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David Richards

Correction

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The head of the NBN Mike Quigley and CFO Jean-Pascal Beaufret have said via their in-house lawyers that no allegations of corruption or bribery were ever made against them.

We recently published two articles following allegations made by Opposition Spokesperson Malcolm Turnbull about NBN Co executives Mike Quigley and Jean-Pascal Beaufret and a corruption investigation into Alcatel-Lucent whilst they were senior executives of the French Company. Those articles implied that Mr Quigley and Mr Beaufret were responsible for the corrupt practices of Alcatel-Lucent and should have disclosed the investigation of the company to the government when considered for their roles at NBN Co.

Smarthouse acknowledges that those statements were unfair to Mr Quigley and Mr Beaufret.

Smarthouse accepts that no allegations of corruption or bribery were ever made against Mr Quigley and Mr Beaufret and they were not involved in any way in the incidents.  We also acknowledge that Mr Quigley and Mr Beaufret were never questioned by investigating authorities. As such, there was no proper basis for suggesting the investigation into Alcatel-Lucent should have been disclosed by Mr Quigley or Mr Beaufret.

Smarthouse unreservedly apologises to Mr Quigley and Mr Beaufret for the harm caused to them by the articles.

Get Online Or Perish Long Term

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Are you trading online? If not you are missing out on a massive opportunity. In the UK more than a quarter of the population now buy online with online sales in 2006 nudging close to high street sales. To get online is not hard.

For a business to prosper online, there are a few intrinsic stages you need to be aware of. To give you the best advice SmartHouse News has teamed up with NetRegistry a leading ISP who has operated in the Australian market for a long time. During the next few weeks in association with Net Registry we will bring you a series of tips and hints that will help you understand what is involved in getting your business online. Then you can make a decision as to where you want to go.

This article focuses on domain names, website creation, and the web hosting phases of establishing an online enterprise. With numerous service providers to choose from, it is important to choose one that can provide all necessary services to facilitate the online growth of your business.
Many businesses might have asked themselves at one time or another, “Why does our business need a website?” The simple answer is that businesses have a direct channel to prospective customers through the internet, facilitating an area to promote past work. This portfolio could be in the form of images as well as testimonials from clients, boosting your credibility and business success.
In the future, online businesses with eCommerce facilities will be able to offer online purchasing of products or information, considerably increasing their market presence whilst making it easier for customers.
In January 2006, over 68.4% of Australians were recorded as using the internet on a regular basis, (Nielson//NetRatings). This is the second highest per capita usage in the world, with the United States topping the list at 68.7%. Internet usage has doubled since 2000, when only 33.8% of the population were online. These days, Australians of all ages are frequently using the internet as a resource, and according to the Australian Bureau of Statistic’s most recent polls, over 72% of 40-54-year-olds and 32% of 55-year-olds and above are actively online. These statistics exemplify the potential success of Australian businesses online.

Registering a Domain Name

A domain name is the unique name by which a website is identified on the internet; it’s a memorable address, and should be both recognisable and relative to your company name or brand. To secure a specific domain name, a business must register it with a domain registrar, where it is as simple as entering your desired name and domain extension (for example .com) on a registrar’s homepage, and ordering the available domain or a domain that is as close to the domain you want, if it’s not available.
When purchasing a domain name, it’s important to ensure the company is an accredited registrar. Prices range considerably, so it pays to shop around. For example, some IT companies can charge up to $140 for a 2-year domain name versus Sydney-based NetRegistry who charges only $44.95 for exactly the same service.

The Value of a Domain Name

If the internet is part of your business strategy, a small fee ensures the protection of your business’s domain name. It’s recommended that businesses register a domain name to secure it for the future, even if you’re not ready to build a website. Reputable service providers will automatically provide business owners with a placeholder site, advising visitors it is “under construction.” In doing this, businesses can effectively prevent competitors from obtaining/using their name, benefiting from the business foundations already established. Therefore, domain name registration provides a simple and affordable method of protecting a brand or product name.

Making a Website for Your Business

To position your business online and establish a strong web presence, creating a useful tool for current and future clients, you need a valuable and working website. The 2 main alternatives for web design include:
· The first option for business owners is to outsource the entire creation to an experienced web designer. This is a cost effective alternative, which will fulfil a company’s individual requirements. For businesses requiring a more polished aesthetic, web designers are indeed recommended. Businesses can either find a web designer on their own accord or use experienced designers offered by their service provider. NetRegistry offers a Custom Website service for only $499, with a ten-day turn around and a dedicated account manager to handle any concerns.
· In contrast, some hosting companies, like NetRegistry, offer customers Instant Website software – a free website builder. This software is the latest technology in website creation, and with a step-by-step process, customers with no web design skills can create a functional and aesthetically pleasing website for their venue. With Instant Website software, businesses can choose from over 500 templates which offer a seamless integration of business graphics and text to create a professional and customised website. NetRegistry customers have had considerable success with this free website builder – Bert Newton’s Family Feud website as just one example at www.bertsfamilyfeud.com.au .

Web Page Hosting

After producing a web page, the next step is hosting. This is essential to make the site available for public browsing. It’s important to confirm that your web-hosting provider will maintain the server on which your site is hosted, as well as manage the technology linking it to the internet. Service providers should also offer a range of packages that tailor web-hosting specifications (data storage and data transfer) to customers’ requirements. These quantities should be easily upgradeable to facilitate business growth. All packages should include full technical support, which is vital for any technically-challenged businesses.

Choosing the Right Service Provider

When choosing your service provider, ensure they offer the services provided below. It’s also important to choose an accredited domain name registrar who has a solid reputation for consistently delivering value, reliability, service, and technical support to their customers.
· Speed: Remember you are selecting a business partner as well as a service provider. Ensure they’re dedicated to maximising the effectiveness and online performance of your site or multiple sites. It’s important your website maintains a consistent speed/performance, particularly during peak activity periods. This is when many potential customers are trying to access your virtual business.
· Location: Does it matter where your web hosting company is located? Absolutely. Bandwidth in USA is much cheaper than in Australia, which enables US hosting companies to offer hosting services at highly competitive prices. However, with servers on the other side of the world there can be speed issues (known as latency) that can result in your website being delivered slower. Technical support can often be problematic when a US office is closed during Australian business hours. Even though a hosting company presents itself as being Australian, if their data centre is in Florida you’ll experience the same issues. To be sure, look for web hosting providers with high quality Australian data centres.
· Customer Service & Technical Support: It’s important your service provider has technical support staff dedicated to addressing any question or concern that you may have, while also assisting you in configuring your services so that you get the maximum benefit out of all the features that come with the package you choose. Your business relies on the successful, consistent hosting
of your website therefore choose a service provider that will give immediate help, so you don’t have to wait for call-backs or explanations. Also take into consideration the after-sales support offered by each hosting company. Ensure your web hosting company can be contacted by telephone during business hours, because many smaller web hosts only offer email only support. It’s also preferable you choose a company with a dedicated technical support telephone number with a set time of availability so should you require any advice, or have any technical issues, you’re able to contact someone for a quick resolution.
· Range of Services: Choose a provider whose web hosting packages are scalable, facilitating the potential growth of your business needs. Businesses can start with a basic web hosting or email package and as your internet presence grows, you can upgrade easily to more comprehensive packages such as eCommerce.
· Specialist: Choose a company who specialises in web hosting. In return, your website will be stored on infrastructure that is fast, stable, and secure – with a dedicated customer support team.
Whilst your business may only want a simple website in the first instance, you are likely to want to grow in the future. Does the hosting company offer a range of services that will facilitate your growth online, in areas such as eCommerce or online marketing? Do they offer any extras such as news articles or tutorials that will help you increase your understanding of the opportunities available online, as well as technological developments? Web hosting is a business critical service – do not be afraid to ask questions of your web hosting company or your web designer to ensure you are receiving a quality web hosting service.
When you are ready to take your business to the online market, call a NetRegistry consultant on 1800 78 80 82 to trial their web hosting for a month and experience the benefits it will bring to your business, jump online and visit www.netregistry.com.au.

 

Dick Smith Close 8 Stores

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Dick Smith has been forced to close eight stores in Christchurch New Zealand after a 6.5 earthquake just before 1pm NZ time today. This was followed by constant aftershocks, some as powerful as magnitude 5.

Also affected by the earthquake is Harvey Norman who has one store in Queensland. Telstra who operate their struggling TelstraClear said that their network which uses a Telstra owned cable network was still up but like the recent Queensland Cyclone their network has been affected by a lack of power to key locations where operational gear is located.

Telecom New Zealand said that their Christchurch network was operable but there was significant network congestion and a lot of its network is running on battery power which has limited life.

Both Telecom NZ and TelstraClear advised fixed-line customers to use a plug-in analogue phone if they had one.

“These are currently running on back-up power. This means our voice services are still operating, except where there is damage to phone lines, individual premises or power is lost to premises,” spokesman David Courtney said.

About half of its 50,000 cable modem customers were without access to the internet.

At 3.00pm Australian Eastern Time, Vodafone said that their network was still running but 10 of its 150 towers in the region had been knocked out and another 43 were operating on battery back-up which will run out by midnight tonight.

A spokesperson for Dick Smith said that all of their Christchurch stores were now closed and that there had been no loss of life among employees.

All of the networks operating in Christchurch say that data networks which in a lot of cases are still operational will run out of power as battery back up fails.

Flat Panel TVs Blamed For Grim Harvey Norman Warning

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Harvey Norman is struggling, company chairman Gerry Harvey has claimed with a 30% fall in TV values identified as a major contributor to the groups problems.

As a result the company that is also facing problems in Ireland has warned that profits are set to fall.

Speaking at yesterday’s Annual General Meeting, Harvey said that things were “not looking good”  and that price deflation on flat-screen televisions and growing competition from online rivals had made it impossible to make profits on this key product line.

Earlier in the day the Thorn Group pulled the plug on their Big Brown Box online operation which were set up to sell appliances and consumer electronics goods. Despite $19 million in profits from operations like Radio Rentals and Rentlo the group was unable to turn a profit with the Big Brown Box web site.

Gerry Harvey said: “We are having a dreadful period at the moment. Australia has actually demolished the pricing of this product (TVs) more than any other country in the world. The prices we are selling them at are absolutely impossible to make any money and we have demolished the price.

“The manufacturers are losing a fortune, we are losing a fortune and the category that everyone is in — flat-screen TVs in Australia — is severely damaged.

“You are going to see a pretty sizeable fall in profit for the six months that we are in now and I don’t know how that is going to go in the next year,” he said.

He added: “We’re now looking at November sales figures and they are nowhere where I had hoped they would be. There is a big consumer lack of confidence.”

Google Boss Joins Apple

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Google head honcho Eric Schmidt has joined the board of Apple in a move that will deliver for Apple the experience of a seasoned IT industry executive. The move comes as Google moves to delivering enterprise software and Apple a range of enterprise computers that will run both Windows and Apple software.

Schmidt, 51, joined Google from Novell in 2001. The announcement signals closer professional ties between Apple CEO Steve Jobs, whose iPod is the most popular digital music player, and Schmidt, who oversaw Google’s rise to become the most-used Internet search engine.

Before Novell, Schmidt was chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems .”There’s a real scarcity of really top-flight people with operational experience who can be directors,” said Paul Saffo, an independent technology analyst in Silicon Valley.

“Eric has been around Silicon Valley forever.” Schmidt will join Jobs, former Vice President Al Gore, Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson and J. Crew Group CEO Mickey Drexler on Apple’s board.

While Apple started as a computer company and Google started as a search engine, the companies are beginning to compete in markets such as online video. Google also has a feature that enables users to search for songs and links them to online music stores, including Apple’s iTunes site.

 “It doesn’t hurt the Google-Apple relationship that Schmidt is on Apple’s board,” Saffo said. “It also creates interesting opportunities in the form of expanding the conversation between Google and Apple.” Apple’s other directors are Elevation Partners Managing Director Fred Anderson, General Motors board member Jerome York and Intuit Inc. Chairman Bill Campbell.

BluRay HD DVD War Simmering

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This upcoming summer could be a hot one particulary as the HD-DVD-versus-Blu-Ray optical media marketing war is just starting to heat up.

 Five days after Sony announced it has started shipping 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray Disc recordable (write-once) media disks, Imation countered by announcing the availability of its own recordable HD-DVD media platters. Memorex, a subsidiary brand of  Imation, announced last week that it is shipping its own 15GB HD-DVD recordable media. Both Memorex and Imation brands retail for US$19.99 apiece, but they won’t be competing for attention on the same retail shelves.

“The difference [between the two brands] is that Memorex’s HD DVD is primarily for consumers and available at retail, whereas Imation’s HD DVD is more geared toward business professionals and prosumers and is available primarily through commercial channels,” Imation spokeswoman Nancy Bjorson said recently.

Imation and Memorex HD-DVDs can store up to 15GB of digital files–three times the capacity of standard DVDs–and can be used for any kind of graphics storage: including specialized medical and government imaging, photography, videography, as well as high definition video recording. Imation’s corresponding Blu-ray recordable (write-once) media, announced July 13, can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disk at a retail price of US$19.99 but can only be used on a Blu-ray machine. The rewritable single-layer (25GB) Blu-ray version retails for US$29.99, the spokesperson said.

Sony’s 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray Disc recordable disks with AccuCORE technology retail for US$48 with this tipped to be $69 in Australia. AccuCORE, a proprietary technology Company owned by Sony, utilises a new recording dye for both the DVD-R and DVD+R formats so as to deliver better performance in writing and playback across a wide variety of drives and recorders, a Sony spokesperson said.

Improved writing stability and faster addressing is achieved through a new stamper design, new molding and new bonding technologies, the spokesperson said.

Data storage needs expected to triple by 2010

Data storage requirements are expected to triple by the end of the decade with e-mail proliferation, more stringent compliance requirements, and as businesses continue to produce more multi-media content that needs to be stored in a digital environment, IDC reported.

“I’d say we’re in the early adopter phase of the HDD/Blue-Ray DVD market,” Charles King of Pund-IT said recently.
“The players and recorders aren’t common, but they’re becoming increasingly available. For businesses that use optical storage for back-up and compliance purposes, they qualify as a next-gen solution; faster and more capacious that previous technologies so valuable for companies that are feeling squeezed by the headroom of existing DVD disks.”

The popularity of optical storage has dwindled over time, but its price and performance are still compelling for some small to midsize businesses and organizations with a history of investment in optical-storage processes, King said.

“I also expect to see HDD and Blu-Ray drives in many of the upcoming PC desktop and laptop models that will it the stores in time for the holidays,” King said. “Overall, I’d say that it’s smart for Imation to get these products into the stores ASAP.”

Verbatim Moves Into The Drive Storage Market

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At a time when storage vendors market are being “margin squeezed,” Verbatim has announced that it is moving into the external hard drive market via the aquisition of SmartDisk.

Verbatim and its parent company, Mitsubishi Kagaku Media (MKM), announced the purchase of SmartDisk’s external hard drive and digital imaging business for an undisclosed price.

The acquisition expands Verbatim’s global footprint in the data storage market beyond its current lines of optical disc media, magnetic tape and flash products.

“The acquisition of SmartDisk’s external and portable hard drive business assets is complementary to Verbatim’s existing business,” said Shigenori Otsuka, president of MKM. “Plans are already underway to leverage these assets and Verbatim’s heritage to quickly extend our global leadership in the removable storage and related accessories markets.”

In addition to acquiring SmartDisk technology and patents, Verbatim said in a release that it will retain “key U.S. engineering, operations, marketing and sales personnel to smooth the transition and assist with future business growth.” Verbatim did not disclose if any jobs will be eliminated.

The deal mirrors rival Imation’s recent acquisitions of TDK and Memorex, which added another broad-line memory supplier to the global accessories market.

The removable storage category has seen “explosive growth” in recent years, according to IDC. The research firm predicts more than 6 million external hard drives will be shipped in 2008, up 58 percent from the 3.8 million units shipped in 2006.

SmartDisk had a 16 percent market share in the U.S. retail portable drive market in 2006, according to data from the NPD Group.

Dell Launches Capacitive Touch Notebook

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Dell Australia has unveiled a lightweight tablet PC featuring what it calls “capacitive touch technology”. It’s Dell’s first tablet, and the first by any maker to be sold here with the capacitive technology, the company says.

Capacitive touch uses natural electricity produced by the human body to sense input. According to Dell, it’s superior to the better-known “resistive” touch technology because no pressure is required; scrolling, dragging “flicks” and “gestures” are smoother; it’s more reliable; and there’s no interference with handwriting recognition.

Dell recommends using Microsoft Vista with the tablet, as it enables ouch-based flicks and gestures.

The company claims the tablet also supports future “multi-touch” capability.
It explains that multi-touch allows users to use multiple simultaneous touch points to provide rich interaction through intuitive gestures (“Yes,” it adds in a rare salute by Dell to Apple, “a la the iPod phone”).

The Latitude XT has a 12.1-inch screen and weighs 1.6kg. Dell claims it is the thinnest and one of the lightest 12.1-in. models on the market. In Australia it will be offered with a choice of integrated mobile broadband from Vodafone or BigPond. Pricing starts at A$3500; the company says it will begin taking orders on December 19.

Dell Adds Some Colour To Their Poor Service And Boring Products

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Dell is in trouble and consumers are deserting the online brand in droves due to poor service and boring looking products. Owning a Dell product today is akin to still owning an IBM notebook.

As consumers walk away from Dell in droves due to poor service and lack-lustre products the company has turned to coloured notebooks. There is also rumours that they are talking to mass market retailers in an effort to get Dell branded products into stores as opposed to only being available online.  

The new coloured models were launched in the US overnight, in colours bearing names such as flamingo pink, sunshine yellow, alpine white, ruby red, jet black, midnight blue and espresso.

And in another move to eliminate the past, the Dimension brand has been dropped in favour of the Inspiron moniker.

Significantly the US launch – by a company which once prided itself its products would never be sold in retail stores – was spearheaded in the world’s most iconic retail outlet: Macy’s Herald Square, New York, Emporium.

 

During the past 18 months Dell’s market share has withered over the past couple of years as it has concentrated on dull grey models aimed at the corporate market. But the big growth in the global market has been in the consumer segment, with brands such as Apple, Acer and even HP making the running with more innovative, eye-catching designs.

That saw Dell’s market share slump – and five months ago Michael Dell fired high-powered CEO Kevin Rollins, taking over the top management role himself and putting added impetus into the new drive for the consumer market.

Dell has established a consumer unit that includes marketing, engineering and industrial design and aims to bring new models to market at high speed.