Awards

Founders and experienced personal trainers Dwayne Ebert and Tom Hose set out to create a system for personal trainers that leveraged mobile technology. Their creation, PT Manager Pro, provides the framework for personal trainers to better manage their clients than they ever could before. Personal trainers can now track, manage and store all their client data anywhere and have it accessible anytime and on any device.

We realised our Australian software for doctors and patients could easily be used by doctors and patients all over the world, and in the process help to solve the world’s biggest health problems! We know our software for patients helps the two-thirds of patients who need treatment but don’t receive it, and we know that doctors using our software could treat up to five more patients a day if they use the software. We wanted to take our service to the world, and do so for free.

One average 24-year-old man from the western suburbs of Melbourne was moving to a new home and given the challenge of refurnishing his parents' entire home with a small budget of $5,000. At the time he was living at home with his parents and was sick and tired of coming home to uncoordinated colours and uncoordinated pieces of furniture. He took this opportunity from his parents and was determined to have designer pieces of furniture at an affordable price but found nothing. Interior Secrets was born.

The purpose Campaign Social is to give creative and media agencies, as well as corporations and organisations, the ability to develop their own promotions and campaigns on Facebook. It does this by offering a cloud-based digital platform, allowing users to build their own Facebook campaigns, without needing technical knowledge (i.e. coding).

Diesel Laws noticed the YouTube community sharing opinions below videos that didn't necessarily relate to the video itself. This prompted research into whether or not the video itself was actually needed to encourage opinions. The problem however, was that there was no platform at the time for honest opinions and discussions to be accepted and encouraged. After a few variations of the Barkles platform, Diesel teamed up with Jay Whiting to build the "side-by-side debating service" that exists today.

Despite the lack of data management, businesses have come to depend on data for core operations and the cost of this data not being accessible in a timely fashion can be staggering. Virtual DBA came to life to meet the day-to-day challenges of availability, performance and administration of an organisation's critical Microsoft SQL Server databases.

After fitting yet another misaligned rigid waste shower tray I went home and did some serious drinking and thinking. Why doesn't anybody make an adjustable shower tray, I pondered? Well now they can.

Thirdi Property completed a small development in the regional centre of Orange in NSW. The development consisted of 12 townhouses and all were sold to investors not located in Orange (some lived on the other side of Australia). To help with the task of updating clients, Thirdi created an online project management area where clients could log in and get video updates, site images, invoices and documents. We now have 60+ properties on this platform.

We built a cloud-based online training platform to give the experience of being guided through social media platforms in real time. This was technically difficult, since we wanted users to experience the real technologies, not a video reproduction. After a lot of trial and error, we had it: an online training software with a video guide and an interactive window. We took it to clients, but they wanted the software, not the course.

We saw that government was responding to social media risks by shutting down and adding bureaucratic approval processes that destroy the conversational spirit of services like Twitter. When we heard they had a Twitter committee that would meet once a week to approve tweets we knew we had to do something. Our idea was to add a simple time delay to social media updates, just like a live TV broadcast.

The ability to optimise the power grid and manage peak loads through accessing stored solar energy sources has the potential to save utilities, commercial and residential customers billions of dollars.

I heard of the devastation caused by the 2010 Haiti earthquake. I realised that I had the skills and opportunity to make a positive difference in similar future catastrophes and set about creating a telecommunications system that could operate without relying on large, expensive and easily damaged infrastructure. My vision has attracted a talented, passionate and dedicated team, who are now turning it into reality.

We all have a passion for giving something back to the community. We wondered if there was some way that we could combine our charity work with business. As a result the concept of Karma Contacts was born. We believe that people should be able to change the world simply through their daily purchases of everyday items like contact lenses.

We realised that what we were doing for ourselves online was way more valuable when applied to bricks-and-mortar businesses. This inspired us to really start the business. We can provide accurate predictions on how long it will take to rank any particular keywords. Because of this we are able to provide month-to-month contracts knowing we can keep promises we make to clients.

As an ex-financial planner, clients were constantly asking me for help with managing their everyday money, and nothing was available. Budgets failed to address the problems. The purpose of this innovation is to show people how to eliminate their debts in the fastest possible manner, saving wasted interest and valuable time.

I was looking for an unusual promotional item to sell at a pet and animal expo. While watching Man vs. Wild I suddenly had some inspiration: what if I could make eating bugs not as gross! So I took something really unfamiliar (the bugs) and put them in products that people love to eat. The products were so popular we decided to make them part of our regular range.

Jordan and Alex Knight, brothers from Bendigo in regional Victoria, left their employed positions to work in their area of interest without creative limitations: developing applications on new and cutting-edge technologies. As solution architects, graphic and user-experience designers, developers and Microsoft MVPs, we identified that as a small-scale operation we could effectively produce exciting applications with exceptional hands-on customer service to deliver high-quality and rapid solutions.

We gave our eldest son a cooking set but he didn't have a play oven to accompany it. With quick thinking, I turned the box the cooking set came in, into a cooktop by sticking some paper hotplates to the box -- problem solved and he absolutely loved it! I started to think about what other inexpensive toys could be created from a cardboard box...then came the idea of moving plastic parts to make them even more realistic and interactive, some stickers to make it more authentic...and the Imaginabox product line was born!

CEO Craig Deveson is a cloud computing specialist and serial entrepreneur. This is his second cloud-based business and it aims to deliver enterprise services at consumer prices. The innovation came to life last last year when a security software idea was forged with a cloud computing architecture then aimed at the very popular WordPress market.

Last week, I caused an online ruckus by questioning whether Cool Company Finalist LeadBolt should be named our 2011 Cool Company Awards Readers’ Choice winner. LeadBolt totally annihilated the competition – because its business model is based on triggering online actions, such as Facebook Likes. Starlettos, the first runner-up, had courted reader praise and social media reactions the old fashioned way – by rallying their mates. So, who should get the award? Short-cutting LeadBolt or hard-working Starlettos? The results were smashing.