Googles Ghost-town Tours

Internet behemoth Google has launched a virtual tour through the nuclear wasteland surrounding Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

Virtual tourists can now take an eery tour through the deserted streets of Namie, one of the towns abandoned after the Fukushima meltdowns spewed radioactive fallout across a large area.

The site reveals streets overgrown with weeds, and time appears to have stood still since Namie’s entire population of 21,000 people was evacuated two years ago.

Fifty percent of the town on the Pacific coast sits within the 20-kilometre evacuation zone around the nuclear plant, which was crippled by Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami :: Read the full article »»»»

Europeans Fine Microsoft $700 Million Over Lack of Browser Choice

The technology behemoth that is Microsoft has been fined more than $AU700 million for failing to offer it’s OS users a choice of different internet browsers in Europe.

The company was found to have breached its own 2009 commitment to introduce a pop-up screen offering users a choice of browser, rather than just Internet Explorer. The pop-up was introduced as part of an earlier European Union competition case, but was dropped in a Windows 7 update in early 2011.

Microsoft claims the omission was simply the result of a “technical error”. The tech-behemoth was fined 561 million euros – $AU711 million – taking the total cost of its regulatory troubles in Europe to 2.15 billion euros – $AU2.75 billion – since 2002.

The European Commission, which acts as competition regulator across the 27-member European Union, said it found Microsoft broke its undertaking between May 2011 and July 2012. The Commission said it takes such settlement commitments very seriously :: Read the full article »»»»

Google Maps Back on iPhone as Apple Makes an iMess of iMaps

Google has released a new Maps app for iPhone,the release neatly coincides with Apples inability to get it’s glitch-ridden program right. iPhone users have panned consistently panned iMaps for omitting key landmarks, cities, as well as failing to correctly to give directions.

Google has a serious push for iPhone users underway, promising an entirely new experience with its Google Maps App, including it’s standard – and working – local search functions, voice-guided directions and Street View images of places, as well as the interiors of some 100,000 retail outlets and businesses.

Earlier this year, to much fan-fair, Apple unceremoniously gave Google Maps the boot – which had been the default program for iPhones since the devices inception – when it developed its own mapping application. However, the new Apple developed program immediately drew scorn from iPhone users.

iPhanatics groaned and moaned that Apple’s service – based on Dutch navigation equipment and digital map maker TomTom’s data – contained errors and lacked features that made Google Maps popular.

In October, Scott Forstall, a long-time lieutenant of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, was asked to leave the company partly because of his refusal to take responsibility for the mishandling of the mapping software :: Read the full article »»»»

Australian Court Orders Search Behemoth Google to Pay Damages for FALSE Gangster Search Results

An Australian court has ordered internet search behemoth Google to pay a man $AU200,000 in damages for wrongly linking him to the Melbourne’s underworld.

Michael Trkulja came to Australia from the former Yugoslavia in the 1960s and is an elder in the Serbian Orthodox Church in Springvale, in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs. In 2004, he was shot in the back while dining with his elderly mother at St Albans, in Melbourne’s western suburbs. The crime has never been solved.

But the Victorian Supreme Court heard, when entered into the search engines Yahoo and Google, Mr Trkulja name linked him to Melbourne’s criminal underworld, including to pictures of gangland boss Tony Mokbel

An Australian jury found in making the link, that the internet behemoth had wrongly implied Mr Trkulja was “so involved with crime in Melbourne, that his rivals had hired a hit-man to murder him.”

Lawyers for Google rejected the jury’s finding and tried to distance the company from the publication of the links. They also argued that Yahoo was first to make the wrong connection and therefore struck “the first substantial blow” to Mr Trkulja’s reputation :: Read the full article »»»»

Aussies Jump on Mobile Band Wagon

New figures from the ABS – Australian Bureau of Statistics – show that Aussies have significantly increased their mobile data downloads. The ABS stats show that around 6 million Australians are now using mobile wireless connections, an increase of almost 7 per cent in just six months.

In the three months between April and June, mobile users downloaded 6,610 terabytes of data,  a 32 per cent increase in mobile downloads compared to the three months to the end of last year. The ABS stats are based on figures from internet service providers, also show that the increase in desktop and laptop pc’s in the same period was up by 20 per cent.

Elise Davidson from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network reckons the data isn’t surprising. However, she’s warned it is easy for mobile data spending to get out of control.

“Our advice is monitor what you’re using regularly, especially if you’re on a new plan or a new device,” Ms Davidson said. ”It typically takes two or three months to figure out how much data you’re going to use. If you’re signing a new two-year contract, have a look at what you’ve used both in terms of calls texts and data in your previous contract and estimate really conservatively in the first instance.”

The ABS figures also show the number of internet subscribers in Australia rose by 10 per cent last financial year. There were 12 million subscribers, excluding mobile handset subscribers.

Samsung Set For Record Sales and Profit! THANKS GSIII

Our favourite Korean consumer electronics behemoth, Samsung, looks set to post another record quarterly profit on the back of its latest offering the 4G Galaxy SIII smartphone and Galaxy Note tab/phone hybrid.

The company is forecasting a $AU7 billion September-quarter profit, off the back of $45 billion in 3 month sales. That profit forecast is slightly ahead of the average forecast by 16 analysts surveyed by Reuters. Samsung shares were up 0.3 per cent in early Korean trade, and are up almost 30 per cent so far this year.

Analysts say provisions for the $US1 billion payout to Apple for patent breaches, as well as increased competition from Apple’s iPhone 5 are likely to see Samsung’s profit tail off a little in the last quarter of the year to somewhere closer to $AU6 billion.

“The biggest risk for Samsung is competitive product line-ups from its rivals such as iPhone 5s,” KB Investment and Securities analyst Byun Han-Joon told Reuters. ”Because handsets drive most of its profits, for Samsung one misstep in handsets could result in losses for the whole group.”

However, most are expecting the profit to bounce back again, setting new records by mid-next year. Samsung’s official results for the September quarter will be released on October 26 :: More on our favourite behemoth »»»»