Casino Royale night

Tonight we had dinner with a Casino Royale theme. We all recieved 3x$1000 vouchers that we exchanged for casino chips. There were all the usual games roulette, poker, black jack etc. All in all everyone had a great night.

Consumer Broadband in Australia

Just about to go into the second session. This should be a very interesting session, it’s obviously a topic that effects techAU in a massive way. We’re always negotiating the balance between providing high quality content, whilst being conscious of our users connection speeds. With the average consumer connection increasing, we look to provide a HD version of the show in the future. With faster internet speeds at the right price, with increased download limits, downloading a 1GB file would more than be acceptable.

Currently downloading an average video podcast takes around 30 minutes on a 1.5Mb connection, downloading the same file on an 8Mb connection takes around 10 minutes, and so on.

One question I’d like 2 know is what others think faster internet will be used for ? HD video, real time gamin/training environments, video conferencing taking over traditional phone calls ?

Follow up
Paull Young – Aus blogger, now in the US.

Update:

Speaker form Engine

Topics covered..

Dial-up became competitive, price of dial-up reduced, ISP’s going out of business.

3/4 of households have computers
1/2 of households have Internet
Source: ABS

Not much loyalty to ISP’s
Line rental
Speed isn’t the issue, price is… ?
Speakers thoughts are majority of people’s priority is – Price, Download, Speed

Strategy for IPTV is TIVO

Naked DSL – no line rental

Speaker from Go-Talk

Reading from a Newspaper article, stats indicate older generation are heavier users of the web that younger people.

Pulls out old story of oldest 107yo blogger, months old.

Reads out tech support website story, is clear she has no idea about the terms on the story.

Refers to TV setup evolution as an example of what the PC / phone should work like.

Speaker from Netcomm

Discussion around government solutions
Says dial-up is not dead
Demand is not for speed
New filters for ADSL2+
Fibre to the Node uses VDSL required to be within 1.5km of exchange, ADSL2 required to be within 5km.
Estate in TAS 20 Mb downstream / 1Mb upstream, can get synchronous of same as download.
17 Million mobile users in Australia
3G can be increased to go through multi-story buildings.

Follow up
Real time Australia 

David Haviat
Haviat associats

Hand outs, really, technology conference and we can’t get a projector ?

Desktop security

1st session of the consumer stream.

Symantec
Online identity theft.
Security of PC + mobile device.
Bots on the increase, ability to phone home receive an update and morph to avoid detection / removal.

New threat legitimate sites delivering drive-by-download threat.
Feb – Miama dolphins website

Online Identity
- Constructed from multiple sites / information.
- Consumer identity protection is evolving to include mobile devices.
- Estimated $1.4 billion, 1 person every 4 seconds in US.
- Smart phones are seeing a 77% increase, fastest growth area.
- $2.1 billion mobile devices atm

Q & A session
48,000 virus’ on WIndows last year
4,000 on Linux

—————

Michael Green
PC Tools

New trends in Malware (Malware 2.0).
New tools are being used to create Malware, creating variants up to 3 per minute.
Malware companies have so much coming through they have 2 choose which to fix.
Changing strategy – moving from signature method to full circle (rapid detection, behavior, signature creation, push back down to desktop)
Consumers don’t care about how, they just want things 2 be secured.

Q & A session
Question about individual products vs 1 product / easier for consumers.
Comment that consumers shouldn’t have 2 worry about protection.

————

Computer Associates

User education needs 2 improve.
Firefox will no longer be regarded as more secure than Internet Explorer.
Symantec running Connnected and Protected campaign bus.

———–

Air Win, Mac, Linux story

Snoopware – mobile devices turning on microphones and cameras.

Arrive @ Influence Forum (unconference)

I just arrived and checked in to the Crown Plaza, Hunter Valley. The views here are amazing, I’m sure the next 3 days are going 2 be pretty full on, but if I have 2 work hard, this is the place to do it. Although slightly overcast, this place combines city type accommodation and facilities in a rural setting.

On check in, I met Kirstin, our contact at MediaConnect who invited us to the conference. Got my lapel (Jason – techAU), received a detailed agenda, and a cover letter explaining the conference. It explains that the event is focused on the dynamic flow of information between analysts, blogger’s and industry. And follows the ‘unconference’ theme in steering away from presentations and lectures to more of a discussion / debate style.

About to go into the opening keynote @ 12, should be good, really looking foward to it.

 And of course you can read about all of it right here on techAU.

Influence forum..

The Influence forum is run by MediaConnect, it brings together some of the top Journalists, bloggers, and business people for discussions around..

Desktop security 
IT simplification
Broadband in Australia
Living online
Beyond voip
The evolving pc
Enterprise security
Home & entertainment technology
Business centric it
Mobile & wireless
Enterprise 2.0.

I’ll be speaking on a panel with Ian Yates and Roulla Yiacoumi about Podcasting. It’s on Tuesday from 9.30 till 10am.

I’ve been told wireless Internet will be available, so I’ll be blogging as much as possible through the event.

More @ http://www.influenceforum.com/influencers