The Sizzle

I'm on holiday this week, so instead of no Sizzle at all, I'm writing a cut down Sizzle in the morning. Normal sized Sizzle will resume on the 30th of May!

• Properly modular smartphones are gonna be a thing
• TCL opening a huge factory to make huge TVs
• Another $1b+ government IT project that'll probably shit the bed

• India's space agency made a little space shuttle prototype that worked

NEWS

Properly modular smartphones are gonna be a thing
Google reminded us that its Project Ara modular smartphone is a thing. A thing that will ship in 2017. Wired got a demo of Google's latest experiment and it's kinda cool, I guess. The aim is to create a phone that has swappable modules that can upgrade, or downgrade, the bits you care, or don't care about. Keen photographers can buy, say, a fancy $1000 camera module and take better photos. Maybe it'll be awesome, maybe it won't - it depends on the variety and quality of those modules I guess.
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TCL opening a huge factory to make huge TVs
TCL, that weird TV brand you probably never paid attention to, is building the world's largest 11th generation LCD factory. Based in Shenzhen, it'll focus on making TVs bigger than 65" using 11th generation LCD panels. I would have thought there's a glut of LCD panels around, as TVs are very much a commodity, but I guess TCL reckons there's room to grow in the big screen TV market. No doubt Samsung, LG or Sharp/Foxcon will make better quality panels, but TCL will pump them out like nobody's business for a bargain price. Big TVs cheap? Count me in!
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Another $1b+ government IT project that'll probably shit the bed
The Australian Department of Defence is looking for companies to create and manage a huge ERP system (ERP systems are those horrible things like SAP that run your company). Called Project Insight, it'll be the largest ERP implementation in Australia and cost around a billion dollars to get all the Defence Force's menagerie of 600+ systems down to two. God speed to whoever takes this on - I can't wait to read about the inevitable corruption, stupidity, or simple wastefulness of taxpayer dollars this will lead to.
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COOL SHIT

India's space agency made a little space shuttle prototype that worked
India has made a tiny space shuttle prototype, and it worked. I had no idea India was making a reusable space craft! Apparently their budget for this is a tiny US$14m. This scale model looks a lot like the old school US space shuttles (because India takes the "why re-invent shit approach, it's cheaper to learn from other people's mistakes) and the test was only a simple 70km up and down, but it's still good to see countries with an ambition for space.
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Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!)
--Anthony