LagrangePoint - Brad Howarth

Reminder: ADG/AIMIA Up Close & Digital event on tomorrow night

Just a quick reminder that the Australian Directors Guild and AIMIA NSW event Up Close & Digital is taking place at the Australian Technology Park tomorrow (Tuesday) evening, kicking off at 6.15pm. I'm hosting the evening, where you'll hear from a panel of speakers including SBS' head of online Marshall Heald, Showtime's director of legal affairs Anthony Mrsnik, ninemsn video product manager Christopher Smyth and Mordy Koots producer Jim Shomos. There'll be a Q&A and networking drinks afterwards. If you ever wanted to know what it might take to get your video content out to the wider world, you'll want to come along. More details can be found by clicking here.

ZDNet Bootstrappr: The key Topik is always money

Many great start-ups are begun with no real consideration of how they will make money. Twitter is a great example, because several years in the question of how it will ever turn a profit still hasn't been settled.

In some cases the founders aren't looking to ever get rich, and if the burn rate is low enough a company can continue on for many years. In other cases, the company gains enough attention quickly enough that a big competitor decides to buy it before it becomes a significant threat.

It's unclear which future awaits Australian information discovery tool Topikality, which has created a service to scour the internet for information that you are interested in. It was the subject of my Bootstrappr blog at ZDNet this week, and you can read about it by clicking here.

CRN - NetStar lines up for Vblock kit

The alliance between Cisco, VMware and EMC is starting to move beyond being a marketing alliance, with the announcement of Vblocks, a new set of infrastructure products and services designed to bring cloud computing into data centres. Well, it's been big news at least for the for local network services company NetStar Australia, and you can read about it in this article for CRN by clicking here.

SmartCompany - How to make your business innovative

The recent visit by Cisco CTO Guido Jouret to Australia provided a revealing insight into the way that his company manages its innovation cycle. Cisco is renowned for its rapacious appetite for start-ups - and more recently for some very big ones. But it is also a sizeable investor in its own crop of start-ups, acting as an incubator in its own right. It's criteria are pretty stuff tho - Cisco looks for each start-up to generate around US$1 billion in revenue five years after releasing its first products. It's the sort of ambition that many Australian start-ups would do well to emulate ...

You can read more about Cisco's strategy in this article at SmartCompany, as well as hearing from local companies includeTechnology One, Dyesol and GeekIT.

SmartCompany - How to make your business innovative

The recent visit by Cisco CTO Guido Jouret to Australia provided a revealing insight into the way that his company manages its innovation cycle. Cisco is renowned for its rapacious appetite for start-ups - and more recently for some very big ones. But it is also a sizeable investor in its own crop of start-ups, acting as an incubator in its own right. It's criteria are pretty stuff tho - Cisco looks for each start-up to generate around US$1 billion in revenue five years after releasing its first products. It's the sort of ambition that many Australian start-ups would do well to emulate ...

You can read more about Cisco's strategy in this article at SmartCompany, as well as hearing from local companies includeTechnology One, Dyesol and GeekIT.

The buzz about augmented reality

In a few short weeks augmented reality has sprung from being an interesting online marketing novelty to the latest source of buzz in the technology industry. At this week's Mobile Monday event in Sydney Rob Manson from MOB Labs took guests on a historical journey through the development of AR technology going back into the middle of the last century, before launching into a presentation on a new smart-phone based implementation for Sydney's Sculpture by the Sea exhibition.

Get ready for a cavalcade of new AR implementations, both on PCs and on smart phones. The recent Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles presented a showcase of AR applications using the Flash-based Flare toolkit, and new AR apps for the iPhone seem to be popping up every day.

I recently wrote about AR for ZDNet, and you can see that story by clicking here. But I thought it might be worth posting links to some of the other interesting AR implementations that have popped up of late. You'll need a PC with a working camera - and then enjoy!

QUT student campaign

Boffswana's Sean Kingston virtual karaoke campaign

Boffswana Releas3D Next Gen (video)

Boffswana Wrigley 5 Gum sound mixer (there are plenty more AR demos at the Boffswana site) 

The Hyperfactory's Fanta AR campaign (story)

The Seer app created by IBM and Ogilvy One for Wimbledon (story, and links to more AR)

Insqribe AR (demo)

Bofffswana's Living Sasquatch

Transparent wall (demo)

United States Post Service priority mail box picker

The ArtvertiserWikitude (smart phone)

Layar (smart phone)

Augmented reality showcase at Mobile Monday Sydney this evening

Following on from my article for ZDNet on augmented reality (AR) last week (which you can ready by clicking here) Mobile Monday Sydney has prepared a showcase of local AR talent, including Insqribe, MOB and TigerSpike's application for My247. For more details, click here.

ADG and AIMIA present Up Close and Digital: Broadcasters & Digital Content - Nov 10

On November 10 I'll be hosting a presentation and discussion night at the Australian Technology Park for the Australian Directors Guild and AIMIA NSW, as part of the Up Close and Digital series. These events are designed to encourage collaboration between Australia’s best directing and producing talent, traditionally working in film and television and the  ‘new media’ creatives of the digital industry. The panel will commence at 6.30pm and run for 45 minutes, followed by a 45 minute Q&A session. If you are interested in coming along, you can register by clicking here. There will also be drinks afterwards provided by AC3.

ZDNet Bootstrappr: When keeping it real isn't enough - Augumented reality in Australia

Augmented reality technology has been with us for more than a decade, but has failed so far to catch on as a mainstream part of our interaction with the web. But technical advances are now seeing AR become more common both in marketing campaigns, and in connection with location-based services. You can check out some of the latest local activities of companies such as MOB, Insqribe and My247 in this story for ZDNet.

XMediaLab Sydney calls for projects

The forthcoming XMediaLab Sydney event being held at the Opera House later this month is now looking for 16 digital media projects to take part in its two-day creative ideas and business matching Lab. The theme for XML this year is 'Global Media Cultures', and it will explore how the world’s emerging markets (China, India, the Middle East, North and South Asia) and innovations in digital media are creating new opportunities, new partnership possibilities and new business models.

The mentor line-up includes mentors includes Deepak Chopra's son, Gotham Chopra, who is an advisor to Al Gore and co-founder of entertainment company Liquid Comics, as well as Animal Logic founder Zareh Nalbandian, Bollywood’s biggest content owner Neeraj Roy, and Susan Bonds, the world’s pioneer of Alternate Reality Games and President of 42 Entertainment.

To nominate your project or register to attend the ProDay conference visit http://www.xmedialab.com/