Natalie Chandler

The insurance industry is notoriously cumbersome after a natural disaster. The trauma of rebuilding negotiations often compounds that of the original event. The good news is an award-winning ‘track-and-trace’ approach to claims handling hopes to reduce turnaround time by up to 60%.

Forget the 12 Days of Christmas… Before you stick a partridge in a pear tree, here are the top things you need to get sorted before year’s end.

Facebook is altering the way we communicate, according to new research by the good peeps at Ovum. Almost half of UK consumers responding to Ovum's survey said that social networking platforms have adversely affected their use of email services. But wait, there’s more. A cool 40 per cent blamed Facebook for a decline in the use of voice fixed services, 34 per cent said they made fewer mobile phone calls due to you-know-who, and 29 per cent said the number of text messages they send was heading south.

The new calendar year is looming large. So, Dr Caroline Hong, Chief Executive Officer of the SME Association of Australia, decided it was high time to share her thinkings on upcoming trends for small to medium enterprises.

What do you get when you leave a bunch of industrial designers and engineers to their own devices? A fancy new website in early-2012 that will allow anyone to create their own 3D-printed eyewear.

Fancy building a global brand from scratch? What if we threw language barriers, different work cultures and new tax regulations into the mix? Sydneysiders Alex Herlihy and Chloe Vandervord have done just that. The intrepid duo recently launched luxury leather bag line ECEL – from Buenos Aires, no less.

Us headhunters cop a lot of criticism about the quality of service we deliver. Much of it justified. Recruitment is a service-based industry led by sales people who are sometimes struggling to make commissions. When struggling sales people work with vulnerable jobs seekers, it’s a recipe ripe for unhappiness all round.

Who among your assorted social media peeps is channeling their inner Ashton Kutcher? Rocking some serious online influence, that is. Not getting publicly outed as a [alleged] big, dirty... um... Demi disappointer. The people behind newly-minted Australian start-up, SocialShout!, reckon they’ve struck upon the best way to flag regular folk with maximum social media clout.

The super-speedy new National Broadband Network (NBN) is sloooowly inching closer. But it’s not just digital junkies who’ll benefit from the multitude of megabits; their pushers can also expect a new lease on life. Internet Service Providers (ISP), that is.

Fancy setting up a Facebook page and social coupon campaign in five minutes? As luck would have it, thruSocial can deliver just that. The brainchild of Karel Baloun, the first senior engineer at Facebook, thruSocial and its free social couponing service, Thrupon, has been working its magic in the US of A since April 2010. And now it’s Australia’s and New Zealand’s turn thanks to local entrepreneurs Luke O’Neill and Megan Owen.

The Commonwealth Bank hopes to impress Facebookers with new game The Time Vault. The two-week initiative includes ten prizes of $2,000. The Time Vault has its very own tab on the Bank’s Facebook page. Due to launch November 21, each day for ten business days a question will be asked relating to a decade of the Commonwealth Bank’s 100-year history.

A whopping 95.6% of Australian businesses are small, while 62.7% don’t employ any staff. Until recently, they couldn’t enjoy end-of-year parties in the same way big business can. I said, 'until recently'.

Okay, we'd secured a big name to come and present and felt confident enough to book a 250 seat auditorium using our standard marketing approach of mailing our email database. But a week before the event, we'd only sold 95 tickets. With few options left, here's what I learnt trying to launch an affiliate program with three days’ notice.

Ah Facebook. You’ve turned mum into a serial over-sharer, the boss into a persistent poker, and Mark Zuckerberg keeps pimping your private deets from atop of his 18 carat Captain Kirk replica chair. But still, you heart social media and all the lolz it brings. So what’s the alternative? Maybe, just maybe, it’s new Aussie start-up Family HQ.

Way back in June, we introduced you to Pozible, a newish online platform sharing the crowd-funding love with Australia’s arts industry. Just five wee months later, founders Rick Chen and Alan Crabbe have reached a cool $1 million in pledges. Here are Pozible’s 11 tips to crowd-funding success.

Aussie photography company Eastmon Online is no stranger to innovation. Since launching in a backyard shed in 1961, the business has gone from black and white to colour; from film to digital; and, in recent months, from e-tail to f-tail.

Holy multitasking. According to a new study by telecoms stat gurus Ovum, a cool 74 per cent of consumers with a broadband connection cruise the interwebs while watching the telly.

Rocking your cranky britches because you can never get your mitts on the coveted deal du jour? You’re not alone. Way back in September, The Age reported that, to date this year, Consumer Affairs Victoria had received 160 complaints about group buying sites – a significant increase on the 22 similar complaints received the previous year. Well, Unbooked founders Sarah Taylor and Jeff Dusting believe both vendors and customers are primed for a slicker fix in the supply VS demand quandary.

Could Australian start-up Trunk.ly be the missing link in your online life? With Delicious – the Grand Poobah of online bookmarking pre-Yahoo! acquisition -- struggling to recapture that loving feeling post-relaunch, Trunk.ly has the golden, bejewelled crown firmly in its sights.

When we think of marketing there are a lot of different segments that come to mind, like PR and advertising. These often work in sudden bursts or campaigns driven by budgets and short-term goals. SEO, on the other hand, is an organic approach to marketing. Like farming, but not the genetically modified kind.