Industry News & Events
multimedia filtered,
and with attitude.
November 22 1996
Missed it? Try the archive.
Money for grrrls,
stars, bytes and lasers
Australia
Council New Media Arts Fund grants announced
You knew this already, but you can now quote the facts
AGB McNair NetWatch
finds the Internet grows in widespread appeal
I'll have another one with the lot thanks
"Build Your Own
Gateway" a big Internet hit
Hurry, entries close November 30th
MILIA D'OR '97 Awards add
Online Multimedia section
Shop till you drop (the mouse)
Woolworths
and David Jones throw money at the Web
New Media Arts Fund grants announced
The Australia Council are building strategic relationships
between new media artists and innovative technology
organisations through their latest grants. Funded artists
will work with innovative technology organisations
specialising in astronomical photography, special effect
lighting and lasers, underwater documentary filmaking,
software development, imaging and video production, national TV
broadcasting, industrial heritage, local history and
microscopy.
"38 grants
totalling $1.365 million are the first
to be made by the recently established New Media Arts Fund
and will provide an exciting exchange of skills and creative
ideas," said Acting Chair of the Fund, Stephen
Armstrong.
"The grants given reflect a huge diversity of work in
new media - everything from performance, creation of web
sites, CDs and CDROM production, multimedia installations
overseas touring and virtual reality events," said Mr
Armstrong. "Council has also successfully created new
avenues for the professional employment of artists through
its three new funding categories - Fellowships, Partnerships
and Commissions."
Grants in these new categories include:
· A Fellowship of $80,000 over two years was given to
filmmaker and writer Dr Ross Gibson to work on two projects
with Sydney museums and a project on rural life in Queensland
with Flying Arts. Fellowships give artists with outstanding
track records the opportunity to focus on the creation of new
work.
· $60,000 for SBSTV to commission sound artists,
photographers and digital artists to work with filmmakers to
create a TV series for national broadcast focussing on the
theme of Future Perfect? for eat carpet.
Commissions are to encourage organisations to engage artists
working outside of traditional artform divisions to create a
new work for presentation.
· A Partnership between photographer and visual artist
Lynette Wallworth and David Hannon Productions a company
specialising in new techniques of underwater filmmaking.
Strategic partnerships with non-arts organisations allow
artists access to resources to enable development of their
contemporary practice.
· Another Partnership is with lighting and special events
company Peter Barry and Associates and visual artist Wendy
Mills to create a light and water event on the Brisbane
River.
Full details are in the
release but other grant highlights
include: VRML (virtual reality) exhibition spaces, multimedia
installations, remote North West Queensland links with Feral
Arts studio in Brisbane, new Cyber Cultures project, regional
youth training in MUDs and MOOs by ANAT, an installation at
the Hong Kong Fringe Festival, a collaborative internet project
on new forms of writing and an online new year issue of geekgirl.
You've missed the closing dates for the next round of New
Media Arts grants (it was 15 November). Residency
applications ($20,000) with the ABC Radio's The Listening
Room, the Faculty of Design and Construction at Royal
Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and two new art and
technology residencies ($35,000 per annum) with Firmware and
the CSIRO Division of Information Technology also closed on
15 November.
Stay tuned for the next deadline. You can see the
full press release in our PowerTools database.
The Internet
Gathers Widespread Appeal and is
now being used by a broad cross section of the Australian population,
with more than 10 per cent of all persons aged 14 years and over
(1.6 million) having accessed the Internet in
August/September, according to the latest internet research
study conducted by AGB McNair.
Findings from the "AGB McNair NetWatch", reveal that the internet continues to be accessed at a higher rate by young people with the rate of access decreasing with age. 21 per cent of people aged 14 to 17 accessed the internet in August/September and the access rate falls with age down to 2 per cent for persons 55 and over.
Marc Phillips, director of On Line Research
Services at AGB McNair said that "Although the internet
is commonly referred to as appealing to a specific niche
market, our latest results indicate it is becoming an affordable
communications tool gaining widespread appeal. This is very encouraging for
businesses looking to communicate with consumers of mainstream
goods and services via the internet. This trend is reflected
in recently launched web sites such as Woolworths,
Tattersalls and National Mutual which provide information
about products that we consume every day"
AGB McNair NetWatch is a continuous tracking survey
collecting demographic, occupation, income and usage
information focusing on how often and what internet consumers
specifically buy or use in more than 30 different product
categories. The nationally representative face to face survey
is being conducted with 4000+ respondents each month
aged 14 years and over.
Other findings in the NetWatch report include:
Australians are continuing to turn to the internet for news and current affairs with 434,000 Australians aged 14 years and older having accessed news and current affairs web site. The good news continues for new media proprietors investing in the internet with 304,000 Australians aged 14 years and older having read an electronic magazine.
The banking and finance industry who are investing in online commerce systems will be encouraged with the finding that 7% of those Australians who have accessed the internet have purchased products over the internet, up from 2% in October 1995.
Marc Phillips comments,"This is particularly encouraging when we note that 25 per cent of Australians who have ever accessed the internet, had downloaded software, as web sites often ask users to install software to conduct transactions"
Full details and pricing of the AGB McNair NetWatch" survey are available at http://www.agb.com.au/online/netwatch.html . One off monthly reports are available at $2,500 with reports being available in quarterly and half yearly with annual reports including an executive summary available at $21,000.
Sounds like good business intelligence to me. See the press release in our Database for more statistics.
Reed
Midem Organisation Hosts the third MILIA D'OR '97
Book the tickets. Milia, the International Publishing and New
Media Market today announced it will for the first time
include specific awards for online multimedia works in
addition to existing CD-ROM multimedia titles, during its
third annual edition to be held February 9th-12th, 1997 at - the
Palais des Festivals- in Cannes, NEW LINE CINEMA CORPORATION
and the HAVAS GROUP, will once again co-sponsor this event.
In addition to the Grand Prize for the overall best work
across all categories and genres, there will be a Milia d'Or
for each of the off-line / hybrid categories, and a Gold, Silver
and Bronze Award for the best Editorial online works: · Editorial online
sites.
But hurry entries for all sections close November 30th. There
are full details
here in the PowerTools database.
Gateway
2000 Web site a hit in Internet commerce
Gateway 2000 announced today their Internet site, which
allows customers to configure, order and pay for a PC
on-line, is now averaging over 1.1 million 'hits' per day.
Locally, the Australian site is averaging over 20,000 hits
which translates to approximately 400 visitors each day.
In April this year, Gateway in the US was the first major
personal computer manufacturer to offer an ordering service
which allows customers to configure and order their own PC.
The service has since been introduced to the Australian
operations and Mr Peter Lees, Managing Director of Gateway 2000
in Australia, said that "On-line ordering is a natural
extension of our successful direct marketing model. We have
already received many positive comments from Australian customers."
PC shoppers can access the local Gateway website at http://gw2k.com.au
and utilise the Build Your Own Gateway feature to design the
system they want. Buyers receive a price quote for their configuration
and are able to complete the entire transaction while on-line with
credit cards, and all order details are encrypted using
'Secure Sockets Layer' (SSL). They can also check on the progress
of their order.
Visit http://gw2k.com.au to
find more information on Gateway 2000. See the
full release here.
It has seemed to take forever (that's
in Web time) for the Australian retail companies to embrace
the web. You know all the reasons, but it doesn't make a lot
of sense that the first companies to treat this obsession of
yours to be online seriously, were car companies! The
traditional wisdom for catalogue direct marketing suggests
that products that you don't need to pick up and examine,
will sell better than ones that actually handling is required
for. I don't need to quality check a CD or handle it before I
buy. Similarly, I would also be more inclined to trust an
established retailer to sell me quality items, based on their
reputation alone. Enter David
Jones At Home. An
attractive site where after a bit of Mumbo Jumbo about
browser security, you can fill your shopping trolley with
brand name merchandise and some exclusive DJ's products
(that's Morris the Reindeer above). Using a Microsoft back
end you can then make secure payment. It's nicely done, looks
great and if you sit in a spot like me away from the city, or
just want to avoid the Christmas rush, David Jones At
Home is a winner.
In the supermarket category comes the new Woolworths store. Again traditional marketing and
advertising has prepared us to trust The Fresh Food People.
However this site wisely knows that you'll still want to hand
pick your tomatoes and just builds you a shopping list from
suggested recipes and menus to take to the store. This one is
not so pretty to look at. When you arrive there's a large
ugly interlaced Jpeg that takes forever to load and sharpen
and even then has small antialiased text that is hard to
read. It looks most unappealing. Once the header to the pages
is in your buffer the rest of the site is ok, but lots of the
links are yet to be built. The store location directory is
hard to use and I couldn't find the Queanbeyan store I go to
(so I know it's there) until I looked in the ACT directory.
It's hardly a relevant point because nobody is going to look
up and drive to a store that's out of their area anyway.
The healthy food message is strong at Woolworths but there's
less reason for me to visit this one again. Both sites build
shopping lists but DJ's has a bit more personal feel and lets
me choose gifts in name lists I make up for Mum, Aunty Evie
etc. The Woolworths site does let you build a profile of personal
preferences but it's a bit more complicated.
David Jones At Home has a credit as conceived and produced by the David Jones Internet Project Team in conjunction with Saatchi & Saatchi Interactive and Harrow Media. I couldn't find a credit on the Woolworths site. Both have press releases in our Database, there's Woolworths and David Jones.