Sydney in a day

Not sure what some of you have experienced with work-related travel, but today was a new one for me. Well, actually, a new one for my life in business ... I have a few travelling stories from my rock'n'roll days in the band, but that will have to be another post :)

I flew to Sydney this morning at 6.30am from Brisbane for a meeting with new clients Sattchi & Saatchi Advertising. The job has come through Robin @ Rocketboots (cheers mate!), and I'm also working with talented guys from Generator Interactive. This morning was a kick off meeting at 9.30am, so for once I actually got up before my kids!

Meeting went well, followed by a calamari lunch down at Circular Quay (very nice there in the shadows the Harbour Bridge and Opera House), then back to the airport for a 3pm flight home. Well I'm home now but a little tired and the ol' back didn't like it too much either.

But after remembering the good old days of flying into to town to play a gig, then fly back somewhere after the show the same night ... I've come to realise that I'm just getting too old for that stuff these days :) That all being said, it was a nice way to spend the day out of the office for a change!

Nokia, Motorola riding high

Looks like Macromedia have been doing deals with the right people. I'm not sure where Motorola are with licensing the Flash Lite player, but Nokia are in the bag and it's just as well.

NOKIA and Motorola manufactured about half of all mobile phones sold worldwide during the second quarter of 2005, new research has found.

From April to June, 190.5 million handsets were sold globally, a 21.6 per cent increase compared to the same period of 2004, statistics published by research group Gartner say. Both companies increased their market share, with leader Nokia accounting for 31.9 per cent of all sales and Motorola in second place with 17.9 per cent.

Sales of Nokia were boosted by demand in the Americas, where the Finnish company reclaimed the number one spot.

US-based Motorola has made significant inroads in the western European market and is now the second biggest manufacturer of phones, a leap from fifth place a year ago, Gartner said.

Read the full article on Australian IT here

Back on board

It's been some time since my last post, and being a cold, windy afternoon in Brisbane, it seemed like as good a time as any to catch up on things. The main reason for my absence has been a reasonably serious back injury, which I sustained during a game of squash. Some early readers of DRDblog may remember that playing squash was my attempt at getting back to some level of fitness. As it turns out, it's brought more injuries than I've ever had before, prompting me to rethink my choice of extra-curricular activity - something that the wives of those of who play have been thinking for some time :)

I actually managed to get some work done during the weeks I spent resting up in bed and on the floor - thanks to my laptop and wireless network at home, but it was mostly catch up work anyway and unfortunately not a lot of development.

I did however come up with some new ideas for prototype applications that Moket is now looking at, as well as making some new contacts abroad (via Skype - love it!) in mobile/tech markets around the place.

So what's coming up? Well, DRD has a number of projects on the go and will hopefully clear those soon in time for the next crop of sites and applications. Moket is also pretty busy with some demo apps, as well as an increasing amount of committment and time spent in the growing Flash Lite community. We are an offical "remote" member of the Macromedia Flash Lite User Group of Boston, the first Flash Lite user group of its kind - congrats to Alessandro and all the gang for getting it off the ground.

I'm also of to Sydney tomorrow to work on a Flash Com game we're involved with for a major marketing campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi and Rocketboots. More news on that to come.

Cisco mulls Nokia buy

Hello, what's this what's this? Interesting times ahead for the mobile market at all kinds of levels, particualrly the top levels ....

From Australian IT

CISCO is considering buying mobile handset maker Nokia in a bid to gain its wireless infrastructure technology, a newspaper has reported.

The Business paper, which did not reveal the source of its information, said Cisco had traditionally concentrated on acquisitions of niche technology players, but its chief executive John Chambers is believed to be interested in merging with a wireless infrastructure company. 'Nokia has been identified as the most likely target,' the paper said.

Cisco, the largest maker of internet equipment, is worth around $US123 billion ($160 billion), while Nokia's market value is around $US71 billion.

The paper said Cisco's mainstay networking market was fast changing, with the convergence of fixed-line and wireless networks, and Cisco needed a merger to acquire the technology to create intelligent wireless applications, which Finnish-based Nokia could provide.

Cisco was not immediately available for comment. A Nokia spokeswoman in Helsinki declined to comment.

$1.2m 3D handset deal for Perth company

Forget 3G - it's 3D baby! A Perth (Aust) company has landed a worldwide licensing deal with a leading handset manufacturer (un-named) for it's 3 dimensional mobile software. You can even take pics with your mobile camera, and use the phone's built in image convertor to create a 3D image. Of course Japan has sold nearly 3 million of these puppies already, but it seems the rest of the world might be in for a little red/blue image action sometime soon ... Read more