Speaking of humanity, wanna buy a house? A long-time IT industry friend Gwen John & her husband are selling their house in Sydney – via auction on eBay. Given that Sydney real estate – and auctions specifically – is going through a tough patch right now, they’ve come up with an interesting approach that couples the power of the internet with most peoples distaste for in-person auctions.

Gwen writes in an email:

We’ve decided to put our house on eBay for an online auction. It will operate the same as a normal auction — except buyers have the luxury of time to decide how much they’re prepared to pay for their new home. And, unlike a sale by private treaty, buyers will know exactly what they’re up against in terms of their competition. Like a traditional sales process, the house will be open for inspection during the entire campaign (Saturdays, 12-12:45).

This is a genuine listing and perhaps the first sale of its kind, using the internet to conduct an auction, rather than a live auctioneer. The house is still listed with a real estate agent who will continue to manage the sales process on our behalf.

She’s got photos, and the house is currently listed on eBay here. Good luck!

Congrats to Richard Giles and all the folks who attended the Perth Blog Night yesterday. Richard’s written about his theory that the Internet’s 3rd Wave is defined by its humanity. He’s got an interesting chart there about the Internet’s bias, the basic theory being that the more applications we run on the Net, the more human it becomes. It’s a pretty good aggregation of current blog and web-related thinking.

Sydney’s Broadway Shopping Centre has just turned itself into a geek-magnet. It’s gone Bluetooth crazy, installing the largest public Bluetooth network in the southern hemisphere:

Shoppers will also be able to access movie times and charge tickets to their mobile phone bills, receive step-by-step store directions and locate and message friends within the shopping complex. Premium content will include movie trailers, ring tones and multi-player gaming.

The other story here, as observed by Phil Sim at ITJourno (subs for IT media only) is that the Sydney IT press largely ingored the story until yesterday.

The company issued a press release that ran on a couple of specialist US sites like the Wireless Developer Network. Last week, it got run by New Zealand site Geekzone and US gadget site Engadget. But, unless we’re mistaken, the story didn’t get picked up in Australia until Adam Turner wrote it up this morning for the front page of Next.

So, despite being under the noses of most of the IT journalist community in this country, it took a bloody Melbourne reporter to notice it.

Oh, the shame…

It’s just three days until IDG Australia’s first My Home Entertainment Expo kicks off at Sydney’s Darling Harbour.

Yes, this is a gratuitous plug, but hey, we’re excited. Our team has signed up a raft of big consumer and digital entertainment brands.

And unlike other shows, such as Hannover’s recent effort, our strategy is to focus on entertainment. We believe that consumers relate better to the word “entertainment” than they do “digital” or “intelligent.”

Ian Penman, the man who retired in 2000 as boss of Compaq South Pacific, has randomly emerged to run Volante. ARN’s got the story, but there’s little there about what Penman was doing in his retirement and why he can’t stay away from IT. Good on him – I think.

Grahame Morris fires back at ABC-TV’s (soon to be SMH again) David Marr with all guns blazing in this piece that appeared in The Australian:

It must be sad to leave a job after three years and nobody cares.

Ouch. Sit on that David.

Next question. Why didn’t Grahame post this story on JWM’s blog himself? It would be great to see him blogging on this site or his own.

A little off topic, but bear with me: Good to see that Trevor Cook didn’t miss a beat today, responding to ABC TV’s Media Watch programme last night.

Media Watch host David Marr drew another connection between Trevor’s colleague Grahame Morris and Australia’s PM. Both my wife (who’s in PR and used to work with Trevor at JWM years ago) and I both sat on the couch last night and asked, “Ok, so what was all that about?”

If you missed it, the argument basically boils down to (as per this MW transcript) whether Grahame Morris was still advising the PM on election strategy while working privately for a PR firm (yes) – and whether he had adequately acknowledged that connection in a pro-Liberal column in The Australian while doing so without properly acknowledging his connections (no).

So I’m temped to side with Marr (sorry Trevor). I can’t help but think that Morris’ role as a partner at JWM is significantly enhanced by his ongoing relationship with the PM. It only seems fair that he should disclose that connection in the press.

But as to whether there is a hidden agenda behind David Marr’s coverage of Grahame Morris (as Trevor seems to be implying), well, that’s another story I’d like to follow.

Upside: HP gets to respond officially to Schwartz’s comments. Downside: HP was forced into a position where it needed to respond.

Some entertaining quotes from Peter Hall, HP’s Asia Pacific director of business critical systems:

I think Sun likes talking about HP so much, as it enables them to pretend they are in the same class, when they are really in a minor league.

****

[Sun] has struggled to make a profit and is shooting at all sorts of strategies. Now it is talking about giving away servers on subscription, but can that work?

Mr Schwartz’s comments waste our customers’ time and are not productive for the industry. You’d expect the COO of Sun to be a bit more responsible.

Wow. Google’s desktop search tool is so simple its brilliant. I’ve downloaded the app, and as you can see from this pic (click to make it bigger — highlight is mine), conduct a search and it automatically includes documents already on your local drive.

Interesting that minutes later I should read a classic Steve Gillmor commentary on Jim (“Does that make sense?”) Allchin’s video gaff. Take a few minutes to read about what I think is a defining moment in Microsoft’s history.

Google is busy turning the web platform into an integrated tool before our very eyes. At the same time Allchin admits MS has stalled on delivering the unified search architecture WinFS before 2006, thereby conceding to Google. I bet there are some PR people in Redmond trying to figure out how they’ll salvage this one. Oops.

Information Week Australia is dead. In fact, it’s sister publications Windows for Professionals and SellDigital have also been shut. The closures come in the wake of Haymarket’s acquisition of local publisher AJB.

I’ve received email from people about the closures, and local media site ITJourno (sub required) reported the news yesterday.

The big story here is that Haymarket/AJB own the CMP license in Australia. Speaking as a direct competitor, the closure of Information Week Aust is important not for commercial reasons (they reached just 12 percent of senior IT execs according to the 2004 McNair survey), but because it’s a crack in the global IW/CMP franchise. The only signficant CMP title to still stand in Australia is CRN, and I’m proud to say our channel publication ARN leads that market by a significant margin.

Of course, the other side is no one likes to see people lose jobs. And I sincerely hope the guys over there, some of them former colleagues, all find new gigs soon.