I spent Sunday through to Tuesday at MediaConnect’s annual Kickstart Forum in the Gold Coast. The event brings together the country’s leading IT journalists (and me!) with technology vendors.
Although a lot of it was a bit too technical and enterprise-focused for our readers, I thought I’d share the most relevant new offerings with you. First up, Xobni. It’s the name of a Silicon Valley tech start-up (the word inbox backwards) and a product which could well revolutionise the way you use your email. Having seen a demo by Xobni founder Adam Smith, I’m now just devastated that we don’t have Microsoft Outlook (which you need to use it) on our office Macs. There’s a free version so do me a favour and trust me: this is worth downloading and checking out. I’m also all for backing a young and innovative company, in true Dynamic Business style.
Another tech start-up with some products you might find useful, especially if you use a BlackBerry, is Big Tin Can. Based in Cremorne in Sydney’s Lower North Shore (and my own favoured side of the bridge), they develop smartphone apps, have a mapping service you can use on your BlackBerry, as well as a service that lets you save on calls from your smartphone and manage them better. If Big Tin Can has a fault it’s that it’s trying to do too many things at once, making it hard to sum up its actual offering.
I had a good chat with Citrix Online managing director HR Shiever, who talked about the growing trend for web conferencing in Australia and its latest product GoToTraining, which is ideal for SMEs. Anyone using it yet?
One thing is clear: most technology vendors want a slice of that huge SMB/SME (whatever you want to call it) pie, so shop around for the best deals. A second thing is painfully clear: I still don’t really ‘get’ cloud computing. It’s a good job the Dynamic Business experts do so I’ll leave it to them to explain it to you in the magazine…
