Conroy comes out swinging on Broadband

Communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy has laid the opposition’s broadband plans to ridicule in a fiery televised speech.

Though marked as an update to NBN construction progress, Conroy used his address before the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday to target opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull and what the Government claims is a negative and inconsistent approach from the coalition.

Accompanied by new adviser and telco expert, David Havyatt, Senator Conroy's speech marked a significant change in tone for the communications minister who has, to date, made small criticisms of the Turnbull's alternative policy but neglected to address it head-on.

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Windows XP turns 10

Ten years ago today Windows XP first hit retail shelves, and it was still the most popular operating system in the world until the beginning of this month.

However the sun is finally setting on the stalwart OS that has powered countless home and business PCs (it crossed the 400 million mark way back in 2006), as it recently slipped to number two -- right behind it's youngest brother Windows 7.

And it's about time too; XP was, and still is a great OS. But as the title states, it is now beyond ancient (2 years is typically a dinosaur in the tech world). It's time to move on and upgrade to Windows 7 now (trust me you will not regret it).

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Asus Transform Prime Tablet Is Coming

Asus' Transformer Prime, the company's next-generation Transformer tablet.

It was practically a given that the company would bust out a second edition, and now the particulars are starting to take shape. It'll be based on NVIDIA's next-gen quad-core Tegra 3 chip, and will share the same lid design as the Zenbook.

In laymans terms. It's beautiful to look at. And should easily outperform any other tablet currently on the market.

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Microsoft no received royalties on half of all android sales

Microsoft's general counsel and deputy general counsel (Brad Smith and Horacio Gutierrez) have co-written a new blog entry detailing Microsoft's latest licensing achievement. Yesterday's broad cross-licensing agreement with Compal Electronics means that Microsoft has now negotiated licensing terms with the ODMs (original Device Manufacturers) that build over half the Android devices on the market.

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NBN Co names 28 new fibre locations

NBN Co has laid out its network construction plans for the next year, planning fibre rollouts to 28 new cities and towns across Australia.

Unfortunately no joy for the Sunshine Coast just yet.

Click here to read the full story (includes full list of locations)

Microsoft nabs Samsung Android Royalties

Microsoft’s chief legal counsel has used a patent royalty deal it struck with smartphone giant Samsung to shoot down Google’s claim that patent enforcement will kill innovation.

The agreement will see Samsung pay royalties to Microsoft for its smartphones and tablets running Android, which should avoid the need for Samsung to alter its devices to escape similar litigation battles to those it faces with Apple.

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Apple Confirms October 4 iPhone Event

The October 4 iPhone event date has been confirmed by Apple, as has the rumored location of Apple's Cupertino campus. There's no question what the star of the event will be: the event is called, "Let's Talk iPhone."



Although it's expected that Apple will launch other products on October 4, in particular, it's the iPhone that will be the focus for consumers, tech gurus, and analysts.

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Kinect's New Trick To Be In The Operating Room?

The next proving ground for Microsoft's Kinect? It might not be where you expect. After taking over the living room and exciting gamers across the world, the Kinect has made the move to all sorts of other categories. Everything from making music videos to PC-based hacks have been seen, but for the most part, nothing on a professional level has surfaced. That's all changing now, as the Kinect slides over into the operating room. Doctor's at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto, Canada are hoping that the Kinect could soon help them out during sophisticated surgeries.

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The Breaking the Rules on Google+ Gets you Google -

Google+ may be a brand-new service, but there has already been at least one case of a user breaking the rules and getting the banhammer.

Google, in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, requires its users to be at least 13 years old. Last week, Alex, a 10-year-old boy from the Netherlands, created an account on the Google+ social network. Google promptly responded with a punishment after he entered his date of birth.

In return for violating the terms of service for the social network, the boy was kicked off of all Google services, and, as his father wrote in a blog post, will have his account across all services deleted within a month unless he can provide some proof of being old enough to use the services.

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1000 days left for Windows XP Support

Microsoft has begun counting down the last 1000 days of support remainining for aging stalwart Windows XP as it urges companies to upgrade.

The software giant would stop supplying security patches and hotfixes for all versions of 11-year-old operating system on April 8, 2014, potentially making it vulnerable to issues that may arise after that time.

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Analysts Cast Doubt on Turnbull's NBN

Telco analysts have expressed caution on the Coalition's latest claims that it could provide a national broadband network faster than Labor's $35.9 billion project.

Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull talked up the Coalition's broadband proposal at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) lunch this week.

The Coalition's plan would include immediate cessation of the NBN build pending a six-month cost-benefit analysis of the network and possible alternatives.

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Vint Cerf calls for clarity in NBN cost data

Google chief internet evangelist Vint Cerf, credited in some quarters as the “founder of the internet”, has called on the Australian Government to provide a full and frank breakdown of the costs of building the National Broadband Network.

A detailed report on the costs, provided at the conclusion of the project, could greatly aid and inform attempts by other countries to build national network, Cerf said in a new interview.

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Facebook launches video chat with Skype

Facebook will integrate Skype video chat into its social networking service, striking a deal to cement its role as a hub for communications.

The agreement, announced by Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg at the company's Palo Alto, California, headquarters on Wednesday, deepens its cooperation with Microsoft, which is in the process of acquiring Skype for US$8.5 billion.

Zuckerberg said Facebook now has 750 million users. The new service, rolling out from on Wednesday, could be a huge boost for Skype, which currently has about 145 million regular users.

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Chrome lands 20% market share

According to new reports on web usage, one in five browsing sessions now happens with Chrome, with Microsoft's long-dominant Internet Explorer finally slipping before 50%. The information is provided by StatCounter, which is known for doing these sorts of reports every so often.

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FBI rack raid knocks 'tens' offline

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is staying mum on why it ripped out entire server racks from a US datacentre used by Swiss-based web host, DigitalOne.

The host emailed affected customers on Tuesday to advise that the disruption was due to the FBI confiscating three enclosures, according to the New York Times.

It claimed the FBI had seized servers relied on by “tens of clients” during its hunt for just one.

The FBI has not said who it was targeting in the raid, but a government official told the Times that the bureau had teamed up with the CIA and European cybercrime bureaus in pursuit of the Lulz Security group, responsible for a dozens of recent high profile attacks on corporations and government.

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Telstra seal $11b NBN Co deal

Telstra has finalised an $11 billion agreement with NBN Co and the Federal Government that would see the incumbent telco decommission its copper network and move fixed line broadband customers to the National Broadband Network as it is rolled out.

The agreement, finalised in an ASX announcement from Telstra this morning, comes a year after initially announced and following several delays in negotiations between the two broadband companies

Read more at www.itnews.com.au

No support for ISP filter in Cyber-Safety report

Plans by the Australian Government to introduce a mandatory ISP-level internet filter have suffered another blow with the release of the interim report of the Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety.

After reviewing arguments from both proponents of the cyber-safety measure and those opposed, the Committee declined to make any recommendations or endorse the policy in a chapter dedicated to discussion of the proposal.

Read more at www.itenews.com.au

Google Wins Race to 1 Billion Unique Visitors

According to Internet market research company comScore, Google websites welcomed more than a billion unique visitors around the globe in the month of May 2011, becoming the first Web property in the history of the Internet to reach such a milestone.

"In the past year, Google Sites has seen its audience grow 8 percent to eclipse the 1 billion threshold," comScore said in a blog post. "Microsoft Sites was the second largest Web property in May to reach more than 905 million visitors, followed by Facebook.com with 713.6 million visitors."

Read more at www.hothardware.com

NBN Could deliver 10 Gbps in five years

Australians connected to the National Broadband Network could receive peak speeds of up to 10 Gbps within five years through upgrades to the gigabit passive optical network (GPON) network, according to NBN Co.

Gary McLaren, chief technology officer at the government-owned network builder said that new wave division multiplexing (WDM) technology would increase the network's GPON capacity from 2.5Gbps available today to 40 Gbps.

Users could feasibly receive peak speeds of 10 Gbps – 100 times those promised today – depending on the load on their shared 32-premise GPON link, he said.

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Scientists break data transfer record

A newly developed data decoding technique has allowed German scientists to transmit a record 26 terabits of data on a single laser beam in one second.

Although it was only a quarter the record 109Tbps demonstrated on multi-core fibre connections in March, the new, single-source technique was expected to deliver efficiency and capacity gains.

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The Web is a job creator, not killer

Consulting group McKinsey has released a study that attempts to dispel the notion that internet services have an adverse impact on employment levels.

McKinsey's Global Institute report was produced for release at the “e-G8” summit in Paris, where internet big wigs met with political leaders to discuss the future of the web on Wednesday.

According to a McKinsey, the internet today accounts for 3.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) across G8 member countries, but will account for 21 percent in five years.

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Google, Facebook warn on Internet rules at e-G8

Google chairman Eric Schmidt and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg warned governments to tread lightly on Internet regulation because moves to tame its rough edges risked hurting its virtues.

Despite a glittering guest list, the event dubbed the eG8 ended up with few concrete policy recommendations and mostly vague conclusions that the delegation of six technology chief executives, including Schmidt and Zuckerberg, will present to leaders in Deauville on Thursday.

The outcome highlights the difficulty of finding a way to regulate the Internet that is acceptable to both governments and industry.

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New, More Dangerous Mac Defender Variant Arises

Apple has finally responded to the Mac Defender malware that has infected a number of Mac users, but while Apple took considerable before it took any action, the malware writer did not: he already has a new variant available that is more dangerous than the original.

The new malware has a new name for its fake antivirus component: MacGuard. Previously, two variants of Mac Defender were dubbed Mac Security and Mac Protector.

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Netflix now the largest Single Source of Internet Traffic in the US

Netflix video streaming is now the single largest source of peak downstream Internet traffic in the U.S., according to a new report by Sandvine. The streaming video service now accounts for 29.7 percent of peak downstream traffic, up from 21 percent last fall.

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Report Details Continuing Foxconn Abuse

Foxconn, the company that builds both the iPhone and the iPad, came under fire last year after a string of suicides led to an investigation of the company's conditions. Both Apple and Foxconn promised to make certain that reforms were enacted to improve working conditions. A new report, released today, is the first detailed investigation on how things have changed at the company. Improvements, thus far, have been sporadic at the least.

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Inside an NBN fibre access node

Today iTnews reveals the innards of Australia’s future communications exchange – with the industry’s first look inside an NBN Co fibre access node.

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Samsung Caught in Apple's war on Android

Samsung is caught in the cross fire of Apple’s “all-out war” on “anything Android”, according to an intellectual property lawyer.

Samsung, a key iPad and iPhone components supplier, has confirmed it will fight Apple's accusation that Samsung copied the iPad and iPhone to build its Galaxy and Nexus S, which run on Google’s Gingerbread Android operating system.

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Researches show off DLC projector screen viewable in bright light.

One of the knocks against projectors has always been that they're not able to perform to their fullest unless the room is completely dark, but that may finally change if some researchers from Japan's Tohoku University have their way. They've developed a projector screen based on Diffused Light Control (or DLC), which allows only the light from the projector to be diffused towards those looking at the screen, while all other ambient light is either absorbed or reflected away.

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Broadband Enthusiasts keep the NBN faith

The majority of Australia’s broadband enthusiasts remain buoyant on the Federal Government’s National Broadband Network project, according to a survey released overnight.

Over half of the 23,500 web users surveyed by Australian broadband forum Whirlpool expressed positive sentiments about the project, with a further one in five preferring to remain ‘neutral’.

Only 18.9 percent of respondents were disappointed with the project to date.

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Whole of APAC put in IPv4 rations

The Asia Pacific's regional internet registry APNIC has placed its members on stringent IPv4 address rations, conceding it was now unable to meet IPv4 demands in the region.

Director General Paul Wilson said today that "unprecedented fixed and mobile network growth" in the region meant that today "effectively represents IPv4 exhaustion for many of the current operators in the Asia Pacific".

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Windows 7 Ousts XP for Top Spot in the U.S.

With the warm reception following the release of Windows 7, however, XP users had to think long and hard about whether to stick with their legacy OS or forgive Microsoft for Vista and make the jump to its latest and greatest.

Many have chosen the latter. According to analytics firm StatCounter, Windows XP is no longer the most used desktop OS in the U.S. For the first time, that distinction belongs to Windows 7.

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Acer Iconia Touchbook Dual-Screen Tablet Presales Begin

Starting today, you'll be able to preorder Acer's highly anticipated Iconia dual-touchscreen 6120 Touchbook. As the world's first and only tablet to feature two touch-enabled 14-inch high-definition widescreen LED backlit displays, the Iconia Touchbook gives you a whole new way to interact with digital content. Each LCD is a full touchscreen that can be customized to your liking and used for navigation

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Lenovo LePad Goes on Sale in China, Elsewhere In June

The LePad is an Android-based tablet that was launched on Monday in an exclusive Chinese media-only event, and while no one is publicly saying that this is Lenovo's attack on the iPad, it's pretty clear that the company doesn't want to lose out on the tablet bandwagon.

The company is still planning to sell the LePad outside of China by June, but specifics weren't given.

The LePad launch is significant in a lot of ways. For one, it's a crazy new product design, but also, it's the first product to be launched by this particular segment of the company

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Carbon nanotubes used to more easily detect cancer cells, HIV

Cancer'snot slowing its march to ruining as many lives as it possibly can, so it's always pleasing to hear of any new developments that act as hurdles. The latest in the world of disease-prevention comes from Harvard University, where researches have created a dime-sized carbon-nanotube forest that can be used to trap cancer cells when blood passes through.

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NBN Co chief promises no volume discounts

NBN Co chief Mike Quigley has today promised the Government-owned telco has no intention of offering volume discounts to Telstra or any other service provider connected to the national broadband network.

Several service providers had raised concerns over the potential for NBN Co to grant volume discounts to large players in return for an "efficiency gain".

That possibility had been struck out of the NBN bills in the Senate last week.

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Record Labels Claim Limewire Liable for $75 Trillion in Damages

It's been nearly a decade since the music industry declared war against file sharers via its controversial policy of suing individuals supposedly identified via their IP addresses. After all this time one would expect the various companies to present a consistent, united front. As a recent court filing against Limewire shows this is absolutely not the case.

Limewire, the plaintiffs allege, owes them between $400 billion and 75 trillion. The latter, written out, comes to 75,000,000,000,000.

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Firefox 4 has Already Eclipsed Internet Explorer 9

Mozilla has just release Firefox 4, and in less than a day clocked more than twice the downloads Microsoft boasted about after the release of Internet Explorer 9.

Now website analytics company StatCounter says Mozilla’s new browser has already taken 1.95 percent of the worldwide Internet browser market.

In contrast, StatCounter adds, Internet Explorer 9 has taken only 0.87 percent of the worldwide browser market a week after its debut.

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Auditor calls for Government ban on Gmail, Hotmail

The Australian National Audit Office has called on all government agencies to block free web-based email services like Gmail and Hotmail to mitigate security and information integrity risks.

An audit of electronic security at four Federal departments and agencies found one department - Prime Minister and Cabinet - allowed staff to access the free unsecured email services for business reasons

The auditor also called on agencies to review log-in credentials after administrator or service account passwords were compromised at three of the four agencies examined in the report.

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Apple to sell iPad 2 in Australia from $579

Apple has revealed prices for its iPad 2 tablet will start at $579 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model when the device goes on sale this Friday.

The second-generation tablet – which contained front and rear-facing cameras, a new chip and new operating system version – was released to US customers about a fortnight ago.

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Wireless: What a Difference a Decade Makes

The year is 2001. Alas, videoconferencing hasn't replaced the home phone (and neither Dave nor Hal have embarked on a manned mission to Jupiter). Instead 2G wireless networks, running at 0.006 MB/second, are the best Earth has to offer.

Fast forward one decade and 4G LTE networks are the rage, promising speeds of up to 100 Mbps.

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Internet Authority allocates final IPv4 blocks

Asia Pacific received its final IPv4 address block today, as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) issued the world's last unallocated addresses to regional internet registries.

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FamilyVoice call to expand ISP filters

Christian lobby FamilyVoice Australia has called for the Government's delayed internet filter proposal to be introduced as soon as possible with even more restrictions than first planned.


At a Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety hearing in Adelaide yesterday, FamilyVoice argued that mandatory filtering was essential to assisting parents and kids cope with harmful content on the net.

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NBN Co mulls user-pays upgrade to fiber

NBN Co has flagged the potential for the “last 7 percent” of Australian premises slated to receive wireless or satellite services under the National Broadband Network plan an opportunity to “pay the difference” to upgrade to a fibre connection.

Chief executive Mike Quigley said today the network builder faced some “pressures in first release sites from people who are outside that fibre release boundary who want to get the fibre.”

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No Townsville NBN delays from Yasi

Communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy has rejected suggestions that Cyclone Yasi will have a major impact on the NBN testbed project in Townsville, saying that the nature of the project meant it would not suffer major delays.

Townsville is one of five mainland centres which is serving as an early testbed site for the National Broadband Network.

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Google turns your Android Phone into an On-the-Fly Conversation Interpreter

The latest version of Google Translate for Android comes with a few updates to celebrate the one-year anniversary. Most of these are to the user interface. But there’s also one new feature they’re previewing in alpha mode. And it’s awesome: Conversation Mode.

Essentially, this allows you to speak in one language into your phone and the app will read it out loud translated into the language of the person you’re speaking with. That person can then respond and it will translate it back into your language. Yes, amazing.

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Amnesia Razorfish Connect lets your smartphone share your surface

It's practicality may be a bit questionable until folks actually start using Surfaces in their homes, but Amnesia Razorfish has now produced a rather unique way to share content between your smartphone and Microsoft's would be household device.

The basic idea is fairly simple: just place your smartphone (or tablet) on the Surface, and then simply drag photos and other documents directly onto the device (where you can also, incidentally, preview them instantly).

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Nobody Predicted The iPad's Growth

Apple sold almost 15 million iPads last year. It is outselling Macs in units, and closing in on revenues.

The 7.3 million iPads sold just in the December quarter represented a 75 percent increase from the September quarter, and the $4.6 billion in revenue represented a 65 percent sequential jump. (The iPad launched in April). By any measure, this is an incredible ramp for an entirely new computing product. It is so startling that nobody predicted it—not bullish Wall Street analysts, or even wild-eyed bloggers

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Brisbane's techies shine during flood crisis

Queensland's IT community is doing its level best to keep communications flowing during the State's flood crisis today – with one man mirroring flood information from a faltering Brisbane City Council website, and others opening WiFi channels in their neighbourhood whilst mobile signal gets choked.

The State's official online resources have taken a battering during the flood crisis. Brisbane City Council's website was intermittently offline for most of today and yesterday as residents sought updated projections for flooding in the Queensland capital.

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Flood relief tests Queensland shared services strategy

The Queensland Government has apologised after its shared call centre systems were overloaded during a flood relief telethon on Sunday night, which by consequence delayed emergency SES calls from actual flood victims.

A Channel Nine telethon – which raised over $10 million for victims of Queensland's enormous flood damage - directed calls using the same communications infrastructure flood victims use to make emergency calls to the SES (State Emergency Service).

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