just watching the Olympic opening ceremony and I can’t work out in what order the country groups were marching out in, am guessing Chinese alphabet? Knackered. It’s almost 2am but I’m at that point now where I might as well stay up until the end, reckon the torch lighting will be awesome.

So I went to the aimia web 3.0 and mobile conference and I only cringed once I’m from east London so I’m a born cynic. But it was actually really insightful lol and I particularly enjoyed the no nonsense presentations of both Jennifer William (Principal, IdeaGarden) and Jennifer Wilson (Principal, Lean Forward).

What did I come away with? Well ok yes, the future is mobile -I love the idea of a virtual mobile network where you can scan objects with your mobile and perhaps see a message left for you, a piece of advertising or maybe some sort of digital graffiti. We’re already seeing Telstra kicking this off with their recent campaign using QR codes .

Also the fact that in the future it is predicted that the majority of mobile net users will be those from developing countries i.e consumers that may not have a P.C and who may never rely on a PC for the web. Interesting for me as I have family in said ‘developing’ countries and they never email me but always sms me, easier than travelling by bus to the nearest internet cafe.

This blog post by Tomi T Ahonen describes in detail the impact and the numbers (in the billions) everyone is talking about - When there is a mobile phone for half the planet: Understanding the biggest technology 

Now if I can only remember where I put the bloody thing…….

• Etsy :: Your place to buy and sell all things handmade
  Great site for vintage shopping

Is not just a good exercise mantra…..I did my ‘ideal’ budget for us for the next couple of years while we save towards a deposit for a house. The Grazia article by the blogger ugly debty was enlightening - she has spent 100k or so (on credit) on shopping for shoes and bags, that amount is also our goal in the next year or two.  It’s scary but it’s inspirational. At least she has taken the first step. In the long run, as a woman, it is empowering to take control of your own finances regardless of how much you earn.

In alot of ways I think we  have been indoctrined into the expectation of insta-everything from instant conversations to friends to money, sacrifice is a taboo subject in current times for any average twenty something. We haven’t had to work and live through World Wars, major recessions or crises (yet). The next bubble that bursts is going to be a bigger slap in the face for many of us that are used to buying what we want, when we want and not saving.

We are a generation that doesn’t promote saving the pennies. Drawing up and sticking to the ideal budget is a challenge for us but it’s only because we have become laissez-faire. It’s a good kick up the bum though as if we don’t do this now we will be stuffed once we have a mortgage and family as although we are both on decent wages we have zero money management skills!

Because I haven’t started the new gig it’s given me enough free time to sort out all of the usually boring financial tasks that I have been lazy with. This includes:

1. Super - I’m switching to MTAA as Colonial First State were charging me a ridiculous management fee however the paperwork is completely boring and there are about 50,000 forms to complete, why can’t this be an electronic process?

2. Managed Fund - Have decided to set up a managed fund that focuses on the resource sector - my super is already invested in a moderately diversified fund so investing in this growth sector will spread our savings across different categories, ideally I want to have a % in funds, a small % in shares , majority in cash. Again more form filling, the good part however is that I can set this up as a savings plan with monthly contributions rather than investing a whole lump sum.

3. Household budget - so I have looked at the telecomms spend and I’ve signed up for Skype and will try it out tonight calling my family in the UK, I usually call them once a week and I’ve ordered an additional calling card to handle the UK mobile calls I have to make too. I’m holding out on the iPhone for now

“Food, glorious food”

Next item on the list is food, we have in the past spent a ridiculous amount on food, not that we eat alot, we don’t even eat alot of  ’gourmet’ food. The high cost  boils down to the following factors (deep breath):

1. We don’t shop for the season — I have no idea what fruit and vegetables are in or out of season. It’s even more confusing for me as I’m British and I struggle to discern the actual seasons over here!

2. We shop for convenience — we buy everything at Coles or Woolies each week, even the greengrocers at the local Marrickville Metro is a little on the pricey side

3. We don’t stock up — there’s minimal frozen meat in our fridge and we spend most of our time chucking out food we haven’t used and it’s gone off or forgetting what we do have that we could use.

4. We eat out alot — no, we’re not at Tetsuyas every Friday but we do have big cafe breakfasts in Bondi and Newtown and the odd takeaway. This all adds up and I’m going to attempt to have nothing but coffee after our Sunday runs and just take a banana with me! Or cook up something lovely at home. 

 So in the last fortnight I’ve decided to cut down (and there have been a fair few quarrels along the way!) by attacking our huge food bill through:

1. Buying all basics at Aldi or Bi-Lo, i.e own brand low fat milk, crackers, loaves of bread (I plan on making my own soon though), brown sugar, free range eggs and flour. They are cheaper and they taste the same. I’ve managed to halve my milk bill this way as 2 litres of low fat milk at Aldi is $2.70 instead of the $4 for 1 litre of Pura for example.

2. Every fortnight buying veggies and fruit at Flemington market, on the first visit I have had to stop myself from buying every box! Again looking at basics, onions, potatoes, carrots etc and stuff that’s in season.

3. Aim to cook up meals that can last a few days i.e more soups, casseroles and bakes.

4. Reverse Cooking -  Instead of looking at recipes and deciding what I want to cook, I’m going to buy the veggies and see what’s in season and affordable and then find recipes.

5. Use up everything in the cupboard to reduce chucking stuff out

Reducing the food bill and doing more market shopping will also minimise the packaging we have to recycle and make us think about what we are buying rather than automatically throwing it in the trolley. The only thing my hubby won’t skimp on is 3 ply toilet tissue………

It’s terrible. In general handset trends don’t interest me having had my old handset for years on a prepaid contract. However in the same way that I fell in love with the iMac years ago, I now want that phone! Call me a sucker but I’m adamant about finding the best deal.

Now we’re apparently supposed to be budgeting at the moment so taking into account that the shadow of the ‘credit crunch’ is looming I decided to do abit of googling to see how I could cut costs not just on the mobile but the rest of our telecomms spend (excluding ADSL access for now).

Currently we’re shelling out $175 a month on the following (the total amount shocked me) :

The main points are

1. I have to call my mum on her UK mobile and the rest of my family on a UK landline each week 

2. My husband is on Vodafone corporate mobile plan via his brother

2. We need a phone line for ADSL. 

 If it wasn’t for the iPhone lust I found I could cut the total cost to $98 (saving myself $77 a month!)

So far the best iPhone deal I could find is with Optus for $79 a month and $0 upfront HOWEVER it means that I will have to watch not only the data downloads (I’d get 700 mb) but also the phone calls to other non-Optus mobiles . Hmmmm, that would take the total monthly cost to $128 (so $47 better off….)

If it’s possible to go with their Timeless plan I could pay $113 for unlimited mobile calls and 200mb data downloads but then that is really a palava as total cost would be $162 which is almost the same as I started with!

Perhaps I should hang on for a month or two to see what better deals with the iPhone come along as the launch deal might not be the best? sigh….

I know I’m working in the wrong industry but I cringe when I hear the terms web 1.0, web 2.0, web 3.0 — helllooooo, it’s not controlled (yet, is it?) by a monolithic corporation that has waves of product releases, why box it up, why treat it as if it is? Of course the web and the interaction between user and web has evolved but really do we have to start labelling it already? (Lord knows how I hate categories).

Anyway a particular interest for me is mobile marketing which probably harks back to my very first job working in a corporate mobile comms team ten years ago. I think there is a huge amount of potential here but it needs to be backed (at least in Australia) by a strong telecoms infrastructure and of course decent pricing models. Not much point in developing branded content for the iPhone if the target user will be smashed by extortionate data rates (unless the user you are targeting is a corporate one of course). 

To this end, I’m going to the AIMIA Web 3.0: mobile & the semantic web conference on the 30th to check out what the industry wags are predicting, it’s part of a 4 part series they are running which should be interesting.

So it’s been a fair while since the last post and I don’t even have time as an excuse as I’ve been at home since we got back 3 weeks ago. I’ve been on the job hunt and have landed a new gig (yaaay!). There really is only so much Oprah and hoovering that I can do without going insane however there have been some delights on day time TV.  In particular the Aerogarden, it’s an indoor garden that uses NASA technlogy so you can grow plants at any time of year. With a day time TV audience of X amount of students I can see this product being a hit. Finally you can grow your own…..

I thought I’d share my experiences a shortlist of funny moments from the whole job hunting process, I’d like to call this time of my life my ‘legally blonde’ phase:

1. Do not meet with potential employers while still employed, hit it off during the interview but then tell them you are not “looking to move” (ummmm, yes you are love)

2. Do not meet with an award winning employer when flu stricken and drugged up to the eyeballs with antibiotics and tell them that the reason you don’t update your blog regularly is because “life gets in the way” (what are you talking about, this should be ALL you live for lol)

3. Best quote so far from an interviewer while looking at the job description with me- “Well we can scratch out Tertiary Qualifications, we’re in advertising, we don’t need tertiary qualifications”

4. Best moment so far from an interview with 3 staff (2 guys and a girl) all under the age of 27, I ask what the plans with building the digital team, the most ’senior’ one looks at me and says “yeah we’re recruiting for a Head of Digital, our last one left a month ago”, the girl looks at him and says “ahh actually like 3 months ago”, he snaps back “yeah yeah she handed in her resignation three months ago but she like left properly one month ago”…..the stoned dude in the middle says nothing

5. Having two recruiters tell me that I’m not quite senior enough but then get offered 4 senior roles……

Granted, it is dangerous to be unemployed and technically on holiday back at home in London. However there is a certain kind of freedom that comes with it and a stolen appreciation of experiences here. After three and a bit years in Sydney, I had forgotten about the enfant terribles of the art scene until I found out that Tracey Emin had become a Royal Academian and had worked on one of the rooms for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art.

Joy! I find myself lost in an overwhelming sea of paintings, photos, sculpture and architectural drawings. There is nothing I love more in the world than staring at a huge photo of a young lady with a designer bagful of sausages, Eve as an illustrated Barbie doll or a Zebra getting jiggy with a young lady (yes, you read that correctly and no it’s not a real life depiction…..as far as I know). 

Contemporary and new art is like the front line, an index finger to the greatest enemies of creativity, Tradition and History. Countless times I overheard the disgust and the guffaws of passers-by. Yes, art is objective and everyone is entitled to their own opinion but personally, I feel that art is expression regardless and not to be constrained (you know I hate those boxes). Don’t denounce it, discuss it.

The husband’s favourite……a giant sculpture of a baby’s head that was created in such a way as to look blurred from a distance.

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/summerexhibition2007/

So seeing as eventually I want to move away from production and into strategy and development, I’ve decided to try and find some work experience while I am back here at home. I also wanted to find out what the market was like out here now just out of curiosity too. Anyway, after a few weeks below is my answer to the internship question they have as part of their application process:

“Pick one of the following and explain why they are popular and what they indicate about the future of the digital marketplace: Flickr, The Huffington Post, Last.fm, or Habbo Hotel.”

Driven by its founders, a Canadian online game start-up Flickr was developed by programmers Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake originally as an add-on tool to a multiplayer game they were developing a “cool tool to share photos and save them to a Web page while playing” . 

Flickr is not the only photo sharing site online, and it was certainly not the first to market but it could be deemed the most popular or at least the most well known within mainstream media when compared to others in the marketplace that offer on the surface a similar service such as Fotolog, Snapfish or Zoto.

Flickrs’ success in the popularity stakes is related to a number of social and business factors, the basis of which is the community behind the brand.

 It has been said that while web 1.0 was the era of broadcast and inform, a one way relationship, web 2.0 is purported to be the development of ‘true’ interaction via the provision of online services, a two way street.

The rise of digital photography

In the last ten years, the rise of digital photography has prompted people to look at new ways to manage and store their photos using their own hardware and software but increasingly also online.

The digitisation of photography has had an enormous impact on empowering photographers to switch to digital, to capture and create instant memories and easily share these via email, blogs, as well as entities like Facebook and MySpace.

“A study by InfoTrends/CAP Ventures predicts that worldwide digital camera revenue will reach $24 billion by the end of 2004, and will exceed $30 billion by 2009. Europe, the United States and Japan top the table for digital camera sales this year while it is expected that Asia and Rest of World (ROW) regions, which currently has a combined share of 10%, will share 33% of the revenue by 2009”

For the ordinary ‘Joe’, traditional photography could be cumbersome in terms of learning how to use the camera, setting up a shot and developing film. Apart from the technical expertise and time involved, there are probably more barriers to sharing your work.  As an amateur, you could promote a collection through a self-funded exhibition or a camera club however for the non-enthusiast; many print photos are probably still languishing unseen and uncommented on in archived albums and shoeboxes hidden under the bed.

 Digital photography has provided greater accessibility and freedom for amateur and professional photographers. For some it is often emotionally less intimidating and costly to show your work online publicly than to a select group of specialists.

 Flickr meets the basic needs of these photographers (amateur, professional and casual) to share their works with friends, family and others by providing the following services:

·         A free account with limited space, essentially to enable users to try before they buy.  Upgrading to a Pro account at $25 annually buys unlimited space and uploads for photos (capped at 100mb as a bandwidth limit).

·         An easy to use uncluttered interface with useful features and tools

Keep it Social Stupid

1.       Help people make their content available to the people who matter to them.

Flickr provides a number of channels to share user generated images both within personal social groups (family and friends) and public groups (interest groups). Products can also be made from photos such as books, calling cards and posters.

Within the site, people can create groups or join groups where users can share a pool of photos and engage in discussion. Groups can be public or private.

Individually, friends and family that you add as viewers can comment on your photos and you can see friend and family ‘photostreams’ or group photos once you login.

In terms of integration and greater collaboration, photos can be posted to external blog sites, as rss feeds or as ‘badges’ that can be added to web pages. In web 2.0 world, products have to mesh together as users will lose patience with applications and services that don’t.

Sharing the experience across differing levels of social groups and across platforms embeds Flickr within a person’s life as pervasively as email. If it’s useful we’ll keep using it.

2.       Enable new ways of organizing photos and video.

A prime driver of the site, tagging enables users to classify their own work, using whatever keywords come to mind. One man’s ‘Red’ might be another mans ‘Auburn’. Flickr is well known as using this form of collaborative tagging or folksonomy.

Tagging enables users to attach keywords to their photos based on content and location. It also provides myriad methods in which to use these tags, you can search by most popular, by time or explore through groups of similarly tagged photos.

You can instantly find 89,344 results pertaining to beagles. More interestingly, you can also see where photos have been taken if they have been geo-tagged, so you can probably find a beagle in Sydney.

How does Flickr enable new ways? It relies on the alpha geeks.

As per other web 2.0 entities such as Wordpress and Facebook, Flickr has approached product development by using its Open Application Programming Interface. The API enables users to develop their own widgets and applications. Instead of relying on a crack team of expensive rocket scientists, Flickr take advantage of their user base, they listen.

Currently this is non-commercial however by providing an API Flickr can monitor how people use their product and take advantage of the free brain space and ideas that are produced. There is nothing that alpha geeks love more than the challenge of making and potentially breaking a piece of software.

Flickr also reinforces the relationship with its users, increases loyalty and retention by providing these opportunities and by providing widgets and features for the rest of the community.

Rather than providing just another ‘online service’ for you to subscribe to. To many users, it is more than a photo sharing site, more than just a place to save your photos to and create online albums. It’s a channel for photographic expression regardless of source and quality. Flickr is a community centred on the shared experience of images.

What’s next?

In the Flickr universe, you have access to photos worldwide from a variety of sources. You have photos that are tagged using keywords that users relate to. There is the ability to upload photos instantly and search on keyword and location. There is the ability to embed.  What if the BBC or CNN or Reuters wanted to buy your photo? What if a design agency wanted your photo for a magazine cover?

At present, Flickr is staunch in staying resolutely ‘non-commercial’ with its services in that users can only use their services for personal reasons only. There is no functionality to enable people to sell their photos. Yet.

Could Flickr be the Getty Images? It could be argued that this would be both the rational ‘next step’ but also the death knell for the original community ethos.

The next YouTube?

Having been bought three years ago by Yahoo for an estimated $40 million dollars, it’s not clear as to what their strategy will be for Flickr. As of April this year, Pro users can now upload 90 seconds of video and share it in the same way as a photo.  It’s similar material within the same context of shared experience. Is this a preamble to taking on YouTube? Possibly but only time and the user base will tell whether it’s a novelty or a feature that will proliferate.  

What does Flickr indicate for the future for the digital marketplace?

Social Profiles

In web 2.0 world, users have evolved and are creating their own digital identity from publishing opinions on blogs, to networking on Facebook and LinkedIn to 24 hour updates via Twitter. Flickr is yet another facet to add to this personal web of sites and services that form who we are and what we do online.

Monetisation

Entities such as Flickr could threaten traditional photo and media outlets such as Getty, AP or Reuters.

Advertising will have to become more covert, how do you target an established community with a product that could benefit them?

Ten signs that tell me I am back at ‘home’:

1.       I’m living on tea not coffee

2.       Every dog I jog past in the park is a mastiff and wears a studded collar.

3.       I can get anything I want for one pound, a pack of tea, nail scissors, Liquorice Allsorts…. a mastiff puppy……

4.       The dulcet tones of a police siren ring out at least twice a day

5.       The sky is grey but the grass, trees and bushes are all a verdant green

6.       We had a Monday evening beer and barbeque with two friends and their Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese-Dutch and gay neighbours.

7.       I can travel for miles on a bus for just 2 pounds

8.       If I wipe my nose, the tissue goes grey and sooty

9.       The birdsong is serene not screaming

10.   I can cross cultures, classes and languages by Tube