What do you want to see from Delimiter in 2013?

[Renai LeMayKeymaster]

hi everyone,

hope you had a great Christmas and NY period! I enjoyed mine … I spent a *lot* of time on the beach completely chilling out :)

Just wanted to post a quick topic in the forums asking readers what they want to see from Delimiter in 2013. It’s the fourth year of the site’s operation, and while I think I have most things nailed down now, I still think it’s important to ask you guys what you want to see over the next 12 months.

At the moment, from a site technical perspective my main project is investigating whether it’s feasible to provide a version of the site without ads for those that want it. You’d pay a small monthly or annual fee and in return be able to access Delimiter without ads. I’ve had quite a few requests for this over the past year, so I’m looking into it.

From an editorial perspective, this year these are the things which I envisage us focusing on:

-The NBN, especially putting pressure on the Coalition to deliver its own policy in the area, and with a view to ensuring the stability and continuance of the project as a whole, no matter whether it’s FTTH or FTTN. I think very few people want to see the project dismantled as a whole at this point — we need a stable road forward politically

-Keeping a watch on the Attorney-General’s Dept … as far as I’m concerned it’s the big bad of the Federal Government, with quite a few questionable schemes going on. Anti-piracy, #NatSecInquiry etc

-Developments in enterprise IT, including the ongoing disaster in state government IT, the big banking core systems revolution, mobility, cloud computing, BYOD and so on within the enterprise. Basically wherever there are big enterprise IT movements we want to be covering it. We expect SaaS and private cloud to again be big this year, and perhaps Windows 8, although the shift to Windows 7 is still very important

-The reviews program will continue to focus on the most popular devices — smartphones, tablets, eReaders and pushing into laptops, especially as Windows 8 takes hold. Also we’re planning some IPTV reviews this year and perhaps more gaming coverage. Let me know if there is something you want reviewed.

-Keeping vendors to account on their Australian pricing, licensing and product availability practices, especially with respect to the IT pricing inquiry being pushed by Labor backbencher Ed Husic

-Following the development of 4G networks in the mobile telco space

-In IT startups we’ll obviously continue to follow the major stories — capital funding, acquisitions, failures and so on.

Obviously these are just the main themes but there are literally dozens of minor ones — any interesting issue we’ll take a look at.

So now it’s over to you guys — what site developments, editorial style or topics or individual areas would you like to see from Delimiter this year? I can’t promise we’ll do everything we’re asked to, but we’ll certainly try. Readers are the most important aspect of Delimiter and I can’t stress highly enough that if you guys care enough about something, I’ll definitely follow it up to the best of my ability.

Let me know in the comments below!

Cheers,

Renai

• This topic was modified 4 months, 2 weeks ago by  Renai LeMay.
• This topic was modified 4 months, 2 weeks ago by  Renai LeMay.

[Renai LeMayKeymaster]

Alternatively, is there something you *don’t* want to see from Delimiter in 2013? The other side of the coin also applies :)

[pointzerooneParticipant]

You should do an article on Kogan and every tech item/thing he releases.

We know how much your site needs the hits.

[dave.o.mulhollandParticipant]

more CIO interviews
more future predictions of australian tech scene
some analysis on international tech news stories
less stock images

[Renai LeMayKeymaster]

“You should do an article on Kogan and every tech item/thing he releases.”

True. Perhaps a nude photo gallery of Kogan cradling his new Agora phone? With the phone tastefully positioned to cover his modesty? That should get the punters in.

[Renai LeMayKeymaster]

Oh btw upcoming on the reviews list over the next 2 weeks:

-The Nexus 10
-HTC Windows Phone 8S
-Nokia Lumia 920
-Quickflix IPTV streaming service (this one has been coming for a while)

[bluetysonParticipant]

General bandwidth market factors/movement.

You could have a series on avoiding the ‘technology tax’ for businesses and individuals.

[Renai LeMayKeymaster]

Also I’m not sure how relevant to you guys this is, but FYI I’m growing a beard this year. It’s almost reached viable stage at the moment — getting beyond shaggy etc.

[bluetysonParticipant]

Best things to do with a spy helicopter and a spy tank.

:)

[pointzerooneParticipant]

You should post progress pics of said beard.

Also I cancelled my QuickFlix streaming subscription, the lack of episode queueing/playlist was really annoying.

[KarlParticipant]

An interesting idea I’ve just had this minute (so don’t shoot me if it’s not thought-through properly) is maybe a weekly mention of the reader comments that you’ve found most informative or thought provoking. Not that I expect to ever make the list, but it would be interesting especially for those who don’t always have the time to read all the comments. Downside of course is it could take up too much time, or cause drama.

Otherwise though I don’t think there’s anything really that could be changed for the better.

[GongGavParticipant]

What about edging into a little user controlled content. Nothing much, but what about discussion around big (or not so big) game releases, with user reviews or the like. I’m sure you’d appreciate our viewpoints on the upcoming Starcraft xpack for example :)

You already cover most new tech items we care about, but some area to discuss what you miss would be nice.

[Renai LeMayKeymaster]

hey everyone,

thanks for these suggestions! They’re very useful. I’m doing some planning this afternoon so I’ll go through this and my own plans and see what I can put in place for this year. I’ll also post some responses later.

Cheers,

Renai

[quinkParticipant]

> Alternatively, is there something you *don’t* want to see from Delimiter in 2013? The other side of the coin also applies :)

I for one want to see more crazy stock images.

But here’s a few ideas:

– TV. I think that’s an area long overdue for, if not change, at least discussion as to what we’re doing about the delivery platforms in this country. Not the usual rumours and TV programs and stuff, but talking about content delivery, even if it’s just FTA. Right now, it’s 20-bloody-13 and we have either digital over-the-air (DVB-T vs. YouTube – I’ll pick YouTube any day for picture quality, reliability and convenience reasons), FOXTEL, iView and that’s it. Maybe something like a re-review over the ‘updated’ FetchTV review from March 2012 is in order – which would mostly point out that the continual improvement has pretty much gone and providers like iiNet have only to blame themselves for the low uptake. Or pointing out the fact that TPG is the only provider that does streaming of FTA programs – which is legal within a license area, etc., mind you – in Sydney, apparently, allowing reception via VLC. Why Optus went time-shifting not optional baffles me and it’s no surprise they lost on court. Or about how VAST, in international comparison, is one of the worst satellite reception schemes ever devised. In Germany go to a hardware store, spend 50 euros and you get hundreds and hundreds of channels of Astra at 19.2. Ditto in the UK with Astra at 28.2. Or, believe it or not, in New Zealand. Here it’s $500 in great part due to forced encryption and not even legal unless you either pay even more money to prove your reception is bad or lie to the government. Or how about considering that it’s easier to get CCTV1 streaming online (or in perfect free-to-air reception via a C-band dish anywhere in the damn country) twenty minutes from Sydney CBD from China than getting the ABC 7pm NSW news. Sure, it’s mostly the regional broadcasters behind this, but the government not picking up on the convergence review really isn’t helping much. Or finally having grown up discussions about spectrum management.

– ISPs. Internode in particular seems to have been doing nothing about its plans for a while now. They’ve introduced the combo pack, it seems, but that’s hardly popular (see FetchTV), and the same is true for oh-so-many providers. Now that Southern Cross has lowered their transit costs recently (iirc) it would be in order to call out some ISPs and ask them what’s happening, if anything.

– NBN. FTTN is a viable solution, but it’s probably time to pack it in and stop calling it a pretty sensible solution from this point in time onwards. There are too many unanswered questions that the coalition just isn’t going to answer, such as what will happen with Telstra, what will happen with the HFC networks or, more pragmatically, what will happen in cases where a household has only one pair of copper or what happens if the copper is rotted. That lack of answering means that there’s only a facade of a policy going on and the rest of the media sure isn’t going to call the coalition out on that.

– Convergence Review. The rest of the media is going to go full retard on this as soon as it gets mentioned this year and since it’s tangled together with technology in quite a few aspects, it’d make a big bunch of sense for Delimiter to present a reasoned point of view.

– Gaming. I know, this isn’t Delimiter’s focus or anything, but it’s sure to drive the page views up a bit. Even if it’s something as simple as a monthly column detailing what Australian game developers are up to – which could be as simple as scouring press releases. Knowing what Halfbrick and Firemint and others are up to is sure to be of interest. Or things like the potential re-release of L4D2 as R18+, which was an article a short while ago.

And, of course, newsy things.

And beards. Maybe all the stock images could, from now on, have a certain quota of beards on people portrayed therein.

[mrjkParticipant]

I’d like to see more about the Public Sector implementation of digital and technology services and how they are being managed. It would be good to highlight to the Australian Public exactly how and what different initiatives are being conducted by the Government to move Australia into an advanced Digital Economy. Maybe start with featuring more about the CSIRO Digital Economy research piece and then extend towards the other departments and agencies to see how they will leverage off this?

[ITauditParticipant]

more lessons learned on shared service failures in other states and overseas to save wasting too much of our NSW taxpayer funds eg absence on strong suitable independent inputs to decision makers – vendors and consultants are not really independent if they vested interest due to impacts on their income

[quinkParticipant]

And thus begins the shitstorm of the year: http://www.afr.com/p/national/media_law_reforms_to_hit_news_corp_CMp6ukuS1vCoeVaY3QNeyH

[boyterParticipant]

I wouldn’t mind seeing a TechCrunch style focus on Australian founded startups. Maybe starting with some of the active ones listed here http://madeinoz.org/

[quinkParticipant]

> Convergence Review. The rest of the media is going to go full retard on this

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m pretty sure this qualifies as full retard.

http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1a57a6/stephen_conroy_on_the_front_page_of_tomorrows/

https://twitter.com/CarleenFrost/status/311449270001741824/photo/1

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