Bigpondnews.com reported this morning that Telstra, its sister company, would likely plead guilty to allegations by the ACCC that is was misleading and deceptive in telling wholesale customers that several telephone exchanges were full when they weren’t.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009 » 08:33am

Telstra is likely to admit to allegations brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that could lead to a $300 million fine.

Telstra is accused of misleading and deceptive conduct by telling its wholesale customers that seven telephone exchanges were full when they were not.

Analysts say Telstra’s competitors are likely to use the admission to argue that it should be separated up to prevent such conduct.

The irony in all of this is that Bigpond has an interest in Telstra as it is apart of the one company.

A Telstra spokesperson indicated to Tech Wired that it had either accidentally syndicated the article or based it off of a report in the Australian Financial Review that Telstra would admit it was guilty of wrongdoing.

The article has since been removed.

Large organisations urged to donate

Not-for-profit organisation WorkVentures has celebrated the delivery of its 20,000th low-cost computer.

WorkVentures, an organisation that specialises in refurbishing redundant workplace PCs, celebrated the delivery of its 20,000th PC to Sydney resident Mrs Jennifer Arnold last week.

The organisation provides refurbished PCs to disadvantaged people from $250 a pop and made it clear it can only continue to do so if PCs continue to be donated.

“Our challenge with a program like this is really balancing supply and demand,” said Arsenio Alegre, CEO of WorkVentures.

“Supply, at times, comes in drips and drops,” he said. “You’ll have one big supply in one period and then suddenly there isn’t as much.”

“Our role in managing it to make sure that there is an even flow so that we can work with organisations like Centrelink who have been very vital in promoting this program as well as housing New South Wales.”

Westpac have donated more than 14,000 PCs to WorkVentures since it kick-started the program in 2002.

It plans to deliver even more now that it has merged with other banks.

“We’ve just recommitted our support into the future…and now that we’re part of a larger group since we merged with St George and Bank SA in December, we’re looking at ways we can increase our support,” said Samantha Brown, Head of Community Engagement at the Westpac Group.

Brown added that the role of WorkVentures had helped Westpac find a solution for the disposal of old computers.

“One of the things we love most about this program is that it…solves a business problem for us,” she said. “We dispose of our PCs safely and securely and it ensures nothing goes to landfill,” she said.

“It also provides a really practical way for us to…make a positive contribution to employment and training of young people as well as looking at how we can improve the accessibility of technology to people.”

Other organisations recognised included Toll Priority and Microsoft.

Toll Priority delivers the computers at cost which Alegre said “enables them (purchasers) to make a significant saving in their acquisition of computers.”

Microsoft has also helped out by giving WorkVentures its software for free.

“The computers, when we refurbish them, they don’t (initially) work, there isn’t any software,” Alegre said.

“This is where Microsoft comes in with their On My Way program,” he said. “They provide the software for these computers for free.”

Alegre added that without “the collaboration amongst the various sectors” their project would not be possible.

Also at the celebration was Federal Minister for Human Services, Chris Bowen, who said that WorkVentures had helped close the gap on “social inclusion”.

“We all think of poverty and we think of money,” he said. “Poverty is about much more than that, It’s about being restricted from full involvement in our wonderful society,” he said.

“To be fully engaged in our society you need to be computer literate and have access to a computer.”

Tech Wired Australia episode 109.

Hosts: Ben Grubb and Brent Pudney.

Topics discussed:

McAfee sends out customer details in email

Optus shocked over ACCC court action

Libraries object to internet filtering

Conroy vows to tackle illegal file sharing

Specialised windows 7 version for Europe with no browser

MELBOURNE-BASED Ruslan Kogan, the founder of the Australian-based consumer electronics company Kogan Technologies, is branching out to the US market and says his buying power will increase by over 1000 per cent in doing so.

At a press briefing last week Mr Kogan showed off some of his latest products and announced that he was ready to open a warehouse in the US State of Kentucky.

There’s some good news for his Australian customers too, he says.

Analysis done by Kogan Technologies in regards to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) indicates that any search term in Australia like LCD TV or Blu-ray, for example, the US are searching 25 per cent more.

“As soon as we go to the UK our US and Aussie customers will benefit,” he said.

One issue Kogan will face with getting into the US market is getting his SEO and branding right.

As Kogan doesn’t own the domain name Kogan.com it’s likely he’s going to have to purchase it from its owner Tucows Inc, an internet services company.

However, Tucows owned the domain name ten years prior to Kogan and have refused to hand it over even though Kogan says they are breaching his trademark.

“Our lawyers are onto it,” he said. “It was secured ten years before we came into the marketplace and we’ve had some interesting conversations with them recently because they are actually passing off on the Kogan trademark,” he added. “If you go to Kogan.com they’re advertising LCD TVs, GPS’s and Digital photo frames.”

Kogan remains confident in getting the domain name.

“We’re trying, but we’ll get there,” he said

The young entrepreneur has been undercutting the Australian market for quite some time now and says he can do it by taking out the middleman.

“The fact that containers (are) direct to here, straight to customers, none of the overheads the other companies have (and) an efficient business model, a paperless office, things like that,” are all things Mr Kogan says are the reasons he can keep his prices lower than other big name brands.

Kogan will do anything in his power to keep prices at bare minimum, including the removal of paper manuals from products.

“Sony will spend $2 printing each one of their manuals,” he said. “You’re probably not even going to read it.”

“We’ll put it online.”

When asked why he chose Kentucky he said it was mathematically the right choice.

“There’s been a lot of maths done and that’s the central point…because it’s cheaper to distribute to the rest of America.”

When commenting on his launch in America he said it was much more easier than launching in Australia because of “stupid” Australian Government standards.

“Launching into America is even easier than Australia because our government was stupid enough to select a digital TV standard that none of the world uses,” he added.

“Our TVs are more expensive to manufacture already because the manufacturing process can only be used for Australia.”

The launch of the US warehouse will also see the launch of his pro-range of LCD TVs.

“The ones with (a) built-in DVD player, USB drive and SD card,” Kogan said.

Kogan re-affirmed that once he secures the US market it’ll have a great impact on Australian prices.

“When our buying power grows to that magnitude, our Aussie customers are going to benefit because that is going to drop our prices.”

• BarCamp Sydney this Saturday June 27th (tomorrow).
• Listen to an interview from the last Sydney BarCamp.
• Register.
• Directions.

Tomorrow is Saturday June 27th and it’s time for another Sydney BarCamp to be held at the Australian Technology Park in Redfern, Sydney.

So what’s a BarCamp?

“BarCamp is an intense community event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees,” It’s community members say.

“Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to participate.”

Usual discussions at the event:

The usual discussions at the event include:

• Comparing startups in San Fransisco to Australia and whether startups should accept funding;
• Coding and hacking;
• The latest internet technology; and
• The most randomness thing you won’t even think will be talked about.

Almost 200 people have registered for the latest Sydney BarCamp, with previous ones seeing more than 100 people show up; sponsors even put in some money for food and drink.

“There’s something for everyone,” said un-organiser Jean-Jacques Halans at the last one.

“The things we talk about here touch on everyone’s life; everyone uses the internet”

Image Credit: Jean-Jacques Halans

From the media release:

Windows 7 Upgrade Option
Customers who purchase a new Windows Home Premium, Business or Ultimate PC from today (26 June 2009) will be able to upgrade to Windows 7 for little or no cost when it launches on 22 October this year. This means that consumers can purchase and use a new Windows PC now, while being assured they are investing in the latest technology.

The Windows 7 Upgrade Option will run until 31 January 2010, and people can redeem the offer until the end of February 2010.

In addition, from now until the end of the financial year (30 June 2009) eligible Australian families can take advantage of the Education Tax Refund (ETR) on offer from the Australian Federal Government. The ETR allows eligible parents of school-age children to claim up to 50 percent back on expenses related to their kids’ education, including Windows PCs.

This incentive, combined with Microsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Option, makes for a very attractive opportunity for eligible Australian families who have a window of opportunity from 26-30 June 2009 to take advantage of both offers by buying a Windows PC with a guaranteed upgrade to Windows 7 and getting up to 50% of the cost back from the Federal Government through the ETR.

Consumers can check if the Windows PC they are purchasing is part of the Windows 7 Upgrade Option by:
1.       Checking in-store stickers on the PC they are looking to purchase
2.       Visiting the Microsoft website www.windows.com/upgradeoffer
3.       Asking in-store if the PC they’re buying is eligible for the Windows 7 Upgrade

For more information on Microsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Option go to:
http://www.windows.com/upgradeoffer

For more information on the Australian Government’s Education Tax Refund go to:
http://www.educationtaxrefund.gov.au/home/

Checkout http://www.staysmartonline.gov.au/ for more info or watch the video below.

IN HOPE of predicting and informing the severeness and scale of flu virus’ similar to the Swine Flu, Google announced yesterday an Australian version of Google Flu Trends in conjunction with health authorities’ data.

The Australian and New Zealand release follows the launch of the service Google have already deployed in Mexico and the United States.

Heath Kelly, the head of the Epidemiology Unit at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL) told Tech Wired that he believed the data revealed that the current Australian flu season appeared similar to previous years when compared with Google’s results.

“It appears as though the Swine Flu is no greater than any other flu season from previous years,” he said.

“It may be able to put out the swine flu hype.”

Mr Kelly also said that multiple sources of information gathered would help provide better understanding of the flu virus, and that Google Flu Trends provided one aspect of value that could identify trends in influenza activity.

“Having additional sources of data will be even more important than usual in the current influenza season, with the circulation of novel influenza A (H1N1), commonly known as swine flu, already established in Victoria,” he said.

“It’s providing interesting data because our surveillance says there is a high rise in the flu.”

With the help of the VIDRL, Google Australia hopes to inform the general public and authorities of any threats in an outbreak of the influenza virus.

The search giant found, by analysing certain anonymous search terms, that queries related to the flu tended to be very common during the flu season each year, as you’d expect.

“Upon building this model, we found that our historical Google search data correlated well with the VIDRL’s historical data in terms of flu activity in past years,” Google said in a statement.

“As the season unfolds this year, we’ll be watching to see how well our flu model performs compared with these existing surveillance systems.”

Google’s Flu Trend tracker has already shown how powerful its aggregated results can be when it predicted the Swine Flu outbreak in Mexico; but it was all too late.

It was only after inquiries were made to Google by public health officials until it lead them to create an experimental graph that showed an increase in flu-related search terms just before the Swine Flu spread.

By using its Geolocation knowledge, Google can then pinpoint locations in terms of which state those search queries were made from and display them on a map. This can then allow authorities to pinpoint locations for quarantine of future outbreaks.

The VIDRL’s Heath Kelly said he would be watching Google’s Flu Trend tracker to “…keep a keen eye on”.

The Australian version of the website is available at:

http://www.google.org/flutrends/intl/en_au/

IN A WORLD where you could stay a fan boy of a brand such as Apple for life, could you live without your preferred laptop, phone and entertainment system for a week?

Crazy man Anthony Agius, aka @Decryption and co-founder of MacTalk.com.au, is embarking on a 5-day week without Apple to see if he can cope.

“For a full working week, beginning as of 12:01am Monday the 1st of June, I will abandon my Apple products, casting them to the fortress that is my mother’s house,” he said

Can he do it?

Anthony will be giving up the following items:

• 15″ MacBook Pro (Early 2008) – 2.4Ghz CPU, 4GB RAM, 200GB 7200RPM HDD
• 16GB iPhone 3G
• AirPort Express
• AppleTV 40GB

To replace these items he will use:

• HP Pavilion dv6-1143tx – 2.4Ghz CPU, 4GB RAM, 500GB 5400RPM HDD
• RIM Blackberry Bold
• Linksys WRT610N
• TiVo

If he doesn’t co crazy, Anthony hopes to document his day by day journey of equivalent products @ http://www.mactalk.com.au/tag/noapple/

If an apple a day keeps the doctor away then I think Anthony is going to be at the doctor every day this week.

IN A FIGHT to compete with the global search engine market Microsoft announced their new replacement for Windows Live Search this week.

Launching locally next Wednesday, and previewed by nineMSN on Friday, partnered companies Microsoft and nineMSN (PBL media) unveiled their new search engine Bing.com.au.

The product, of which the companies say has been two years in the making, is consider a brand change by many and more of an upgrade to what Windows Live Search currently offers.

Launching in beta to begin with it will see the launch of a bunch of new features that won’t be available locally straight away.

Hot Spots, Categorised Search and Vertical Search Categories covering local travel, health and shopping are some of the features we won’t be seeing on Wednesday.

However, Instant answers, Best match, Hover preview, Rich image search and Video thumbnail preview are some of the new innovative features we will see on launch.

When asked how long it would take for nineMSN to get its localisation team into gear, they said they’d announce something in the next month, suggesting one had not been formed.

Once such a team is initiated on its task to make the search engine more localised, the team would then take “six to 12 to 18 months” to roll out the localised features.

The two localised features that stood out from the rest, Bing cash back and a flight information tool, are features Google will no doubt look at implementing.

Driving Traffic

The companies hope to use mainstream television programs on the nine network to drive traffic to their online portal, such as using end credits and “editorial cues” that will suggest to viewers to head on over to Bing with a certain search term.

According to nineMSN director of MSN products, Alex Parsons, the Australian search engine market is worth around $800 million, and is set to become “the new rivers of gold” online. Whether it be 1 percentage point at a time, the two companies hope to grab a piece of that $800 million dollar pie.

NineMSN said that Google currently owns 90 percent of the global market, but locally nineMSN has a strong hold of it, with about 70 percent of Australian active internet users touching the nineMSN portal at least once a month.

A missed opportunity?

Initial impressions of the search engine indicate nineMSN are after more page views than anything.

By adding features that will keep users within their portal such as Bing cash back, a price comparison tool, and a flight information tool that can predict and show previous pricing of flights to certain destinations, there are quite a good number of features that could lead for a switch from Google if they don’t adopt some of the features Bing has.

One advantage nineMSN has over any other search engine is the fact they’re the default home page for Windows Internet Explorer users ‘out of the box’.

Embracing new features like a background picture that changes daily is something I think a lot of tech-savvy users are not going to be interested in. The brilliance behind Google is its ability for it to be simple, fast and relevant to use. On the other hand you have users like my mother and grandmother who don’t care about Google and love the fact nineMSN has news inbuilt into its portal as well as search.

The name

Bing… to bing…do you bing? These are some of the questions the marketing team would’ve been asked to try out on the public. A name is important. If the product is good then it really should not matter… or should it? Can you imagine nine network presenters telling you to Bing a certain product or telling us to “head on over to bing” to search for the latest video of karl stefanovic drunk? I just can’t imagine it. Only time will tell.

Tech Wired writer Ben Grubb was flown to Sydney for the launch of Bing.com.au