It could take up to eight weeks for Sydney’s electricity supply to return to normal after the latest blackout, EnergyAustralia said over the weekend. About 50,000 homes and businesses in the northern part of the Sydney CBD, parts of Surry Hills and the Eastern Suburbs lost power on Saturday after a transformer tripped at 10.28am (AEDT). It is the second time large sections of the city have suffered power outages within the past week, with the first occurring during the Monday afternoon peak-hour. About 20 key CBD building managers have been asked to reduce their air conditioning and other non-essential electricity use
Fears that over 100 jobs from Western Australian Energy company Synergy would be outsourced to an Indian IT company were yesterday laid to rest. Western Australian Shadow Minister for Energy Kate Doust had said earlier this week that Synergy was negotiating with an Indian company with the goal of sending IT jobs abroad. Energy Minister Peter Collier said he would take the concerns to the company and yesterday announced a plan developed with Synergy to make sure no Western Australian jobs would be sent overseas as part of Synergy’s business transformation program to introduce new SAP-based customer care and billing systems
Italian police have found more than 100 immigrants, including 24 Afghan children, living in the sewer system beneath railway stations in Rome. The children range in age from 10 to 15 years and are now being looked after by the city’s social services. They were found when the railway police followed up reports of children living near the city’s stations. The police say they do not speak Italian and broke into the sewers by removing manhole covers. The charity Save the Children Italy says that more than 1,000 unaccompanied children arrived in Rome last year from various countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America
The CSIRO‘s legal win against Hewlett Packard over the use of its patented wireless technology could mean big bucks for the Australian science agency, says a patent attorney. The four-year lawsuit was brought by the CSIRO over the use of its Wi-Fi technology, which has been widely used as industry standard in computer products by major international corporations. The CSIRO was granted patent for its IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g Wi-Fi products in 1996, but since has been used extensively, regardless. The companies have agreed on an undisclosed settlement amount and Davies Collision Cave patent attorney, Neil Shoot, says it is highly likely there will be a similar outcome in the other litigation cases the CSIRO is involved in
The dusty stacks of the nation’s great university and research libraries are full of orphans — books that the author and publisher have essentially abandoned. They are out of print, and while they remain under copyright, the rights holders are unknown or cannot be found. Now millions of orphan books may get a new legal guardian. Google has been scanning the pages of those books and others as part of its plan to bring a digital library and bookstore, unprecedented in scope, to computer screens across the United States. But a growing chorus is complaining that a far-reaching settlement of a suit brought against Google by publishers and authors is about to grant the company too much power over orphan works
For the first time, MIT researchers have shown they can genetically engineer viruses to build both the positively and negatively charged ends of a lithium-ion battery. The new virus-produced batteries have the same energy capacity and power performance as state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries being considered to power plug-in hybrid cars, and they could also be used to power a range of personal electronic devices, said Angela Belcher, the MIT materials scientist who led the research team
A spate of burglaries in a Buckinghamshire village had already put residents on the alert for any suspicious vehicles. So when the Google Street View car trundled towards Broughton with a 360-degree camera on its roof, villagers sprang into action. Forming a human chain to stop it, they harangued the driver about the invasion of privacy
, adding that the images that Google planned to put online could be used by burglars. As police made their way to the stand-off, the Google car yielded to the villagers. For now, Broughton remains off the internet search engine’s mapping service
Australia’s competition watchdog tonight issued a strongly worded statement of concern that the proposed merger of mobile carriers Hutchison and Vodafone could lead to increased retail prices on mobile telephony and broadband services. In February the pair announced plans to merge in a joint venture dubbed VHA that would have around 6 million customers and combined revenues of approximately $4 billion for the 12 months ended 30 June 2008. The merger is subject to a shareholder vote and is the subject of a current ACCC inquiry
The Huffington Post said Sunday that it will bankroll a group of investigative journalists, directing them at first to look at stories about the nation’s economy. The popular Web site is collaborating with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors to launch the Huffington Post Investigative Fund with an initial budget of $1.75 million. That should be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate stories with freelancers, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post. Work that the journalists produce will be available for any publication or Web site to use at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post
Yeast cells feeding on the glucose in human blood might one day power implants such as pacemakers. A living source of power that is able to regenerate itself would eliminate the need for regular operations to replace batteries. Now that prospect is a step nearer. A team at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, has created tiny microbial fuel cells by encapsulating yeast cells in a flexible capsule. They went on to show the fuel cells can generate power from a drop of human blood plasma
Sweden will allow gay couples to be legally married from next month. Parliament voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to recognise same-sex marriage, becoming the fifth country in Europe to do so. Sweden was one of the first countries to give gay couples legal partnership
rights, in the mid-1990s, and allowed them to adopt children from 2002. The new law lets homosexuals wed in either a civil or religious ceremony, though individual churches can opt out. The law was passed by 226 votes to 22 and will come into force on 1 May
Microsoft is to exit its Encarta encyclopedia business later this year after losing ground over the years to freely available reference material on the Internet on web sites like Wikipedia. Encarta websites worldwide, except Encarta Japan, would be discontinued on 31 October and Encarta Japan will cease after 31 December
An almost finished copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine starring Hugh Jackman has been leaked online a month before its cinema release. The high quality copy of the film has been uploaded to several file sharing and streaming video web sites. The movie is incomplete, with some special effects still in need of fine tuning and green screens and wires attached to actors still visible. The film is not due for release in the UK until 29 April and 1 May in the US
Someone has put the Minister for Communications Stephen Conroy up for auction on eBay. Item number 180342524797 is described as the big mouth of Broadband and Communications in Australia — The uneducated idiot that plans to filter all internet content at an ISP level for end users. The rightful owner will have full use of Mr Conroy — As you see fit. (Although It is recommended only bringing him out for sexual pleasure at parties.) He has failed the Australian Government as Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. The asking price is around $8?000, or best offer. but send me your thoughts, No reasonable offer refused. He will be delivered via FedEX Courier Service to your doorstep where you can do with him as you wish. More Images are available via email on request — Including Nooooodes. Signed, K Rudd
On April Fools’ Day, Google continued its spoofing tradition by having CADIE declare she rules the search site. Google used gobbledegook to explain CADIE and suggested it may keep the joke going. Along with CADIE, Google also added Auto Red-Eye
to pictures on Picassa, flipped videos on YouTube, and added to its China and Australia sites
Spam, that annoying but ignorable scourge of the Web, has finally recovered from the jolt it received last November, when Internet backbone providers cut off McColo Corporation, a California Web-hosting service that spammers were using to coordinate e-mail attacks. The average seven-day spam volume during the latter half of March is now at roughly the same levels as October of last year — around 94 percent of all e-mail — according to the antispam company Postini, a division of Google
Google, which has invested in many startups over the years, will announce on Tuesday that it is creating a venture capital arm whose main objective will be to turn a profit. The group, called Google Ventures, is expected to invest up to $100 million over the next 12 months. It will be overseen by David Drummond, who will continue in his role as senior vice president of corporate developing and chief legal officer at Google. Investments will be vetted by William Maris, who joined Google about a year ago, and Rich Miner, a co-founder of Android, a mobile software startup that Google acquired in 2005
Google’s Gmail just grew up, but not by much. Marking the online e-mail service’s fifth birthday, Google announced it is going global with its Gmail Labs box of quirky functions it launched last year in English. Features include undo send, a way of retracting an e-mail up to five seconds after you hit the send button; mail goggles, which makes you solve some math questions before sending a message, to make it harder to send messages while inebriated; and a forgotten attachment reminder, which reminds you to attach a file if you mention one in your message
The credit card details of 19,000 Britons who shopped online were freely and briefly available on Google, it has been revealed. Anyone using the search engine could have easily accessed not only the name and addresses of thousands of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express card holders, but also the full card details too. It is thought cybercriminals accidently made the information live during a bid to sell the credit card details to other online criminals
Trying to gain ground in one of the few markets where it is behind, Google said Monday that it had begun to offer in China links to free music downloads, a service it does not offer anywhere else in the world. Google executives said they were responding to the phenomenal popularity of free music downloads in China and were acting legally by forming an alliance with the music industry, including Sony BMG Music Entertainment, EMI Group, Universal Music and the Warner Music Group
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