I’ve been meaning to uncover some of the talents in the web industry of Australia. Forgive me if I’ve missed anyone, you can blame me for not already spending enough time to do more research.

Software

Atlassian
These guys are most well known in the Java community. Their bug tracking system, Jira, is used in most open source Java projects and is very popular across the world. Their wiki software, Confluence, is also very popular and is a leader in wiki functionality and UI design. They received the Deloitte Fast 500 Award earlier this year.

Atmail
Mail Server: Webmail Client Software on Linux, Unix, Windows. Their product looks quite stable with nice UI, should be a strong competitor with Zimbra in the hosted email client sector.

BigWorld Technology
These guys are on the edge of computer games development. Their products include 3D client, advanced load-balancing server and world building tools.

Pandora Squared
One of the first companies to use Ruby on Rails. They have a social networking software with asia pacific clients. They’ve a software team in Philippines, although from word of mouth, there might be some hiccups within the company.

‘Web 2.0’

Remember the milk
A simple but powerful web application for managing task list. It is only runned by 2 people.

Campaign Monitor
Email campaign application. Although the product might not sound very innovative, this company has done it with perfection. They tackled the market targeting to the web designers first and the usability and design of the application is just excellent. One of my favorite Australian web applications.

Zookoda
Small team focused on transforming rss to email newsletter.

Zapr – Really Simple Sharing
File sharing software with social aspects… I haven’t had a need to try it yet 😛

Omnidrive
Multiple platform file storage – desktop, web, api. I was employed by them for a while. They have been in private beta since start of the year. There’s also a majority development team in India.

Gnoos
Australian blog search…

Mobile

Legion Interactive
They are the main player in the sms voting product, a leader in the mobile application industry.

Moket
Quite a young company focusing on flashlite development.

bluepulse
A platform for adding widgets on the mobile phone. You can find out more from their website.

Stealth

I can’t say much about these…

Tangler – http://www.tangler.com/

TILEFILEâ„¢ — Welcome to TILEFILE, the Corporation behind GRIDMOâ„¢ & GRIDIOTâ„¢ …“Share Your World”â„¢

Genbook – generic booking system.

Terrence Tao, the 31yr-old genius, who completed his PhD at 21 and was teaching my 3rd year math course at UNSW at age of 25! Although I wasn’t the brightest mathematician in his class (actually I got abit lost in 3rd year math – with integrating 4 dimension contours?!?), I remembered he was such a smart fellow. He spoke fast but he was obviously good at his stuff (different to the typical lecturer).

He’s based in UCLA now, here’s the press release. He is still very young and has a long way to go, I’m proud to be one of his student in the past 🙂

For a contrast, there’s new research that shows – “Working With Idiots Can Kill You“. I find this quite true in my past experience (don’t mean to offend anybody).

Stress is one of the top causes of heart attacks — and working with stupid people on a daily basis is one of the deadliest forms of stress, according to researchers at Sweden’s Lindbergh University Medical Center.

I had quite an experience with 11 other jurors coming up with the verdicts for 6 different charges. About 2 weeks ago, I was a summoned by the district court to work as juror. The case that I got allocated to was a rape case involving 2 very young adults. I am so glad that it is all over now and I can talk about it.

This is my first time being a juror and it is definitely alot more stressful than I originally thought. I don’t normally watch those law court dramas so all the procedures are very new to me. It was quite an awful experience listening to the victim and witnesses iterating the story in full description. I couldn’t bare seeing the victim being cross examined by the defendant barrister. After 2 weeks, those words I hear in court (sexual intercourse, assault, lie) keep repeating in my head. I am glad this is all over now, and I can tell you the accused was guilty for 5 out of 6 charges.

The big twist of if all was at the very end, after we gave the verdict. The sheriff told us that he accused had some violent history, which we weren’t allowed to know as it might sway our judgement on this particular case. This guy had stole a car, kidnapped a girl, drove across three states and put a gun on a woman’s head. It was quite a shock to us at the point, as we had some argument as to whether he was guilty or not. It was hard to decide who to believe because the victim’s story was all over the place and the accused was quite confident with his statement. He’ll probably need to get some psychiatric help as there’s suggestion of schizophrenia from his behaviour. Anyway we’ll find out the sentence in about 6 weeks and we’ll also have a jury reunion as post jury support 🙂

I am officially no longer working for Omnidrive. It’s a pity that I couln’t see the new web interface go live during my time there. There were several reasons that led me to make this decision. Anyhow I’ll be continuing my own endeavour as a independent consultant and work on some of my own little projects. Here’s some pointers you should know before joining a ‘startup’ from Guy Kawasaki.
– The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs
– Nine Questions to Ask a Startup