wide-full

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that simple logos are the best kind of logos. If you don't agree, consider the world's top 100 brands, according to Interbrand.

If you're considering changing phone systems, or you're a new business wanting a system to grow with you, make sure that Fonality is part of your decision process.

We all want the best for our families, and building successful companies is one of the best ways to provide for them. But while you're off establishing your empire, will your kids turn into spoilt ingrates?

Electronics retailer Bing Lee has caused a ruckus on the interwebs for pledging to donate $1 to the Queensland flood appeal for every user who became a member of the company's fan page. The strategy has been attacked on Twitter, with users adopting the hashtag "#charityfail". Brilliant marketing or worth a bollocking?

I started my own financial planning firm in 2010, with insurance for tradesmen and women being our target market. Insurance for tradies is quite unique in that the minimum requirements are set by the various state and territory governments depending on the type of trade. As we started to field enquiries from tradies, we noted that many of them had no idea of their insurance responsibilities under the relevant laws. As we grew our own knowledge by doing research on our clients' behalf, we saw the opportunity to collate this information and create on online insurance resource for trade workers.

Sponsored Message: Are you an over-worked, underpaid business owner? Wouldn't you prefer to be an entrepreneurial Renegade Rockstar? Register for your free 'Productise or Die' DVD.

Researchers at the ANU collaborated with Volvo in Sweden to explore advanced driver safety systems based on monitoring the driver (instead of monitoring the vehicle or environment). Using a video camera and video image analysis the team learnt to accurately track and monitor the driver's face and facial features. That technology allows the driver's eyes to be monitored (open or closed?) and to track the direction the driver is facing (looking at the road or not?). Crucial innovations along the way include coping with eyeglasses, sunglasses, working night and day, and being fully automatic and remaining off-body/non-contact.

Are you an industrial designer, a technologist, an inventor, an entrepreneurial product developer - someone with an innovation that you'd like Anthill to help promote?

According to the latest trade payments analysis by Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), the payment terms of Australian firms have risen for the third consecutive quarter.

Over the past 10 days, Anthill has experienced more technical issues and downtime than in its entire digital history. We won't bore you with the details. Suffice to say, it was hellish. Rather than take a long-weekend to lick our wounds and recoup, it wasn't a hard decision to attempt to turn this negative into a positive, and create a compelling 'living' lesson for Anthill readers instead.

In my previous letter I looked at two trends in Japan that may turn into “hot’ opportunities for those outside the country. Here are two more trends that will provide opportunities for an entrepreneurial soul.

Real-estate entrepreneurs have never featured strongly in the 30under30. In our opinions, entrepreneurship is not about personal wealth creation. It’s about the process of creation itself! This year, three real-estate entrepreneurs grabbed our attention, not because of the number of Torrens Titles stashed under their beds, but because each has built a business around the real-estate industry at a tender age.

With NBN on the horizon, there has been an increase in businesses looking to take the ‘virtual leap’ towards high-quality, feature-rich IP voice solutions, commonly called VoIP (Voice over IP) or hosted/virtual PBX. There are other options to the traditional landline for business telephony.

Anthill’s ‘SMART 100′ Index was developed in 2008 to identify and rank Australia’s 100 most innovative products, proving to be one of the largest surveys of its kind in Australia. Nominations for the 2011 awards are now open. Do you know of an Australian innovation worthy of recognition?

Market research company and business information provider IBISWorld has recently released its findings on Australia’s leading export industries for 2010 and their outlook for the next five years.

For over 20 years, SIGNARAMA consultants have been working closely with companies to create customised branding and signage strategies.

From the wonderfully verdant mind of entrepreneurial illustrator Hugh MacLeod, author of Ignore Everybody (listed among Amazon's Top 10 Editor's Picks for Best Business Books 2009), comes this print worthy of hanging on any entrepreneur's wall.

ROI is a bunch of numbers invented by the marketing guys and then given substance by creating a scenario to support the desired end result. Most of us know this as spin or, more bluntly, bullshit.

Which trends in Japan will turn into hot opportunities for entrepreneurs located outside the country? I gave this some thought while sliding down Japan’s best powder ski slopes as Australia was sweltering over summer. Here are the first two of four “hot” sectors at the top of my list.

We simply love situations where business, art and culture collide.