Technology

Web surfers who thought online advertisements were becoming increasingly obtrusive may be dismayed by a new tactic: pop-up downloads

A new breed of spam-filtering technology that combines peer-to-peer communications with machine learning could intercept nearly all unwanted e-mail, according to its creators. The new technology is code-named Folsom and its creators say that tests using it on e-mail streams containing between 40 and 60% unsolicited e-mail reduced to the spam to near zero

Gary Wilke, from Appleton, Wisconsin, bought a $2,600 Gateway PC for his daughter in January. During its short life, the PC had problems both with its hard drive, and its sound system. After returning the persistently faulty PC to a shop five times over three months, he snapped and took it apart with a sledgehammer in front of shocked shoppers

In October of 2001, Kim Pedersen dedicated the Niles Monorail, thereby introducing a new hobby to the world… rideable garden monorails

A super-fast multimillion dollar data network that will push Australia to the forefront of advanced communications research has been given the green light. GrangeNet (GRid And Next GEneration Network) will form a 10 gigabit per second broadband backbone linking universities and research groups in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, with a 5Gbps link to Brisbane

F-16 fighter jet test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base are flying with sophisticated helmets, resembling a bug’s eye, that allow them to aim their weapons and sensors simply by looking at potential targets on the ground or in the air

Overture is suing Google over its AdWords advertising method since it may be infringing upon patent 6,269,361; System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine

Applied Digital Solutions has announced that the FDA has ruled that an implantable microchip used for ID purposes is not a regulated device, paving the way for the chip’s immediate sale in the United States

For a mere $78 million, you can purchase the ultimate in boys toys — your own personal luxury submarine. The price may seem a little steep until you discover that it comes with its own docking mini sub

Forget the roar of rocketry and those bone jarring lift-offs, the space elevator would be a smooth 100,000km ride up a long cable. Payloads can shimmy up the Earth-to-space cable, experiencing no large launch forces, slowly climbing from one atmosphere to a vacuum

A virtual country has entered into the world economy. Norrath, the setting for the online game Everquest, has been found to be the 77th richest country in the world, sandwiched between Russia and Bulgaria

The phase-out of Microsoft’s Java virtual machine from products such as Windows XP is being blamed for the inaccessibility of an Australian Internet banking site for some users

Around 2,000 BigPond customers have lost their personal homepages, in the latest outage to hit Telstra users

Internet giant AOL has won a civil lawsuit against Florida-based Netvision Audiotext, a company it accused of sending unsolicited pornographic e-mail to AOL members

Print on demand (POD) is rapidly changing the way books are printed, published and consumed world-wide. The first POD facilities are already up and running in Australia, both at point-of-sale and publisher level

An ad hoc bunch of ‘Net police’ has helped save Australian Internet service provider, Labyrinth Connections, and its users from being blackbanned after the ISP was a recent victim of impersonation by a shadowy group that manages Internet pornography sites

After spending the past six months perfecting the technology, Apostolos Gerasoulis and his development team on Monday evening will roll out a souped-up search engine called Teoma that will take dead aim at Google, widely regarded as the best way to find something on the Web