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Soul Loses Their Mojo and $18.9 Million Struggling ISP SP Telemedia which operates Internet and telephone services in Australia under the Soul brand, has reported a net loss for the year to June 30 of $18.9 million. It was only 12 months ago after taking on bottom end ISP TPG whose services were popular with students that Soul were bragging as to how they were set to carve up the Australian broadband market.

Qantas Bans Mile High Porn Thrills Qantas been sucked into an American airlines porn row with the Aussie icon now banning live internet access on their A380 planes.

Google Releases First Patch For Chrome Google has issued an update for its new Chrome browser, following a critical security flaw found by Vietnamese security researchers.

Chrome Grabs 1% Of Browser Market In 24hrs Talk about hot chrome--Googles new Chrome browser has already grabbed 1% of the browser market in its first day, according to a Web metrics provider and a report in computerworld.com.

Viral Social Networks Infecting Business Users Viral networks and social sites such as MySpace and Facebook have created a fertile ground for predators, scammers and identity thieves, according to an Australian information security expert.

.Org Domain Passes The 7 Million Mark The Public Interest Registry, the registry behind the global .Org domain name, says that more than 7 million domain names are now registered as .Org, making it the third largest generic domain (after .com and .net).

Beware the Blog--Malware Attacks Coming From Social Sites You wouldn’t know it but daily malware attacks are coming down in number. However, what is changing is the way they are being launched and who they are targeting.

Malware Invoices & Viral Packages Flooding SMB Inboxes Many small businesses wrongly believe that they're too insignificant to attract hackers and spend too little time on security but according to Secure Computing, since the beginning of July there are steady waves of mass-mailings hitting inboxes with fake invoices.

Google This--Rival Search Engine Launched Today According to AFP, in 2004 Google thought that engineer Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so good it bought the technology to upgrade its own system.

Filtered ISPs Make Senator Conroy Breathe Easy Only days after hundreds of Australian businesses are still trying to untangle themselves from the so-called UPS parcel virus, Federal Communications Senator Stephen Conroy has welcomed news “advances in filtering technology”.

Aussie Online Addiction Costs Employers A new report out by Sensis shows that Australians are costing their employers money by spending too much time on social networks during work time, and at home a significant number of parents are not keeping tabs on their children’s internet habits.

Dirty Dozen Spammers Exposed As 1 In 28 Emails Prove Dodgy IT security and control firm Sophos has published its report on the latest trends in spam, and revealed the top twelve spam-relaying countries for the second quarter of 2008.

Primitive Infrastructure Stifles Internet Speed Australia’s lack of fiberoptic infrastructure could be seen as a stumbling block to taking on a new innovation developed by Australian researchers out of the University of Sydney.

Customer 2.0--Social Networking Sites The New Business Tool According to a recent survey by Gartner and other analysts, the majority of users of social networking sites are motivated mainly by “personal needs and a desire for entertainment, rather than business and practical objectives”. However some have seen the potential of such sites for business.

iPod Owners Beware--Customs Wants To Have A Peek Inside According to the UK Guardian newspaper, moves are afoot to enable governments around the world to have the power to have a peep into your iPods.

Banks Beware! -- WWW Found To Have Fatal Flaw According to a number of overseas reports, Internet industry heavyweights are trying to fix a flaw in the foundation of the Internet that could allow hackers to control traffic on the worldwide web.

Symantec Says Word Attack Inevitable Symantec has posted a warning on its website that attackers are using an “undisclosed vulnerability affecting Microsoft Word."

Good News For iPhone Buyers--Telstra Gets Speedier In what could only be described as great news for those thinking of buying an iPhone 3G this Friday, Telstra says it broadband is breaking more speed records than an Olympic athletics meet.

Australia Losing Nearly $1 Billion To ID Fraud Over $980 million was lost as a result of personal fraud according to the first National Personal Fraud Survey, by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which was released today.

Sleek Wireless Gateway From Linksys Linksys has released the WAG160N Wireless-N ADSL2+ Gateway.

Asus Gives Radio Listeners A Green Choice With the support of more than 10,000 broadcast stations worldwide, users can now listen to whatever catches their fancy. When they connect the ASUS Internet Radio (AIR) via a wireless or LAN (DHCP) connection, the whole world opens up as they can choose music from any genre from any corner of the globe.

Firefox Running Hot On The Internet According to online analysts firm Net Applications, Mozilla's Firefox 3.0 browser is now being used by over 19 per cent of web surfers.

Rudd Government To Review Its Own Online Security The Attorney-General Robert McClelland and the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Senator Stephen Conroy today announced a whole-of-government review of e-security.

Adobe Rolls Out Web-Based Rich Media Search Adobe Systems has announced the company is teaming up with search industry leaders to dramatically improve search results of dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs).

Yahoo!7 To Get A Major Nip And Tuck In terms of portal reassignment surgery, locally, it doesn’t get much bigger than this as Yahoo7 is set to announce the redesign of its online portal and also launch its biggest marketing campaign since the start of the joint venture between Yahoo and Channel Seven in 2005.

Telstra Claims QR Codes Will Change Advertising Industry Telstra customers will soon have software downloaded free to their mobile phones, through QR coding technology, giving them quick access to websites and mobile content via special barcodes.

Minister Angry Over Broadband Inquiry Broadband and Comms Minister Stephen Conroy last night accused the Opposition of "economic vandalism" after the coalition used its about-to-disappear Senate numbers to establish a Select Committee inquiry into the Government's plans for a high-speed national broadband network, to which it is supplying $4.7 million in funding.

Macquarie Pulls Out Of NBN Tender The national broadband network (NBN) tender process has claimed its first victim today as Macquarie Group has decided to withdraw its bid, leaving it two contenders left standing for the $12 billion project.

Domain Name Change Set To Trigger Web Explosion According to a number of overseas reports, internet users worldwide should soon be able to use new domain names such as .love, .sydney or .bank if one of the world wide web's biggest shakeups is approved this week as expected by the global web regulator ICANN.

Easy IP Surveillance From QNAP QNAP Systems has announced the NVR-1012 network surveillance kit for home and office. The NVR-101 is an instant surveillance system providing professional grade live video recording and real-time remote monitoring/playback service.

Lodging eTax Can Be Hazardous Says F-Secure Security vendor F-Secure is warning Australian taxpayers to be cautious of end of financial year specific scam and phishing attacks. The warning comes after F-Secure’s Security Labs observed a new peak of malware this year targeting tax payers in the US at the close of the financial year.

Senator Conroy Becomes The Cybernator The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, has turned himself into an online superhero in a bid to kill off spam, malware, hacking and other online abuse.

Broadband To Add $100 Billion To Economy Claims Analyst Broadband will add more than $100 billion to the Australian economy over the next 10-15 years, says a new report by Paul Budde's BuddeCom ­ but it warns Australia is still trailing two years behind penetration levels in Europe and Asia, and growth rates are slowing.

Toshiba & BigPond Make Wireless Even Easier Toshiba and BigPond have announced the availability of three new notebooks with BigPond Wireless Broadband built-in.

Telstra Tries To Pinch The Node According to reports, Telstra has thrown its hat into the ring to build the fibre-to-node broadband network by lodging a $5 million bidder’s bond with the federal government.

Internode Offers Free Churn To Butter Up Customers Local broadband provider Internode is offering a free churn procedure until June 30 to draw customers away from rival providers to Internode’s international broadband network.

iiNet Gobbles Up Westnet iiNet Limited has announced the signing of an AUD$81 million agreement which will see the acquisition of rival internet service provider Westnet.

IPTV In The Dark Ages Says ACMA According to a report by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), the Australian market for internet protocol television (IPTV) and internet video is less developed than many other international markets, with fewer than five IPTV providers and fifteen internet video providers offering full-length professional content directly to consumers.

So Where To Now For Microsoft? With Microsoft's recent decision to drop its purchase of Yahoo, the pressure is on Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer to make his money-losing Internet business succeed against Google, says a report in Bloomberg.com.

Microsoft Dithers Between Yahoo And Investors The saga of the computing giants it seems will continue with the next move being up to Microsoft as Yahoo blissfully ignored Microsoft's Saturday deadline for its $US 44.6 billion takeover bid.

3 Rolls Out More Affordable Broadband Plans 3 has launched three new broadband plans in an effort to make mobile broadband even more appealing to more consumers than ever before, the company said.

Clinton And Obama Used By Spammers Public figures, celebrities, celebrated events, and even branded items are now being used by spammers to solicit personal data. This is according to Symantec’s recently published report on the current state of spam.

NEC Delivers Broadband Over Power-Line NEC has launched a new broadband sharing solution that uses power-lines to deliver broadband to different areas of the home.

Telstra To Access 'Secret' OPEL Documents Telstra is taking it upon itself to reveal “secret documents” from the previous Government that could disclose why it changed a bid process which gave nearly $1 billion to the OPEL consortium headed-up by rival Telco Optus for broadband services which haven’t yet been delivered.

Clever Comms Performs Backflip Amid Losses Clever Communications has generated positive operating cash flow for the first time in months following net losses two years running to the tune of almost $900,000.

Telstra Invests $21m To Expand Next G Coverage More suburbs are set to receive Telstra Next G mobile network coverage by the end of March in a $21 million expansion by the telco to add 40 new locations Australia-wide.

Beware The Pre-Valentine Love Bug Looking for love on the Internet may be a good idea, just don’t get bitten by any malicious computer bugs by opening any love related e-mails sent to you by an anonymous lover.

Internet Costs To Slump With New Cable ISP iiNet says its quick move to secure capacity on Pipe Networks' planned new $200 million, 6900km Sydney-Guam undersea cable will help lower Internet pricing.

Optus Cable Reaching 20Mbps Optus cable customers on the MyHome Broadband Cable and Optus ‘yes’ Fusion Cable plans will receive a speed upgrade to 20Mbps.

BigPond Expands Liberty Plan To 25GB Home-owners with large download needs will be pleased by Telstra BigPond’s new offering, called the BigPond Liberty 25GB plan, which provides 25GB of monthly data without excess download feed.