iTnews: Is 'industry-ready' a University responsibility?

As a journalist at iTnews:

To combat a persistent skills shortage in the Australian IT industry, educational institutions have focussed their efforts on attracting students to science and engineering studies in recent years.

However, despite the best efforts of Australian universities, the industry remains unimpressed. University graduates have not been suitably prepared to fulfil commercial demand, industry players say.

“One of the things we see with people coming out of universities is that they are generally a fair way behind where the industry is,” said Nick Rodda, Managing Director of hosted contact centre solutions provider, Global Speech Networks.

Estimating two to three years in training expenses to do with hiring fresh graduates, Rodda blamed the Australian tertiary education system for not keeping up with industry demands.

“We hire graduates from time to time with the intention of investing in them to make them productive in two years time,” he said.

According to specialist IT recruitment agency, Kelly Services, employers greatly value candidates with a proven experience in the technologies that are already used by the company.

Naming .NET as the most commonly used programming language being used at present, Kelly Services’s Resources Branch Manager, Jason Fuller, noted an industry appreciation for candidates who have previously worked on time sensitive commercial projects and an experience in high-pressure, commercial environments.

“Employers will almost always choose to have someone join their company with a proven experience using the same technologies that they already use, or may be in the process of migrating towards in the near future,” Fuller said.

But training students to meet exact industry demands may be impossible, University of New South Wales lecturer John Shepherd said.

“For us to actually pick the exact technologies that are going to suit [the industry] and training up our students hoping those technologies are going to suit every company - we’ve got no chance,” he said.

“We could go for the dominant market players and teach all our students those technologies, but that’s not really the point. The point is learning how to learn,” he said.

As a lecturer of database programming at the university’s School of Computer Science and Engineering, Shepherd specialises in the PHP programming platform on top of the PostgreSQL database in his teachings.

While he admitted that the industry tends to favour Oracle over PostgreSQL in commercial databases, Shepherd said that Open Source platforms such as PostgreSQL and PHP are better suited to his teachings due to cost advantages and the ease of access to the technical mechanisms behind the platform.

Rather than teaching any one particular system, Shepherd said the University is more concerned with teaching the ideas behind the systems, which he expects will better equip students to adapt to new versions of existing technologies.

While the university’s teaching decisions may not have completely satisfied the demands of its students, Shepherd pointed out that several training institutions already offer courses targeted to industry-specific platforms and languages.

“We’re not teaching a particular system; we’re teaching the ideas behind the system,” he said, “and that’s what university is about.”

“The students say why don’t you teach us .NET, why don’t you teach us Oracle, and we have to keep justifying that you’re not learning .NET or Oracle, you’re learning Object-Oriented distributed programming, or you’re learning SQL.”

“We’re not a training institute; there are plenty of those going around. If they [students] want to learn version 3.0 of Oracle, they can go to an Oracle training course, or go to a TAFE,” he said.

While he agreed that tertiary institutions tend not to exactly satisfy the demands of the industry, Dimension Data’s General Manager for Application Integration, Peter Menadue, said that the educational tendency towards more academically-targeted platforms has been an ongoing theme for decades.

“It’s true to say that in tertiary institutions, more of the languages that are taught are of a great educational basis and less of a commercial basis,” Menadue said.

“There’s probably a little more of a preference around a spread of things [platforms], including open source, in tertiary institutions, [but] we just haven’t seen a bulk of commercial development that’s happening in Open Source for our enterprise customers.”

Mentioning .NET and Java as programming platforms that are more popular in the enterprise, Menadue encouraged tertiary institutions to make sure that students are equipped with relevant skills.

Meanwhile, UNSW’s Shepherd argued that universities should be more focussed on the long-term employability of students rather than the immediate demands of the industry.

“Is it our job to produce industry-ready graduates, or should we produce people who will be better long-term employees,” he asked.

“The company that takes them [graduates] will have to train them on a particular platform, but then this person should be easy to train because they’ve got the foundations down, and they should be more adaptable in the future,” he said.

Both industry experience and tertiary qualifications are attractive qualities in job candidates, Kelly Services’ Fuller said, noting a rise of work experience requirements in University courses to meet industry demand.

“Depending on what particular industry the client is within, a university degree may be a pre requisite of the role,” he said. “Others will simply need the candidate to be able to display a combination of the commercial and technical experience required to successfully work the role on a daily basis.”

“As employers demand more of their employees than they did 10 years ago, the educational institutions have responded by dramatically improving the level of preparation they put in place for making the graduates ‘career ready’ for when they gain their first commercial role.”

“More and more education facilities are incorporating a level of on site work experience as an integral part of their curriculum,” Fuller said.

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iTnews: Rising interest rates may drive online sales boom

As a journalist at CHANGEME:

As a journalist at iTnews:

A tightening Australian economy may be driving Australian consumers to look online for better deals, online shopping comparison site GetPrice suggests.

As the Reserve Bank of Australia raises interest rates in an effort to curb what has been said to be the fastest inflation in 16 years, higher borrowing and living costs are likely to discourage consumer spending.

Meanwhile, rising wages and the record low unemployment rate of recent years has fuelled the rise of a “borrowing” culture in Australia. Lending to consumers and businesses increased the most in five months in December, indicating last year's interest-rate increases haven't deterred borrowing.

According to GetPrice’s Managing Director, Chris Hitchen, the rising interest rates are likely to drive Australians to spend online, rather than haggling on High Street.

"As we approach Autumn, High Street sales are likely to moderate as consumers feel the pinch of an increase in petrol prices at Easter, escalating rents, falling share prices and the highest interest rates for 11 years," Hitchen predicts.

Price history and comparison data that is available online for specific products is likely to benefit consumers who are on the look out for better deals, he said, citing an especially strong demand for consumer electronics during the Christmas period and in the first quarter of 2008.

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iTnews: New music format thousands of times smaller than MP3

As a journalist at iTnews:

Scientists claim to have developed a music storage format that uses the absolute least amount of data needed to reproduce a piece of music.

By virtually modelling the interactions between a clarinet and clarinet player, researchers have digitally reproduced a 20-second instrumental solo in a file nearly 1,000 times smaller than a regular MP3 file.

"This is essentially a human-scale system of reproducing music," said Mark Bocko, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Rochester and co-creator of the technology.

"Humans can manipulate their tongue, breath, and fingers only so fast, so in theory we shouldn't really have to measure the music many thousands of times a second like we do on a CD.”

“As a result, I think we may have found the absolute least amount of data needed to reproduce a piece of music,” he said.

In developing the format, researchers built a computer model of the clarinet based on measurements of every aspect of the instrument that affects its sound: from the back-pressure in the mouthpiece for every different fingering, to the way sound radiates from the instrument.

The team then created a virtual clarinet player by modeling the interactions between the musician and instrument, including the fingerings, the force of breath, and the pressure of the player's lips to determine how they would affect the response of the virtual clarinet.

After the virtual clarinet and musician were created, Bocko said it was a matter of letting the computer "listen" to a real clarinet performance to infer and record the various actions required to create a specific sound. The original sound is then reproduced by feeding the record of the player's actions back into the computer model.

While they have not yet achieved a flawless reproduction of an original performance on the clarinet, the researchers expect their finish line to be not far away. The team is currently working on including acoustic effects such as tonguing, which is how a clarinet player strikes the instrument with the tongue to better define ‘staccato’ notes.

As the method is refined, the researchers imagine that it may give computer musicians more intuitive ways to create expressive music by including the actions of a virtual musician in computer synthesizers.

As acoustic measurements and modeling algorithms improve, Bocko said the process eventually may represent the maximum possible data compression of music.

Future developments may allow the method to be applied to reproducing the highly complex human voice as well, he said.

"Maybe the future of music recording lies in reproducing performers and not recording them," Bocko said.

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iTnews: Virtual business

As a journalist at iTnews:

Beyond the realm of virtual escorts, real estate agents, and other entrepreneurial start-ups, the Second Life business world has been traditionally dominated by the largest of the real-world companies.

Australian telecommunications incumbent Telstra last year launched what was said to be the country’s first major corporate presence in the online virtual world. Dubbed “the Pond”, Telstra’s Second Life islands aim to encourage customer interaction while creating new sales and marketing opportunities.

Spanning multiple islands, and estimated to cost more than $20,000 at launch, Telstra’s Second Life presence features virtual recreations of iconic national landmarks such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Opera House, the Outback and Uluru.

"Second Life is a very compelling package offering entertainment, creative collaboration and business possibilities,” said Justin Milne, who is the Managing Director of BigPond Group.

"We've already seen how rapidly user-generated content has gained popularity online, in particular through our interactive BigBlogs and Game Arena,” he said.

"Now we're taking a glimpse of what the internet of the future could be like - driven by user-determined experience.”

Telstra’s vision of the future looks to be shared by the likes of IBM, Cisco, Sun Microsystems and Dell, which each have launched their respective Second Life presences for a mixed bag of purposes including staff recruitment, research and development, marketing and customer support.

Outside of the Fortune 500 big league, however, corporate uptake of virtual worlds has been less enthusiastic. On top of Linden Labs’s real estate hosting prices of US$1,675 per island, businesses can expect to pay US$295 per month in maintenance fees per island, not to mention the costs of hiring Second Life developers and support staff.

Open source opens virtual doors

In hopes of making the Second Life metaverse more palatable to businesses, enterprise solutions provider Clever Zebra has developed ready-made corporate complexes that it has made available under the Open Source GPL license.

Clever Zebra was founded last year by virtual worlds enthusiast Nick Wilson, on the principle of promoting virtual worlds as a platform for business. The company operates with the simple idea of “disrupting the way development in virtual worlds currently works”.

With the goal of making it easy and inexpensive for companies to work in virtual environments, Clever Zebra offers free copies of the buildings, code and tools that organizations need to develop their own Second Life presences.

Monetary opportunities for Clever Zebra come from additional paid offerings such as customisation, branding, installation, and training.

“I’m fond of the phrase "a rising tide lifts all boats" when describing our philosophy,” Wilson said.

“Unless we make this stuff easy and cheap, we'll never get anywhere, and it [virtual worlds] will only ever be the domain of large companies with six-figure research and development budgets.”

“I think the most valuable thing we have to offer is service, not architecture or code. By making it [the code] free, we make it easier for any company to come in here and experiment, to use SL for what we know it's good for: meetings, distance learning, etc,” he said.

It’s an odd tack on the virtual world business model, especially when compared to traditional virtual businesses whose profits are derived solely from in-world development work.

Wilson believes Clever Zebra to be the only enterprise solutions provider of its kind, adding that the company has received a mixed response to its business model from the wider Second Life community.

“Some folks love us, evangelize us, work with us and hang out with us while we do this stuff. Some folks hate us, think we're the death knell for the SL economy and go out of their way to tell people that,” he said.

“I think it's a pretty good balance. I’m happy to produce products that cause so much passion at either end. I figure we must be doing something right.”

Clever Zebra will this month launch Version 1.0 of its open source development kit, which includes a corporate complex, presentation halls, roads, showrooms and meeting areas.

The company currently spans five Second Life islands with its free, open source corporate architecture, providing ample room to its four staff members who perform all their work in-game.

“We really do work here [in Clever Zebra’s Second Life office],” Wilson boasts. “None of our company have met any of the others; we work from Denmark, Canada and the US and have never met physically.”

The tastefully designed headquarters and has all the appearances of a real-life office, and features numerous workspaces, glass-walled meeting rooms, casual sitting areas in which red couches surround glass coffee tables, and wall art.

“We actually find that by mimicking a real-life office, we get that wonderful effect of spontaneous interaction, and a lot of ideas and information get shared that would never have by just using email, instant message or some kind of teleconference gear,” Wilson said.

“It feels like we all work together in the same space, and get a lot done by just being close to one another.”

Dubbed “Zebra Corporate”, the kit has taken the four-person company some months to build, and has been in quiet beta for the past few weeks. Already, Wilson is aware of three users of Zebra Corporate, including Non Profit Commons, Coventry University's Serious Games Institute, and recruitment firm Kelly Services.

Virtual discussion

Meanwhile, information technology analyst firm Gartner is warning businesses against investing too heavily in Linden Labs’s metaverse.

Citing hardware requirements, server downtime, security, and identity authentication as potential issues, Gartner analysts have advised businesses to carefully consider the risks of establishing virtual operations when faced with the virtual world hype.

"The risks enterprises face as a result of their involvement in virtual worlds are real and can be significant," said Steve Prentice, vice president and analyst at Gartner.

"When planning enterprise activities in virtual worlds, an enterprise's awareness of the risks, as well as a reasoned and objective analysis of them, will enable it to objectively evaluate the overall situation and offset risks against often-nebulous benefits," he said.

The highly interactive world of Second Life could pose brand marketing problems for companies that are particularly sensitive to brand issues, as well as social and ethical positioning, Gartner analysts say, suggesting the use of more heavily moderated virtual worlds such as There, Kaneva and Activeworlds.

By the end of 2009, Gartner predicts that other, more scalable virtual environments will emerge as attractive alternatives to Second Life. Sony’s forthcoming Home, a free-to-download, three-dimensional community for Playstation3 users worldwide that has been planned for launch early this year, was named as one such alternative.

"Second Life is acceptable for pilots and prototypes," said James Lundy, managing vice president at Gartner.

"However, current technical issues would have a significant impact on any organisation that wanted to use it in a production environment, and we are advising companies to evaluate alternatives."

To discuss the potentials and issues to do with the corporate uptake of Second Life, Clever Zebra is hosting an in-world vBusiness Expo.

The four-day-long conference will be held in the largest of Clever Zebra’s ampitheatres from April 24 to 27, and will feature keynote presentations by Erica Driver, principal analyst with Forrester Research; Sandra Kearney, IBM’s Global Director of Emerging 3D Internet and Virtual Business; and David Fenech, Senior Director of Internet Services with Kelly Services.

A separate panel about the value of virtual worlds in the enterprise will be chaired by Gartner's Prentice, and bootcamps for virtual world newbies will run in the lead up to the conference.

Among other guests are Qwaq Forums’s CEO Greg Nuyens, and Nicole Yankelovich, Sun Microsystems principal investigator of collaborative environments, who was responsible for Sun's own virtual world, Project Wonderland.

“This will be the first large scale virtual worlds business event [to be] actually hosted in a virtual world,” Clever Zebra’s Wilson said.

“The other conferences want to talk about virtual worlds, but won’t actually eat the dog food as well,” he said with a laugh.

Having just past the first birthday of his Second Life avatar, 57 Miles, Wilson has great expectations of the future of virtual worlds, and big plans for Clever Zebra.

“I discovered Second Life at the start of 2007,” he recalled. “Within six weeks, I’d quit my social media startup to work with Virtual Worlds.”

“I think this, or something like it will eventually become a huge part of everybody’s online daily lives, and I want to be involved in it, and influencing it, right from the start.”

“We [Clever Zebra] will be working on vBusiness Expo, and vBusiness Legal [conference] the following month, as events are what fuel SL,” he said. “We also want to build a pretty vast repository of high quality corporate and educational architecture and tools, and will keep working on the library.”

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iTnews: IT recruiter signs international hire agreement

As a journalist at iTnews:

A newly-awarded Federal Government labour agreement will allow three recruitment companies to hire and land skilled workers from overseas.

In accordance with a newly implemented overhaul of the 457 Visa system, the agreement ensures that members of the recruitment industry meet the country’s targets for foreign skilled hires.

IT recruiter 3W, which was awarded the agreement this week, expects the 457 Visa reforms to facilitate the recruitment of skilled professionals from overseas to help meet the demands of Australia’s skills-short market.

“In the past, the Recruitment and On Hire Industries have displayed an inability to regulate themselves in relation to the hiring of overseas workers,” said Bruce Mills, joint CEO of 3W.

“Collectively they have made significant returns from this source of workers; however their reinvestment into building the local IT skills base has been questionable.”

“The new On Hire rules bring long-needed regulation and will support appropriate investment and industry development,” he said.

457 regulations encourage companies to adhere to the Australian immigration system by fast-tracking skilled temporary visa applications that are lodged by recognised employers.

While the agreement means that more Australian jobs will be granted to international workers, 3W Director and joint CEO Andrew McCarroll believes that it may alleviate the larger threat of offshoring.

“This overseas pipeline of skills will also allow many of our clients to commit to new IT projects, confident that they can resource these projects from the local workforce, supported by key skills sourced from offshore,” he said.

“We are already aware of a number of situations where this will be a defining factor in the decision not to send whole projects offshore to locations such as India,” he said.

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iTnews: Virtual law and you

As a journalist at iTnews:

Businesses in recent years have increasingly turned to virtual worlds for opportunities in advertising, recruiting, and online expansion. As real-world money and people migrate online, new questions are being raised about the legal implications of virtual behaviour.

In a forthcoming book titled “Virtual Law”, cyberlaw scholar Greg Lastowka explores the future of virtual crime and how real-world legal cases involving property rights, criminal activities, contractual duties, copyright and trademark laws, have emerged from disputes in virtual worlds such as Second Life.

An associate professor at the Rutgers-Camden law school, Lastowka spoke with iTnews about his book, and what virtual law might mean for businesses.

What are the business potentials of virtual worlds?

Today, most virtual worlds are marketed as entertainment services. However, there seems to be an increased interest lately in virtual worlds that are oriented toward less structured and more social experiences.

In environments like Second Life, users have much more control over the world and there are no game goals that guide participant behavior. Virtual worlds like Second Life are not marketed as games, but as platforms where individuals and companies might pursue their own goals and businesses.

For instance, in Second Life, people sell personal services, engage in advertising, and seek profits from transactions in virtual property, all using a virtual currency that can be exchanged for real currency. So it seems the business opportunities in virtual worlds vary depending on whether you have a game world or a more social world.

Game worlds are primarily businesses for their creators and are usually built around a monthly subscription model and the sale of "expansion" software and additional services. Often, game worlds prohibit third parties from creating businesses on their platforms.

More social worlds might pursue subscription models as well, but they might also sell players virtual property, like the furniture that is sold to players in the world of Habbo Hotel. They also pursue advertising revenues.

The Second Life model of an open virtual world is perhaps the most interesting. Second Life sees itself as a platform on which third parties will make investments and try to build their own businesses. So the business model of the provider is tied to the business models of the participants.

What are the legal risks of virtual worlds for businesses?

Most subscribers to game worlds have rather small-scale monetary investments in them, so it seems doubtful that players would resort to litigation. But some do, and providers of game worlds generally design end-user license agreements and terms of service as a first line of defense.

Players must click through the agreements before installing the software and the game companies claim this is a binding contract. So far, game companies have been very successful in defending these licenses and contracts in litigation.

Providers of more open worlds, like Second Life, face potentially more significant legal risks because they attract greater and more concentrated investments. When a company or an individual has invested several thousand or more dollars in doing business in a virtual world, they will be more likely to bring a court challenge if they feel the game company has jeopardized their investments.

Additionally, because the virtual world acts as a host, it may find itself in the middle of disputes between competing investors. For instance, one business operating in the virtual world might claim that another business in the world infringed its trademarks or copyrights. In that case, they may want the platform owner to assist them in stopping the infringer. This might put the platform owner in a tricky position.

Finally, those who invest in more open virtual worlds may be taking substantial legal risks. As I said, the contract terms drafted by virtual world providers are generally very favorable to their interests. They make it difficult for third-party investors to make claims if troubles occur.

Obviously, if you are making business investments on a platform that you do not control and where the owner offers no real assurances, this can be risky.

Have there been any past legal cases relating to virtual worlds?

Yes, there are some cases now on the books, although the number is small, given the novelty of virtual worlds. I know of fewer than twenty lawsuits, though I imagine the number may be somewhat larger than that given that many suits have not been reported.

The cases I know of have dealt with various disputes: intellectual property issues, computer abuse issues, and enforcement of contracts, for instance. There was even one case that dealt with the issue of whether player volunteers should be understood as game company employees.

What happened in the most significant of these cases?

I do not know which case is really the most significant, but the recent case of Bragg v. Linden Research has attracted a good deal of attention. The Bragg case involved a participant in Second Life who happened to also be a lawyer. He sued Linden Research, the owners of Second Life.

Bragg alleged he had lost several thousand dollars worth of virtual property investments when the platform owner cancelled his account. He alleged that the company had essentially stolen or destroyed his personal property and he deserved compensation.

The owners of Second Life countered that their contract provisions controlled the dispute. According to the terms of the contract, the dispute needed to be submitted to arbitration in California.

Also, the contract drafted by the company seemed to say, essentially, that Bragg had no real interest in the virtual property. Linden also claimed that Bragg had exploited their software in order to purchase part of the property he alleged was confiscated. So they brought a counterclaim alleging that Bragg violated computer hacking law.

The suit was settled after Second Life brought a motion asking that the arbitration provision be enforced. The court denied that motion. The court stated that the term would not be enforced because it was "unconscionable". In other words, the court found the provision procedurally and substantively unfair to Bragg.

It is interesting that the court also seemed interested in reaching the deeper issues presented by the case. In its opinion on the arbitration provision, it said: "Ultimately at issue in this case are the novel questions of what rights and obligations grow out of the relationship between the owner and creator of a virtual world and its resident-customers."

What are some topics your book will cover - can you give us a preview of your favourite of these topics?

The book is going to tackle several issues. There will be some general material on the basic structure and types of virtual worlds, the history of the technology, and how virtual worlds work as businesses. There will be some more theoretical material on how law adapts to new technology and particularly internet technologies. I will also have discussions of virtual world litigation and how it has raised interesting questions in various legal fields, such as criminal law and intellectual property law.

One of my favorite topics is the question of how legal rules relate to rules of games. Strangely enough, the law seems to recognize and give some deference to private and traditional game rules. There is even a United States Supreme Court that, in deciding the interpretation of a federal statute, makes a serious distinction between the essential and non-essential rules of golf.

I find that real interesting. In the case of game-like virtual worlds, understanding the idea of a "jurisdiction of play" might be one key to making legal sense of these environments.

What has drawn your interest to the legal implications of virtual worlds?

One of my first experiences with a computer was when I was in elementary school in the late 1970's. As part of an enrichment program, I was allowed to play the text-game "Adventure" on an old mainframe computer that was programmed with punch cards. That game was the inspiration for a host of early virtual worlds.

I started programming similar games on an Apple II computer before I was a teenager. So you might say I have had a long fascination with virtual worlds.

As a law student, I was generally interested in questions about the interface of law and technology. In law school, I wrote a student publication on the new legal issues arising around search engines.

When I realized that there were also interesting issues being raised by online games and virtual worlds, I was eager to write about that as well. Luckily, I met Professor Dan Hunter (who is teaching now at the University of Melbourne), and we co-authored one of the first law review articles on law and virtual worlds.

In the past few years, I have explored about a dozen virtual worlds. Still, I think I am still something of a "noob". While really enjoy exploring the environments and learning about them, I am not a dedicated participant in any of these worlds at present. My family simply would not let me spend twenty hours a week in a virtual world – like many participants do.

What do you expect of the law and virtual worlds in the near future?

I expect the law in this area will get more interesting. Virtual worlds are interesting because they combine together aspects of creative fiction, games and real communities. Many of the rules of these environments are going to be flexible as both a matter of law and technology.

As bandwidth and participation both increase, we are going to see more interesting legal issues being raised. If we see the development of more virtual worlds that operate as open platforms for third-party investments, I imagine litigation activity will increase as well.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, I think few people realized how important e-commerce and internet law would turn out to be. I am not certain that Amazon.com will be replaced by a virtual bookstore (two dimensional space is sometimes easier to navigate), but we can be fairly confident that, over the next few years, we will see more courts and legislatures looking more carefully at disputes taking place in virtual worlds.

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iTnews: Mobile Internet: the wireless convergence

As a journalist at iTnews:

The national telecommunications industry has experienced some strife in recent days. Weighed down by regulatory issues to do with a once-government-owned incumbent copper network, international comparisons of Australian broadband pricing and availability have proved to be embarrassing at best.

But while Telstra and the recently formed Group of Nine tiptoe through a tangle of broadband regulations and negotiations with the ACCC, other telecommunications service providers are treading into a brave new world of wireless communications.

Since the launch of Hutchison's third-generation mobile network in April 2003, mobile telecommunications service providers have expanded their offerings from traditional voice calling to include video calls, multimedia downloads and Internet access.

According to 2007 survey results from the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association's (AIMIA) Australia Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index, 30 percent of survey respondents reported using 3G technology, reflecting an 11 percent growth in 3G penetration from previous years' results.

While voice calls and SMS were found to be the most frequently used services, survey participants also reported having used their phones for MMS, content downloads, and video calling. Seven percent of survey respondents used their mobile phones for sending and receiving e-mail.

Speaking at a wireless discussion organised by the Australian Telecommunications Users Group (ATUG) last week, AIMIA's Head of Mobile Claudia Sagripanti said that while 11 percent of Australians are reportedly accessing the Internet via their mobile phones, public uptake of the technology remains deterred by cost.

"Data charges are a big issue for consumers because they [consumers] don't know exactly how much they are being charged," she said.

But cost is not likely to be an issue for long, as service providers race to deliver networks that are faster, cheaper, and more accessible than ever before.

When Telstra launched its $1 billion NextG network in October 2006, the network claimed to reach 98.8 per cent of the Australian population, delivering voice and broadband services at speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps. The network has since been upgraded to deliver speeds of up to 14.4 Mbps, and is expected to reach speeds of up to 40 Mbps by next year.

Hutchison too upgraded its 3G mobile network in February last year to incorporate High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technology, increasing the network's maximum download speed to 3.6 Mbps.

Mobile telecommunications are expected to heat up as Optus and Vodafone prepare to launch their own 3G networks by the end of the year.

Optus is working with Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks to build a national network that operates in the 900 megahertz (MHz) and 2100MHz frequency spectrum.

Meanwhile, Vodafone has earmarked Christmas 2008 for the launch of its $500 million 3G mobile broadband network that is set to cover
95 percent of the Australian population.

At first glance, mobile Internet speeds pale in comparison to ADSL2+ wired broadband offerings that operate at speeds of around 20 Mbps.

When compared with average Australian broadband speeds of 1 Mbps as reported by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) last year, however, HSDPA may present a reasonable alternative to wired services.

But with network rivalry comes cost reductions for businesses and consumers.

"Wireless services are now competing with the incumbent copper wire line service," said Grant Stepa, Australia and New Zealand Managing Director of Airspan Networks, while expounding the merits of WiMAX technologies at last week's ATUG wireless discussion.

"Hence price points mirror – and in many cases are lower than – those of traditional telephone services."

"This is a threat to the incumbent's fixed and mobile pricing regime, and the end users are at an advantage," he said.

World Wide WiMax

WiMax is a wireless telecommunications technology that is based on the IEEE 802.16 standard. Governed by the WiMax Forum, which was formed in June 2001 to promote the development of a WiMax standard, the technology has applications in high-speed data and telecommunications, as well as presenting a wireless alternative for last mile broadband access.

Already, the technology has received great attention in developing nations and countries such as China, Russia and Tanzania.

Last October, networking giant Cisco announced two initiatives aimed at bringing high-speed broadband access to consumers and businesses in emerging countries.

Called "Country Transformation" and "Digital Inclusion", the projects are expected to make use of the company's wireless portfolio of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi mesh and mobile WiMax products to drive the provision of wireless broadband in developing areas.

Canadian broadband and wireless product and services vendor Redline Communications has launched a Tanzanian WiMax network in a partnership with African service provider, Hotspot Business Solutions. The network debuted in November 2007 to service the Tanzania's commercial centre in Dar es Salaam, and is expected to be expanded to cover six major cities nationwide.

In Taiwan, officials announced in October last year that the island will spend $664 million in a WiMax development program in efforts to garner the lion's share of WiMax manufacturing.

Also in motion are plans for an island-wide Mobile WiMax network, called the M(mobile)-Taiwan program.

As voice and data telecommunications services converge, Airspan's Stepa expects WiMax to be a convenient, portable alternative to the local loop copper network in Australia.

"What we're seeing in Australia is a proliferation in the deployment of fixed and nomadic wireless broadband services," he said.

"Once a wireless service is in place, it is an easy next step to deliver a converged suite of services that include traditional Internet and VoIP."

The penetration of WiMax in Australia is championed by Internet Service Providers such as Internode and Unwired.

In January this year, Internode launched what it claimed to be the first region-wide wireless broadband service in Australia to use WiMax. The service delivers speeds of up to 6 Mbps in specific areas near Adelaide, and is targeted towards people unable to get ADSL because they live too far from a telephone exchange.

Unwired's Sydney-based wireless network was launched in 2004. In August 2005, the company received a $37 million investment from Intel for the promotion of mobile WiMax in Australia. Unwired currently is working with Intel, Samsung, Motorola, Navini and Alcatel to bring Mobile WiMax technology to Australia.

HSPA's battle

Meanwhile, Hutchison and Telstra, along with mobile manufacturers Ericsson and LG, have snubbed WiMax in favour of HSPA and other 3G technologies.

According to Klaas Raaijmakers, who is the Head of Broadband of Hutchison's 3 Mobile, the telecommunications company now is servicing a larger, more diverse market than ever before.

"We're moving away from the traditional tech-savvy users; we're seeing more female customers, for example," Raaijmakers said, citing greater affordability, convenience and portability between home, work, places of study, and overseas as customer-reported benefits.

Meanwhile, Airspan's Stepa said that 3G and WiMax may not necessarily be competing directly for market share.

"We're not fighting 3G", he said, noting that vendors and network carriers tend to "choose their horses" when it comes down to delivering a service in any particular area.

Motorola and Samsung are two examples of vendors that manufacture mobile phones for both WiMax and 3G networks.

Rob Inshaw, Nortel Network's Australia and New Zealand General Manager of Carrier Solutions, agrees.

"3G and WiMax service different markets," he said, forecasting that WiMax is likely to appeal to more tech-savvy users who value mobile access to the Internet more than traditional telephony services.

Inshaw cited increased and improved communication applications, a hyperconnected environment in which people are using multiple devices to connect to other people and other machines, as well as the availability of what he called "true broadband" as driving forces behind the development of more advanced wireless technologies.

Currently available HSDPA networks support speeds of up to 14.4 Mbps. Future incarnations of the technology, dubbed HSPA Evolved, are expected to deliver speeds of 42 Mbps, and will involve antenna array technologies.

Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks are next on the 3G roadmap. LTE networks are expected to achieve downlink speeds of up to 200 Mbps and uplink speeds of up to 100 Mbps.

"What is true broadband? I think it's being able to do what you want, when you want," Inshaw said, estimating that Web services should ideally take a maximum of four seconds to load before the average user tends to lose interest.

Forecasting spectrum capacity problems to hinder the speeds deliverable by 3G technologies, Inshaw said that future developments in the 3G space may bring the services available to 3G networks closer to those offered by WiMax.

"3G will continue to evolve over the next four years, and will eventually offer similar services to WiMax," he said.

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iTnews: Angels give wings to Australian start-ups

As a journalist at iTnews:

As a nation that is home to a well-developed education system and world-class research institutions, Australia is often lauded as fertile grounds for innovation. But the outlook for young entrepreneurs may not be so rosy.


The technology industry is rife with anecdotal evidence that although ideas may be born down under, start-ups often move to larger markets such as the U.S. or Asia to grow.

"Australia does have good innovation networks, markets for development, access to capital and funding," said Rob Fitzpatrick, who is the Director of Commercialisation at national research organisation, NICTA.

"The biggest challenge for start-up companies," he said, "is in Angel funding, which is just not well organised in Australia."

Angel funding is one of the few avenues for start-up companies in their very initial stages to obtain seed funding to further grow their business. In return, Angel investors receive a percentage share in the start-up company.

It is a high risk, high return investment, and one that is not particularly common in the Australian culture.

In the U.S., however, it's a different story. According to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire, Angels are the largest source of seed and capital funding in the U.S. As of 2007, there are more than 250 angel groups in the U.S., which is approximately equal to the total number of angel groups in all other countries combined.

Thankfully, globalisation is allowing U.S. Angels and other similar groups to spread their wings over start-ups in other countries too. TechStars is one U.S.-based group that extends its start-up funding and incubation program to companies across the globe.

The program offers up to US$15,000 in seed founding to ten start-up companies each year, in exchange for five per cent equity. Over the course of three months, selected start-ups will be given access to legal advice, office space, and experienced mentors.

Start-ups in the program will also be required to spend most of the three months at TechStars's offices in Boulder, Colorado – a potentially expensive relocation that might offset the seed money altogether.

But it's not just about the money, according to Techstars founder and Angel investor David Cohen.

"If you're thinking about the money, you're not thinking about the right thing," he said.

"The funding we provide is simply enough to keep you alive while you are here - that's all a motivated first time entrepreneur should need."

"The value of the mentorship and connections we provide should be the true motivator," he said.

Of the ten start-ups enrolled in TechStars's 2007 program, eight companies are now venture - or angel - backed and profitable, Cohen pointed out, with some companies even receiving credible acquisition offers.

Credibility is traditionally a big issue for start-up companies, which Cohen said could be mitigated by the support of established backers like TechStars.

"If you're two people, a dog, and an idea, it's hard to convince customers or partners that you're capable of delivering something interesting and worthwhile," he said.

"The other major problems are lack of market (startups doing things nobody wants) and team problems (founders who can't stick together)," he said. "I would specifically exclude access to funding - it's very easy if you have a great team, execute well, and are building stuff people want."

Admittedly, the atmosphere for start-ups in the U.S. could be the strongest in the world, with early stage capital widely available for good ideas and teams.

While saying that he tends to focus mostly on his local area, Cohen speculated that there seems to be a reasonable amount of start-up activity in Western Europe and Australia also.

"We get lots of interest in TechStars from Australia," he said. "Last year we did have one founder from Sweden, but otherwise they have all been US-based."

"Last summer was our first [year in operation]. There were ten companies consisting of 26 founders. One of those founders was from Sweden. Ultimately, they incorporated in the USA, [after] intense debate."

According to Sydney-based venture capital company OneVentures, however, the Australian market does offer some advantages over the larger, more established U.S. market.

"U.S. companies do get advantages of immediate access to a much larger market but often this is highly competitive and market entry is costly," said Michelle Deaker, the company's founder and CEO.

"It is traditionally difficult to raise capital for emerging high growth technology companies in this [Australian technology] market, but I would like to say that entrepreneurs shouldn't give up hope."

Besides assessing capital and resource management, Deaker highlighted company structure, market entry, team building and strategy as issues that plague start-ups. Formerly the co-founder and executive director of her own start-up, E Com Industries, Deaker said that Angel investors can sometimes help in providing professional networks as well as capital to help entrepreneurs.

In addition to leveraging any opportunities in the local market, Deaker also recommends looking offshore for opportunities to grow a start-up business.

"The AU market is small," she said. "Stepping offshore can be daunting but maybe necessary to make the business into an entity that an investor would be interested in and allow the company to capture a bigger market or seek capital from offshore investors."

"The government supports offshore activity with Export Market Development Grants for example. We [OneVentures] do our best to help smooth the way for this process."

NICTA's Fitzpatrick agrees that the market for technology companies goes beyond any international boundaries. He cited a NICTA project in the mobile telecommunications application area that currently is in negotiations with developers in China.

"Most of our start-ups are now born global," he said.

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iTnews: Nortel and TAFE sign training agreement

As a journalist at iTnews:

In a bid to address the high demand for local technical skills in the Australian ICT and telecommunications industries, telecommunications vendor Nortel has announced a new training agreement with TAFE New South Wales.

The agreement places Nortel's Technology Solutions Academy courseware as part of the 2008 curriculum in nine TAFE NSW Institutes across the state. Nortel’s courseware includes three books - a lab guide, a student guide and a resource guide – that all focus on the generic VOIP technology.

On completion of an accredited course at TAFE, students have the option to sit an exam for Nortel Professional certification. The course consists of between 80 to 100 hours of theoretical work and 20 hours of lab work, and can be either taught as a stand alone, or incorporated into a current curriculum.

"Our main challenge at TAFE is to meet the skills requirement of industry, and at this particular time in Australia we're faced with incredible demand for technology and telecommunications skills," said Susan Hartigan, relieving general manager of TAFE NSW’s Business division.

"By adding Nortel technology training solutions to our teaching and learning resources, TAFE NSW will not only become more attractive to prospective students, but will also provide our current students with a competitive advantage in the workforce."

TAFE NSW is also partnered with a number of different companies across various industries to provide its students with a mix of theoretical and industry knowledge, with a focus on gaining experience with current technologies, Hartigan said.

"This agreement with TAFE NSW is another major milestone for us,” said Mark Stevens, managing director of Nortel Australia and New Zealand, “especially at a time where graduates are faced with managing the unprecedented growth in corporate networks and the onset of new communication and transmission technologies like unified communications, WiMAX and Metro Ethernet networks."

Although Nortel’s Technology Solutions Academy program is available to all colleges and universities that offer IT courses, TAFE was the first Australian institute to sign up for the program, according to Frances Lambert, Training Program Manager of Nortel’s Knowledge Services Asia.

The certification gained from completing the TAFE course will not be any different from the certification gained from completing an independent Nortel course, Lambert said.

The first course to be offered through the new agreement will centre on VoIP technologies and will be available from March 15. Other upcoming courses include BCM 50 on March 25, Basic Data Networking on April 15, and Real Time Networking on May 1.

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iTnews: AI news reader brings academia to the real world

As a freelance journalist at Haymarket Media:

When he found himself staring at a screenful of irrelevant headlines in search of the few news stories of interest, Artificial Intelligence enthusiast Alex North decided that it was time to delegate the task to a machine.

Thus was born tiinker, which was launched this week by North's start-up company, Deep Grey Labs, as an intelligent news aggregator that learns the interests of individual users and selects stories tailored to each individual.

"The amount of information available on the internet is growing so quickly it is impossible to keep up without a way to weed out the chaff, so to speak," said Oleg Sushkov, co-founder of Deep Grey Labs.

"tiinker came about because we saw a need for a good news filter due to the huge number of news articles and blogs being published every day - many more than any person could reasonable keep up with."

Targeted at the 'average' Internet user who reads news online, tiinker joins an array of online news aggregation tools such as Slashdot, Digg, and Google News.

But while these existing sites either employ a group of users or editors to choose the news stories that are centrally displayed, tiinker has been designed to use machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to tailor news feeds to individual users' preferences.

"tiinker is aimed at people who want something to just work for them automatically, not people who want absolute control," North said.

"People who might usually visit the websites of a few newspapers and blogs can come to tiinker instead and have stories picked for them, and from a far wider range of sources than they could cover otherwise."

For the past year, tiinker has been a full-time venture for Sushkov and North, who are both recent graduates of the school of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales.

The intelligent news aggregator was one of three ideas that the pair thought up, with the aim of applying their academic knowledge in a real world product.

"There are a number of machine learning and AI [Artificial Intelligence] techniques in the backend, tuned and combined in a way we believe to be unique," North said. "Our studies in AI at uni were a good preparation for developing this - we knew what to try first and how to make it work well."

"Deep Grey Labs was started with a mission of applying research to making products and services for people," he said. "Too much research is locked away in academia, where no-one is interested in building a product out of it."

But while a bulk of Deep Grey Labs' development has been framed by Sushkov's and North's studies at the University of New South Wales, the start-up has received little financial and technical support from the university.

"Apart from casual tutoring work and the support of friends and colleagues, we've had little real support from the UNSW; IP [Intellectual property] rules make it very difficult for us to collaborate," North said.

So what's next for the boys at Deep Grey Labs?

"Hopefully making some money so we can eat," North said.

"If tiinker and Deep Grey Labs are successful we'd like to expand a little and take on another problem sometime."

"We're aiming to have a profitable business so that we can go on and apply AI and machine learning research to yet more services to help people."

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