Archive for the ‘Australia’ Category
I have mentioned Pipe Networks before, more specifically their “Project Runway” surviving a near death credit crunch experience. There have been two interesting developments since that time. The first is that Pipe have put up a blog tracking the progress of the cable installation. You can view it at pipeinternational.com. As with their DC3 data [...]
PipeNetworks have survived ANZ pulling the plug on their finance and have emerged from a share trading halt to announce that Project Runway is pushing ahead. It is great to see that even in tough financial times that profitable and well founded projects can still get through with smart companies banding together. It represents more [...]
Today the Reserve Bank of Australia cut interest rates by 0.75% (0.25% more than the expected 0.5%. That represents a 200 basis point cut over just the last three months. When reading an article on the cut on news.com.au, I noticed the “Related Coverage” sidebar. Every single piece of news has a different guess; some [...]
I am really focusing on user interfaces at the moment, both due to requirements at work and personal interest. It is one of those areas where the computer science ends, and the people science begins. It is very rare to come across a good user interface, in fact UI’s have reached the stage of ridicule [...]
It is all happening in the world of Australian Online RealEstate tonight! The Realestate.com.au board have announced the immediate departure of their long serving (since 2001) CEO, Simon Baker. This was a huge surprise, although the fact that he sent out about 50 LinkedIn recommendation requests to people (myself included) late Friday night should have [...]
It is not hard to find doomsday predictions for the Real Estate market. Sites such as Who Crashed the Economy are a collation of tales of pending economic (and particularly housing sector) destruction. There is a trend that indicates mortgage stress and housing price falls are limited to the outer suburbs of Sydney, primarily the [...]
The NSW Government introduced the First Home Buyer’s Grant Scheme back in the year 2000. The $7000 cash bonus is nice, but it is the stamp duty concession that really helps out. The stamp duty calculator shows that the duty on a $500k home drops from $18,170 to a tiny $180 if you are a first [...]
You thought buying a car was complicated! For anyone wanting a checklist (who doesn’t love a checklist) here is basically mine so far: Open inspection Family inspection / Attempted building inspection Check public transport timetables and/or traffic Pest inspection Building inspection Quotes on repairs and alterations Check heritage listing Check zoning for the area and [...]
This came up all of a sudden after I decided to test my SEO by googling my name. That took me to this page on Submissions to the National Broadband Expert Panel. Among them is a submission that I emailed in to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (hell of a title, [...]
One of the spending cuts in last nights Federal Budget 2008 was the Commercial Ready program. Thankfully the R&D Tax Concession is still available, but this relies on the inventor having the capital upfront. The axing of this program will stifle innovation in Australia, particularly when our venture capital system is so underdeveloped relative to [...]