Staff Writers

Developer of the Hutchison Three social networking application, Kink Kommunity, is in the UK negotiating to take the service to 4 million Hutchison user there.

Loop Wireless CEO Gavin Bullen also has plans for Three Italy, meetings with Vodafone and has a US visit scheduled to meet with wireless operators there.

Kink is a social networking tool that allows members to incorporate blogging and mixed media content on a range of subjects. A key feature is the ability for users to contribute their own (moderated) content such as commentary, photos or video footage.

The service launched on Hutchison Three’s Australian network back in October last year and while it took a few months to reach a critical mass, the service is gaining in popularity amongst its 18-24 target audience.

Recently judged the ‘Best Mobile/Wireless Content’ at the 12^th Annual Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) Awards, for the service has caught the attention of Three UK executives and bullen says the gusto with which they are taking to the idea is exciting for the small Perth-based developer.

Speaking to SmartOffice from the UK where he is currently hammering out a revenue sharing deal to get the service online there, Bullen said the nation’s 4 million Three users represented a significant opportunity compared to Hutchison’s Australian 3G subscriber base of 700,000. If he can do a similar deal with Three in Italy, the service will be made to an additional 4.3 million users.

In Australia subscribers pay a monthly $3 access charge to use the service which is hosted out of a Loop Wireless data centre back in Australia.

With the Kink Kommunity set to go live in the UK in a little over a month, Three and Loop executives are still working out the details, but Bullen said senior Three executives in the UK are keen to make a move into the social networking space and plan to put on a significant marketing blitz to get the community up to critical mass.

“They will work much harder to get take up. It will be considerably quicker as they are throwing a much heavier marketing spend at it. We should be able to reach critical mass here three or four months ahead of what we did in Australia,” he said.

“Product managers within a carrier are all trying to jostle to get their product marketed to the user base,” explained Bullen. “A new product like this with unrecognised brand has to work hard to get the marketing space.”

The 3G content system there is a little different from the user interface used locally explained Bullen and has only a limited number of icon positions and significantly something else is getting bumped to give Kink a good position on the grid.

www.loopwireless.com

Microsoft is readying an online storage service, called LiveDrive, just a month after Google leaked plans for tis own.

Any announcement would have to be seen in context of Google’s Gdrive project which was leaked in typical Google style last month.

The Gdrive project came to light after a PowerPoint presentation designed for financial analysts accidentally included details of the hosted storage solution. It’s not the first time commercially sensitive information about Google has found its way into the public domain seemingly by accident.

The Gdrive service is believed to be a repository for emails, photos, music and documents saved to the Google servers rather than locally.

Now Microsoft is believed to be working on a similar offering as part of its Live service currently in Beta testing in the United States.

Like Gdrive the Microsoft Live Drive service is being pitched as a remote repository rather than a back-up solution. In Australia, Telstra announced its PC Backup service via its Kaz subsidiary. As the name suggests the online solution is more focused on strict back-up rather than storage and bundles a number of tools and utilities to automate and make process more bandwidth efficient.

Both Gdrive and LiveDrive would compete with existing smaller players in the online storage space. Streamload for example offers a free service to store up to 25GB of data and then offers subscription accounts to accommodate larger disk requirements or bigger transfer allowances.

US News source IDG managed to obtain confirmation form a Microsoft spokesman, Adam Sohn, last week. Sohn said the project code-named (Live Drive) could be used to search and share files across PCs and devices with the Sharing Folders feature in Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger e-mail chat client.

It would also allow users to synchronise folders based on technology Microsoft gained with its acquisition of FolderShare.

Wireless broadband company, BigAir, has announced it will delay its pending IPO while the market digests a new acquisition.

The company announced today it has acquired 3,000 new iBurst subscribers from OzEmail. The deal, through recently acquired BigAir subsidiary, Veritel Wireless, will see the budding telco take over management, support and billing of all OzEmail wireless (iBurst) customers.

All 3000 subscribers have already been migrated to the BigAir core network and billing systems. The move follows BigAir Group’s recent acquisition of Veritel Wireless and precedes the company’s upcoming listing on the ASX.  The news has prompted the company to delay its listing to allow time for the market to take in the changes.

BigAir managing director, Jason Ashton said that this acquisition puts BigAir ahead of schedule for its target to reach 10,000 customers by November 2006.  “Prior to this acquisition BigAir’s customer base had already reached 4,000 and it is growing rapidly.  BigAir customers are attracted to the speed and flexibility of our ‘copper-free’ wireless broadband networks and they are also attracted to the premium service levels offered across all of the services that we deliver.”

“It’s a good deal for us,” said Ashton. “We aim to be number one or number two [in the wireless broadband space] and to focus on the business market.” The deal actually puts BigAir well ahead of other iBurst resellers. Ahston said Veritel, an iBurst partner the company acquired recently was the number one reseller, while OzEmail was the second largest.

The consolidation of these two subscriber bases gives BigAir more than 50 per cent of the current iBurst business, according to estimates. Ashton said the salemadesense for OzEmail owner iiNet which adopted the wireless subscribers as part of its acquisition of OzEmail from MCI. “The wireless subscribers didn’t fit in with iiNet’s DSLAM strategy so we said we would take them off their hands,” said Ashton.

“We are the only Australian wireless provider to offer a complete range of fixed, portable and mobile wireless broadband services and we have plans to expand our network and wireless service offerings into the other major capital cities across Australia,” Jason Ashton said.  “We have already extended an offer to invest in our Initial Public Offering (IPO) to our existing customers which has been well received and we are now delighted to be able to offer our extended customer base the opportunity to participate in the upcoming float.”

BigAir Group’s iBurst service is a completely mobile wireless broadband service.  It is an ‘always on’ Internet connection that enables users to surf the web, do email, download files, access office VPN networks, and more, all at speeds of up to 1Mbps.  With iBurst, users can access broadband in their home, office, or on the move as it is transmitted though the air waves from local radio towers to a computer within the coverage area, and provides access to the Internet without the need for dedicated telephone lines or cable TV connections.

The IPO for shares in BigAir Group Limited is made in accordance with its Prospectus lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on 20 October 2005.  Application for shares under this offer can only be made on the application form attached to the Prospectus.  The Prospectus is available during the Offer Period at www.bigair.com.au/prospectus.

BigAir Group has extended the closing date for its IPO for two weeks in order to allow its most recently acquired customers the opportunity to invest in its IPO.

For more information, please visit www.bigair.com.au

Sharp has developed an LCD technology which is able to display two images at once. Viewing the screen from one angle you see a different image that viewing it from the opposite side.

A technology that is definitely going to be a hit in the signage business was announced by Sharp’s European Laboratories with volume production of the screen to start immediately.

Dubbed Controlled viewing-angle or two-way viewing-angle LCD’s the proprietary Sharp technology seems to have several applications such as shared entertainment/work screens, but another demonstrated application is akin to the privacy LCDs notebook vendor Toshiba is working on. Using the dual image LCDs announced today could let the user of a PDA or notebook see what is really on the screen while those at an angle to the screen would see an entirely different image.

With all the work that’s gone into increasing the viewing angle of LCD displays, this evolutionary technology uses a parallax barrier superimposed on an ordinary TFT LCD. The LCD sends the light from the backlight into right and left directions, making it possible to show different information and visual content on the same screen at the same time depending on the viewing angle.

Controlling the viewing angle in this way allows the information or visual content to be tailored to multiple users viewing the same screen. For example, one user can view the display as a PC screen for browsing the Internet or for editing video shot using a digital camera (IT) while at the same time another user watches video content such as a movie or a TV broadcast (A/V). This ability to enjoy two functions in a single unit in full-screen size will contribute to achieving a full-fledged convergence of digital home electronics A/V and IT, says the company.

Dell beat out its competitors selling the most LCD monitors for the year in 2005, according to DisplayBank.

The company shipped a whopping 20 million units, almost doubling the total of second ranked Samsung, which shipped 10.8 million units, according to the research. In all Dell accounted for 19 per cent of the LCD monitor market for the year.

However, Samsung was the second largest manufacturer of LCD monitors making 12.5 million screens, while Dell OEM sourced its monitors. Taiwan manufacturer, TPV Technology, was the top supplier. The Hong-Kong listed company shipped 17.1 million units.