Yes, let’s continue with the five vibe.

Despite this blog regularly benefitting from stories posted on other blogs, I felt it was high time I shared with you all my Top Five Favourite Internet Resources for Awesomeness (TFIRA).

Some of these are related to entrepreneurialism, some relate to current technological affairs (like Today Tonight, albeit with a smattering of credibility) and some of them are just cool.

So let’s get started on the TFIRA, each link guaranteed to please*

1. Trendwatching: I get this email once a month, and each month the trendwatching crew like to coin new marketing phenomena like “Trysumers”, “Customer-made”, and my favourite “Infolust”. This month we take a look at Female Fever, and no, it isn’t female menopause. Trendwatching is just wonderful Internetery! (that’s mine).
2. Treehugger: Green goes Pop! Make Treehugger your favourite resource for reducing your (and your organisation’s) carbon footprint. A fantastic look into the collective conservational consciousness.
3. Engadget: Yes, one of the most popular tech blogs going around, but nothing short of brilliant up-to-the-minute tech and gadget news to keep your inner-geek satiated.
4. Music Thing: This one is a little more personal, but covers amazing music-related gadgets, rare YouTube performances, robots that play Guitar Hero, and uncovers things like the ugliest band ever.
5. Littleladyluxe: This is an act of self-preservation, and OK maybe a pinch of pride. Each week my other half (who’s handy with a sewing machine) produces a new work. Each new item fondly reminds me that our credit card is safe for another week.

*Actual links may not please.

So, what are your favourite website sanctuaries?

– Ben Prendergast

This week, I’d like to share with you five things I do routinely to engender creativity. Whether I’m building a new business, consulting for a client, or writing music, these things are employed at various times and in varying configurations. Your mileage may vary, but welcome to my zany world of self-provocation.1. Do things in fivesFive things are easier to remember. We have five fingers, attention spans of five minutes, five business days. Chinese mythology places a lot of importance in the number five (there are five notes in the Pentatonic scale, otherwise known to musicians as the Blues, or Chinese traditional music, or the powerchord, but I digress).If you can get by with five departments, five email folders, five blog points, five children, do it! This was a quick and easy one; just get down with five, alright!?2. Espresso in the AM, merlot in the PMYes I’m advocating drug use, albeit on the legal side of things. The brain is chemistry’s bitch, so sometimes when I’m on a work bender I’ll use caffeine (cocaine’s distant cousin) to pull me out of my rut and feel like I’m at one with my creative self.Then in the afternoon, after I’ve cajoled my membrane into action, I like to smooth it over with some antioxidants, in the form of a couple of glasses of red wine. Like a good athlete, I like to keep my grey-matter fine tuned (legally).3. Ride/runIncidentally, it works the other way too; abstaining from the aforementioned stimulants and undertaking some physical exercise releases endorphins and the feeling of mastery required to be a creative whirlwind.So an early morning workout has the same effect for me, and I’ll be buzzing for the rest of the day. Sometimes I’ll have a coffee, ride 20ks, drink some red wine, and solve world hunger, but that’s just how I roll (because I’m extremely creative).4. Use a split-personalityIf the physical activity or quasi-narcotics don’t get my synapses firing, I like to employ a little self-imposed psychosis and adopt a split personality (I usually call him Kevin).To be specific, and in my case we’re normally talking about new product development or marketing activities, I’ll normally adopt the guise of a customer seeing my product for the first time.Every business person should do this once a week. Just clear your head and be your target market.5. Write lists, with progressively more threatening checkboxes each time you procrastinateSir Richard Branson taught me this (not personally, but on a five-hour flight while reading his Virgin-sanctioned book) and, being susceptible to procrastination when creating, I’ve taken list writing to a whole new level.Check it out. At the start of each week I write a list of really specific things I’d like to get done, and draw a little checkbox to the left of them. If I complete something, I make a little show of ticking it (eg, punch the air, dance a jig).If I don’t tick it in reasonable time I’ll draw the box a little thicker, draw another box, or sometimes I’ll write self-imposed threats (eg, “I HAVE YOUR WIFE, DO THIS OR ELSE!”).Lists work my friends, as evidenced by my completion of this blog posting (ticks box, saves wife, does MC Hammer shuffle).Until next week, get hi-tech with ‘yer head.

– Ben Prendergast

As a tech entrepreneur, or indeed a closet capitalist, sometimes it’s hard to feel like you’re contributing in any way to the greater good.For me personally, it was only when I started involving myself and my organisation in worthy causes did I actually become passionate about our capacity to assist the greater good. We recently provided software for an African ministry, which was the most rewarding contribution I’ve ever made.So this week, I thought I’d take a look at current happenings on the entrepreneurial-environmentalist front. As it turns out, making money and saving the planet are not mutually exclusive.1. Transport. Oooooh! Brammo’s Enertia Electric motorcycle is destined to be the next Vespa, with decidedly sexy lines that hark back to old-school two wheelers. Just stick your tongue on the fuel cap to see if there’s charge!2. Wood. Step one: write furious letters requesting environmental action to your local MP. Step two, plant your expired Haatar pencil, the one with the seed-embedded butt.3. Energy. The worlds largest solar farm, to be built in California, will service 21,000 homes. You know, Australia shares a liberal heritage with its west-coast US cousins, not to mention millions of hectares of sun-drenched desert. Why don’t we have the largest solar farm?4. Water. The environmentalist, Queensland scientist Dr Ian Edmonds has this idea to solve the water crisis: Using the East Australian current, float cargo-ship sized plastic membranes filled with fresh water down to Brisbane and Sydney. Just watch she doesn’t snag on the reef, guys!5. ???? For some delightful environmentalist schtick, take a look at this fantastic video. I won’t give away the plot, just watch.Credit to www.treehugger.com (a great environmental blog).

– Ben Prendergast

Woah! In the last week we’ve seen a plethora (a PLETHORA!!) of online activity around the iPhone release, which occurs Saturday morning (our time) in the US. Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting tidbits.
1. Apple released its official guided tour this week, complete with faux turtle-necked Steve Jobs.

2. This slovenly chap was (unfortunately for Apple) the first in line for an iPhone (four days before release), and further reports suggest that professional queue-sitters have been employed for up to $1000. Around the blogosphere, the Apple detractors are still out in force, some calling the iPhone the “greatest failure of all time”…

3. Which is vehemently contradicted by the actual reviews, available now that the review embargo has been lifted. My favourite is the hilarious “My iPhone Diary” by New York Times columnist David Pogue. New features uncovered like the fake GPS and real time traffic reports right on the Google map suggest we’re only scratching the surface as to what kind of new features we’ll see in this breakthrough device.

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, provides a more austere review, yet interestingly vindicates the controversial virtual keyboard: “Three days in I wanted to throw it out the window, five days in I was typing faster than my Treo QWERTY keyboard.” However Walt also provides that the greatest drawback at this point seems to be that it is only available on one carrier (AT&T, the USA’s largest).

4. The competition responds with the Nokia E65. However, I get the feeling Nokia is to iPhone what PC is to Mac, and right now there would be frantic activity in both the marketing and development labs of said competition. By contrast, Apple are probably readying their “Hi, I’m an iPhone, and I’m a Nokia” ads.

5. What about the plans? US mobile phone plans are somewhat different to Australian plans (they’re mainly based on bundled minutes), however here is a really great breakdown of the TCO (total cost of ownership) for the iPhone.

Interestingly, there are myriad plans, which is somewhat at odds with the Apple simplicity ethos, but perhaps the most interesting story in all of this is how other carriers will be brought on as it has a bearing on what networks the iPhone will support in the medium term, and of course how the Australian market will in turn be serviced.

– Ben Prendergast

When I was a kid I was called the Little Scientist. I suppose I just liked tinkering with things, making them that little bit better/faster or just more appropriate for my requirements.

More than a handful of broken Christmas presents can attest to this (hi Mum, and belated apologies).

Progressing through my teen years my friends arrived at a similar moniker, “Cousin Midas” (a reference to the famed golden-touch king, however I was the bizarro cousin who’s inferior touch just rendered things inoperable).

They say that one’s core personality traits are formed by the age of eight, and indeed this obsession with tinkering continues to this day.

My businesses, marketing initiatives, products, music, car, fish tank, toddlers (!), are all subjected to my eternal Little Scientist. While I break far fewer things these days (the stakes are clearly higher, lest I render a toddler mute … or worse), any entrepreneur will attest that strong business growth is often the product of short-term audacious changes that can be tested and indeed kept should they produce favourable results.

‘But wait!’ I hear you say, ‘this is a tech blog! Get out of here with your existentialist-quasi-entrepreneurial rant!’ [ed: he’s conversing with himself again!]. However, the rules equally apply to the technology you apply in your business. The tools and systems you use are just as susceptible to improvement as any other part of your business.

Example? Every business receives frequently asked questions around a particular customer requirement. Conventional wisdom is to create a FAQ page on your website, but why not try a YouTube instructional video, a CEO blog, a Google AdWords campaign, website wiki, product forum?

Each of these options will create interesting side-effects: they might endear you to your customers, increase sales by attracting more customers with the same issue, or just simply reduce the net support costs around that issue.

The beauty is that these are low-cost options, and if they don’t work in the short term you can pull them down! Technology can be such an enabler for creating new efficiencies in any organisation.

If your tech department, website developer, online marketing agency aren’t pushing these kinds of ideas, then I’d say you’re better off finding a Little Scientist.

– Ben Prendergast

And so it was on Tuesday that Jobs descended from Mt Cupertino and delivered to the faithful the much coveted iPhone.

A product somewhat smaller than Moses’s tablets of 4000 years before, but nevertheless a device poised to deliver a similar impact, at least in technological terms. But what’s all the fuss about?

In a nutshell, the iPhone promises to do for mobile telephones what the iPod has done for music. That is, to deliver a simplified yet rich user experience, combining for the first time a phone, contacts, calendar, email, real internet browsing and, in a unique twist, a promising partnership with Google.

Check out this ad, and the entire platform makes sense.

As an entrepreneur, business technologist, and design sympathiser, I can’t help but feel excited by a deliciously sexy device that delivers real-time access to the internet, and otherwise creates a platform where I have all the benefits of my home Mac when I’m on the road.

However, is this anything new? I think so, in execution at least, and here is a short list of the everyday features that people are going to love about the iPhone.

• It’s the most logical phone on the planet. Easily find a contact in an email, contacts list, website, and call them.
• Late for an appointment? Can’t find an address? Need directions? Google Maps are now in your pocket.
• Web-based services are hugely popular and here the divide is crossed into handheld territory en-masse for the first time. MySpace, Salesforce, Twitter, productivity tools, newspapers, SmartCompany, Crikey! Great for my own benefit or when working with clients.
• Music & Movies. Browse the iTunes store anywhere and download music/movies for the road.
• Cheap phone calls? I use Skype religiously, and one can only imagine that delivering VOIP/WiFi functions for iPhone is just on the horizon.

Our short technological history is littered with examples of products that were seemingly “under featured” yet ultimately succeeded because they got the mix of usability and functionality right, and then evolved to meet new requirements. Like the iPod before it, I suspect the iPhone will part the waters for Apple Corp and deliver yet another fantastic growth story.

What do you think?

– Ben Prendergast

Well I’m feeling a little guilty here, I’ve been hard at work keeping new features flowing but clearly you’re needing some love in your inbox, so here it is.The last few months have been among our strongest on record (thanks to you), and I’d like to thank all who have come on board or continued to show their support!

We’ve been busy building the structures for new features, and have a couple of new products in development that are really going to boil some of your potatoes.
But on to the news!

30 DAY TRIALS A simple request, you wanted more time to review our editions, so we’re now offering full 30 day trials on all our products. Tell your friends one month of efficiency is on us! Sign up here. http://www.copperproject.com/demo.php

NEW ENTERPRISE EDITION REPORTS, RESOURCING The word was past down from our last survey, “build us a report writer!”. So we did. Our new reports module is now in beta, and you can now produce reports relating to clients or projects, or relating to particular resources. You can save these reports for reprodution, export them to CSV, or have them run periodically and be emailed right to your inbox. We’ve also made some changes to resource management widget, and you can now quickly allocate a resource without having to specify the hours they will work on a task These features are now available to our Enterprise customers now so get in touch and we’ll send you the update.

NEW REFERRAL PROGRAM Do you know someone that could use Copper in their business? If so, we’re offering no questions asked referals. If you refer someone to the Copper product and if they purchase either a server license or sign up for a hosted account, you’ll receive a 20% commission (server-license) or once off $25/$50/$100 bonus (Hosted account). No strings.

ELEMENT ON THE RADIO Australian customers might be a fan of the Byte Into IT show on Melbourne’s RRR, as was/is CEO Ben Prendergast, heard here paying his respects to the doyens of the Australian IT media, replete with unabashed self-promotion. http://media.libsyn.com/media/rrrfm/Byte-Into-It-20070509.mp3

– Ben Prendergast

You know, it’s not every day someone publishes your mug on their webiste, let alone the Apple site, and with a company review no less.

Click here to see the article: http://www.apple.com/au/pr/casestudies/2007/01/element_software/

Thanks especially to the Apple retouchers for some splendid photoshop work.

– Ben Prendergast

1. All New Standard 2007, $29/mth
2. New Enterprise Update
3. 20% off licenses until the end of March

NEW STANDARD 2007 EDITION ($29/MTH) We’re really excited about this release. Our survey uncovered a hidden user-group, those that have less than ten users, but needed full functionality. Well, we agonized over a free version (truly we did) however this is much better (for you, and our accountants). Starting TODAY we have the Standard 2007 version which includes groups, timesheets, invoicing, budgeting, central files, and basically EVERYTHING in the Corporate version, for $29/mth. http://www.copperproject.com/buy.php

NEW ENTERPRISE UPDATE The Enterprise version is now at 3.1 which means a number of those unavoidable pesky bugs have been squashed and we have a really solid product on our hands. The new version now includes a quote function, so you can build up a project timeline and quote to PDF within minutes (and of course still invoice on completion). If you’ve been waiting for this functionality head over to the sight and check it out. http://www.copperproject.com/demo.php

20% OFF CORPORATE & ENTERPRISE LICENCES UNTIL THE END OF THE MONTH That’s right, if you’ve been waiting for a special deal, seachange, heartful exchange of goodwill, this is it! Use the coupon code ‘SilverTime’ for a 20% discount on your Corporate or Enterprise license, but only until the end of March.

– Ben Prendergast

1. Element Software featured by Apple
2. Fly, Enterprise, Fly.
3. A new pricing model to be decided…by you!
4. Erstwhile a new product approacheth

ONE. Replete with many a saucy photo, this month bears witness to our CEO espousing the virtues of Apple products on the Apple website, along with a delicately placed plug for our litte Copper products. To put a face to a name, and otherwise dispel all myths, click the link below: http://www.apple.com/au/pr/casestudies/2007/01/element_software/

TWO.. Our Enterprise edition is performing splendidly, thankyou. It seems we’ve hit on the perfect mix of features for the team requiring a little more flexibility with their producitvity solution. However, March will see the release of an update (what already? - Ed) to include a new Reporting module and other goodies taking our flagship product another step forward. We’re also now offering Enterprise edition 14-day trials so if you’d like to pop the hood get on over to http://www.copperproject.com/demo.php

THREE… As per our yearly survey, we’re nearing the release of a free Copper product, however in order to move ahead we need your help arriving at a suitable pricing model. Whether you’re a customer or not, please click here and vote for the model that suits you best. Thanks in advance for your help!

FOUR…. Tally ye not! A new product doth approach! Yes, it’s weird when old English is employed to spruik a new web 2.0 software product, however all will make sense in good time. All we can say is that it will be financial in nature, will be web-based, and it will be beyond awesome for those who require a product of its type. Feeling lucky you feisty braggard? Well if you can guess what it is we’ll give you one free when it’s released!

– Ben Prendergast