iPad Available in 9 More Countries This Friday

Can't hardly wait... I guess I'm gonna get one...

iPad Available in 9 More Countries This Friday: "Apple’s iPad will go on sale in Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore on July 23."

via mashable

Wow - Mobilkom austria and fring launch partner program!

The only part where mobilkom austria seems to "get" the post PSTN/incumbant/closed-network era is VOIP...
Now they partner wirth fring (mobile skype et al client)

Mobilkom austria’s A1 and fring launch partner program!

via japhy.at - thanks

Java Conference in Austria

Finally, Sun talks Java again in Austria. [1]

On June 19th there will be a one day Java Conference called JavaDeus[2] in St. Pölten.
Free admission of course.

Topics will cover Java 7, Netbeans, openESB... as well as some not-so-directly-Java-related stuff like MySql and Solaris Dtrace... stuff for developers, if you will.
Details can be found here at www.sun.at/javadeus08



[1] Not only do I work for Sun, but I'm also involved in organizing this event.
[2] don't blame me for the name.

iPhone in Austria on T-Mobile

Rumors and media reports are growing that in Austria (as well as in Germany) T-Mobile will be the exclusive partner for the iPhone.
Which is
a) not good, because I'm on A1 mobilkom (but I'm not really sure if I want to convert to the iPhone anyway)
and
b) quite exciting because it might eradicate the paradigm #1 of the Austria mobile operator landscape, being that "mobilkom will always be #1".

With T-mobile having acquired tele.ring and they got quite close to mobilkom in regards of number of subscribers. For Q1 the regulator reported mobilkom at 3.7M subscribers and T-mobile/tele.ring at 3.2M. The trend for Q2 and Q3 I personally expect is that the gap would become narrower.

Now if T-Mobile had the iPhone exclusively the one customer segment they never managed to get from mobilkom is getting more available to them: the business users.
Which in turn could make them #1.

A thrilling fall is ahead... ;-)

Review of the Austrian ID system

Found a good review of the Austrian Identity system, a.k.a. "Bürgerkarte" (="citizen card").

Austrian ID system � Identity and Privacy Blog

A good point (with a false assumption) is at the end:

Finally, as with all smartcards used for online authentication, the need for smartcard readers to access the digital certificate. However, it may be that widespread availability of smartcard readers (one for every computer) is not a problem in Austria.

Given the current acceptance of the Bürgerkarte with citizens (or rather lack there-of), one can easily see that the burden of the card reader is indeed still a problem in Austria.