The government yesterday laid down AU$8 million for the next year to fill mobile phone black spots on sections of highway as well as selected towns in WA and NT.
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is trying to fix two "annoying" features that clients face when they attempt to call for advice when its staff are too busy — a persistent busy tone or being "chopped off" the line without an explanation.
Tourist industries in most states have collaborated to create a national tourism accreditation portal which eases the process of tourist businesses becoming certified.
The University of Queensland's Centre for Online Health (COH) and Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane have launched a joint paediatric service for remote communities using a telepresence system called called 'Tiny Tom'.
Australian scientists from the Centre of Quantum Computing Technology, have pushed the boundaries of atomic scale fabrication by building a wire only three atoms thick, opening the possibility of new chip architectures.
Just days before he finally hangs up his hat as Microsoft's figurehead and inspiration (on 27 June), ZDNet.com.au looks back at Bill Gates' career over the past 30 years.
The Australian Tax Office has laid out the requirements for its centralised computing contract, worth AU$160 million per year.
Blacktown Hospital has run a trial of a tablet PC designed specifically for the healthcare industry — even blood and guts won't slow it down.
Linux specialist Red Hat has announced it is developing an embedded hypervisor product that it claims will complement, rather than compete with, its existing virtualisation strategy.
A first-time collaboration between Australian, Chinese and Japanese scientists has allowed new high-resolution images of black holes to be produced by linking together radio telescopes.
Creating and cataloguing recordings of indigenous languages is a challenging enough technology task, but the Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre had some additional barriers to overcome: creaky IT systems, a depleting base of native speakers and the ever-present threat of cyclones.
Ahead of the election, with promises for nationwide broadband networks and digital revolutions in schools, the ICT industry could hope the government was on their side. But now the glamour of a sparkling new government has worn off, how ICT-friendly is the Rudd government really?
Customs has been trialling a spy plane to patrol Australia's borders, flying surveillance low and slow to get into the dirty details of shipping.
At NICTA's recent Techfest conference, researchers from National ICT Australia (NICTA) get to show off the projects they have been working on all year, including facial recognition tech designed to help catch criminals as well as better algorithms and sensors for traffic control.
Telstra doesn't just "do telephones" according to Deena Schiff, Telstra Group MD — it seems it's also got its eye on the health space. This week in Sydney, the telco has been showing off the latest health tech from its partners, including a wireless stethoscope and remote monitoring for aged and disability care.
Being green, in terms of IT and datacentres, only very superficially has anything to do with saving the environment. In reality it is about cold, hard cash — and how to spend less of it.
Centrelink, Australia's welfare payment organisation, deals with millions of transactions and billions of dollars every week. CIO John Wadeson recently spoke to ZDNet.com.au about the challenges of running one of the country's largest IT infrastructures.
Making predictions about the storage market isn't difficult. Suggest that capacities will go up and costs will go down and you shouldn't go too far wrong.
Bill Gibson, CIO of the Australian Tax office, spoke to ZDNet.com.au about why he doesn't completely trust open source software; how the ATO handles security and why competing vendors will have to learn to work together.
Lorie Buckingham, CIO of telecom solutions provider Avaya, talks about the promise of unified communications for its more than one million business customers around the world. She also discusses her passion for technology and strategy for integrating innovative communication technologies.
While a solid machine and a capable media centre, we're still trying to work out who the target market for the highly expensive LT VAIO is. Design-crazed multimillionaires, perhaps.
The Lenovo A57 is a well-priced office desktop with a strong performance. While very similar to its smaller sibling, the M57e, the A57 offers better performance and upgrade options for a small price increase.
Web 2.0, with its complex sites and rich Ajax applications, is an increasingly demanding platform for a browser. In this review feature, we look at how the leading browsers measure up.
As Next G handsets go, the A551 isn't the best, nor is it the worst. Its middle of the road design and feature set is matched by a mid-range price tag.
The Lenovo M57 eco is a small form-factor desktop that is promoted by the company as energy efficient. We found it to be a capable and powerful office performer for its size, but with limited upgrade options.
The Dell Vostro range, which comes in both notebook and desktop form factors, is designed for the small business market. We found the Vostro 1510 to have good performance for a mid-range notebook — but performance comes at the expense of battery life.
With two batteries and a separate charger, the SGH-i780 could be a wise choice for the mobile professional, although it's a bit bulky and the screen is a touch small for some applications
Many free and inexpensive office suites are available for download or for use in a web browser. So what's the advantage of paying a pretty penny for a desktop office suite? Corel's WordPerfect Office X4 offers a strong software package that comes closest to the breadth and depth of features found in Microsoft Office.
Accounting software is never going to be sexy. We didn't find Quickbooks QBi 2008/2009 sexy, but we did find the latest incarnation of the well known brand to be a great program and a worthy upgrade.
Thunderbird 2 provides a compelling option for users looking for an open source e-mail client.
Earlier this month, Telstra put out a press release trumpeting that it's come up with a new phone coaching service to help people who are "bamboozled" by their mobiles. Another excellent example of wrongheaded thinking from the mobile industry.
Sometimes, a well-placed and well-timed letter can make all the difference. Other times, it can make no difference at all — and even hurt your case. This week's missive by the Competitive Carriers' Coalition, I would suggest, falls into the latter category.
I'm standing in a room with roughly a quarter of a million backup tapes. No, this isn't where the FuelWatch guys hid the evidence, it's the Perth storage area for Spectrum Data, which specialises in storing ageing backup media and helping companies retrieve data from long-forgotten archives.
According to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner's 2007 annual report, Australian consumers should feel pretty safe — but that's because it's full of crap.
With the OPEL bid cancelled and procedural questions dogging the FTTN bid, Australia is currently in something of a technological limbo.
The components that make up a modern datacentre often look disturbingly like commodity items: a server here, a rack there, spaghetti tangles of cable everywhere. But there's one item that is still something of a rarity -- and no, I'm not talking about the expertise needed to run it.
What's the first thing you look at when you check into a hotel room? The bed? The view? The minibar?
If there was ever evidence that the stoush over broadband had gotten personal, it came when Telstra's sour-grapes mentality led it to sue Helen Coonan, personally, for claimed procedural flaws in the OPEL contract.
Just a few days after the Australia Connected program was launched Communications Minister Helen Coonan was selling the initiative to the TV talk shows.
Software vendor CA recently took me for a tour around their AV research centre in Melbourne, where I got to visit their "live virus" room, which was the only place in the building I saw a Mac.
Telstra mobile code reader
It may look like a 3-D image but it's in fact a barcode designed to direct your phone's web browser to a relev… Watch it now
In the second part of his interview, Defence CIO Greg Farr talks about outsourcing, the skills crisis and reveals his most urgent IT priority.
HP & Intel Business Technology Power Center
I'm a celebrity, don't back me up
Lies, damned lies and telco stupidity 
Dear carriers: More walking, less talking
iPhone Launch Centre
The ZDNet.com.au iPhone resource guide contains everything you need to know about Apple's highly anticipated mobile device.
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Who guards the guards: Storage
Making predictions about the storage market isn't difficult. Suggest that capacities will go up and costs will go down and you shouldn't go too far wrong.
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The best mobile processor is...
Our comprehensive review benchmarks 19 of the latest mobile processors, giving you an insight into the best chips on the market.
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