Blog Entries for Tech Head

Take the stress out of flying high

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:00:00 +0100

I’m terrified of flying.

It’s a strange fear, as I’ve taken to the skies scores of times in my short life. I know the ins and outs of checking in, boarding; the noises you should expect when the plane is heading up to the runway – and I have my answers ready to questions asked every time I sit in the exit row.< [...]

The subscription software revolution

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 08 May 2013 14:00:00 +0100

Ah, the cloud. The debate rages on.

If you’re a fan of Adobe products, or even just a user, you may have noted a significant announcement this week. The company said its Creative Suite, which contains products such as Photoshop and Illustrator, will no longer be sold as stand-alone software.

Instead, the [...]

Bring your own device disasters

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Tue, 07 May 2013 01:27:25 +0100

Look around you.

You’re probably in an office, with a few different people. Maybe a manager or two. Perhaps you’re in a large open-plan office, so you see dozens of employees surrounding you.

Now look at their phones. They’re probably on the table next to them, just sitting idly. Maybe they even have a ta [...]

Don’t be lazy: Mobile always comes first

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 01 May 2013 14:00:00 +0100

A couple of weeks ago I attended a few sessions at an ecommerce conference in Melbourne.

They were mostly informative and useful – especially a panel on how Country Road transformed its entire business into an omni-channel entity.

One of the sessions caught my interest more than others.

In a sessi [...]

The low-value threshold debate is dead

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 01:02:37 +0100

The low-value threshold argument is like a bad stink. It just won’t go away.

Years after the retail industry started debating whether the $1000 threshold for imports should be reduced, the argument still rages. Dropping the threshold, the argument goes, will save jobs.

Never mind the biggest proponents [...]

Tech lessons from the supermarkets

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0100

“Just switch to Google Apps!” Right, easier said than done.

Australian businesses have probably heard a similar plea over the last few years, possibly even from myself. “Switch to cloud services and you’ll save a ton of money,” we say.

While that may be true, it’s certainly not an easy task. For busines [...]

Fast broadband is coming – and you aren’t ready

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 07:52:55 +0100

The Coalition’s broadband proposal is very much an admission it could never dismantle the National Broadband Network.

Despite the threats and promises to tear apart the network once it won power, the new proposal is simply Diet NBN. And now, whether you liked it or not, Australia is getting broadband. It’ll co [...]

Kogan’s prank a lesson – don’t ignore offline

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0100

April Fools’ Day – it always gets someone.

I must admit, I was caught myself a few times when I woke and started reading my Twitter feed. Suffice to say, I turned it off.

But The Australian wasn’t so lucky, republishing a story based on a press release from tech entrepreneur and notoriously cheeky marketing presence Ruslan Kogan. The release said he would be opening a retail store in Chadstone.

Anyone who’s paid five seconds’ worth of attention to Kogan knows he’s not [...]

Less is always certainly more

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 06:43:59 +0100

It’s enough to make you just a little jealous. This week, 17-year-old British entrepreneur Nick D'Aloisio sold his app, Summly, to Yahoo! for a reported $30 million.

That’s $30 million. At 17 years old.

Of course, he’s not going to see all that money given the number of investors in the company, but it’s a hefty sum for a teenager who hasn’t reached the legal drinking age.

If you haven’t checked out the app, then you really should. It’s a nifty take on the way we acq [...]

Think of Google Reader’s death as a wake-up call

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0100

Nearly a week ago, Google announced something which made me, and hundreds of thousands of other users, freak out: The search giant would be killing its RSS aggregator Google Reader.

To give you any indication of just how big a deal this is, both the death of Google Reader and the election of Pope Francis were announced about the same time. Google Reader was the highest trending topic on Twitter.

Google cited a low and declining number of users as the reason for the axing of th [...]

The importance of keeping a good secret

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0100

If you pay any sort of attention to, you know, the world, you’d probably know the Catholic Church has chosen a new Pope this morning.

It’s an intriguing time, not only because this process happens so rarely but due to the sheer amount of secrecy which has surrounded the whole affair.

Sure, we know how the Pope is chosen – through a vote and some smoke – but we don’t really know the details. In fact, so much of the process is kept under guard the Church makes a point of [...]

Paint your social networks with pictures

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0100

Facebook is updating itself. Again.

Tomorrow, Mark Zuckerberg will address press at the company’s San Francisco headquarters to debut some changes to the company’s News Feed – one of the most important parts of the site.

Facebook makes plenty of other changes to the sharing ecosystem, but it rarely touches the News Feed and with good reason. It’s the main way users can stay updated with their friends’ activities, and it’s rightly never messed with.

Early reports indi [...]

Simplicity is the key to Google’s retail strategy

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0100

If you’ve been following news concerning Google over the past couple of weeks, you might have seen the rumours the company will be launching physical stores soon.

It seems kind of weird at first, right?

Google doesn’t really make physical products. You think of it is as a search company, a business that offers things like Gmail and business apps. It’s a huge business, but it’s mostly online.

That seems to be changing, though. Google is shifting gears and wants to be [...]

Your password probably sucks

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0100

I’m going to write two phrases. Try and remember both of them by the end of this article. One is completely random, and the other less so.

X93YtuF7g\\+3
Sprinkle pretzel rainbow

Got them? Good. Let’s keep going.

Over the past few days there have been a number of stories about hacking: companies being hacked, software vulnerabilities, and so on. The first major story occurred when Burger King’s social media team found someone had hacked into its Twitter account, [...]

Australia will never have a Silicon Valley

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0100

I recently interviewed 99designs co-founder Mark Harbottle and he revealed something genuinely shocking: just when the company received a $35 million investment from Accel Partners, the business had not received one call from an Australian venture capitalist.

That’s crazy.

Now, it’s not unusual for businesses to receive calls from VC firms. The bigger teams have analysts and junior staffers gathering information on all the hot new companies and start-ups. It only makes sense, [...]

Set your customers free

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0100

Australia has been a hotbed of debate over the nature of digital pirates. It makes sense, since we’re a country of pirates. Multiple surveys show Australians are per capita downloading more illegal copies of television shows and movies than anywhere else in the world.

Telstra is taking an axe to this, announcing this week the company would be throttling P2P traffic on its networks. This means anyone detected to be using this type of technology, which is used by torrents, will have t [...]

Inspiring trust online: Easier said than done

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:00:00 +0100

It seems fitting the creator of the world wide web should warn us about its destructive tendencies. After all, he would know, right?

Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the WWW – the protocol by which we view the entire internet – spoke to an Australian audience yesterday at the launch for the CSIRO’s Digital Productivity and Services program.

It’s a $40 million program designed to help boost the country’s digital economy. But the best comments of the day came fr [...]

The acquisition Myer needs to make yesterday

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:00:00 +0100

You may have seen this week fashion retailer The Iconic managed to win another round of funding, worth $25 million – we spoke to founder Finn Haensel about the deal. That’s a significant get for an Australian business, especially a fashion retailer, considering the business has already received other funding rounds.

Yet it seems it’s only the latest story of an Australian online retailer winning big. Companies like Shoes of Prey are receiving a significant amount of attention, and e [...]

Welcome to the Facebook age

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:00:00 +0100

If you haven’t checked out Facebook’s latest product announcement, then you really should.

It’s a simple proposition, really: Take all the data that Facebook has on its network, then allow users to search through it comprehensively. It’s a great idea and solves a lot of problems users have.

If I want to search for a restaurant near my home, I could use Google. Or, I could just search through Facebook and likely find not only the same businesses, but notes telling me where m [...]

The problem-solvers and the rest of us

pstafford@smartcompany.com.au — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:00:00 +0100

Given it’s bushfire season, and our fair country is being ravaged by flames in at least two different states, it seems an appropriate topic to discuss.

The latest heatwave is making things worse for people caught in fires, and especially those who are dedicating their time to getting the blazes under control. They deserve an enormous amount of respect – but equally interesting is the technology being used to help them in their efforts.

About 18 months ago, I spoke to the he [...]