Omnichannel: an opportunity and a challenge for retailers

Omnichannel is the new buzzword in retailing and it could present huge opportunities for traditional bricks and mortar retailers, but reaping the rewards won't be easy, or cheap.

Competitive Carriers Coalition takes the high ground on comms policy

The Competitive Carriers Coalition (CCC) has attempted to take the high ground releasing a 'statement of regulatory principles' ahead of what is shaping up to be very polarised pre-lection debate around the NBN and communications policy in general hoping it will engender "more policy debate and less political posturing." Good luck to it.

RIM's prospects take a turn for the better

Beleaguered BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has had a run of good press in recent days, with headlines like "RIM shares rally as optimism about new devices grows," "Investors find life in RIM ahead of BlackBerry 10 launch," "RIM Ends Week Up 27% - Can It Continue?" However, these all seem to be traceable to one source.

.NXT puts all WCIT-12 documents online

There has been a great furore surrounding both the agenda for and the secrecy surrounding the International Telecommunications Union's (ITU's) upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12). The .NXT organisation is to be congratulated for dealing with the latter by making all WCIT-12 documents available online.

ITU's claims of openness around WCIT-12 don't stack up

The chorus of concerned voices being raised ahead of the International Telecommunication Union's forthcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) is growing in both the number and the status of participants. The ITU's latest attempt to address those concerns is not re-assuring.

Big data helping online advertisers find small targets

It's well known that the ads you see when you browse the web are targeted using a number of parameters, but that level of targeting is about to get a whole lot more sophisticated.

The case for a new C level executive: 'customer experience'

The growth on online channels for customer action is dramatically changing the balance of power between companies and their customers: managing the 'customer experience' is becoming a top priority.

And the winner of the next election is...Big Data

Nate Silver, the statistician behind the New York Times' fivethirtyeight blog correctly predicted the outcome of the US presidential election in all 50 states, convincingly demonstrating the power of big data: but what if that power were applied pro-actively rather than merely predictively?

ICT energy does not obey Moore's Law

The processing power of ICT hardware has followed Moore's Law for several decades: energy efficiency has improved nowhere near as rapidly, and something has to be done.

There's more to Flemington's Cisco's Stadium Solution than simply Wi-Fi

Cisco's announcement that it has been chosen to install Wi-Fi at Flemington racecourse was exquisitely timed and full of the usual hyperbole, but it's a good story and it's about much more than just Wi-Fi.

Telstra talks down role of small mobile cells

Telstra announced last week that it had deployed new very small cellular base stations to boost mobile coverage at Flemington Racecourse during the spring racing carnival, but gave no indication that such technology will become a key part of its mobile network.

Pens will have to be smart to survive

The pen might be mightier than the sword but it's unlikely to prove a match for the tablet and the smartphone, unless Livescribe realises its vision of a smart pen tightly integrated with smartphone and tablet.

In the online world you are what you surf

As more of our lives are spent online buying goods and services, downloading files, watching videos and interacting with others we leave great details of our existence that can be used or abused by others.

A new take on the digital divide

The Digital Divide has been hot political potato in Australia for years. Now the ITU has come up with  a new way of measuring it that might just reveal it to be bigger than it's generally regarded.

Think smart, think big - data that is

Two postings  appeared on Cisco's blog recently. The first announced the acquisition of Ireland based ThinkSmart Technologies and the second announced a webinar on big data. Neither referenced the other. Yet the links between them are significant. The ThinkSmart acquisition suggests that Cisco plans to use big data technologies to extract value from the vast amounts of data generated by wireless networks and their associated devices.

Apple's Passbook excuse for NFC-free iPhone 5 rates a 'fail'

For many years Apple has been ahead of the curve when it comes to new computing technologies. It was the first to adopt the mini floppy disk, and the first to abandon it. It led in the incorporation of WiFi and Firewire and, in the MacBook Air the use of flash storage instead of spinning drives for internal storage. Yet on near field communications (NFC) it is now well behind the curve.

Clouds gathering over the channel

The shift of IT into the cloud is also likely to have a profound effect on the supply chain: the market for IT hardware and software will shift from the end user organisation to the cloud service provider. An increasing percentage of the dollars will be spent by a few large service providers rather than many thousands of IT departments in end user organisations.