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Last New Saabs in US Head to Auction
A stockpile of about 900 Saabs is finally set to be sold off after having sat in three U.S. ports since December 2011 as collateral in the company’s financial snafu.
Half a year later the small army of Swedish cars is finally going up for auction, though not to the general public. The vehicles accumulated after Ally financial claimed Saab missed payments. Starting with the first 300 cars, the holding company will offer lots to Saab dealers in 45 unit increments. While the auctions are restricted to keep most people from bidding, those cars will probably end up in dealer lots soon.
The remaining 600 until will also be auctioned in six lots of 100 each to rental agencies and exporters and will likely never see U.S. sale with the exception of those sold off by the rental companies.
Buying a new Saab probably seems like a risk given the company’s collapse, but we recently reported that the brand’s parts arm will continue to function, meaning owners will be able to maintain their cars even though new vehicle production has ceased.
Luke is an energetic automotive journalist who spends his time covering industry news and crawling the internet for the latest breaking story. When he isn't in the office, Luke can be found obsessively browsing used car listings, drinking scotch at his favorite bar and dreaming of what to drive next, though the list grows a lot faster than his bank account. He's always on Twitter looking for a good car conversation. Find Luke on Twitter and Google+.
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Shatto Milk Co. has been rolling out a few special flavors in honor of its 10th anniversary.
The fifth flavor, Blueberry Milk, is scheduled to hit store shelves Thursday in its own unique half liter bottle featuring the word Chillin’.
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Barbara Shatto, owner and co-founder of the family-owned business based in Osborn, Mo., said Shatto wanted a Labor Day theme that was mellow and a bit fun in “recognition of the economic and social contribution of all workers.”
Just 4,000 of the Chillin’ bottles were created. Once they are gone the blueberry milk will be offered in the traditional pint bottles until mid-September.
This year’s other limited edition flavors were: chocolate cherry milk with “Smooch” on the bottle released before Valentine’s Day, mint chocolate milk with the word “Lucky” on the bottle released before St. Patrick’s Day, cookies and cream milk with the word “Thanks” on the bottle released in late May, and apple pie milk with the word “Indie” released before Independence Day.
Only five anniversary flavors were planned. However, customer response has been so great the company is planning two more limited edition flavors this year, one released before its birthday party on Oct. 10 and the other before the end of the year.

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According to Omnicom’s third quarter results, the group reported global revenue of $3.49 billion, up 2.5 per cent from $3.41 billion in the three months to 30 September 2012. Organic revenue growth, however, was stronger at 4.1 per cent.
The revenue growth was led by the US where Omnicom’s revenue was $1.82 billion during Q3, up 3.2 per cent. International revenue, which includes the contribution of the UK, was $1.68 billion in the three months, up 1.6 per cent.
An organic revenue decline of 1.6 per cent in the Euro region during the three months to 30 September partially offset the organic revenue growth elsewhere – 7.5 per cent in the UK, 5.0 per cent in the US and 4.5 per cent in other markets, primarily Asia and Latin America.


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Tip shops can appear to be pretty ordinary places.
A plethora of old pieces of furniture, rusty mechanical items and assorted oddities.
But if you know what you are looking for, many a bargain is to be had. Even treasures may be found.
At the Karratha tip shop in the PIlbara region of Western Australia, one local even bought a coffin.
Another fossicker once found £400 in a $2 book — suffice to say books have been a popular tip shop buy ever since.
Peter Skinner has been working at the waste facility for more than 11 years and is now its waste services team leader.
With a staff of some 14 people, his job is to run the day-to-day operations at the site.
A big part of his job is running the tip shop.
Closed during the week, Peter and his team organise the various wares at the site in preparation for the treasure hunters who arrive on weekends looking for a deal.
He says people drive by when the shop is closed to spy on what is available before the gates open on Saturdays.
"People drive past all week and have a look in and spy something, and it could be something that we don't think is worth much but they think it's a treasure," he said.
City Services manager Steve Wacher said Saturday mornings were akin to a Black Friday sale and customers were often three deep at the gate champing at the bit to get in.
The shop does not reserve items and operates on a first-come-first-served basis.
"When they come in, it's no running, so whoever walks fastest gets it … and if you get in quickly enough, then you'll get what you're looking for," Mr Wacher said.
Tip shop regular Andrew Wilson said he went to the tip shop most weeks looking for anything that caught his eye.
"I'm not after anything in particular, just like to have a walk around and see if anything sticks out," he said.
Over the years Mr Wilson said he had bought some great stuff.
One buy that sprung to mind was a leather marine seat he bought for $30 and reckoned he could sell for thousands of dollars.
You never know what you might find
Most items at the shop sell for less than $10, from outdoor six-seater tables to books, cassettes and appliances.
Flashier items may carry a higher price tag, but are still priced well-below commercial value.
In Mr Skinner's opinion it is always a good deal.
"We've had boats in here that we've sold for $100, we've had spas, you name it," he said.
"Just ask the tip fairy and you'll get it one day."
While scouting out treasures, arriving early and power walking are all excellent strategies. He said luck also played an important part where treasure-hunting was concerned.
"One that sticks out in my mind is the person that bought a $2 book here and there was £400 in it," he said.
"It was a very good deal. So now I think everybody's looking through the books."
All about reusing, not profit
The tip shop has been running since 2014 with the simple goal of encouraging people to reuse and buy second-hand items instead of spending lots of money on new products.
Mr Wacher said city workers would go through items before they were sent to landfill to see what they could save.
"We take what we can, anything we think will sell and we've get a very good turnover of people buying this stuff," he said.
Money raised from the sales goes back into running the tip shop.
"Come, take a look, buy something you can use, reduce waste and save money, everybody wins," he said.


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Australian businesses expect massive change from the NBN and are rapidly warming to the potential role of NBN-driven teleworking, but most still aren’t ready for the changes the network will bring, a major survey of business readiness has concluded.
Mobile telco Vodafone has confirmed it access the call records of an Australian journalist in an effort to determine the source of a negative story about privacy breaches in its operations.
Despite annual revenues estimated at north of $1 billion and increasing profits made from advertising and services sales to Australian customers, the Australian division of global search giant Google has revealed it paid almost no local tax in the 2013 calendar year, as outrage over the situation continues to grow in the local community.
blog Sydney-based financial technology startup hub Stone & Chalk launched last night to great fanfare, with a solid wedge of politicians from both major...
Atlassian, the Sydney-founded provider of team collaboration and productivity software, has announced a spike in revenue in its latest financial results.
Atlassian Corporation – the Sydney-based provider of team collaboration and productivity software – has revealed in its third quarter of fiscal 2016 earnings report that, while revenue grew considerably compared with the same period last year, it still suffered an operating loss of US$4.9 million.
A fault discovered on the 6,900km PPC-1 submarine cable connecting Australia to Guam is likely to take around 30 days to repair, according to TPG Telecom.
In Australia's technology pantheon, Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes is somewhere near the top. Cannon-Brookes successfully developed a massive software company still largely based in Australia, has invested in scores of other local technology startups, and is trying to save Australian Technology Park in Sydney. Now you'll get the chance to ask the entrepreneur anything you want, courtesy of a Reddit AMA he's starting to promote the closing date of the latest intake round for the Startmate incubator.
River City Labs, a Brisbane based start-up company, was officially opened on 22 March 2012 by Brisbane Deputy Mayor Adrian Schrinner. According to a press release, Labs is a not-for-profit co-working space founded and funded by Stephen Baxter, PIPE Networks co-founder (pictured, above left) and a well-known figure within the telecommunications and Internet industry.
Melbourne-based cloud content delivery network startup MetaCDN this week revealed it had completed one of the largest early stage investment rounds in an Australian technology startup over the past several years, winning $2.3 million in funding from investors including Starfish Ventures and the University of Melbourne Endowment fund.
Telstra has announced a plan to cut staffing numbers via voluntary redundancies in its Global Contact Centre (GCC) group.
I just wanted to post a quick note to let readers know that AngelCube, the Melbourne-based startup accelerator, has opened the doors for applications for its 2014 intake. If you don't know about AngelCube but you are interested in starting your own IT startup, you had better familiarise yourself quickly, because you only have a few days to file your entry.
A landmark report published by Australia's largest startup industry representative group has outlined what is billed as the nation's first comprehensive plan to boost the local technology startup ecosystem, with a number of concrete steps listed which the Federal Government and other stakeholders can take to facilitate rapid growth.
Some of you may remember the name of Nick Ross, the editor of the ABC’s Technology & Games site who wrote several in-depth articles criticising the Coalition’s rival National Broadband Network project. Well, what you probably didn’t know is that Ross has also been spending a great deal of time and effort on a side project. Known as ‘Nanotransactions’, the project is micro-transaction technology which Ross hopes will “save high-quality journalism”.
There might not be enough capital floating around in Australia’s IT startup ecosystem for it to expand at the rate some would like, but some startups, at least, are not finding much difficulty with raising capital. Crowdsourced security startup Bugcrowd today revealed it had picked up $1.6 million in funding from Australian and US investors.
Australian web startup Canva this morning revealed it had picked up a $3 million seed round from a number of early stage investors and venture capitalists in Australia and Silicon Valley.
Australian technology services group SMS Management & Technology has shifted the staff in its development facility in Vietnam to a third-party it has signed a comprehensive partnership with, as part of the company's efforts to expand its offshore resources and reducing its fixed costs in the region.
iiNet shareholders have overwhelmingly voted for the company to be acquired by rival TPG, with approval by the competition regulator and the Federal Court the two remaining conditions before the acquisition can take place.
Online retailer Kogan.com has announced an initial public offering (IPO) that it said is aimed to raise $50 million via the sale of new shares.
Multinational IT giant HP has signed a six-year agreement to deploy Microsoft Dynamics for its thousands of employees.
The nation's largest telco has flagged a small redundancy and redeployment round as part of its huge $1.1 billion contract with the Department of Defence, in the latest set of job cuts that appear to be sweeping across Australia's technology and telecommunications industries.
Technology giant Cisco has unveiled the line-up for its Cisco Live confab in Melbourne next week, with US-based technology evangelist Harper Reed to feature as one of the main keynotes, alongside several senior global Cisco executives.
The newspaper alleged, and Leighton has substantially verified, the fact that staff from Visionstream were suspected of aiding Silcar staff in stealing Visionstream tender files relating to a $240 million contract to deploy Optus’s 4G network, which the two contractors were competing to bid. I’ll have a separate article on that situation shortly. What you may not realise is that this not an isolated incident.
Mid-tier telcos M2 and Vocus this morning announced they would merge into a large company with a market capitalisation in excess of $3 billion, in a move that will further cement M2’s place as Australia’s fourth-largest broadband player and further consolidate the already minimalist Australian telecommunications industry.
The administrator for Dick Smith Holdings has announced that it will shut down all the troubled retailer's outlets within David Jones department stores, leaving over 180 employees facing an uncertain future.
The ACS, the professional body for Australia's ICT industry, has announced that Anthony Wong has been elected as its President for a two year term commencing 1 January.
Australian iOS and Android app development house Shifty Jelly has published an extensive and heart-felt blog post detailing what it's really like to be an app developer in the cold, hard smartphone/tablet world.
If you've been involved in Australia's technology startup community over the past several years, you will be aware that there have been multiple incubator programs that have been made available to entrepreneurs. Programs such as Startmate, PushStart, Telstra's Muru-D and so on have made early stage seed funding, mentorship and even physical work facilities available. However, according to one business consultant, the 'scene' is actually a lot more undeveloped than it seems.
Australian IT startup Scriptrock has won venture capital funding of $1.2 million from a list of names which reads like a who's who of the local and international technology investment scene.
Telstra has entered an agreement to acquire Kloud, a firm that helps governments and companies seeking to transition their workloads and applications to the cloud. Additionally, the telco indicates it has made a strategic investment in Instart Logic, a provider of next-gen application delivery services.
The NBN company this morning announced it had launched a fixed wireless broadband service offering download speeds of 50Mbps and upload speeds of 20Mbps -- double the speeds currently available on the company's wireless platform.
Your writer can't imagine that it's easy working at Telstra. Although Australia's biggest telco has an extensive workforce with many career opportunities, it also conducts regularly redundancy rounds as part of its ongoing drive to become more efficient and cut costs.
Online group buying deals are finding favour with more and more Australians, going by sales figures. According to local emerging technology analyst firm Telsyte, the online group buying market generated revenues worth $498 million in 2011.
Australia’s tight domain name policies may have prevented opportunistic cybersquatters from cashing in on local disasters, but this week’s Boston Marathon bombing and Waco fertiliser explosion have had less luck avoiding cybesquatters, analysis by a local domain-name specialist has revealed.
Software giant Adobe has informed its users of its intention to substantially increase the price of accessing its Creative Cloud family of image and video editing products, in a move which appears set to cause frustration amongst the company's already tetchy local user base.
Honestly, sometimes it feels at the moment as though there is just a huge stack of pure cash money flowing in the streets for Australia’s technology startups. Several weeks ago the Queensland Government announced a $40 million co-investment fund for startups, last week Victoria followed with a $60 million effort, and of course who could forget the new $200 million fund unveiled by Blackbird Ventures in August. Well now there’s another $200 million fund targeting Australian technology startups.
Seasoned Australian technology executive Alan Hyde left his managing director role at NEC to lead the South Pacific division of HP's Enterprise Group, it has been revealed.
National Australia Bank (NAB) has launched a new payment service that lets customers use their mobile phone to make purchases, without the need to carry a physical card.
Opening a venture capital branch seems to be the new “thing” in the corporate world. While Telstra and Westpac are the new big national players, Google is clearly ahead of the curve, with two distinct venture capital firms: the newly launched Google Capital and the five-year-old Google Ventures. But why are so many companies, across a range of sectors, now running to open their own venture capital funds?
A solar company and a call centre firm have been issued formal warnings by The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) for making telemarketing calls to numbers on the Do Not Call Register.
Software giant Atlassian has announced the acquisition of its long-term partner StatusPage, a provider of status and incident communication services.
Telstra has made the first improvements to regions with poor mobile coverage as part of the government's Mobile Black Spot Programme.
Telstra has launched a cloud management platform aimed to help businesses with the operation of hybrid cloud environments.
Great news from the US, where Australian software firm Atlassian has at long last started selling its shares on the NASDAQ, under the ticker TEAM. The Guardian reports that the share price of the company has already soared on its first day. The share sale apparently represents Australia's biggest ever share float on the international market.
As revealed by the Sydney Morning Herald and a number of other media this morning, the content industry's first target will be Solar Movie.
With the exception of airport locations, all remaining Dick Smith and Move stores across Australia and New Zealand are to close, according to the receiving company Ferrier Hodgson.
We know we’ve pinned Ruslan Kogan for a certain degree of … arrogance, previously, but we really didn’t expect the maverick online retail and consumer electronics guru to go quite this far in proving our point.
Australian graphic design software company Canva this week revealed it had raised a further $15 million in venture capital investment, in what appears to be the company’s fourth sizable capital raising in only the past several years.
The next Atlassian could be started by a pair of Chinese students studying right now in Melbourne, or an Australian-born Vietnamese or Indian entrepreneur who can leverage transnational family connections and build a fast-growing company.
As Korean giant Samsung has grown its presence in the mobile phone space to rival and even exceed that of industry leader Apple, it has also had to grow its support network. This is to be expected. But what many readers may not have realised is that much of the company’s support for its devices in Australia was actually supported from Australia, with a call centre based in Wollongong. Unfortunately for those concerned, according to Ausdroid, those jobs are now to be offshored.
If you've been paying attention to Australia's technology startup sector recently, you might have noticed that it's absolutely booming. Tens of millions of dollars are being ploughed into new startups, incubators and co-working spaces are popping up all over the place, and successful startups like Freelancer.com are considering massive stock market listings.
Lucy Turnbull AO, wife of the Prime Minister, has become patron of an organisation called DICE Kids, which aims to turn Australia's kids into entrepreneurs.
Digital agricultural technology (AgTech) will be a "critical component" of Australia's plan to develop a $100 billion agricultural industry by 2030, according to a new StartupAUS report.
We can't imagine the staff morale at Australia's peak IT research group NICTA is fantastic at this point. The Federal Government cut all funding to the organisation in the 2014 Budget, the CSIRO merger plan to save the group has been in negotiations for six months, and even now the situation in terms of hundreds of redundancies continues to be unclear.
Australian web startup DesignCrowd announced overnight that it had picked up a further $3 million in funding from Melbourne-based venture capital firm Starfish Ventures, which it will use to continue to scale up its operations and take advantage of the growing trend towards crowdsourcing tasks online.
Salesforce has released its third State of IT research report, an annual look at the industry which this year suggests that the digital revolution is "shaking up" traditional IT departments.
The Victorian Government has unveiled a new body called LaunchVic that is aimed to accelerate startups, drive new ideas and create jobs in the state.
The Australian division of search and software giant Google has published its latest set of financial results for the 2012 calendar year, revealing that it paid several million dollars more tax than the paltry $74,000 sum it claimed in 2011, but also that its revenues and headcount jumped substantially over that period.
The Financial Review newspaper reports that Apple has shifted some $9 billion in profits out of Australia, avoiding a normal tax situation being applied to them.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott visited a P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early Career High) school in New York last week, hinting it’s a model of education we should consider implementing in Australia. The school, partly funded by IBM and training students to suit the company’s needs, is different to anything we have in Australia. While the P-TECH model would be feasible here, the model risks confusing economic needs with educational ones.
Optus and Cisco have announced a joint initiative to develop technologies that they anticipate will create "disruptive capabilities" for Australian businesses and government.
Japanese IT services and products giant NEC has opened a new Australian headquarters in Victoria.
US technology juggernaut Apple has insisted that it pays all of its local taxes, despite the company having filed financial results this week that saw the company pay extra taxes of just $4.5 million last year off an extra $1.8 billion in local revenue.
news The chief executive of British incumbent telco BT has announced a significant upgrade to his company’s broadband expansion plans, with BT now planning...
Future Capital Development Fund (FCDF), the prominent Australian web 2.0 investment group, announced its investment yesterday in two more companies, TheAgendaDaily.com and BlueChilli Technology. This brings the total of fast growing Internet companies in the Future Capital portfolio to at least 14.
Startmate, the Sydney based mentor-driven seed fund that invests in Australian techies who have ambitions of creating startups, has announced its latest class of protégées for the 2012 program. The fund was announced at the Tech23 2010 event held in Sydney and it has a stated mission of helping create world-class companies that will solve customer problems.
In what it is calling a "world first", Comcast has switched on gigabit hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) broadband at a home in the US.
Global consulting, technology and outsourcing company Capgemini has announced the appointment of Nicolas Aidoud as its new Chief Executive Officer for Australia and New Zealand.
US-based multinational defence company Leidos has announced the successful completion of its previously announced merger with Lockheed Martin's Information Systems & Global Solutions (IS&GS) business.
Australian enterprise software provider Atlassian has publicly filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to list common stock on the NASDAQ Global Market under the ticker symbol 'TEAM'.
Those of you who’ve been following the exploits of Freelancer.com chief executive and all-round celebrity Australian technologist Matt Barrie will no doubt be interested in the news that one of the other companies Barrie helped found, high-performance networking outfit Sensory Networks, has been bought by giant chipmaker Intel for about $20m.
The Federal Court this morning ruled that copyright owners could not use the preliminary discovery process to sue alleged Internet pirates for punitive damages, in a move that will be likely to limit the potential liability of those Australians illicitly downloading films and TV programs.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has given its approval for a new taxi app called ihail, a joint venture between taxi networks and other participants that the industry hopes will allow it to fight back against ride-sharing services like Uber.
Always wondered what secretive TPG billionaire David Teoh looks like? Never been able to check out a photo of the executive? You're not alone. However, that changed this morning after the Financial Review published a photo of Teoh that a freelancer photographer had taken after camping out outside his house for days.
Hosting and domain name specialist Melbourne IT announced today that it had entered into an agreement to acquire its biggest rival, Netregistry for $50.4 million, in a move that will ensure the fortunes of the company's founder Larry Bloch but also potentially create a giant with close to monopoly powers over the Australian domain name space.
Foxtel has more than doubled the quota available on the broadband packages it bundles with telephone and pay TV offerings, with customers now able to receive a terabyte of quota along with a Foxtel subscription TV package and unlimited local and national calls for $130 a month, in plan bundles that appear to beat those offered by Foxtel partner Telstra.
Clune's right: Australia's IT startup scene is predominantly composed of white, middle class males, a physical form which venture capitalists usually identify with. But Liubinskas is also right: Things are more complicated than that in real life, and opportunities do abound for the passionate or determined, regardless of who they are. Perhaps the passion and diversity in this debate do much to illustrate the sector as a whole.
This brief speech was read by Apple Australia managing director Anthony King to Australia's House of Representatives' Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications last week on Friday 22 March. As far as Delimiter is aware, it represents the longest and most detailed statement technology giant Apple has made with respect to its operations in Australia over at least the past decade.
Australia Post has announced that it will be investing $20 million in emerging e-commerce businesses, as well as co-locating its venture accelerator program within the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Accelerator programme (MAP).
A joint venture between NAB and Telstra will see the launch of a new digital marketplace startup called Proquo, aimed to help small businesses around Australia develop and grow.
The University of Adelaide and technology company NEC Australia have signed a new agreement that will see them collaborate on a so-called 'smart cities' project aimed to help urban areas become more dynamic and sustainable.
Australian consumers are embracing digital commerce, but Australian retailers are failing to build long-term relationships with their customers online, according to new research.
This morning Twitter Australia opened its new Australian headquarters in Sydney. The facility was opened by NSW Premier Mike Baird, and according to Twitter, has "a distinctly Australian flair", which includes meeting rooms named after Australian beaches, a "muted green and golden colour scheme", a "local beach design" and an open plan. Presumably they also have a fantastic expresso machine.
A 21-year-old man from the rural Queensland town of Kingaroy has been charged with hacking and fraud offences following the alleged hacking of a US based online gaming developer’s computer network, the Queensland Police today.
A new report has outlined the "megatrends" shaping the future of employment in Australia and highlighted the importance of education across the jobs spectrum.
MYOB, a provider of online business management solutions, has announced the acquisition of resource planning software group Greentree at a cost of NZ$28.5 million (AU$27.12 million).
Australian tech entrepreneur Bevan Slattery has launched a comprehensive cloud and datacentre directory called Cloudscene.
Telstra has announced the acquisition of Readify, an Australian app development firm that has previously provided services for Microsoft.
Often I've found, in my field of online publishing, that the solution you're looking to with regard to a problem you're experiencing has already been worked out by someone else -- someone you can easily talk to about it. Startups thrive when they interface with each other and share lessons.
Australian-founded invoicing startup Invoice2go has raised $15 in investment capital to continue its mission of simplifying invoicing for small businesses.
Less than 24 hours after one of Australia's most high-profile declared Australia's venture capital industry "dead", a new $30 million venture capital fund has launched locally to support the next wave of Australian tech startups, backed by a who's who list of the local early stage technology industry.
Not every Web 2.0 startup is for sexy young things who are devoted to sharing every instant of their “social universe” online. Some startups aim at different categories. A good example is Tapestry.net, which just picked up a cool $400k in investment from government group Commercialisation Australia.
Another one of startup incubator Pollenizer's portfolio companies has raised a significant amount of investment capital to expand its operations, with social payments company Pygg today revealing it had taken $600k in funding.
Ninefold, the Macquarie Telecom-owned cloud computing company which provides infrastructure as a service offerings, has decided to shut down, with its last day of operation being January 30, 2016.
StartupAUS, a group that advocates for Australia's startups, has published a report highlighting the importance of the relationship between big business and startups in cultivating a "vibrant and energetic" environment for innovation.
Computing giant Dell has announced that Japan-based NTT Data is to acquire its IT services consultation division, Dell Services.
SAP, a multinational provider of enterprise software, has established a public services business unit in Australia, along with a financial services business unit covering both Australia and New Zealand – both have been set up to help the company scale in the region, the firm said.
news TPG has told iiNet staff that it will maintain the iiNet and Internode brands as well as the pair’s call centre operations, as...
In a bid to see more Australian products in the global marketplace, the last month has seen a number of startups receiving funding from the Australian Government’s Entrepreneurs' Programme.
To my mind, this action by Uber is something akin to corporate heroism. Its customers want to use its services, and so it is continuing to provide services that customers want, despite the fact that the Victorian Government is essentially trying to shut it down at the moment.
Pioneering US security journalist Brian Krebs — who has broken a number of major hacking stories over the past several years — thinks he may have tracked down one of the Ashley Madison perpetrators. The kicker? He appears to be Australian and may be a fan of local supergroup AC/DC.
This afternoon, The Guardian reported that police had raided the home of alleged Bitcoin creator Craig Steven Wright's home in Sydney on the basis of an investigation by the Australian Taxation Office.
The theory that the National Broadband Network is a threat to Foxtel's pay TV business doesn't really hold water.
The shortage of computing experts in Australian schools has serious implications for our future as a player in the knowledge economy.
National pay TV operator Foxtel has reportedly confirmed plans to launch an attempt early in the near year to have a specific website allegedly hosting pirated film and TV content blocked, in what is expected to be the first test of new legislation designed to tackle Internet piracy.
Australia's second-largest telco Optus is set to cut several hundred jobs, one of its main unions claimed last week, as part of a "company-wide restructure" that may involve outsourcing and offshoring some aspects of Optus' operations.
Australian firm NextDC has announced it plans to raise equity to fund the building of two new data centres, including a second facility in Melbourne.
It has become more or less the norm for global technology companies to minimise their Australian tax liability in a way that much of the local population finds at least mildly objectionable. Well, perhaps the most arrogant of the bunch (surprise, surprise) has turned out to be social networking giant Facebook, which has filed a form arguing it doesn’t need to disclose its Australian earnings at all.
Tradie search site hipages.com.au this week announced it had secured $6 million in venture capital from a range of investors to expand its operations connecting Australians with small service providers in their area.
National broadband provider iiNet and its subsidiary brands have instantly dumped the Fetch TV Internet television platform following the company’s acquisition by TPG, with Fetch TV confirming the order came from TPG itself following the acquisition.
Tasmania’s first Tier III datacentre has moved a step closer to the construction stage with the purchase of a site for the facility, according to its Western Australian operator, Red Cloud.
If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: Now is a fantastic time to be involved in an Australian IT startup. It used to be that it was tough to find finding for great new ideas in the Australian technology sector, but the plethora of sizable investment deals over the past several years proven that the local funding environment has changed substantially.
Australian enterprise software firm Atlassian revealed this week that it had acquired San Francisco-based HipChat.
Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen has given a landmark speech in which he argues that much of the future for Australia's economy lies in high-tech jobs, innovation and entrepreneurship, in sentiments which run directly contrary to the thrust of the Coalition Government's first budget.
Oracle has entered into an agreement to acquire US-based cloud solutions provider NetSuite at a cost of approximately US$9.3 billion (AU$12.34 billion) in cash.
A crowdfunding campaign has been launched to help publish a new book on Australian inventor Henry Sutton – a self-taught engineer and inventor from Ballarat.
Google has announced that it will be be bringing its digital wallet Android Pay to Australia in the first half of 2016 with a number of financial partners.
Fetch TV has revealed it is financially profitable and rapidly expanding its operations and customer numbers, in news that signals it will not be substantially adversely affected by the decision by iiNet’s new owner TPG to terminate its long-standing relationship with the Internet television company.
According to From Little Things, the Gillard Government is currently sitting on its hands with respect to decisions about supporting Australia's IT startup sector and hasn't responded to its own review in the area.
Australian cloud computing startup OrionVM today revealed it had taken angel investment capital from two high-profile technology sector luminaries: PIPE Networks co-founder Stephen Baxter and US engineer Gordon Bell, of Digital Equipment Corporation fame.
In a flurry of leadership announcements this week, telcos Optus and AAPT have revealed that they have lost their local chief executives, while the Australian division of Chinese manufacturer Huawei has gained a new one.
The Federal Court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by Australia Post against fledgling e-post joint venture Digital Post Australia with reference to the similarity in the name of the company with its own well-established brand.
The Federal Parliament committee examining IT price hikes in Australia has published an extensive report recommending a raft of drastic measures to deal with current practices in the area, which, the report says, are seeing Australians unfairly slugged with price increases of up to 50 percent on key technology goods and services.
IBM and VMware have agreed a strategic partnership aimed to make it easier for businesses to advantage of the cloud’s speed and economic factors.
The Commonwealth Bank has beaten off its main rival to acquire and redevelop the Australian Technology Park (ATP), following a successful bid by a Mirvac Group-led consortium.
Virtualisation giant VMware has unveiled a new platform for delivering secure digital workspaces for flexible working on any device.
An open data initiative named DataStart has been brought about by the collaboration of Malcolm Turnbull's Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet with an established Australian incubator, Pollenizer, to support data-driven innovation in Australia.
Mobile telco Vodafone has confirmed it is still planning to eventually offer fixed broadband services over the National Broadband Network’s infrastructure, despite the fact that its trial over the NBN died a quiet death several years ago.
Phillip Dalidakis, Victorian Minister for Small Business, Trade and Innovation, was in Sydney on 30th October to make an announcement along with Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer. Addressing an audience of over 2,000, the two announced the shifting of Australia’s largest startup tech conference, SydStart, from Sydney to Melbourne.
According to Phil Morle, the co-founder of startup incubator and consultancy Pollenizer, the situation still isn’t where it needs to be in terms of IT startup funding in Australia.
Virtualisation giant VMware has announced the hiring of a new regional chief for the Asia Pacific and Japan.
In which Kotaku alleges an odious culture of gross staff neglect and out and out abuse at national retailer EB Games.
If you want to register an Australian web address, your options may be about to change due to a review of domain name policy that is currently underway.
Today Victoria's’s Technology Minister Gordon Rich-Phillips has gone into bat for technology giants such as Google, defending the search giant against the Federal Government’s attempts to make it pay a fair level of tax in Australia.
Global technology giant HP yesterday announced it had created a new dedicated Security Operations Centre (SOC) in Sydney that will support the company's managed security services platform and deal with customers located around the globe.
There is currently a great deal of debate and controversy out there surrounding the decision by Australian software giant Atlassian to go public through listing its shares on a US-based stock exchange rather than in Australia. Some successful Australian entrepreneurs, such as Freelancer chief executive Matt Barrie, have been trying to persuade Atlassian to list locally for years, in a move that they believe will help change the focus of Australia's financial markets towards the tech sector.
Telstra has announced limited-time bundle deals for new NBN or broadband customers, offering extra data, bonus calls, and access to Wi-Fi when away from the home.
Freelancer chief executive Matt Barrie shocked a few in Australia’s tech sector with his mid-September rejection of a $400 million offer from a Japanese HR and recruitment giant to buy his company. The executive’s decision to list his company on the Australian Stock Exchange instead was similarly controversial. However, as I write in Delimiter 2.0 today (subscriber content), Freelancer’s not alone. There’s half a dozen other technology industry companies seeking to list on the ASX late this year or early next.
Heard the term "Australian brain-drain"? You're probably not going to see a more blatant attempt at it than this.
This article is by Charis Palmer, Deputy Business Editor at The Conversation. It originally appeared on The Conversation. After eight years and 19 rounds of...
The Federal Government tonight revealed plans to totally stop funding the nation's peak ICT research group National ICT Australia (NICTA) after two more years, with Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull stating that the organisation would then need to move to a "self-sustaining model".
Melbourne geek Anthony Agius’ newest venture is attempting to ascertain whether he can make enough money from mining the Bitcoin virtual currency to keep himself in new servers and fast broadband in the style to which he has become accustomed.
Telecommunications and media giants Telstra and Seven West Media have revealed they will splurge a total of $10.4 million on HealthEngine, in a move which represents the second major investment in the seven-year-old Perth-based health appointment search startup in less than a year.
Dick Smith Holdings Ltd, the Australian electrical retail group, has entered receivership, according to a statement.
Australian startup incubator Pollenizer has raised a further $1.1 million to continue to develop its operations, and has substantially reformed its model on building startups to place a higher emphasis on its staff acting as co-founders of the startup companies it helps to foster.
We're seeing a great deal of investment in Australian technology startups at the moment. After years in the wilderness after the dot com crash, the local funding scene appears to be running hot. The latest cab off the rank is point of sale startup Kounta, which last week announced it had kicked off its first venture round, with Reckon founder greg Wilkinson kicking in an unspecified amount and joining Kounta's board.
iiNet is offering a 50 percent discount for a limited period on HFC cable plans in some parts of Victoria where it owns its own infrastructure.
The 'disruptive economy' being brought about by companies such as Uber is "driving down" workers’ rights, the Transport Workers Union has warned.
A 19-year-old Australian developer, Zac Altman has successfully launched an online service for taxi users in Australia focusing on mobile bookings, thrusting himself into an industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
What I can't understand at this point is why the auDA board itself would turf Disspain from the position he has done an admirable job in. Was it a personality conflict? A professional disagreement of opinion? The statement says auDA is looking for "new leadership", but isn't the essence of auDA that it needs to remain stable -- something which Disspain has certainly been able to deliver to the organisation?
It’s official: Australia isn’t the “lucky country” in the IT sector. Consumers, government and industry down under are charged typically 50% more for software and hardware compared to their American counterparts. Why is this the case and, more importantly, what can affected customers do about it?
Fresh off the back of claims that Oracle has just dumped its entire Australian support operation, news has arrived from the Financial Review this week that global Oracle co-chief executive Mark Hurd has landed in Australia.
Simon Hackett has teamed up with another senior former senior Internode executive and two early executives from electric car pioneer to found a new startup focused on building a new type of electric car specifically designed for high-speed performance racing.
NSW Roads and Maritime Services this week revealed it had suspended some forty owners of vehicles involved in UberX-style ride-sharing services, ruling the use of vehicles for this purpose as illegal, despite the fact that the State Government is currently conducting a review into the future of the related taxi industry.
The nation's largest telco Telstra has revealed it will invest a significant amount of capital upgrading the HFC cable network it has contracted to sell to the NBN company, in a move which raises questions about the long-term future of the network.
Australian e-commerce software as a service firm Bigcommerce revealed overnight that it had picked up a further US$40 million in funding, taking its total investment from the US venture capital scene to some $75 million and further illustrating the rapid growth of Australia's startup scene.
Keen to use your iPhone and/or Apple Watch to pay for goods and services at EFTPOS terminals around Australia? You're right out of luck, with Australia's major banks standing in the way of Apple's Pay service launching locally.
Mobile telco amaysim this morning announced it had bought privately owned Vaya for $70 million, in a move that will add some 140,000 subscribers to amaysim's customer database and further consolidate the already tight mobile market.
Mark Greig, the commercial director of Pollenizer Global (and chairman of Pollenizer’s Investment Council) has published an extremely common sense blog post outlining some the basic things you need to know about investing in Australian IT startups.
The cloud has sparked true IT transformation, and could potentially usher in a new Industrial Revolution, according to an opinion piece penned by Michelle Bendschneider – Telstra's Executive Director, Global Products.
The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) will hold a public inquiry starting on 17 August 2015 as part of an investigation it is conducting into allegations that a TAFE ICT manager dishonestly obtained over $1.7 million from the Department of Education and Communities TAFE South West Sydney Institute (SWSI).
Uber's new 'ride-sharing' service has caused an uproar in Australia's tightly controlled taxi industry. However, the truth is that this innovative offering is just the tip of the iceberg for a whole raft of 'person to person' services shortly to launch in Australia, collectively known as the emerging 'sharing economy'.
NEC has announced that it will establish a $4.38 million cybersecurity centre in Adelaide to address growing demand for online security.
Multinational security and aerospace company Lockheed Martin has revealed that it is to set up a multi-disciplinary research and development facility in Melbourne.
Consumer electronics retailer Dick Smith has revealed it will take over the electronics retail operations of some 30 David Jons stores around Australia from October, as the troubled company's new private equity owners continue to push to rehabilitate its operations.
The Coalition has revealed an extra $42 million in funding to support peak ICT research group National ICT Australia (NICTA) unveiled several weeks ago by Labor Digital Economy Minister Kate Lundy will be a victim of its election drive to cut costs.
Understandably, new governments have an interest in putting their own stamp on policy, particularly in areas as critical to our future as research and innovation, but sometimes continuity and re-badging is preferable to scorched earth.
Australia-based software as a service email marketing platform Campaign Monitor announced overnight that it had taken a $250 million investment from US-based venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners, in one of the largest ever VC investments in an Australian technology startup.
Action camera manufacturer GoPro has said it will set up its Australian and New Zealand headquarters in Melbourne – a move that will create up to 50 jobs over the next five years and was in part due to assistance from the Victorian Government.
Canon Australia announced Monday it has fully acquired New Zealand Post Group subsidiary Converga for an undisclosed sum.
The Australian Computer Society has accused local technology employers of dumping older staff and failing to hire graduates, replacing both categories with "cheap" imported labor through the Federal Government's 457 Visa scheme, as debate continues as to how the nation will serve its growing need for technology skills.
Walking around Cisco Live in Melbourne over the past several days, it is quite hard to escape the fact that Cisco appears a little more ... obsessed with Apple iMacs and MacBooks than one would expect.
Capgemini, the international consulting, IT and outsourcing services firm, has announced the Australian launch of Backelite, its digital service design consultancy.
The new year has not started well for Australian technologists in terms of the jobs situation. Qantas is cutting IT workers, Sensis is cutting workers, Telstra is cutting workers, the Victorian Government is looking into offshoring, and now, according to The Australian newspaper, IBM Australia has embarked on another major redundancy round.
Wright and Nakamoto appear, so far, to be polar opposites. Whether the Sydneysider was involved in creating Bitcoin or not, it appears certain that others must also have been.
The new Coalition Federal Government has stated that it is "committed" to addressing the ongoing concerns Australian startups have with tax arrangements for employee share schemes, re-opening consultation on the matter for two weeks late this month and early in February. Any opening up of the scheme is likely to be welcomed by Australia's IT startup sector.
The Innovyz START startup accelerator program recently launched by ANZ Bank has revealed the second 10 startups to which it will attract funding and mentorship, with the major of successful startups originating in South Australian capital city Adelaide.
I have to say, it’s hard to disagree with the Atlassian gurus on this one. Comprehensively, if there was a measure which was aimed at assisting Australia’s ICT sector (particularly fast-growing startups), it appears as though the new Coalition Government was determined to cut it. Regular Delimiter readers will be aware that I didn’t find some of these programs very effective, but there is at the least no doubt that the Coalition certainly didn’t replace them with anything either. Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and company appear to believe that the sector — responsible for huge ecoomic outcomes in other countries — has little relevance to the land Down Under. Strange stuff. Why wouldn’t you want to have a bevy of high-powered tech firms like Atlassian calling Australia home?
The call for a technology policy think tank is opportune and probably long overdue. The Australian IT industry is a massive industry, a huge success story for Australia, and well deserving of its own voice.
Australian startup Beat the Q Posse Group today announced the closure of an oversubscribed Series A $5M funding round led by key investment partners, the Westpac backed venture fund Reinventure and venture capital firm Exto Partners.
Vocus Communications has confirmed that it has signed a non-binding agreement with Nextgen Networks to construct a high-speed Australia-Singapore submarine cable (ASC) and and is currently "engaged in due diligence on the opportunity".
If Wired is to be believed, Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto may have been unmasked overnight. The magazine has presented a great deal of evidence in this article that Nakamoto is actually Craig Steven Wright, an Australian cryptology expert living in 'Eastern Australia'.
Australian Internet news aggregator Wotnews has announced it will shut the site down to focus on its sister site WeAreHunted, potentially leaving site investor and Wotif.com multimillionaire Graeme Wood out of pocket.
Australia-founded Bugcrowd, a provider of crowdsourced security for enterprises, has announced the completion of a $15 million Series B funding round led by Blackbird Ventures.
On October 27th, Telstra informed the Communication Workers Union (CWU) about its proposed operational changes that will result in making 480 positions redundant. The majority of the affected positions are held by Telstra employees, while the rest include agency staff.
As many people will be aware, yesterday an Australian startup named Flirtey announced that it in March next year, it would launch a commercial drone package delivery service, using "fully automated drones" to deliver packages in inner Sydney through short flights. But can this claim be believed?
This article is by Antony Ting, Associate Professor, University of Sydney. It originally appeared on The Conversation. opinion/analysis The war on tax avoidance by multinational...
Corporate and technology consulting firm Deloitte has proposed a set of concrete definitions and rules that would substantially change the way the Australian Taxation Office deals with the contentious issue of employee share schemes for Australian startup companies.
Telstra Ventures – the venture capital arm of the major telecommunications firm – has announced a strategic investment in NGINX, a San Francisco-based company providing open-source web server software that supports many of the world’s busiest websites.
Optus Business entered a new partnership with Macquarie University to establish a new "cybersecurity hub" aimed help business and government organisations protect themselves from increasing cyber threats.
The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has announced the launch of what it describes as its Venture Incubator Space under the auspices of the university’s School of Computer Science and Engineering.
Pollenizer-backed startup 99dresses this week took its site down for renovation promising that it would eventually return, but revealing it was suffering from financial problems linked to its use of virtual currency.
Other companies' Australian managing directors exit gracefully, in a carefully stage-managed process which sees a replacement privately sourced almost before the incumbent leaves. But not Google. Google just dumps a new job ad on its country page as the local MD leaves the country.
South Australia's Liberal Party has vowed to make Adelaide "the startup capital of Australia" if it wins the upcoming state election, promising to plough some $500,000 into a startup week and committing to a slew of other initiatives that would help alleviate what the party described as the state's "devastating brain drain" crisis.
The revenues of Apple's Australian division have finally stopped their massive annual growth initiated in 2009, as the company's lack of new product lines over the past year have stalled its onwards financial march.
The competition regulator has declared it will not oppose TPG’s proposed acquisition of iiNet, stating its view today that the merger would not result in a “substantial” lessening of competition as was required under its supporting legislation.
Sydney-based next-generation mobile startup Paloma Mobile has raised $1.5 million in investment funding from Australian venture capital firm OneVentures, in a move which will further highlight the growing strengths of the local funding landscape for Australia-based technology startups.
The nation's largest telco Telstra has added to a recent splurge of funding on smaller companies, ploughing a reported $10 million into US-based corporate cloud file-sharing company and Dropbox competitor Box.
New institutional and retail investors have provided Australian wireless company SkyFii with over $4 million in new investment capital through the issue of new shares.
I personally feel it would be a real shame to see UXC snapped up by CSC. UXC is a strong Australian business, with its Red Rock, Oxygen, Connect, Telsyte and other brands being very well-known in Australia. Of course, CSC would be likely to keep most of its staff intact. But the Australian IT services market would feel a lot less ... Australian without UXC existing on its own.
Freelancer.com chief executive Matt Barrie has published an impassioned article on his LinkedIn profile strongly heavily criticising the Government for its underinvestment in the technology sector, which he said had led to a situation where Australia is devoid of good IT talent and "missing out" on the ongoing industry revolution.
Sydney-based hosting and cloud computing company Bulletproof Networks has unexpectedly revealed its intention to list on the Australian Stock Exchange through a reverse takeover of a mining firm, in the second example in as many months of a major Australian technology firm going public.
Diversified technology solutions group NEC has notified its Australian staff that it will shortly undertake a round of redundancies, just months after the company warned it was facing “immediate profitability challenges” despite having a “very healthy” pipeline of contracts.
The Federal Government has released a statement that sets out its plans to support Australia's FinTech startups in order to boost jobs and economic growth, and includes measures to tackle the "double taxation" of digital currencies.
US technology juggernaut Apple has revealed it only paid an extra $4.5 million worth of corporate tax in Australia in its 2015 financial year, despite the company making an extra $1.8 billion in local revenue, taking its local taxes to a paltry sum of $85 million off record Australian revenues of $7.8 billion.
Australia finally has its first digital technology curriculum which is mandatory for all Australian children from Foundation, the name replacing kindergarten, to Year 8.
The Federal Government has made good on the threat delivered this month by its Commission of Audit to "abolish" key early stage innovation industry support vehicles Commercialisation Australia and the Innovation Investment Fund (IIF), with the pair and others to be rolled into a new body dubbed the 'Entrepreneurs' Infrastructure Programme'.
Writing on the ABC's The Drum site, Institute of Public Affairs senior fellow Julie Novak argues that globally, countries are competing to be centres of taxation, and that Australia should start playing the game better, as low-taxing countries such as Ireland have.
Our productivity problem is a like an epidemic. It affects many businesses and threatens the prosperity of future Australians yet it is poorly understood and goes largely unnoticed, especially in a service economy. If a problem of this size and scale were to affect people’s health, money would be raised for further research to isolate the causes and cures for the malady.
IBM has announced the creation of a cybersecurity centre in Canberra aimed to bring about greater cybersecurity resilience and collaboration between Australia's governments and businesses on strategy and policy.
Following the launch of next-generation taxi service Uber in Sydney in late October last year, the US startup has now annoucned that it has launched quietly in Melbourne.
Global technology firm Digital Realty is to establish a new datacentre in Victoria that will create hundreds of new jobs in the state.
Every so often you come across something in Australia’s technology sector which infuriates you because of its counter-intuitiveness. Today’s item is the news broken by Mahesh Sharma at ZDNet.com.au that local technology incubator Startmate has successfully advised its latest batch of companies to become incorporated in the state of Delaware in the US instead of in Australia.
Global social bookmarking company Delicious has bought Australian startup Trunk.ly, less than a year after the site launched in the wake of Delicious' own temporary sunset at the hands of former owner Yahoo.
The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) has inked a 10-year agreement that sees Optus become the official telecommunications partner of the Australian Olympic team.
Global technology giant IBM is cutting jobs in its Australian operations, Delimiter can reveal, in a move which appears to be part of a broad global cull by Big Blue.
Apple, famous for its innovative products, is equally creative in its tax structure. From 2009 to 2012, it successfully sheltered US$44 billion from being taxed anywhere in the world, including sales generated in Australia.
blog Even as it marks the tenth anniversary of iTunes and its companion iPod device, Apple’s first profit decline in a decade has many observers contemplating the future of the pioneering company – and asking whether Steve Jobs’ spirit of innovation has in fact passed along with the company’s co-founder.
Startup consultancy and incubator Pollenizer celebrates five years with a new book about the lifecycle of startups, Startup Focus.
The Federal Government tonight announced as part of this year's Budget that it would cut $10 million of remaining funding to the Australian Interactive Games Fund, in a move which at least one commentator has already said will "destroy" Australia's video games industry.
Local startup incubator Pollenizer has launched the opening of its Autumn semester intake for new startups from 1 April 2012, calling for applications until 20 January. Those businesses shortlisted will be notified between 23 and 25 January.
Red Cloud Ltd, a data centre services provider, has announced it will build a $40-million, resilient, Tier-3 data centre in Hobart using proven state-of-the-art modular technology.
Vodafone has announced its Australian growth figures for 2015, saying that its customer base increased by 135,000 customer – a 2.5% year-on-year increase to 5,437 million.
The public listing of Australia-based tech company Atlassian on a US stock exchange will have a huge impact on Australia’s technology sector, unleashing a lasting wave of innovation and ongoing digital disruption that will deeply impact the nation at a fundamental level. Watch closely: Things are about to drastically change.
Australian pay television company Foxtel is hiring an anti-fraud investigator to drive the firm's efforts to cut down on piracy and other criminal activities.
Customer service platform provider Zendesk, Inc, has announced a new partnership with the Victorian Government that will create up to 175 new jobs in the state's developing tech industry.
Telstra is offering free data for a day for all customers this Sunday following an outage in its national mobile network that affected voice and data services for some customers.
Google Fiber may soon come to Chicago and Los Angeles, following a call from the tech and search giant for the two cities to explore the feasibility of a rollout there.
Just a day or so ago, National ICT Australia appeared relatively unfazed by the Coalition Federal Government’s decision to entirely cut its funding within two years, vowing to seek alternative options. But an interview with the group’s chief executive Hugh Durrant-Whyte in the Financial Review newspaper yesterday paints an entirely different picture.
This whole business model is now under challenge; for newspapers, TV channels and for pay TV. The share prices of media companies are in decline, and in the US in sharp decline.
National telecommunications player Optus has made its first investments in several Australian technology startups, courtesy of its Innov8 seed fund set up in collaboration with parent SingTel, with local groups 121cast and Venuemob getting the nod for initial capital investment.
Tasmania-based video startup, Biteable, has announced a $1.1-million seed funding round from a group of Australian investors including Tank Stream Ventures and BridgeLane Capital.
Delimiter has been contacted by several sources who have stated that The Register's report is accurate, and that Oracle has indeed completely offshored its Australian support centre in the past month.
The number of Australian households with a Netflix subscription rose in October to top one million, according to data from Roy Morgan Research.
TPG and its subsidiary iiNet have quietly shut down the dedicated call centre supporting ACT and Victoria-based ISP TransACT, making all of its staff redundant and shifting call volumes to other call centres around Australia.
Multinational IT services corporation CSC has completed the acquisition of UXC, Australia’s largest independent and publicly owned IT services company for over $420m.
The nation's largest telco Telstra has substantially boosted its enterprise telephony business and thrown down the gauntlet to Optus through the acquisition of one of Australia's largest communications and network integrators, NSC Group.
Two of Australia's most hyped Internet startups have shut their doors just six months after launching or taking investment, in a sign of how quickly events move in the rapidly evolving local technology ecosystem.
Remember how the US Government made such as a huge song and dance about the claimed security implications to buying networking equipment from Chinese vendor Huawei? Well, it turns out that this was squarely a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Customer relationship management firm Salesforce has announced a new partnership with the United Nations Women’s National Committee for Australia that will see the company join its global 'HeforShe' gender equality program as its first Australian corporate partner.
Mike Sneesby was yesterday announced as the Chief Executive of Cudo, the online group buying company that is a joint venture between Microsoft and Nine Entertainment Co (NEC).
Australian software firm Atlassian has revealed it will shift its headquarters to the United Kingdom on paper, to aid with its plans to eventually list in the United States.
Australian startup incubator Pollenizer today revealed it had added a further $1.1 million in investment to its coffers, with the aim of furthering its mission of helping to build innovative technology startups.
Pay TV giant Foxtel today launched a set of broadband plans offering unlimited download quota, although customers will need to be signed up to its subscription television offering to get the full benefits.
Last week I spent three days immersed in the new world that Microsoft is trying to create, as a guest of the company at its Ignite conference on the Gold Coast. What did I discover? Is Microsoft surging again? Or is it still stuck in the doldrums? Read on to find out.
A study by analyst firm Gartner has found that 8.5% of global public companies use cloud email from Microsoft's Office 365 service, with just 4.7% using Google Apps for Work.
In the face of an upset customer base, Telstra has backtracked on its recently announced decision to more than triple excess data fees incurred when roaming internationally.
A better understanding of the realities of entrepreneurial life in Australia will lead to better informed industry policy, and perhaps increased support for an ecosystem that is a key driver of future growth and development for Australia.
Australia must take care not to miss out on the benefits of the ‘next great disruptor’ – the Internet of Things – according to a report published last week by the newly formed Communications Alliance Internet of Things (IoT) Think Tank.
Is Atlassian, as its Initial Public Offering documents proclaims, truly something different -- an "open company" with "no bullshit"? Is the company determined not to "#@!% the customer"? Does it "play as a team"?
Just wanted to post a brief note that Optus has opened the second round of applications for Australian IT startups to attract seed funding under its Innov8 program.
A staged trial of a driverless electric shuttle bus will take place in Western Australia later this year, according to the state government.
Spend a lot of time calling Oracle's Australian support centre for those pesky database support enquiries? Well, if a report late last year and mutterings this week around the traps are any indication, you could shortly be speaking to someone in somewhere like Romania instead.
If the Financial System Inquiry is to achieve its aim of helping to promote growth and productivity in the Australian economy it will need to focus strongly on electronic payments.
In what it claims is a first in Australia, Insurance Australia Group (IAG) has used drones to examine damage caused by devastating bushfires and fast-track the assessment process for customer claims.
Australia Post has instituted legal proceedings against fledgling e-post joint venture Digital Post Australia with reference to the similarity in the name of the company with its own well-established brand. It has sought an injunction in the Federal Court to stop Digital Post Australia from using the name ‘Digital Post Australia’ for its digital mailbox service.
Vodafone has completed re-farming the low-frequency 850MHz mobile spectrum in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory to bring about stronger 4G coverage and extra capacity.
Global technology giant HP has refused to say whether or not the 25,000 to 30,000 job cuts it is making globally will have an impact on the company’s extensive Australian workforce, although speculation flying around Australia’s IT industry this afternoon and the company’s past history suggests Australia will not be spared.
Yellow Pages directories have been appearing on doorsteps across Australia in recent weeks. As often as not, they go straight into the recycling bin. In the world of the internet and e-commerce, the very notion of a book the size of two bricks being the source of valuable purchasing information seems plain silly.
For the Australian tech company market, the success of Freelancer would be a good thing and could possibly serve to boost the likelihood of other companies receiving investment. But because tech companies listing on the ASX are relatively uncommon, they are often treated as scarce events resulting in a general temptation to attach too much significance to a company that has yet to really prove it is worthy of the attention.
Given the size, volume of sales and complexity of Apple’s retail footprint, as well as the extreme level of revenue Apple makes in Australia in general, you would have to say that most people would probably expect Apple Store employees to be making a little more. As it stands, the lowest-level employees will barely be making more than minimum wage. And that’s just not insanely great.
The moment we tie short-term political, economic or social goals to science is the moment we ensure we’ll slow down finding those momentous future breakthroughs that science has brought us. It is a paradox, but one that the government needs to understand before cutting big budgets out of long-term fundamental research programs at the CSIRO.
iiNet chairman Michael Smith has labelled the company’s planned sell-out to TPG as a “very significant day” in iiNet’s “proud history”, as shareholders vote today on what is still one of the most controversial mergers ever to have been proposed in Australia’s telecommunications industry.
This morning the Sydney Morning Herald published a series of articles claiming that Australia's technology startup ecosystem is unable to support local entrepreneurs, causing them to increasingly head to the US in search of the financial backing they are unable to attract in Australia. The only problem is, the evidence doesn't support this assertion.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) has been in talks with both NBN and Telstra in recent days to discuss a range of issues including concerns over the use of 457 visa workers and funding for a proposed training scheme.
Thereitis.com, the Adelaide start-up spun out of Flinders University has elicited a $2 million angel investment round to steer international commercialisation of its user interface technology.
Optus and Huawei late last week said a live trial of 4.5G technology has produced mobile download speeds of 1.41Gbps.
Remember that year when search giant Google made revenues from its Australian operations estimated at north of $1 billion, but paid corporate taxes of just $74,000? Or the year that Apple made $6.1 billion in revenue but paid just $36 million in corporate tax? Yeah, good times, good times. Well, the good times may well be over for these technology giants, with the ABC reporting that the Australian Taxation Office has (finally) set up a dedicated task force to tackle the situation.
In a move that looks likely aimed at countering the threat from mobile payments apps like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, a group of Australian banks has applied to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) for authorisation to enter joint negotiations with providers of third-party mobile wallets.
Optus has paid fines of $51,000 for making false claims about its broadband services, saying they were "NBN-like" in their speeds.
Those of you who were watching closely would have noticed that the Federal Government finally last week released a discussion paper looking at new rules for Australian technology startups (see the media release here), which would make it much easier for IT startups with 10 staff or less to launch share programs for employees without having those programs attract massive taxation headaches. But do the rules go far enough?
Uber this week announced a somewhat-free week in Sydney, allowing users up to $60 worth of credit on its service. Meanwhile the service which is emerging as its main local competitor, goCatch, just pulled in a cool $3 million in venture capital.
Experienced Australian investor Domenic Carosa has led the establishment of a US$30 million investment fund which will directly invest in companies that are leveraging services based in Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies.
iiNet’s highest profile technology executive Greg Bader has added his name to the growing number of staff departing the national broadband provider in the wake of its acquisition by rival company TPG.
The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has selected US firm Digital Asset Holdings to develop a blockchain post-trade solution for the Australian equity market.
Troubled research group National ICT Australia last week revealed one of its spinoff companies, cloud disaster recovery group Yuruware, had been purchased by US data protection company Unitrends for an amount reported to be at least $10 million.
Redflow, an energy storage solutions provider, has announced two new senior management changes, including the appointment of a new acting Chief Executive Officer.
Technology services company NEC Australia has announced a new leadership team that will be led by Mike Barber, a member of the firm's board and former Executive Director of IT Solutions and Services.
BugHerd, the Australian developer of the bug-tracking software by the same name, revealed yesterday that it had received a $500K investment from Melbourne-based venture capital firm Starfish Ventures.
National telecommunications company M2 this morning revealed it had plans to make another 150 positions redundant, just five months after culling 100 staff from its operations.
Last week the ABC's flagship current affairs program 7:30 covered the somewhat extraordinary story of Dylan Wheeler, an Australian teenager. According to the program, Wheeler has not only been charged by Australian police on hacking offences, but he has also been highlighted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation for his activities. None of this, however, appears to have stopped Wheeler from leaving Australia on his own passport or subsequently appearing on national television.
Logicalis, an international IT solutions and managed services provider, has announced the acquisition of Australian cloud and datacentre Services firm Thomas Duryea Consulting.
Australia's highest-profile organisation representing the technology startup sector has strongly criticised the Federal Government's substantial cuts to supporting resources as part of this year's budget, stating that the Government must move quickly to fill the gap it has created.
Telstra has announced it is giving millions of customers "unlimited free access" to its Wi-Fi network, Telstra Air.
You may recall that MacTalk founder and all-round geek Anthony Agius has been conducting something of an experiment to determine whether an Australian Bitcoin miner could make enough money to justify the practice. Well, the results are in: And the answer is: “Most likely not”.
Global IT services provider CSC has now entered a binding Scheme of Implementation agreement to acquire UXC, an Australian IT services company with headquarters in Melbourne.
Three Australian IT and web startups have revealed that they have attracted sizable investment rounds over the past week, as the nation's startup community continues to gain in scale amid a constant and ongoing series of capital injections that is fuelling individual company growth and the growth of the local ecosystem as a whole.
If you're interested in Australia's IT startup ecosystem, you could do a lot worse than read this fascinating braindump by Morle posted amid the dying embers of 2012.
The From Little Things blog created by Australian startup incubator Pollenizer recently has been turning up some solid content; profiles of Australian startups, interesting tidbits about the local investment and more. And today it’s gone one better, publishing a detailed report into Australia’s IT startup scene and how it compares internationally.
An international line-up of experts will speak at Sydney Blockchain Workshops in December – an event organised by Commonwealth Bank and COALA, a blockchain advocacy group.
Employees at Alcatel-Lucent Australia have threatened to commence industrial action to defend wages and entitlements, in a move that could see the rollout of the National Broadband Network delayed.
Delimiter’s spies have pointed us to a post made by Leigh’s advisor Thomas McMahon on startup/developer gathering ground Hacker News last week.
Anyone who still thinks there aren't sufficient funding options in Australia for startups had better take another look at that belief, because over the past year we've seen an absolute heap of decently sized early funding rounds for fast-growing local IT companies. Now there's one more to be added to the list -- email and collaboration company Atmail, which has picked up $2 million from Starfish Ventures.
Iconic technology giant Apple has described its relationship with the Australian Taxation Office as "open, frank and candid" and its process of calculating its local tax obligation as "rigorous", despite the fact that the company last year paid local company tax of just $40 million, off Australian revenues of $6 billion.
In a global economy it is logical that companies would want to structure their business to take advantage of beneficial rules in different countries. And equally each country will want a competitive corporate tax system to attract and retain economic activity. However, the policies of one country should not undermine the policies of another or cause them economic harm. Organisations such as the G20, EU and OECD must enable cooperation to make sure that countries are in agreement with each other’s policies and to pressure those countries whose policies are disadvantaging their neighbours.
The latest review of Australia’s energy-saving appliance scheme has delivered a rare trifecta: a good news story for the economy, the community and the environment. According to my estimates from data in the Department of Industry review, the value of energy saved in Australia last year alone was around A$3.2 billion. Of this, some A$2.7 billion was saved by households.
From the thought-provoking blog of REA Group chief information officer Nigel Dalton and his consulting colleague James Pierce comes the news that Australia is currently training many more fitness instructors than IT professionals.
It used to be that the most that early stage Australian software companies could pick up in capital raisings was a few hundred thousand to a couple of million. Complaints about the impossibility of raising a decent amount of venture capital were constant and loud. Wow. How times have changed over the past few years. Today's piece of evidence demonstrates that money is truly flowing in the streets for Australia's growing cadre of technology firms.
Cloud computing firm Salesforce has been voted the best place to work in Australia for companies with over 100 employees.
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KATHMANDU, MILAN MANI SHARMA : Nepal could soon make use of long-secured but never brought to use railways-based transit facility to trade with Bangladesh, something which can greatly facilitate trade with the country´s second largest trading partner in South Asia. Such a situation surfaced after India, the transit providing country for Nepal, and Bangladesh decided to ink bilateral railways service agreement, starting operations of containerized cargo train service between the two countries. The two sides are inking the agreement during Bangladeshi Prime Minister´s visit to New Delhi on December 18 -21. Nepal will mainly enjoy the new facility on the basis of Transit Treaty and Railways Service Agreement it has with India. Under the Transit Treaty, India has pledged Rohanpur-Singhbad railways route (connecting Bangladesh with India) as a transit corridor for Nepal for trade with Bangladesh. Also the provisions of bilateral Railways Service Agreement links Nepal´s dry port in Birgunj with all transit ports and routes. Nepal further has an agreement with Bangladesh that recognizes bilateral trade through Rohanpur-Singhbad route. Despite holding this transit rights, Nepal had not been able to make use of the facility so far due to the lack of train service between India and Bangladesh. “Signing of Railways Agreement between India and Bangladesh will turn the situation in our favor,” Commerce Secretary Purushottam Ojha told myrepublica.com.
He informed myrepublica.com that Nepal could start using the facility by exchanging letters of intent with India and Bangladesh, informing them that Nepal will be utilizing the facility for bilateral trade with Bangladesh. Exchange of letters will also be needed to initiate the process of customs and procedural harmonization. Traders, too, stated that signing of railways agreement between the two neighbors will open new trading opportunities for them. Mainly, it will help Nepali traders escape problems and hassles that they are facing while conducting trade via road-based transit route of Kakarbhitta-Fulbari-Banglabandh (K-F-B). According to a study carried out by Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI), although Banglabandh is only 61 kilometers from Kakarbhitta border, bad roads conditions and hassles posed by Indian customs and security agencies make trading through K-F-B very difficult. Poor implementation of one-time lock system, unnecessary procedural hassles, weak trade supporting logistics and infrastructure on the Indian side of Indo-Bangladesh border and restrictions imposed by the Indian customs to Nepali containers from entering Banglabandh dry port are other major factors hindering bilateral trade through this route. All these problems ultimately add up to cost of trading, making exports expensive. As a result, trade between Nepal and Bangladesh stands at a mere Rs 5 billion a year, despite high potentials. According to the statistics of Trade and Export Promotion Center, Nepal exported commodities worth Rs 4.66 billion in Bangladesh in 2007/08 and imported goods worth Rs 491.21 million from it, enjoying trade surplus of Rs 4.17 billion. Traders stated the opening of the new route and operations of cargo trains will give new impetus to Nepal´s trade with Bangladesh. However, they argued that the government should develop a railway terminal along the eastern border to make use of the facility more effectively.


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Press Release Distribution
Naval Vessels Press Releases+ XML/RSS
The Global Naval Vessels & Surface Combatants Market is expected increase to US$47.2 billion by 2025
The global naval vessels and surface combatants market is expected to be worth US$35.9 billion in 2015
Visiongain’s new report, The Warships & Naval Vessels Market 2013-2023 has determined that the value of the global warships & naval vessels market in 2013 will reach $77.17bn.
By Kate Magill - Communications Manager
AVEVA has announced the release of a brand new product, AVEVA Space Management 12.1, which is part of the AVEVA Marine portfolio.
Page updated every 10 minutes


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21st > November > 2000 Archive
Apple slashes two-way G4 prices
Apple announced steep discounts on its dual processor G4 Macs today in the US and Europe.
MCI Worldcom is ‘random billing’ specialist – official
Plagiarism CornerRegular readers will know that The Register employs some cunning booby-traps to foil the most obvious plagiarists.
It's like the Love Bug, only less romantic
Virus writers are slushy at heart - naming the latest computer masher "Romeo & Juliet".
Easier.co.uk on life support machine
A British dotcom that helps people buy and sell property on the Web is about to slip into a coma.
Where next for Corel?
AnalysisLast week, Corel's former Linux project lead, and now CEO, Derek Burney gave an equivocal backing to the company's Quixotic free software initiative.
BT sacks domain grab contractor
BT is to launch a technology incubator business that will exploit the thousands of ideas its boffins come up with at the company's labs in Suffolk.
The Euro Software Patent Chamber of Horrors
The idiocies of the European Patent Office are to be highlighted in a unique exhibition opening today. Between 11am and 12:30 in Munich, the European Software Patent Horror Gallery will open to the public, hosted by FSF founder Richard M Stallman, only this time wearing his League of Programming Freedom hat.
Guninski finds another IE 5.5 security hole
We have a problem with IE security bugs - they all look the same to us. So thank goodness for George Guninski, who's found yet another security hole in Microsoft's IE5.
Compaq $60m lawsuit centres on DVD violation
More details have emerged concerning Compaq's legal tussle over alleged video compression patent violations - action that could see the PC vendor being forced to cough up at least $60 million in damages.
Ozzy Osbourne to bite head off Net media co.
Bat biter Ozzy Osbourne, Pantera and seven other metal bands are together suing a trio of media companies, including online video company MCY, for broadcasting bootlegged concert footage.
Hello, Australia, are you there?
It was connection chaos for millions of Internet users yesterday - and to think we never noticed. Millions of people in Australia, Asia, America and Europe found it difficult, no impossible, to get onto the Net, after a 39,000km-long undersea cable was severed, possibly by a trawler, in the wee hours of yesterday morning (Brit time), somewhere near Singapore.
E-minister puts brave face on auction farce
The collapse and utter failure of the auction for Broadband Fixed Wireless Access yesterday put e-minister, Patricia Hewitt, in a difficult spot. How to explain that the expected £1 billion windfall from the licences had, in fact, turned into a measly £38.2 million. How to pass over the fact that only 16 licences of the 42 up for sale even received a bid. Why the large number of companies that registered their interest were reduced to just ten (officially twelve at the time - what happened to the other two?) before the auction kicked off - and of them, two pulled out within days.
Intel AGP 8x spec published
Intel has published the draft spec of the AGP 8x standard - an extension of the existing AGP 4x bus - including an outline of a 64-bit version supporting Itanic and its successors.
The Reg – a reader's guide
Based on the number of emails we receive from irate readers (many of them written in green crayon - not an easy thing to do in Outlook Express), it would appear many people consider The Reg to be variously opinionated, biased, racist, too tough, too weak, political, apolitical, too technical, not technical enough, pro AMD, anti AMD, pro Intel, anti Intel, pro Rambus and anti Rambus.
Cardiff Prison official faces child porn allegations
A senior member of staff at Cardiff prison has been arrested by police after kiddie porn was allegedly found on his laptop computer.
Nokia unveils first Symbian Crystal Communicator
Nokia has taken the wraps off its first Communicator based on Symbian's Crystal reference design - at its mobile Internet show in Prague, as indeed we said the company would several weeks ago. The 9210 Communicator is intended as a 'do-everything' high speed mobile device, and is intended to ship in the first half of next year.
Reg reader finds hardcore Barbie porn
Last week we wrote a story debunking a hysterical article by the Daily Mail which claimed kids were at serious risk of viewing pornography while searching online for their favourite toys.
Reg pops Brit net lit zit
Quite a week for comps down here at Vulture Central. On top of the excitement over our Codebreaker competition results and our latest Bluetooth give-away, we can now announce the ten unclogged pores who will be curling up with a copy of The New English Book of Internet Stories.
BBC sacrifices virgin online
We were shocked, nay appalled, to find that that paragon of free speech, the BBC, prevented a loyal Reg reader from discussing sky-diving online.
EMI falls into red on failed Warner tie-up
EMI, the world's third largest record company, said today its attempt to merge with Warner - itself soon to be bought by AOL - knocked an anticipated first-half profit into a loss.
Sony, Honda prep people-like robots
Sony has developed a 19 inch high robot, codenamed SDR-3X, capable of walking on two legs, kicking a ball and a few other nifty tricks. Meanwhile, Honda has unveiled a four foot tall bipedal robot that can even shake hands with people.
Intel and Broadcom best friends again
Intel and Broadcom are reported to have kissed and made up, and settled all claims and counter-claims against each other.
Blunder cuts Lucent Q1 sales by $125m
Lucent admitted today it has made a mistake its Q1 fiscal predictions, a cock up that will effectively wipe two cents of its earnings and cuts its sales figures for the period by $125 million.
Another P4 mobo floods onto the market
Gigabyte's new GA-8TX mobo joins Aopen's AX4T, shown at last month's World PC Expo 2000 in Tokyo, and Intel's own D850GB Garibaldi and swells the number of boards available for Intel's new flagchip P4 to, er, three.
Employees blush at AltaVista porn deal
Employees at AltaVista UK have expressed their concerns about the company's deal with a Nasdaq-listed porn company.
Police fence stolen goods online
Ever wonder why the police have the best drugs and hi-fi systems? Sorry, that is a completely false and libellous allegation and completely without foundation. However, there is the question of what happens to all the kit that the police inevitably end up with - the lost, found and stolen goods that no one ever claims.
MP3 to kill the CD by 2005 – MORI
The CD is dead, buried by MP3. Or at least it will be by 2005. That's the conclusion of punters in the UK, a recent survey by market researcher MORI reveals
uTravel.co.uk goes titsup.com
Another one bites the dust. Yes, United News & Media-backed travel site uTravel.co.uk has gone titsup.com, joining a host of other Web sites that have folded in a pre-Xmas rush.
Essex girls to get free WebTV
The land of white stilettos is to receive free Internet connections as part of a government drive to get Brits wired.
Fujitsu Siemens de-emphasises desktop PC biz
Fujitsu-Siemens said today, in a London strategy briefing, that it will concentrate on its mobile computing business and services to back up its products for the next three years
Gameplay zaps 20 jobs
Gameplay is poised to axe as many as 20 people from its operation following a decision to downsize the games portal company.
Republicans peevishly await Bush coronation
As the manual re-count proceeds in several Florida counties carefully chosen by the Gore people to boost his chances, and its various parties square off in quest of vindication by the courts, Republicans have turned to their favourite tactic of alleging deliberate malfeasance and perfidious intent among their opponents.


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Is it primarily a phone or a camera? Who knows – but Samsung is certainly turning a few heads with the SCH-B600 10 megapixel camera phone, which it has just launched in Korea.
The SCH-B600 is actually 6mm thinner and 10g lighter than it’s previous big camera phone – the 7 megapixel SCH-V770. The new model features 3x optical zoom, 5x digital zoom and an LED autofocus feature for clearer, sharper images, even in poor light. There’s also white balance, manual focus, continuous picture-taking and movie recording, along with Bluetooth for sending your pictures wirelessly, a high-colour TFT LCD screen and TV out to view images and movies externally.
Despite all that – and looking like a camera, it is very much a phone, with all the usual functions, plus MP3 player, business card reader and mobile TV via DMB. Will we see it in Europe? Who knows, but it’s on sale now in Korea for the equivalent of around £485.
Via Akihabara News


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This WSJ article (sub. req'd) details plans (and negotiations) to charge fees of content providers for priority high-speed delivery of broadband content:
Large phone companies, setting the stage for a big battle ahead, hope to start charging Google Inc., Vonage Holdings Corp. and other Internet content providers for high-quality delivery of music, movies and the like over their telecommunications networks.
One view of this is that the content providers/producers will want to ensure high-speed content delivery to consumers and so are motivated to cooperate. Another view is that this is partly about fairness but partly about sour grapes, as BellSouth, Verizon and AT&T (formerly SBC) see Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Skype and Vonage (among others) starting to encroach on their various businesses. They don't want to be the "dumb pipes" that fuel the rise of their rivals.
More from the WSJ article:
The phone companies are motivated by a need to find new ways to make money from their networks as more and more customers turn to cable or Internet-based companies for less-expensive phone service. Further, the telecom companies argue that they have spent billions of dollars through the years to upgrade their networks so that users can effortlessly download content from Web sites such as Google and Yahoo—with little benefit to the phone companies themselves.
"During the hurricanes, Google didn't pay to have the DSL restored," said BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher. "We're paying all that money."
There may be regulatory scrutiny of such efforts, but the more significant long-term unintended consequence of any such efforts by ISPs (if they're implemented) is the development of alternative access paradigms (including free Wi-Fi). Any efforts of telcos to "tax" their rivals who rely on consumer access to bandwidth—and you can track the rise of search engines with the rise of broadband access—could spur development of those alternative access paradigms.
Google, Yahoo!, MSN et al very self-consciously know that their growth is tied to unfettered, high-speed access (as well as new platforms). As The Journal suggests, a battle and intensifying competition is coming.
As I argued before, the traditional media businesses such as print Yellow Pages may have greater staying power and profitability (quite ironically) than the "21st century" business models such as Internet access and wireless. I can hear the skepticism now—we'll see.


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Bitcoin can be a payment system created by Satoshi Nakamoto who released it last year becoming an open-source software. States the identity of Nakamoto weren’t verified, nevertheless the Bitcoin has progressed from obscurity for the largest available, a digital asset now being referred to as ‘cryptocurrency’.
The most crucial manifestation of Bitcoin is always that unlike conventional and traditional printed currency, this is an electronic payment system that is founded on mathematical proof. Traditional currencies have centralized banking systems that control them and without any single institution controlling it, the u . s . states Treasury has termed the Bitcoin a ‘decentralized virtual currency’. The particular idea behind Bitcoin was to create a currency entirely outside of any central authority then one which may be transferred digitally and instantly with almost nil transaction charges.
With the finish of 2015, the quantity of merchant traders accepting Bitcoin payments for products and services exceeded 100,000. Major banking and financial regulatory government physiques such as the European Banking Authority for instance have cautioned that users of Bitcoin aren’t compensated by chargeback or refund legal legal rights, although finance experts in primary financial centers think that Bitcoin can provide legitimate and valid financial services. биткоин на приват However, the growing usage of Bitcoin by crooks remains as reported by legislative government physiques, police pressure agencies and financial regulators just like a primary reason for concern.
The master of Bitcoin voucher service Azteco, Akin Fernandez comments there’ll shortly be an important game-changer in the manner Bitcoin is generated. The rate of Bitcoin generation each day will probably be literally ‘halved’ which might affect the idea of Bitcoin completely, although it’ll be extremely difficult to calculate how a public particularly as well as the retailers will react to this kind of move.
In the backdrop of those moving, the predictions would be the transaction quantity of Bitcoin is positioned to triple this year riding around the rear of the probable Jesse Trump presidency. Some market commentators possess the vista the price in the digital currency could spike in situation of this kind of possibility leading to market turmoil globally.
The Panama Papers scandal which began in May this year has spurred the Eu to fight against tax avoidance strategies the rich and efficient use to stash wealth through getting in new rules. The current rules try to close the loopholes using among the measures recommended are efforts to complete anonymous exchanging on virtual currency platforms like Bitcoin.