Tech & Innovation

Christopher Wilkie is 24 years old and trained in psychology, computer science, accounting and finance. For someone of his stamina, developing an app should be a cinch, right? Not so much, he admits. Here are 10 things that Wilkie learned while developing his first iPhone app, DELUX, an on-demand car-booking enterprise.

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has released an iPhone app aimed at classical music's most under-served demographic: kids. The app includes profiles of each of the instrument sections and Q&A's with some of its members. While the app makes for a solid educational tool, we also find it to be effective publicity for the often under-appreciated arts. What good is a symphony without an audience? And as those audiences grow ever older, who will replace them?

Poor old Bluetooth. For a while now it’s been misappropriated by loud, shouty types stomping up the high street fog-horning ‘Buy! Buy! SELL!’ into their ear pieces. We here at Anthill -- with a liberal dollop of help from the delightful folk at Intel -- would like to reclaim Bluetooth as much more than just a conduit for idiots.

The iPhone truly sets us apart. You're an iPhone user or... well... you're just *not*. It is something many of us have known for some...

Outsourcing big kahuna Freelancer.com has finally signaled its intent to muscle in on 99design’s graphic design crowdsourcing turf, stumping up US$20,000 in cash-money for creative types. Has Australia become the new global crowdsourcing hub?

Small business owners have enough on their plates without adding IT woes to the mix – that’s why Intel recommends you have a back-up disaster plan in place so that you can minimise downtime should your technology take a tumble.

Entrepreneurs' Night Out is on in Brisbane for a round of meeting and mingling. Share a drink. Have a laugh. And most importantly, help...

We have to admit it -- an embarrassing percentage of advertisements for mobile phones are awesome. But of all the ads we've seen hawking 4G, touchscreens and megapixels, this entry from France for the Samsung Galaxy S II series beats them all. It also prompted us to quickly assemble our own list of mobile phone ad favourites, and ask: Who in the name of David Copperfield is this guy, and what's his day job?

Simon Moss, who co-founded a newly minted company that is tapping into the crowdsourcing phenomenon, offers his insight and personal experience in a talk presented at VIVID Creative Sydney. His enterprise, ImageBrief, aims to turn the stock-photography market on its head.

Phishing, for those who’ve not had the pleasure, refers to fraudulent electronic attempts to acquire personal information such as bank and credit card information, usernames and passwords, and any other details that can be used in identity theft. Phishing emails can be tricky to spot. Often they look exactly like legit messages from banks or creditors. Here’s the really sneaky part: they contain dangerous links that take you to fraudulent spoof sites.

The only foolproof way to keep your info from being permanently available to the other WWW – the whole wide world – is to make sure it doesn’t get uploaded in the first place. Remember: those Schoolies snaps of you with sick in your hair might nibble you on the buttocks when you run for parliament further down the line.

IPowow, a Sydney-based interactive media company that has made its mark in international sports and entertainment, ventured down the runway this past weekend, giving viewers of the Miss USA pageant a chance to express their opinions in real time.

The latest AVG Digital Diary report studied technology use among young Australian children and found out that 51% of Aussie kids use social networks to keep in contact with each other and that they spend more time online than the global average. Yet most parents (58%) still aren’t fully aware of their children’s social networking practices.

Cisco’s annual Visual Networking Index (VNI) foresees that internet traffic in Australia will grow at a rate of 41% per year until 2015, which means that current internet traffic volumes will grow six fold over the course of the next four years. By 2015, 10% of global traffic and 18% of internet video traffic will be consumed by Web-enabled TVs. Average global traffic in 2015 will be equivalent to 200 million people streaming an HD movie at the same time all day.

As tempting as it is to confirm whether there’s $5 squillion sitting in the bank account of some nice old reverend from foreign climes who’s devoted his life to poor children and very cute puppies, we both know this one pongs to high heaven of over-ripe spam. But the good news is there are a number of precautions you can take to avoid scams, protect your personal information, and keep your email address safe.

Based on this first-look video, Windows 8 looks eerily familiar to those of us who paid any attention to the Windows Phone 7 operating system when it came out a year ago -- big tiles that contain themes and logical (to the folks in Redmond, Wash., at least) collections of apps and data. And touching. Lots and lots of touching.

It was Arthur C. Clarke who said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." This clever clip almost demonstrates his point. Almost. Behold mere mortals! (And cue Europe's Final Countdown.) You are about to witness some ma-gic!

JMango has an online tool that can greatly speed up the development of apps for mobile devices. The development platform takes and app and customises it for all the mobile platforms out there -- iPhone, Android and the like. JMango's cool toy finished fifth in this year's Anthill SMART 100.

When it comes to eyewear, people either compromise on style, colour and size... or pay through the wazoo to get exactly what they want. Daniel He, an entrepreneur with a degree in optometry, wants to change all that. His idea for a website where people can create custom eyewear was good for fourth place in this year's Anthill SMART 100.

The world’s first laptop powered Chromium, Google’s operating system, has been released by Ruslan Kogan, beating competitors like Acer and Samsung. “We’ve been able to beat the rest of the world to bring the first commercially available laptop running Google’s Chromium OS,” Kogan said.