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This week saw another major tech launch on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) when a Swiss flag flew to mark the launch of a Swedish company (whoops)! At the end of trade, Spotify had a market capitalisation of almost US$30 billion. Not bad for a com…

Eighteen years ago, our country introduced the Goods and Services Tax (GST) that, despite a few minor complications with certain exemptions, is relatively simple. When a supplier sells a product, the supplier needs to add ten per cent to the cost of …

It is one of life’s great ironies. A person with a certain trait will unwittingly look for – or see – that trait in other people before any other trait. For example, take the situation when you don’t know where your phone is. …

If you think about the biggest single sales day on the mobile phone calendar you might think about Christmas Eve or 30 June or maybe even the beginning of the school year. What about Valentine’s Day? All incorrect. Undoubtedly the biggest singl…

The internal combustion engine has some history. Patents can be traced back as far as 1791 and various improvements were made through the 1800s. In 1826 a patent was issued for an engine that included a carburettor. In 1856 a 5HP engine replaced stea…

Breaking news. 4G is being rolled out on a barren sparse landscape to allow HD video to be uploaded. Sounds like a scenario that would make many people in regional Australia very happy. And as much as it would be fantastic to be reporting on that sit…

With a little help from the McKinsey Global Institute, today I want to jump forward to the year 2025 and look at what technologies we know about today that I think will be having a larger impact on our world by 2025, a time when the world population …

US Patent number 634,042 was issued in October 1899 for something called the pneumatic carpet renovator. Something like an early vacuum cleaner. It was shortly after this that the United States Commissioner of Patents was purported to say, “Eve…

It was way back in 1989 that I had finished with the fun of living at a University College and moved into a flat with some friends. The first analogue cellular mobile phone call was made in Australia on 23 February 1987 so very few people actually ha…

I was out riding my bike early one morn with a small group of riders that ride together semi-regularly. It was a popular route amongst cyclists around the city with different groups using it most mornings. On this particular morning, there was a ride…

Australia Day. A day of celebrations around the country as we mark the 230th anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson. Technology will be used extensively across the country as we take photos and videos and edit,…

My tech article this week is dedicated to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). I have been inundated with questions lately related to bitcoin specifically – or cryptocurrencies in general. When media articles are written about people who have turned US$…

Today is the last day of the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in Las Vegas. The 2018 version was the 51st anniversary of the largest global gathering of innovation and electronics with almost 200,000 people in attendance over the four days…

When Australian Director, Peter Weir, released The Truman Show in 1998, I am not sure he would have thought how the world would look twenty years after the release of his movie. In the movie, Truman Burbank’s entire life is being broadcast to t…

Now here is an engineering challenge to keep your mind occupied over the Christmas break. Firstly, take a geostationary satellite delivering Internet connectivity to a large chunk of the earth. I have spoken about the inherent issue with satellite te…