Reeltime has again suspended it’s trading on the ASX. They are scrabbling to stay alive, with their homepage now littered with google ads and syndicated entertainment news. Anything to get a click. Under 12 months ago Reeltime’s founder John Karantzis called the Quickflix mail model ‘dead’, but then resigned from his own business only 5 months later! With mounting debt and lack of growth … movie downloads here in Australia are an absolute train wreck. Around the same time, rival operation AU Anytime also hit problems with rumours it was carrying debt of $10 million and again - NO growth. It’s since folded, and if you’d ever had a look at their site whilst they were live - you’d understand why. It was dog ugly and behaved even worse. And what of Bigpond Movies Download? I’d wager they’re just as dead, but kept afloat as ’strategic’ to Telstra’s future plans. With financials hidden within the bowls of Telstra, we’ll probably never know.

But back to Reeltime. In late 2007 ezyDVD stepped in and partnered to throw them a life line. Jim Zavos (ezyDVD founder) now sits on the board and sees a blended DVD retail and download future … but is Reeltime too far gone? With trading halted on Jan 25th there’s still no explanation as to why.

Apple’s entrance to the download market throws new pressure onto Reeltime’s progress. When Apple come here in 12-24 months, what chance has Reeltime got? Reeltime’s strategy hinges around a set top box that has yet to materialise, whereas Apple has the complete end-to-end product and will have had at least a years production experience from the States. They should be able to hit the ground running. Business Spectator note that if I had invested $1000 in Reeltime a year ago, it would now be worth $212. Hmmm … how about in another 12 months ??

Behind the scenes, Domenic Carosa continues to grow his empire. Destra is pushing forward as a broad ranging content and advertising provider, positioned for a future of digital, digital, digital. His latest acquisition in this space is Mess+Noise.

I hadn’t heard of M+N, so always great to discover another Australian venture (and even better, they’re Melbourne based). M+N started in 2005 - so 3 years of hard work has led to hopefully a nice pay day. And I don’t see that as a sell out, rather a point of equilibrium. There’s only so long a startup can function before the load needs to be lifted from it’s founders. Proper funds must be injected to take it to the next level.

So congrats to founders Danny Bos and Kristy Milliken of M+N!

I’m finding that Google apps whilst convenient, falls way, way short of the sort of power I want in docs and spreadsheets. But I want all my admin docs and office apps online so APPLEBOX operations can run out of anywhere. So thought I’d try ThinkFree, and see how that stacks up.

It looks great … but wait! ThinkFree is only available as BigPond Office for those in the Australasia region:

Right .. I have to sign up with BigPond for a rebadged version of ThinkFree!@#? Way to go ThinkFree, but I’ll stick with Google apps for a while longer, or perhaps try Zoho. I CAN’T STAND Telstra and I don’t want anything whatsoever to do with them. Some might call that a pathological aversion, but hey I’m sure I’m not alone. Oh well, back to business.

Headlines about the death of print are sorta like headlines about the death of the local video store. Duncan Reilly raises the prospect at techcrunch with the demise of the local PC Mag, ‘PC World’.

There’s comment from Phil Sim here, and Chris Saad here.

Like the local video store, I don’t see print (even tech rags) dying any time soon. I really like print - the aesthetic, the feel, being able to read a mag in the sun. The simplicity. We’re not all hardwired to our feed readers, sucking down the latest in tech news every second of the day. However, the market is re-adjusting and our respective businesses simply cannot operate with the same MO and margins of 5 years ago. In video rentals, the K-marts/Myers/Targets (ie mass retail merchants) have changed the rental market forever. Video rentals have got to get smarter and more efficient. Same with the print mags. They’ve got to get leaner and focus on new value. It seems PC World (the Aus edition) couldn’t make that transition.

Quite a while ago, someone pointed out to me that Australia just doesn’t have the mail order culture that the US has. Ok. So we don’t order and receive goods through the mail like they do. I guess that’s just Americans vs Aussies. But after being in the States, Sarah has just pointed out a MAJOR difference between the US postal service and Aus Post - In the US the mailman picks up mail from people’s letter boxes - Aus Post don’t do that.

Most of us probably knew that (think of all the American movies with the little red flag raised on the letterbox indicating ‘pickup’) - but I’d never really thought through the impact of it. I reckon that’s a HUGE difference in the way the mail works, and could well explain the mail order culture that exists over there. It’s so damn easy to mail something out.

And that works for Netflix. You get a movie in the mail. You watch it. You pop it back in the letterbox when you’re done. You can turn it round quickly with minimal effort. And that’s exactly what DOESN’T work for Quickflix here in Australia. You’ve still got to remember to post the DVD back, and the longer you take, the longer it will take for you to get the next one delivered.

Putting Quickflix and BigPond Movies subscribers together, the adoption rate of mail-order DVDs here in Australia badly trails what Netflix achieved in the States. Netflix broke even after 4 years of trading, with about 2 million subscriptions. At the end of this year, Quickflix will be 4 years in, and as of today, is still making multi-million dollar losses with only 21,000 signed members.

I reckon our lack of a mail-order culture (and different population density) is a big factor at play here. So be wary - just because something works in the states … doesn’t mean that it will work here …

Correction
Stephen Langsford, CEO Quickflix has pointed out Quickflix has only been trading for just under 4 years. I incorrectly said 5 - I’ve updated my post to reflect this.

I’ve just come across Australia’s first contribution to blognation.com. You can read it here: State of the nation: Australia. I can’t find much info about blognation and it’s goals but it looks like a blog network with contributions grouped to the different nations of the world. From the icon list, we have Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Russia, USA, and the UK represented so far. To see Australian content, you go to: au.blognation.com. It’s all in English - China, Russia, France - no native tongue here. That works for me, because I can read it, but in France might that reduce readership? Plus there’s no real bio’s on the authors so David Feng posting to China Blognation could be living in St Kilda, Victoria for all I know (and how did he assume his role?). But, the content should, and will always speak for itself. The focus looks to be definitely tech and web.

All this works for me! Especially Chris Saad’s opening post for us Aussies. I AM interested in web/tech activity, especially in the startup arena. I would love to see a focus on the Australian space - I skim Techcrunch and Read/WriteWeb more and more these days, as most of the content is focused on the US. With a market that has matured considerably in the last 3 years, multi million dollar valuations, funding rounds, buyouts and so on are the norm. This is far removed from my world of a boostrapped business in an environment that still feels 10 years behind what I read is happening over there.

So, a blog with a mandate to focus on the Australian space is great. Congrats to Chris Saad (founder of Particls) for stepping up and taking that on. I’m subscribed and ready to read.

Nice to see Telstra and Quickflix redesign their sites and finally get some JavaScript skills on board. Good web sites engage their audience. Basic animations like sliding a strip of covers to the left or right are fun to use! There’s no page-refresh wait and we get an instant response to our actions. The page is just more engaging.

Telstra look to have turfed their skinned version of Webflicks (licenced via VNH systems) - good, because this had completely stagnated. I wonder if their new effort is internally developed? Who knows. It’s a bit slow, and still completely inconsistent with their downloads business, but hey - progress is being made. Good to see they are using prototype for their JavaScript library. Quickflix have gone with Yahoo. Both are good, solid choices. I use my own library, augmented with the DomAPI. The DomAPI was way ahead of it’s time years ago, but prototype, dojo, yui have now caught up and have a huge amount of momentum behind them. At some point I’ll consider swapping DomApi out for one of the others, but for the moment I’ve got all the GUI richness you can poke a stick at - sliding cover strips, resizing cover art, buttons that actually depress, tabs .. you name it.

Nice also to see Telstra have stretched their UI to 990px wide - hello Quickflix? Still at 800 - news flash, the majority of displays are 1024 wide these days - use it! APPLEBOX of course can go full screen width: 800, 1024, 1440, 1660 - you name it.

The bar is being raised. ezydvd.com.au suddenly looks sooo first generation. Massive traffic, but there comes a time when you have just gotta move with the times ….

Josh Catone of Read Write Web writes that web apps have hit mainstream. Well, the APPLEBOX storefront is most definitely a web app, and I definitely want it to go mainstream! Quoting from the original whitepaper:

“Web apps need to solve practical problems. Users don’t care whether they’re using a web application or a traditional application; they just want to get on with their lives. The good news for web app companies is that there’s very little barrier to adoption of web apps. The challenging news is that users expect the apps to solve real-world problems. Web app companies must make sure they’re offering a service that users really care about, and must explain the benefits of it in terms users can understand.”

I’d say wandering aimlessly along isles of DVD covers is a without doubt a practical problem to solve! And APPLEBOX does that. But as per the above quote, my customers don’t really care how it’s done, as long as it’s painless for them and the solution is easily accessible.

I use all the latest and greatest in Web 2.0 techniques - XML, SOAP and Serverless AJAX all bound together with enough JavaScript to keep the most dedicated JavaScript guru happy. But is it any better than a standard website? Is it easier to use, than say browsing the mail-order catalogue of Quickflix?

My answer is of-course yes. What all the Web 2.0 techniques can deliver is a more engaging experience, more cohesive for the user, more interactive, better performance. Users don’t get disoriented, can get around the app quickly, and forget about the app and just look at the movies. And thats what APPLEBOX is all about - the content - the movies.

Sometimes I just shake my head in dismay. Take Telstra. Resourced like no other, yet just having just visited their tv/video site, bigpondvideo.com, and using firefox on my mac, I find they put out junk that says

“This site has been optimised for Internet Explorer 6 and above. For the best experience, please view this site using Internet Explorer”.

what? They’ve got a site that looks to be entirely flash, and yet they choose to use wmv for video playback (even when there aren’t DRM requirements), and can’t get it to work in Firefox (I just tried with XP and no luck there either).

Its actually good news, because when Telstra can’t execute properly, it leaves an opening for the smaller players to get it right. And when they set the bar so low for a web experience … well, they just make the rest of us look good!

Remember the fan fare last year, when jobs.com.au came online? There was a multi-million dollar media campaign spearheaded by a character called ‘Axel’. At the time I thought ok - I’ll check out the site - I couldn’t even get in because they demanded I sign up. Bugger that - I just want to look - so I didn’t. And it seems a tonne of other people didn’t either, because when I checked this morning, I find they went bust. Surprise surprise!

You can see jobs.com.au in the way back when machine, and heres their tv ad:

What a waste of money. As they say, everything is in the execution, and the jobs.com.au website failed the first basic test - just let people in to have a look. From where I sit, that set them up for failure from day one.