australia

During a trip Down Under, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has had a lot to say. This week in Sydney, Australia, he stated that he isn't interested in wooing Yahoo anymore, he doesn't understand how Google plans to profit from Android, and he has confidence in President-elect Barack Obama's leadership.

And while the expressive executive on Friday also said Microsoft "may look into" using WebKit, the open-source browser-rendering technology used by Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari browsers, he mostly rejected that idea, according to a Computerworld report. Instead, he said the two prominent Microsoft … Read more

During a whirlwind visit to Sydney, Australia, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer this week said he has confidence in President-elect Barack Obama's leadership.

Obama's decisive victory this week over Republican rival John McCain in the U.S. presidential elections has been broadly hailed by technology leaders as potentially beneficial to the country's technology and communications industries.

"I have a lot of faith in our system and our electoral process, and I think President-elect Obama understands that there's a deep set of economic issues, and I have confidence in his leadership," Ballmer said on the … Read more

A number of Telstra's major broadband rivals have said they have no immediate plans to follow the telecommunications company's lead and use the Twitter microblogging service to monitor service outages and contact customers about support plans, though a closer look shows Optus to be one of the only large carriers not using the tool.

Telstra launched the offering over the past several weeks, garnering a mixed response from Australian users of the service, but rivals Optus, iiNet and Internode said they weren't as keen to offer an official Twitter-based service.

iiNet did admit that it had already … Read more

This story was written by Brett Winterford and Julian Hill.

The leaders of three of Australia's largest ISP's have declared the Net neutrality debate as solely a U.S. problem--and further, that the nation that pioneered the Internet might want to study the Australian market for clues as to how to solve the dilemma.

Net neutrality is a term coined by Internet users who oppose the increasing tendency among network owners (telecommunications companies) to tier or prioritize certain content on the network.

The debate was sparked after several American and British service providers offered to charge a premium to prioritize traffic connecting with some sites over others. These service providers claim the Internet is "running out of capacity" due to excessive use of rich content like video and file-sharing traffic. The only model with which capacity can be expanded, they argue, is to charge large media companies to prioritize traffic to and from their sites.

But Simon Hackett, the managing director of Adelaide-based ISP Internode, argues that it is ridiculous to suggest bandwidth is "running out."

"I don't subscribe to the view that network capacity is finite at all... Optical fiber basically doesn't run out of capacity, it's just a question of how fast you blink the bits at each end," he said in a recent interview with ZDNet.com.au. … Read more

In the US, Mac sales are growing three times as fast as PC sales. The Australians, however, are putting us to shame. In the land "Down Under" made famous by Men at Work, Olivia Newton John, and Crocodile Dundee, Mac sales are growing at six times the industry average.

With Mac sales growing 52 percent in Australia in Q2 2008, Australia is officially the world's fastest-growing Mac population.

Oy, mate! Throw a little of that Mac on the barby!

On today's show, it's all about guido fist pumps and geopolitics. Psyke! We actually talk about big foot news (down, but not out), more Spanish insensitivities, ugly ducklings, neuvo guido fashion, the Goslings vs. the Reynolds, and Wilson's disturbing explanation of evolutionary breast development.

After receiving an e-mail from one of our listeners requesting coverage of the dismal political climate in modern Georgia, we dig deep and produce: "I love the money pit." That's all we have to say about that. There are few things that we don't discuss on The 404, and … Read more

Bill's friend, the one with whom he was going on a motorbike holiday in Tasmania, suddenly died. Bill, being upset and Australian, went out and got drunk.

A cab dropped him off back at his house. But he collapsed before he could get to his front door.

So along came a friendly Google StreetView camera car. The Australian version of the service was to be launched August 4. So the Googler had a lot of filming to do.

He shot the prostrate Bill who was lying on his back, his feet sticking out into the road.

This was a … Read more

Our guest today is Stone Newman from Go!Animate, enter The 404 animation contest, Spore porn, pay per sick note, GTA copycat killings, geeks as better lovers, and TV shows on the big screen.

Stone Newman drops by the studio today to tell us about an awesome Web site that allows you to create your own custom Flash animation without all the tech nonsense! Go!Animate is all about simplicity. You can choose from a variety of locations and a ton of different characters, or even upload a picture of your own! Very cool, I can't imagine how many … Read more

Street View, the driver's-eye view on Google Maps, made its debut in the United States, but it's now available in Australia and Japan, too.

The Street View service has raised privacy hackles in some quarters, but it's helped me navigate in areas I've never visited: What does the house I'm visiting look like? Or the street corner where I'm supposed to get off the bus? Or where exactly is that big-box retailer?

Google also is extending Street View to Europe, and in the process is gathering data that will let it create 3D models … Read more