Telecoms

Telecommunications infrastructure investment through a National Broadband Network (NBN) will help Australia weather the economic crisis, but only if the ACCC and the government can pull their heads out, get the NBN players co-operating and turn the first sod before 2010.

Yahoo this week began rolling out a beta version of a new Web Analytics tool that it says will provide up-to-date reports and graphs showing metrics like sales, page views and sources of traffic to Web site operators.

Wikia Search, an open-source search tool launched early this year by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, today opened its platform with a new application programming interface (API) that allows individuals or business to create interactive search results.

U.S. online advertising, the motor that fuels most Internet companies large and small, including Google, Yahoo, Facebook and MySpace, has seen its growth lose significant speed in the first half of this year.

Hackers may have hit the Australian Telecommunications User Group (ATUG) Web site, according to Google which has placed security threat warnings across all pages displayed in searches.

It's gotten pretty hard to miss the financial news lately: September was the worst month for stocks in years, and October looks to surpass it. Despite the US government's massive US$800-billion bailout, the US economy is still roiling, and Europe's is doing even worse.

As we get older, we realize what a surprisingly big part of our happiness simple fitness and health habits play. A growing number of sites help people to manage their diet, exercise, and health issues, and give them a way to rap with others doing the same. Following are the best health sites we know of.

The whole IT industry has high hopes for mobile advertising, but it's still in its infancy and has many hurdles to overcome before it can deliver on lofty promises of billion dollar revenues, according to analysts and ad agencies. Vendors are more upbeat.

The sound of a tech start-up crashing to Earth is loudest when it's unexpected. However, there are several warning signs that investors and customers can look for that almost always spell trouble:

Adobe's PDF (Portable Document Format) is one of the most popular ways to distribute printed information electronically.

For the majority of those looking to upgrade to broadband Internet for the business or home, it's all about the extra speed.

When TV production company FremantleMedia Australia had an opportunity to move to IP telephony during an office refurbishment, the open source Asterisk proved itself to offer everything required and more for the 150-plus handset deployment.

With wired phones dying off at colleges, IT executives on campus are looking to VOIP and unified communications platforms as ways to meet the needs of students and faculty using wireless devices.

Mining and construction distributor Komatsu Australia is overhauling its application infrastructure to drive efficiency and keep pace with more modern technology.

With its data centre housed in 1923 square metres and spread over two levels, ensuring power continuity is at the top of Macquarie Hosting's to-do list.

When it comes to using advanced technology, 120-employee Goldsmith Agio Helms could teach the mega-sized investment banks of the world a thing or two. Take, for example, the sophisticated, converged network infrastructure over which the Minneapolis-based firm conducts its multinational business. Because it supports advanced applications such as instant messaging/presence, unified messaging, video calling and VOIP, the network lets bankers stay in touch and up to date at all times.

We posed a few questions to Russ Housley, chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force, about why the standards body is developing network address translations for IPv6 when IPv6 was supposed to eliminate the need for NATs on the Internet. Here's what Housley had to say.

While perhaps best known as a major social networking site in the Web 2.0 vein, Facebook is becoming a popular place to interface with potential customers, similar to what companies such as Scribe and iLike have done. Facebook also is being viewed as a place for enterprise collaboration, with Serena Software leveraging the site for this purpose. To get perspective on Facebook, InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill recently spoke with Aditya Agarwal, Facebook director of engineering. Agarwal formerly worked in the Oracle server technologies division.

The quest to find a good price on a high-definition television can be a frustrating and confusing experience. For most people, the process concludes with the purchase of a brand-new TV set. For Mukesh Chatter, that was just the beginning.

Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, is well known for its consumer devices but maintains a range of enterprise products. Mary McDowell is executive vice president and general manager of Nokia's Enterprise Solutions, a division that deals with products from the E Series phones to security appliances to software such as the Intellisync Mobile Suite, designed to manage a fleet of enterprise devices. She spoke with Jeremy Kirk about Nokia's direction in several enterprise areas.

Cisco introduced its Services Oriented Network Architecture less than two years ago, and now the company says the SONA concept in action will reduce corporate costs and move customers toward virtualized services, including security, voice, mobility, applications, management, processing and storage -- with the network as the common facet. Bill Ruh, vice president of Advanced Services at Cisco, recently discussed with Network World Senior Editor Denise Dubie about why network engineers should be already be incorporating the principles of SONA into their network design and how Cisco's services-oriented architecture (SOA) would help them better architect and navigate tomorrow's next-generation networks. Can you give me a bit of background on SONA?

Every week, I feel like I'm discovering new ways for companies to reduce the amount of paper and ink they use each day -- not to mention the amount they spend shipping pieces of paper hither and yon for signing, processing, and filing (by no means a trivial cost, either, considering that a single 6 oz. large envelope shipped via USPS Express can cost around US$19.50 or $4.80 if it's sent Priority).

I did it yesterday. Not that I was trying, mind you -- honestly, I wasn't. I did, however, predict it would happen, so I'm going to take this opportunity to gloat about that.

I recently visited the Greek island of Santorini. The island is best known as a sunny destination for jet-setting holiday makers who lounge in idyllic hotel rooms perched on the sides of steep and majestic cliffs. But historians, geologists and archaeologists know Santorini as the site of one of the most horrible disasters in human history.

There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in every industry, if you define "interesting" as the kind of thing that a practitioner of the space will jump for joy at the prospect of reading.

You can't simply open a new Web site, sit back, and expect to welcome a horde of visitors showing up at your virtual storefront. If you want your online business to be successful, you must promote your site.

Check Point is introducing a software client that makes it possible to access non-Web applications via handheld devices over Internet-based SSL VPNs.

World and economic conditions combined with technological advancements continue to alter the business-travel landscape.

SIP works. Not only does it work, but it is easier to use, implement, and configure than older VOIP standards.