Startmate wants to help technically-focused founders get started, with a small amount of capital, advice and a mission to Silicon Valley.

Startmate is a pool of funds and a roster of mentors who’ve all built hands-on successful web startups that began in Australia. We’ve been where you’re going and most of us are still on the journey, so we think we bring some useful perspective and experience to the challenges of getting an Australian tech startup up-and-running.

Our first program will fund five startups and begin in January, 2011 in Sydney. We’ll spend three months helping you launch your company and win your first customers.

Startmate is a bit different because:

My wife feels like cancer has taken her body hostage

She’s got two more weekly chemotherapy treatments to go, but that doesn’t make it any easier when she feels as crappy as she does today. She says it was easier, sort of, when she was sicker, because back then she was able to sleep through some of the day. Now she’s not sick enough to sleep that much, she’s left with no energy to do the things that might take her mind off how bad she feels.

She says for her, it’s been like a hostage crisis. The cancer has taken her body hostage, and her body is no longer something she can take for granted, something that is just part of who she is. (Read more…)

Don't ask customers for their opinion without paying attention to their answers.

It’s a great idea to show consumers considering your brand what other consumers think about it. But it’s really important to listen closely and pay attention to that stream and participate in the discussion.

This angry and ignored Malvern Star customer hasn’t just been ignored in store and on the phone, he’s also being ignored when he takes his complaint to the brand’s website.

This page could look so much better with a conciliatory comment from Malvern Star customer service, with an offer to resolve the problem on the phone or via email. It might even become a net positive result for the brand if handled well.

Surgeon-General’s Warning: I hadn’t taken my brevity medication before the interview so you may find I rattle on for quite some time.

You know what’s great about this podcast episode? It’s only episode four of a brand-new podcast. It was recorded on a portable digital recorder, in my car, and the total post-production probably took Owen only an hour, from importing, editing and through to hosting on Soundcloud.

Despite the market-dominating power of iTunes and News Corporation and Facebook, more unique new content is being published every year by the people who would have been considered “the audience” twenty years ago.

Check out Owen’s E-Marketing Insights podcast, it’s early days yet but shows great promise, and that’s the best kind of content there is.

• Product management is mostly about translation
• Managing product development teams is easier if you can rephrase business requirements as interesting, challenging puzzles
• Good product managers are top-level guys, but with a detailed subfloor

Hmmm… some of that may make more sense if you view the presentation below. Let me know what you think…

They’re showing how little they understand when they say they want to add a follow button to the order confirmation page in their shopping cart. Look, knock yourself out, it can’t hurt, but i would expect a 0.0001% clickthru rate on that. It’s not like many of us start following companies we buy from at most once a year, especially when it’s just a retailer of products made by other companies.

Offering useful advice, however, in a friendly, conversational tone — that might well get you some followers. Can you find a way to advise customers on using the product or service they’re considering buying? Can you offer advice on the decisions made before purchase or even on the industry as a whole?

Besides, in 12mths time average Australian Twitter users will probably have 500+ people they follow on average, so for brands, being followed by a customer won’t mean that customer’s seen your message. Lifestream marketing messages are ephemeral things. There’s no way for the marketer to determine an equivalent to impressions/month. It’s like radio or TV — broadcast. Without panel research or clickthru data to show it’s been acted on, we have no idea whether it’s been seen.

Think of Facebook, Twitter and anything that displays a stream of updates as a form of broadcast media, but an unusually fractured kind. On TV, every audience member’s viewing habits are different; on lifestream media, it’s not just their viewing habits but the programming that is different, according to the number and nature of things they follow.

People ask me how I keep up to date with all the tweets I get from the 1,000+ people and brands I follow. I tell them I don’t — but that’s not the point — by following 1,000+ people I ensure that there’s always something interesting to read whenever I have time for Twitter.

(This post was my first from an iPad. Another device further dividing attention into smaller chunks. I’ll tidy it up later, promise!)

“I think most consumers use a search engine the same way they brush their teeth — with 90% of their attention on something else, with impatience, boredom and frustration with the whole category of search. They begin with unreasonable expectations about the quality of the result and with minimal patience for any request to contribute to the input.

As search product designers we find it very hard to really live inside that mindset since our work requires that we have 90% of our attention on the product we’re designing. It’s really a kind of method acting to get inside the head of a search user.”

That’s me, talking to Kat Mackintosh in a two-part interview on Nestoria’s company blog. Read on for more bold assertions about how personalisation, recommendation and geolocation might change the world. Again.

Apple asks you to print out and sign a 70 page contract, in duplicate, for each geographic market iTunes services (US/Canada/Mexico, Europe, Japan, Australia/NZ, then you have to FedEx that stack of paper to Apple in Cupertino, where they will manually review each signature page, countersign each contract, and FedEx back your copy. They then scan and store their copy in some vast archive.

Apple feels this stack of paperwork and penmanship is necessary before you enter into the business of selling digital content over their digital distribution network.

Sadly Apple has yet to adopt digital signature technology

So take it from me: this ad from Melbourne public transport agency Metlink, artist Justin Heazlewood and  agency Currie Communications is very good if you get all the local in-jokes and still very good even if you don’t. It works on many levels — as a spoof of his own previously-released music video, as a piss-take at pretentious iPhone owners, as a critique of idle young arts students, and really, at the idea that iPhone software for finding a train timetable could be anything world-changing. Much courage from Metlink and the agency and much creativity from Heazlewood!

What do you do when you know you should be attending a weekly industry meetup but just can’t seem to get there, week after week?

As the crow flies, the nearest industry meetup to my home is North Shore Coffee Morning (#nscm) held each Thursday morning in Mosman, on Sydney’s leafy lower north shore.

It’s a great meetup: small, interesting, diverse group of people, good coffee, and great networking. According to Google Maps it ought to take me about 14mins to drive there, but I find Google Maps is rarely right about trip durations in Sydney, and typically it takes me between 20-30mins to get there, find a park and lob on in. Since I can only afford to spend an hour at #nscm, I’m taking two hours out of my highly productive morning and spending as much time on the road as I am networking with the regulars.

What to do? Why not create my own ‘lower North Shore coffee morning’ instead? I have a spacious living area with a lovely outlook, a great Italian coffee machine, good coffee beans, and enough cups and seats for about twelve people. I enjoy playing barista. Ticketing can be done quickly and easily in the cloud for next to nothing these days (see Amiando, Eventbrite and Eventarc for starters) and I can use a cheap ticket to (a) cover the cost of coffee, milk and muffins; and (b) give people some motivation to actually attend rather than (as I do) say they’ll try to make it. Any money left-over after consumables will be donated to Oxfam via my Trailwalker Sydney 2010 team. Maybe I can have the industry networking event come straight to me.

So tomorrow, in my home, Lower North Shore Coffee Morning will have its debut. If it goes well and people enjoy themselves, it might make a monthly reappearance. Tickets for this first iteration are limited to 12 and as I write this, there are only three tickets remaining.

If you’d like to come, it’s not too late — just use the order form below.

If you come, please bring passion, enthusiasm, good humour and curiosity. Also, please bring either a book, an artwork or some music to lend/give to someone else. Use of the WiFi, fireplace, comfy chairs, garden, huggy old dog and rope swing are included in the ticket price. The Twitter hashtag is #lnscm.

Our house is 10mins walk from St Leonards station, 3mins walk from the 273 and 274 bus route stops at Naremburn shops, and all-day street parking is available in Dargan St and surrounding streets.

Hope to see you there!

- alan (@bigyahu)

Online Event Registration with amiando

Andrew Günsberg’s post, “Reading Then Thinking Speaking Then Listening” is a great example of the latter. He discloses his conflict of interest up front and encourages his readers to think twice, that it might not be all black-and-white and good-versus-evil. He encourages them to read a book about the background to the occupation of Gaza and talks about how the Israeli population isn’t always in favour of the way its government and its military behaves.

It’s all good, reasonable stuff, but it misses a crucial question: what was the only action committed by the Israeli forces during this incident for which there’s no justification? Firing shock grenades and tasers at the occupants of a foreign-registered vessel while in international waters? Use of high-velocity paintball rounds and live ammunition at close quarters against non-combatants? Taking foreign nationals from outside Israel’s borders and detaining them indefinitely or deporting without access to legal representation or appeal?

No. The only indefensible act of the state of Israel in this matter was the effective and almost total censorship of all communication arising from the incident so that the only significant record of events will be that provided by Israeli military video crews.

Flotilla activists interviewed by a journalist immediately prior to the attack (AP Photo/IHH)

According to eyewitness accounts, journalists were the first target of the Israeli action, including blocking cellphone and satellite communications from well prior to the incident to well after it had concluded, to prevent video, audio and text evidence being broadcast from the scene. Two Australian ABC reporters were immediately detained, with one, photographer Kate Geraghty reportedly tasered as she tried to upload images via satellite.

These Australian journalists aren’t Hamas apologists, anti-Israeli propagandists or easily-duped greenhorn reporters. They are both seasoned, professionally unbiased reporters working for an international broadcaster with an unblemished and rigidly enforced code of non-bias and independence. Israeli forces had been informed they were on the vessel, they identified themselves to the commandos storming the vessel, but they were nevertheless assaulted and had their equipment not just confiscated but methodically destroyed, even to the point of tearing up the notebook journalist Paul McGeough had been writing his reports into once satellite and cellphone communication had been blocked.

So far, Israel’s government has refused widespread calls for an inquiry into the incident from many UN nations including Australia, so maybe an inquiry will never happen. But if there ever is an inquiry by the Israeli military or anyone else, the only significant body of evidence will be eyewitness accounts and the video footage recorded by the Israeli military’s own video teams. You can easily discount the evidence of the flotilla’s eyewitnesses as being the rantings of terrorist sympathisers, as Israeli military inquiries habitually do. Which leaves the only version of events those recorded by the Israeli military itself.

Sorry, but I’ve got a degree in journalism and media studies, and I know how easy it is to influence opinion by selective editing, or just by pointing the camera one way and not another. The only hope we ever had of knowing the truth of the flotilla incident would be to compare and contrast the Israeli military’s own footage with that supplied by the independent professional media accompanying the flotilla. Now that there’s only one source of video footage, there’s no hope of knowing what really happened.

I’m as prepared as the next realist to remain open to the idea that Israeli forces may have done their best to minimise casualties and separate combatants from non-combatants on-board the flotilla vessels. That injuries and deaths on board happened accidentally and without intent in the heat of the moment. That some of the flotilla’s occupants were aggressors and initiated some of the violence that occurred. Perhaps even that Israel would have delivered the cargo of aid intact and in a timely fashion as they’d offered to do if the flotilla diverted to the Israeli port of Ashdod.

But — and it’s a huge but — there’s only one motivation I know of for blocking independent news coverage of the incident, and that is to hide the truth of what really occurred from the world community, from the international Jewish community and the citizens of Israel.

If you feel like being realist about this incident, by all means reserve judgement until ‘we know more about what happened’ but ask yourself who’s made sure you’ll never really know for sure, and what their motivation could possibly be.

Paul McGeough on the rise of Hamas, while remaining independent, unbiased and unassaulted. (ABC Fora)

See, what will make the iPad successful is not the list of technologies included in the specification list. When the iPhone was launched, sceptics pooh-poohed the lack of hardware (especially the low-res camera and lack of a front-facing camera). The iPhone went on to sell millions. It was because of how the included technology was implemented, not which technologies were included.

First, Apple provided a high-quality app development toolset that allowed third-party developers to write so many different apps, not just operating on the OS but addressing the hardware in the phone in a consistent and reliable manner. (See “The best camera to have is the one with apps on it” http://doingwords.com/?p=1995)

Next, Apple provided a great retail experience for consumers and developers in iTunes Store, leveraging the iPod’s vast community of music, TV and movie customers to rapidly create a new market for iPhone apps. There’s never been a simpler, more seamless click-to-buy experience than finding and buying a new app from your iPhone. Apple knows the best way to sell iPhones is to market apps not iPhones — when was the last time you saw an ad for the iPhone itself?

I’m predicting the iPad will be an even greater success as an entertainment device than the iPhone because it’s not a compromise between a phone and an entertainment device.

It has a brighter, clearer screen with a far wider viewing angle because it doesn’t need to fit in your pocket, so it allows two people to watch a show together, read a book together, compete or collaborate on a game together. It has a 10 hour battery life because it doesn’t need to keep a 3G radio powered up and connected to a tower.

Unlike a MacBook Air, the iPad has no ‘up’ orientation — we can pass it around a table without needing to re-orient the screen or input area, making collaboration faster and more natural.

Unlike a MacBook, it’s light enough to make no significant impact on your shoulder bag, it doesn’t need a power brick to get through the day, it’s awake instantly and it’s significantly faster at all compute-intensive operations than your iPhone.

Multi-tasking? Please, the only common purpose I can think of for multi-tasking on a portable device would be polling an imap mail server while you’re reading an ebook or surfing the web, and Apple provides for that with push and pull email services. If you get an email while you’re reading, the iPad (and iPhone) will pop up a badge. Click on the badge and the iPad (and iPhone) will hold your front app in its current state and open the email for you. Other apps (such as eBay or Facebook) can access the same push notification services to push you a badge notification that you’ve been outbid on an auction item or that you’ve been tagged in a Facebook photo.

You don’t need multi-tasking to do this and leaving it out makes the device simpler to manage and preserves battery life. Try explaining to Nanna why her battery’s only lasting three hours because she’s minimised instead of quit her mail app. No thanks.

The iPad converts your next Economy plane seat to a Premium Economy seat. It makes a bus or train journey a potentially collaborative, social experience. It makes a visit to Nanna’s a chance to go through the latest family photos without having to teach Nanna a single thing about using a computer. It allows a classroom to get straight into educational play without first installing patches, removing viruses and debugging the network and printer connection.

And that’s the single most important benefit of an iPad: it puts real-world use first. It hides computing from the user. You don’t need to learn how to use it.

The thought for today: when branding, be true to who you are. Customers have a seventh sense for these things.

That said, this bright new world comes at a cost. I’m now paying $60 a month for 60GB of data on a DSL2 connection and about $40 a month in iPhone data charges, of which a significant chunk is accessing cloud resources. But that’s just the beginning — I’m now paying about $2,000 a year in SAAS software subscriptions!

Back in the bad old pre-SAAS days, I paid about $600 for a copy of Microsoft Office. Granted, it was buggy as hell, I couldn’t access my files from another machine, and it didn’t do any of the collaborative, CRM or media functions that some of my cloud apps will do. And I should also note that a big chunk of my business is made possible by Google Apps, which I get for free even though I am apparently the only person in the world who doesn’t click on sponsored listings in search results.

Still, thank goodness the cost of cloud storage and processing is coming down so fast, because the cost of subscribing to the software is more significant than I realised. I’m not complaining, mind, I’m just thinking twice about ordering that shiny new iPad+3G because I think I just spent the money on the cloud.

Very little trickery used here, just the iPhone in my pocket with the apps Darkroom (for minimising blurring in low light) and Tiltshiftgen (for a touch of blur, saturation and brightness).

Check my Flickr feed and you’ll see a significant percentage of my photography in the past year has been low-resolution because I’ve been taking more shots on my iPhone than my DSLR.

It’s certainly not the quality of the lens or the performance of the shutter and sensor that make the iPhone my camera of choice; it’s the programmable power of the apps I’ve installed, the fact that I can post photos direct to Flickr, Facebook and Twitter. Most importantly it’s the way the iPhone is always in my pocket, on the arm of my chair, in the glovebox of my car, and since it became my alarm clock, on the side of my bed.

If I were a futurist I’d predict in the next five years, the photography industry will be dominated by devices that have lenses and sensors, but also have SIM cards, 3G and WIFI radios, address books, calendars and browsers. Quality of lens and sensor will still matter, but quality of OS and apps on your ‘camera’ will increasingly matter more than the lens and sensor.

It may be tough for a phone maker to make good cameras, but it’s well-nigh impossible for a camera maker to make good phones. Unless you’re a premium professional brand like Leica or Hasselblad, better merge or seek to be acquired by a Samsung or Nokia. Yes, Nikon and Canon, I’m looking at you.

The future of photography is not about what happens in the process of capturing the image, it’s about whether there was a camera present at all, and about what happens to the image after it’s been taken.

But there are still two limits to self-expression:

• Ideas; and
• Time.

You need at  least one idea and you need lots (loads, masses, heaps) of time.

In fact, I can define a new genre of art that is defined primarily by the time taken to produce it. Vimeo is full of examples where the idea itself wasn’t so inventive but the artist has distinguished themselves and found an audience by devoting an enormous amount of time to the expression of the idea.

Here’s an example where the idea’s not a big deal (anybody who’s bounced a ball for a while has heard rhythms in the bounce) but the art is in the expression and the time taken to express it in video. It’s very well done.

It’s been said by people much smarter than me that the most precious commodity of our age is time. I’d humbly suggest that without an idea, time will achieve nothing, yet without time, an idea will remain unrealised.

Gravité from Renaud Hallée on Vimeo.

In one way or another I’ve been working on selling products online since ecommerce was born in the first internet boom of the last decade. At first it was incredibly hard, but one-by-one the barriers to entry have been crumbling and costs have been coming down.

In Australia, only two barriers remain: the relatively high cost of maintaining a merchant account with an Australian bank, and the relatively high cost of delivery, whether by Australia Post or courier, domestic or international.

Tinypay.me in action

Tinypay.me does an end-run around merchant account fees by processing your transactions through PayPal, which means you’re subject to PayPal fees per transaction, which are relatively high per-transaction (2.4% + $0.30 AUD per transaction on transactions up to $5,000) but at least you’re only paying when you sell something. A bank’s merchant account comes with monthly fees, transaction fees and a gateway or EFTPOS rental fee.

In addition to the PayPal fee, Tinypay.me charges 5% of the total sale price. That’s much higher than I’d like to see, but you’re paying for the convenience of having the world’s simplest ecommerce setup, making it no harder than publishing a photo to Facebook or publishing a blog post.

On Tinypay.me, someone as non-technical as your mum, armed with a few product images and a PayPal account, could have a product page up and ready to sell stuff in five minutes. It has easy sharing for social media and adding a product from your Tinypay.me to a web page or blog is as easy as copying and pasting a single line of HTML.

It even allows you to put a percentage of each sale towards a charity.

Only thing lacking I really care about is support for shipping tables (and I’d like to see the Tinypay.me fee more like 2-3%). Otherwise I think it rocks.

Now, please buy a Milkooler!

I’ve seen iCal do some stupid things before but this about takes the cake. What’s worse is I don’t know what I did to deserve this or what I need to do to get my hourly reminders back. For Pete’s sake.

Hey, Apple? When you’ve finished buffing your floor-to-ceiling mirrors to a flawless shine so you can bathe in the glory of the iPad, do you think you could possibly spare a couple of developers to knock some of the rough edges off iCal’s unholy seething mass?