarily for Open Source systems and have also sold applications that are commercial Open Source,” Padisetti said, adding that Open Source systems often have technological benefits for specific requirements.

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iTnews: Psychologists tout educational benefits of video games

As a journalist at iTnews:

Video games could benefit students by improving gamers’ problem-solving skills, dexterity, and scientific thinking, psychologists say.

At the annual convention of the American Psychological Association on Sunday, researchers discussed the effects of video games on high school and college students.

University of Wisconsin researchers highlighted a November 2006 study of nearly 2,000 online discussion posts about the popular multiplayer online game World of Warcraft.

In the study, discussion posts were examined against codes based on national benchmarks for scientific literacy to see what types of conversations took place, such as social bantering versus problem-solving.

The codes addressed different aspects of scientific thinking, including: reasoning using systems and models; understanding feedback; predicting and testing; and using mathematics to investigate a problem.

Researchers found 86 percent of participants to share their knowledge to solve problems, and 58 percent of participants to use systematic and evaluative process that indicate scientific reasoning.

“These forums illustrate how sophisticated intellectual practices to improve game play mimic actual scientific reasoning,” said Sean Duncan, a University of Wisconsin researcher who was involved in the study.

“Gamers are openly discussing their strategies and thinking, creating an environment in which informal scientific reasoning practices are being learned by playing these online video games,” he said.

The researchers suggest that game-based learning could supplement textbooks and science labs in fostering scientific thinking.

Separate studies conducted by Iowa State University psychologists have found players of ‘prosocial’ games to get into fewer fights in school, and be more helpful to other students.

But not all video games were found to have positive effects on players.

Researchers found players of violent games were found to be more hostile, less forgiving and more desensitised to violence, compared to those who played nonviolent games.

Meanwhile, students who play more ‘entertainment games’ were found to do poorer at school and be at greater risk of obesity.

“The big picture is that there are several dimensions on which games have effects,” said Iowa State University psychologist Douglas Gentile.

“[Dimensions include] the amount they are played, the content of each game, what you have to pay attention to on the screen, and how you control the motions.”

“This means that games are not 'good' or 'bad,' but are powerful educational tools and have many effects we might not have expected they could,” he said.

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iTnews: Red Hat launches new Brisbane headquarters

As a journalist at iTnews:

Red Hat has launched a new engineering and support facility in Brisbane to sustain its expanding product line.

The new facility replaces Red Hat’s existing Brisbane premises, which served as its Asia-Pacific engineering and support headquarters for the past nine years.

According to Paul Gampe, who is the software vendor’s vice president of Engineering Services and Operations, Red Hat’s regional engineering and support business has grown over the past six months.

“We have increased staff in both engineering and support, so we are launching this new facility to accommodate for this expansion and scale for future growth,” he told iTnews.

The new facility accommodates approximately 110 staff and has created ‘a number’ of new positions, Gampe said.

Boasting an area of almost 1,500 square metres spread across multiple storeys, the new facility is triple the size of its predecessor and now is Red Hat’s largest engineering centre in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Many technology companies have moved their development and support functions from Australia to China and India,” Gampe said, noting that Red Hat has facilities in all three countries.

“But for Red Hat, the growth of these two economies has contributed to the expansion of our operations in Australia … Brisbane is the regional headquarters for Engineering in Asia.”

“Our Brisbane centre provides service and support to customers around the globe, with Australian and New Zealand customers benefiting further because support is available in their time zone,” he said.

Red Hat’s Asia Pacific engineering and support staff conduct software research and development, product engineering, project management and software engineering activities.

This includes core graphics engineering, and Red Hat’s main translation team, which is responsible for making products available in 13 languages including German, French, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Indonesian.

Gampe highlighted staffing and scaling Red Hat’s support organisation inline with its business growth as two core focus areas of the new headquarters.

“A number of significant announcements were made at the Red Hat Summit in June, particularly around open virtualisation and Linux Automation strategies,” he said.

“Hand-in-hand with these announcements, we’ve increased the local investment in ‘behind-the-scenes’ engineering functions as part of our commitment to these initiatives.”

The new centre was officially opened yesterday afternoon by the Honourable Desley Boyle, Queensland Minister for Tourism, Regional Development and Industry.

According to Gampe, Red Hat’s Queensland location was chosen nine years ago because of ‘overwhelming’ state government support through a Queensland Government grant, and the quality of local engineering talent.

To support and sustain local talent, and contribute to the open source community, Red Hat’s Brisbane engineering centre will drive several initiatives promoting open source innovation and collaboration.

This includes Red Hat’s ongoing sponsorship of Honours research students at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and a research collaboration with QUT that will investigate open source localisation.

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iTnews: 'Web 2.0 University' to launch in A/NZ

As a journalist at iTnews:

Social media startup, acidlabs, has partnered with a U.S.-based consultancy to bring 'Web 2.0 University' to Australia and New Zealand.

Founded by Dion Hinchcliffe of the U.S. consultancy Hinchcliffe & Company, Web 2.0 University comprises a series of workshops that are targeted at enterprise and start-up companies.

Previously, workshops have been delivered to product managers, executives, and architects in Europe and the U.S., and focus on how to design next generation online products and services.

Workshops in Australia and New Zealand will be customised for the local market and will feature local case studies alongside tried and tested international content.

Acidlabs founder Stephen Collins highlighted application developer Tangler and implant company Cochlear as potential local case studies.

“I can imagine we might look at something like Tangler or Cochlear because they’re innovative local companies that may make the most interesting case studies,” he told iTnews.

Despite its name, Web 2.0 University is not a tertiary education institute, nor does it provide any accreditations.

Collins said that the Web 2.0 University brand of workshops has been registered in the U.S., and acidlabs has enlisted legal counsel to determine if their use of the word ‘University’ is permitted in Australia.

“We’re obviously not a real University and obviously don’t offer any accreditations,” he said.

“What we offer is headspace to show organisations how they can engage with clients using these tools, and [discuss] the uptake of collaboration inside the wall.”

“There’s a growing desire for organisations to understand these things. I think the demand is probably pretty high,” he said.

Collins expects to deliver two to three workshops per year at events, through hosting partner Web Directions, in addition to on-premise workshops that will be held as per organisations’ demand.

Web 2.0 University will make its Australian debut on 23 September, in conjunction with the Web Directions South conference.

The first Web Directions workshop will cost $450 to attend and subsequent workshops will be priced at ‘market rates’. For comparison, Web 2.0 University in the U.S. is priced at US$895 per workshop.

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iTnews: Web shakes up contact centre industry

As a journalist at iTnews:

The Internet has turned traditional concepts of brand loyalty, sales, and customer expectations on their heads, Genesys execs have warned.

According to Michael McBrien, who is the senior vice president of Genesys’s APAC Field Operations, businesses are challenged with meeting rising expectations of customer service.

Speaking at the G-FORCE APAC 2008 summit in Melbourne this week, McBrien discussed results of Accenture’s 2007 Global Consumer Survey that found that 33 percent of customers expect greater customer service than they did one year ago.

“[Doing business is] getting harder because of the internet,” he said, describing online ‘shame lists’ on which consumers name poorly-performing contact centres.

“It’s very easy for customers to vent frustration on the very open forum of the Internet,” he said.

While companies spend ‘millions of dollars’ on advertising and branding campaigns to attract new customers, existing customers are often neglected, McBrien said.

He described his experience with a U.S. bank that he contacted when making a large overseas purchase on his credit card.

Despite numerous calls to the bank’s contact centre, McBrien was unable to stop the legitimate purchase -- a surprise gift for his wife -- from being wrongfully flagged as a potentially fraudulent transaction.

Incensed, he returned the purchase and terminated his 20-year-old credit card account.

McBrien blamed the incident on a ‘disconnect’ between the bank’s contact centre and its fraud department.

When different departments within a company operate as separate silos, the result is a disconnected, unsatisfactory customer experience, he said.

According to Genesys’s 2007 Global Consumer Survey, 44 percent of defecting customers cite a poor contact centre experience as their sole reason for leaving.

“Customers don’t call ‘the contact centre’; they call ‘the company’,” McBrien pointed out.

Customer loyalty is expected to play a greater role in today’s world of economic uncertainty, with the credit crunch and U.S. presidential election likely to result in a ‘tough year’ for businesses.

According to Jason Stirling, who is the Vice President of Genesys Australia, India and New Zealand, the time is right to create opportunities by viewing the contact centre from a strategic, rather than a tactical, perspective.

“When you look at the contact centre today, our foundation is to reduce cost,” he said.

“[But] we can make or break customer satisfaction in one foul phone call,” he said. “We have an enormous amount of power.”

Instead of viewing contact centres as a cost, businesses could capitalise on relationship building and sales opportunities to transform the contact centre into a profit centre, Stirling suggests.

Describing the need for a multi-channel approach to cater to the technology preferences of individual customers, Stirling highlighted the importance of supporting customers online.

While Web sites have become increasingly popular for advertising and branding purposes, conversions to sales typically have been few.

Without the support of human interaction functionality like Web chat, Stirling warned that Web sites are likely to experience ‘leakage’ to competitors.

“I believe in two years, if we take a truly customer-centric approach, the Web is going to be our next contact centre,” he said.

“It’s time to really seriously consider opening the channel to the Web,” he said. “We’re neglecting our customers online.”

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iTnews: Genesys enters Aussie partnership to build ‘Quality Conversations’

As a journalist at iTnews:

Genesys has partnered with Australian developer Kevin Panozza to address a need for soft skills among contact centre staff.


Announced today at the G-FORCE APAC 2008 summit in Melbourne, the collaboration has birthed a new training program called ‘Quality Conversations’.

The distance learning program comprises 26 training modules that are expected to improve the quality of interactions between customers and contact centre agents.

With Genesys estimating that a majority of investment in contact centres goes towards ‘putting bums on the seats’, the program is expected to help businesses justify and leverage the cost of contact centre staff.

“The quality of a conversation can make or break a customer situation,” said Jason Stirling, Vice President of Genesys Australia, Indian and New Zealand.

“Quality Conversations will ensure customer-facing staff are armed with critical soft skills required to handle service and sales environments,” he said.

The program involves highly interactive, animated educational material that comes in versions for customer service and sales agents.

It has been one year in development by SalesForce e-Learning company AFrame, and uses an animated ‘mentor’ to guide contact centre agents through each 20-minute training module.

Panozza is the ex-CEO of SalesForce and current Managing Director of Engagement Matters.

According to Panozza, the program encompasses ‘everything a customer service representative needs to know about working in a contact centre’.

Modules address topics that include: vocal skills; active listening; regulating attitude; questioning; and gaining trust.

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iTnews: NAB upgrades contact centre technology

As a journalist at iTnews:

The National Australia Bank (NAB) is adding natural speech capabilities to its contact centres in an effort to ‘join the dots’.

Dubbed ‘Smarttalk’, NAB’s natural language speech portal will be launched later this year to replace current IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technology.

Smarttalk combines speech recognition software and intelligent routing solutions to resolve customer queries efficiently.

NAB also will be introducing a new voice to reflect the bank’s updated persona.

“That’s going to be a big improvement on where we are,” said Steve Collier, who is NAB’s General Manager Sales Performance Retail Banking.

“The voice talent we use today in our IVR is lovely, but she needs to go into a nursing home,” he said. “It’s not the experience we’d like our customers to have.”

Speaking at Genesys’ G-FORCE APAC 2008 summit in Melbourne today, Collier challenged the perspective that ‘banks are anything but nimble’.

He described how NAB has been able to leverage its investments by building an IP solution based on existing Genesys assets.

By routing all incoming calls via one telephone number using Smarttalk, the technology also is expected to strengthen the bank’s brand.

Smarttalk joins a range of technologies that Collier has introduced since taking the reins of NAB’s contact centre operations.

Driven by the growth of Internet banking and customers’ demand for direct channels of communication to the bank, NAB’s contact centre technology has been developed to deliver a consistent multi-channel experience.

“The reality is that customers are demanding more and more of us over time,” Collier said.

SMS, e-mail and Web facilities have been introduced and improved to cater to the needs of modern, tech-savvy customers.

The NAB Web site has been designed to display a range of information according to customers’ lifestyle needs.

Using automatic data population, customers also are able to obtain an online, real-time conditional approval for credit card applications, from which NAB has reported an ‘exponential’ increase in sales and customer satisfaction.

NAB also has commenced two online chat pilots on its Web site. The first is a banker-assisted chat module that connects customers with sales and service specialists who may be working from home or remote branches of the bank.

The second chat pilot, dubbed ‘NAB Online Assistant’, involves greater technical complexity with the use of an automated chat agent that converses with customers with ‘humanised’, conversational responses and 24x7 availability.

Collier described the chat implementations as a ‘learning opportunity’ for the bank, adding that the bank has found customers to prefer chat over the bank’s call-back option.

“To be honest, I’ve learnt a lot,” he said. “These days, when a colleague in the leads area wants to do something, they come to us first.”

Communication within the organisation, a strong governance process, and the ability to leverage existing assets and business partners were highlighted as key factors for a successful technology implementation.

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iTnews: EMC launches 'next-gen' storage architecture

As a journalist at iTnews:

EMC last week introduced a new series of mid-range storage systems that it expects to be compatible with its previous and future products.

The new EMC Clariion CX4 series features enhanced support for virtualization, power-saving features, and the ability to be easily upgraded or integrate with hardware up to four generations old.

According to EMC's Director of Product Marketing ANZ, Clive Gold, mid-tier storage systems traditionally have been ‘fixed’.

He expects the CX4 series to deliver cost savings to customers by being compatible with hardware that could be up to eight years old.

The series currently supports dual-protocol Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage area network (SAN), and can be dynamically upgraded to add I/O ports to extend the flexibility of VMware environments.

Through what EMC has dubbed ‘UltraFlex’ technology, the series also is able to incorporate future connectivity technologies such as 8Gb/s Fibre Channel, 10Gb/s iSCSI and FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet).

The devices run on Intel’s Xeon processors that improve on the energy efficiency of their predecessors.

New support for solid-state disks (SSD) also is expected to improve the speed and energy efficiency of the mid-range storage systems.

SSDs are said to be more than 30 times faster than traditional drives and 98 percent more energy efficient on an Input/Outpot operations per second basis.

“This system has been designed with the ability to be a very low-powered device,” Gold told iTnews, estimating the CX4 series to be 30 percent more energy efficient than competitor devices.

EMC’s Clariion brand currently occupies the lion’s share -- 30 percent -- of the Australian storage market, Gold said.

He expects the CX4 series to drive the uptake of EMC products by offering improved performance and capacity at similar costs.

“This being a generational shift, we believe it’s putting more space between us and our nearest competitor,” he said.

“We’ve received some feedback on the pricing; there’s been a lot of surprise that it’s very competitive.”

“There’s also been a lot of interest around features like virtual provisioning, and [how] we’ve enhanced our ability to provide support for virtualisation as well,” he said.

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iTnews: linux.conf.au 2009 shapes up

As a journalist at iTnews:

Hardware hacking, licensing and art were among a broad range of topics submitted to linux.conf.au (LCA) 2009 organisers by the time a call for papers closed today.

The annual Linux conference will be celebrating its 10th anniversary at the University of Tasmania’s Sandy Bay campus in Hobart next January.

Following previous years’ successes, LCA 2009 is expected to attract 700 delegates and influential speakers from international and local Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities.

It is expected that over 100 speakers will be chosen to present at the Hobart conference, which organisers have dubbed ‘March South’.

“Something that's struck me from the submissions is the amazingly broad range of topics that people have submitted which just goes to show the broad reach that FOSS has these days,” LCA 2009 senior organiser Ben Powell told iTnews yesterday.

“Suffice to say we've had papers from just about every field of endeavour from hardware hacking, to robotics, to legal issues and licensing, to art and multimedia -- and of course plenty of kernel presentations to boot,” he said.

Since the call for papers opened last month, organisers also have received ‘a large number’ of tutorial submissions that will comprise a ‘hands-on’ component of the conference.

Organisers also will be introducing an artistic element to the conference by inviting local artists to engage with the event. Powell hopes to produce ‘interesting results’ from the collision between the arts and technology communities.

Successful presentations will be decided in mid-September and the conference will be held from 19-24 January 2009.

More information is available from the LCA Web site.

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iTnews: Researchers tout super-stretchy electronic material

As a journalist at iTnews:

Researchers have created ‘super-stretchy’ integrated circuits that could be used in intelligent surfaces for curved objects, or in movable parts such as the joints of a robot’s arm.

The circuits can be stretched by up to 70 percent without any degradation in their mechanical or electronic properties, according to the University of Tokyo researchers.

Stretchable electronics is a current challenge for material engineers, particularly for its application in large-area electronics such as bendable and rollable displays.

While soft materials currently tend to be more mechanically robust than rigid materials, stretchable electronics tend to exhibit poorer electronic properties such as performance, controllability and stability.

“Stretchability is an entirely different concept from the miniaturisation trend currently pursued by conventional electronics and has the potential to provide exciting opportunities,” said Takao Someya, lead researcher and Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo’s Quantum Phase Electronics Center.

“Large-area, flexible sensors and actuators are another emerging frontier, [but] although these achievements represent valuable advances, the utility of flexible electronics is limited to nearly flat substrates,” he told iTnews.

“Stretchable electronics can cover arbitrary curved surfaces and movable parts such as the joints of a robot’s arm, thereby significantly expanding the area of utilization of these electronics.”

Someya’s integrated circuits use a newly-developed carbon nanotube-elastomer composite material as a conducting dopant, which boasts a measured conductivity of 57 S/cm.

Researchers claim the conductivity of the new polymer to be two orders of magnitude greater than the conductivity value of previously reported single-walled nanotube (SWNT) composite polymers.

“Carbon-nanotube-based conducting materials have been produced previously [but] their conductivities are very low,” Someya said.

“One can say that the elastic conductors developed in this study are the world’s first chemically stable, highly conductive elastomers,” he said.

Researchers suggest that the stretchable circuits could enable ambient electronics, in which a multitude of devices such as sensor networks could be used to enhance aspects of security, safety, and convenience in daily life.

The technology also could by integrated with pressure sensors to yield a ‘rubber-like artificial skin’, or with an array of actuators to change the feel of a surface.

“This is an important step toward the production of intelligent surfaces that can be used as friendly human-electronics interfaces,” Someya said.

“In the future, such intelligent surfaces will be able to interact with people, objects, and the environment in new ways.”

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iTnews: IBM virtual conference closes at cyber bar

As a journalist at iTnews:

As IBM's Upload 2008 virtual summit came to a close, its virtual networking lounge bustled with greetings and introductions -- some shy, and some less so.

Stir-crazy exhibitors wound down with public offers of virtual vodka, cyber cocktails and iBeers amid a playful discussion of the weather in real-world Townsville and Hobart.

But it wasn’t just an imaginary bar tab that kept conference attendees at the event, which IBM estimates to have attracted some 350 delegates during its first hour.

Attendees who had accumulated enough points by interacting with exhibitors were given the chance to win real-world prizes that include: a 40-inch Sony HD LCD TV; a Flight Centre travel voucher; and an Apple iPhone.

“My boss suggested I participate, and to be really honest, the prizes kept me here,” Chantal Lawrence, NSW IT Coordinator of national construction company Hansen Yuncken, told iTnews at the virtual lounge.

Lawrence attended the summit with a particular interest in gold sponsor VMware, in the lead up to Hansen Yuncken’s forthcoming VMware implementation.

While the presentations were good, the delivery of VMware’s seminar was a little too muted for her liking, she said.

“Vmware wasn’t brilliant; it wasn’t that I didn't like something in particular, just that it was very reserved. A little fanfare is good,” she said.

According to Mark Wilson, Director of Marketing for IBM A/NZ, the conference was three months in the making, with conference sessions filmed throughout the U.S. and Australia, and put together by a virtual project team.

IBM hoped to attract 500 customers to yesterday’s ‘live’ event and another 500 during the following three months, when the recorded presentations will be available online.

The virtual platform is expected to allow IBM to reach a wider audience across Australia and New Zealand, and connect the audience with a global network of speakers.

Using technological reporting functions, the virtual setting is expected also to help IBM to identify specific customer needs.

“Customers can network, visit exhibition stands, attend conference sessions and receive all the same benefits they would reap from attending a physical conference,” Wilson told iTnews.

Another virtual feature that was reminiscent of a physical conference was the conference centre, which bore a fortuitous resemblance to the Sydney convention centre in Darling Harbour.

While Wilson said the virtual world was not modelled on the real-world centre, IBM was ‘pleased to note’ the similarities.

“When we saw the virtual conference platform for the first time, we were pleased to note it was very similar to Sydney convention centre,” he said.

“We were keen to go ahead and use it exactly as it was as we recognised it would give the event a nice local touch,” he said.

IBM reports having received ‘many positive responses’ to the virtual environment from exhibitors to date.

One exhibitor, PK Business Advantage (PKBA), had staff attending from its office in the Northern Queensland city of Townsville.

As most real-world functions tend to be hosted in larger cities to draw sufficient customer attention, the virtual world setting was said to be ‘a lot cheaper’ for PKBA.

“PKBA is a Premier Partner with IBM and were invited to participate,” PKBA Operations Manager James McClimont told iTnews at the virtual lounge this afternoon.

“As our Townsville location has an extensive experience and history with IBM, we felt able to utilise this to provide more info about the value we can add,” he said.

While he admitted that interactions in the virtual world lacked real-world cues such as body language and vocal tones, McClimont said PKBA has managed to attract ‘a great amount’ of interest and visitors to its exhibition booth.

“It was a great concept and has been put into practice quite well,” he said. “With more Virtual Expos I'm sure the experience could be much more [successful].”

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iTnews: IBM Uploads its first virtual ANZ conference

As a journalist at iTnews:

IT delegates from across the nation gathered online today for IBM’s first virtual customer conference to be held in Australia and New Zealand.

The Upload 2008 virtual summit aimed to address what IBM has identified as new business pressures brought about by the credit crunch, rising fuel prices and skill shortages.

Following a global study of 1,130 CEOs across geographies and industries, the summit brought together speakers from all over the world to discuss methods of accelerating change and doing business.

Attendees arrived at the conference via a free-to-use Web interface. Once in the virtual environment, each was greeted by video footage of Glen Boreham, managing director of IBM Australia and New Zealand.

“This event is a sign of things to come,” Boreham said in his opening address.

“Holding a virtual conference is just one of the hundreds of ways IBM is changing how we work in response to the new pressures facing all of our businesses.”

Boreham described pressure from the recent credit crunch to reduce costs, pressure from rising fuel prices to avoid travel, and pressure from skill shortages to achieve more within a working day.

“These pressures that were barely on the radar a few years ago have now come to the fore,” he said.

The virtual setting of Upload 2008 demonstrates one method of alleviating such pressures by allowing attendees and exhibitors to access the event via the Internet, thus avoiding the need for travel.

An interactive visual environment was coupled with hyperlinked text to create a welcoming, user-friendly blend of the Web and virtual world experience.

A virtual auditorium, exhibition hall, networking lounge, and prize centre were mere clicks away from each other, providing attendees with easy access to interactive seminars, vendor representatives, and networking opportunities.

Lenovo, Intel, Nortel, NetBox Blue and VMware were among twenty-three exhibitors who established a virtual presence in IBM’s exhibition hall.

Exhibition attendees navigated the hall either via a hyperlinked list of exhibitors, or by eyeballing the scene and exploring the hall in true virtual world fashion.

At each exhibition booth, attendees were greeted by a team of avatars –- and, in some cases, videos -- with whom they could interact via private or group chat.

“It is a very worthwhile experience,” said Anthony Groves, a spokesperson at Lenovo’s exhibition booth.

“It is a good way to learn about a number of products all without having to leave the office,” he told iTnews via the virtual world chat interface.

According to VMware System Engineer Wibowo Leksono, the virtual setting allowed exhibitors to respond to far more queries than what would be possible in a real-life situation.

“It's been great. I get coverage of a lot more people this way rather than a real life booth,” Leksono told iTnews via private chat at VMware’s exhibition booth.

“[In] the morning, [there] have been non-stop queries, but it is excellent. It has also brought to our attention what issues are out there in the field.”

While virtual environments often take some time to get used to, Leksono reported minimal difficulties in preparing the VMware team for the exhibition.

“To be honest, most of us attended just a bit of training in the morning, and were up and running in no time,” he said.

As part of the Upload 2008 summit, IBM also invited environmentally-conscious conference attendees to give their Green egos a boost with the use of a Web-based carbon counter.

Compared to a traditional conference held in Sydney, IBM estimates the virtual setting to save up to 0.001 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions for an attendee based in North Sydney, and up to 0.4251 tonnes of emissions for an attendee travelling from Perth.

IT infrastructure, management and security were key topics that were discussed in the auditorium by speakers such as Future Exploration Network’s Chief Futurist Richard Watson, IBM’s CIO Mark Hennessy, software architecture and engineering veteran Grady Booch, and compliance and risk management expert Kristin Lovejoy.

Live seminars will be held until 5pm AEST today, after which recorded presentations will be available online until November 6.

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iTnews: Artificially intelligent news reader shuts down

As a journalist at iTnews:

There isn’t space in the online media market for a personalising news aggregator to grow large, an Australian web entrepreneur has claimed.

In a blog post announcing the closure of intelligent news portal ‘tiinker’ this month, the site’s co-founder and developer Alex North mentioned difficulties in competing with branded news sources.

“It’s been great fun and we’ve learnt a heap, but it seems that there just isn’t space for a personalising news aggregator to grow large,” he wrote.

tiinker was launched in January 2008 as an online news aggregator that used artificial intelligence to learn the interests of individual users and select stories tailored to each individual.

The site targeted the 'average' Internet user who reads news online, joining an array of online news aggregation tools such as Slashdot, Digg, and Google News.

“The technology we developed was great and we're happy with how it worked,” North told iTnews.

“It did a pretty good job of recommending interesting stories for us and for many users who sent us good feedback.”

“We were aiming to reduce some of the information overload that Internet users face online,” he explained. “We did create some great technology to achieve this, but unfortunately weren't able to grow the market for it.”

tiinker shut down on July 15, after North and co-founder Oleg Sushkov decided that the site ‘wasn’t going to change the world for enough people’.

Despite identifying the online news market as a rapidly growing sector with great potential for improvement, tiinker’s founders were unable to win consumers away from familiar news sites.

“News consumers have a strong affinity for the big brands in news; they like the familiarity of the SMH or News online and it proved too difficult to drag them away,” North said.

North expects personalised news to be successful in the future -- but only once large news sources implement such features within their existing sites.

He mentioned discussions with ‘local large media companies’, who were said to be interested in the idea, but unwilling to experiment with the technology as yet.

“I think personalisation will have a great future once the big news players implement similar features inside their own sites - a personalised SMH, for example - but there's not space for an external aggregator to do it,” he said.

“There's great potential for improvement here, but traditional media companies are struggling to keep up as it is. We'll see news personalisation take centre stage in a few years time,” he said.

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iTnews: Oracle embraces 'Enterprise 2.0' with new PLM module

As a journalist at iTnews:

Oracle plans to announce a new Customer Needs Management module for its Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software suite early next year.

The module will add ‘Enterprise 2.0’ functionality to Agile, which has been in the market for more than a decade and counts among its customers Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Philips Medical.

Since being acquired by Oracle in May 2007, Agile has received a small number of updates to do with integration and interoperability.

The Customer Needs Management module will incorporate elements of social software -- such as user-generated content and mass collaboration portals -- into the business software suite.

According to Oracle executive Hardeep Gulati, the popularity of Web 2.0 in the consumer space could make Enterprise 2.0 an inevitable progression for businesses.

“There is a lot of recognition in Oracle, all the way to top management, that Enterprise 2.0 is changing the business layout,” said Gulati, who is Oracle’s Vice President, PLM and PIM Product Strategy.

“Every company who’s in the business of building products needs collaboration, whether internally or externally,” he told iTnews.

Gulati expects Enterprise 2.0 to benefit PLM by facilitating collaboration between suppliers, manufacturers, and designers of software and hardware.

Enterprise 2.0 elements could also be an aid in ensuring that products are compliant with regulations such as the European Union’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS) by providing an overview of various processes.

Gulati expressed an interest in the Australian market for PLM, which is valued at $90 million and bolstered by a large number of companies that deal in Consumer Packaged Goods.

“PLM is an area we see as a demand. We have a very strong pipeline, and this [Australian] market is very important to us,” he said.

But although Web 2.0 has been highlighted by analysts as an industry-shaping trend, a lasting effect of Enterprise 2.0 on businesses is yet to be seen.

While North American businesses have been seen to embrace Enterprise 2.0 tools, Asia Pacific is approaching the technology with caution, Gulati observed, noting that the technology is less common still in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Intellectual property (IP) rights have been of particular concern to businesses who may be considering the use of public Web forums to obtain user feedback and discuss future technological directions.

Noting that IP is a ‘sensitive topic’, Gulati argued that collaboration and an open discussion with users promotes innovation.

To counter IP concerns, he suggests the tiered approach employed by Oracle and its partners, in which a broader community is open to the public, and a smaller, closed-loop ‘strategy council’ caters to selected partners and industry leaders.

“As a company, if you don’t embrace it, there’s going to be some Web 2.0 community out there about your product anyway,” he concluded, alluding to the viral, user-generated nature of the Web.

“You’d [The company] might as well be a part of that community,” he said.

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