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Canon Using Kiwi Prisoners To Fix Printers It seems the Chinese are not the only ones using prison labour, for according to www.scoop.co.nz, Canon New Zealand has announced an agreement with the NZ Department of Corrections that will see prison inmates trained to assemble and dismantle its machines.

Lenovo Signs Dicker Data For SMB Channel In a move the company says is “designed to expand its distribution reach within the small to medium business market in Australia”, Lenovo has announced Dicker Data as its new SMB-focused distributor in Australia.

Mobile Advertising Set To Explode In Australia At present, the mobile advertising market in Australia is very much in its infancy with total revenues reaching just $2.5 million in 2007.

GFK Starts Playing Games With Retailers GfK has moved into the games business with the aquisition of the majority shares of the shares market research company Chart-Track Limited, a leading provider of retail information for games software.

Top Asia-Pacific Search Engines Revealed According to comScore, Google sites led the region with 39.1 per cent of all searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! With 24 per cent and Baidu.com at 16.7 per cent.

Telstra Launches Small Business Service Telstra is launching a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform called T-Suite to supply on-demand business applications more efficiently to Australian businesses.

Mining Boom Equals IT Boom For those IT distributors who think that digging holes in the ground and selling laptops are not related, think again, as Queensland-based Infortech Distribution has found that the two industries are virtually linked at the hip.

AV In NZ Booming Says IDT MD According to the managing director of IDT, Gerry Wilkins, the New Zealand audio-visual market is showing strong growth with a very positive vibe.

Google Becomes A Business App According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Google is trying new ways to win over business customers with its latest attempt involving helping companies dig out search results that are buried deep within their own Web sites.

Australians Forced To Register 72 Hours Before Entering USA Australian visitors to the United States will have to register their trip with the American government 72 hours before they leave, it will be announced tomorrow by US Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff and will take effect from January 2009. The registrations will be able to be made online.

Tabcorp Facing A Rough Time Ahead At Jupiters COMMENT: It’s amazing how the Australian tourism industry who has powerful lobby groups expect Federal and State government to bail them out when there is a market downturn or when tourism is taking a downer because visitors who have been here before refuse to come back or alternatively have told their friends that Australia is expensive and delivers “lousy” service for the price they are asked to pay.

Myspider Weaves Job Aggregates Web Myspider is a specialised job search engine which aggregates job content from approximately 100 job sites around Australia.

Ingram Micro Gets Creative Ingram Micro has pumped up the reseller volume with the appointment of Creative Labs as its newest supplier.

CNET Sold For A Song US news and information network CBS has agreed to buy technology publishing company CNET Networks which operates sites including News.com, ZDNet, GameSpot, TV.com and MP3.com, in a deal valued at $US1.8 billion.

MYOB Moves Into Online Services MYOB has moved into the online services sector with its new business grade web hosting solutions, paving the way for its back office business management systems to integrate with small business websites, the company says.

New Search Engine Service Launched Today Fairfax Digital and Melbourne IT have combined to form a new joint venture called Advantate, designed to give the SME market in Australia and New Zealand simple, cost-effective access to search engine marketing services.

Telstra Throws In The Towel Against ACCC The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said only minutes ago that Telstra has dropped its appeal against findings that the marketing of its Next G mobile phone network was misleading.

Telstra Offers SMBs Gold In China SMB exporters will be offered the chance to tap into China's booming economy during the Beijing Olympics through a joint initiative between Telstra and Austrade.

Internode Launches Free Usenet Service Broadband company Internode is now providing its customers with free access to Australia’s premium Usenet service.

Google Only Wants To Milk YouTube According to a recent report in Reuters, Googles number one priority this year is to make money off its YouTube video-sharing site, comments which sent Google's shares up 4.7 per cent straight away.

Telstra First-Half Profits Soar Telstra has reported a first-half profit of almost $2 billion dollars an increase of 13 per over the same period last year. They have also raised their guidance for full-year revenues after achieving $12.4 billion in earnings.

HP To Offset Carbon Printer Emissions HP is extending its commitment to “environmentally responsible” practices in product design, with the introduction of the new HP Carbon Offset Program for LaserJet Printers, which entitles customers who purchase an HP LaserJet to the insurance that HP is funding projects to offset the carbon emitted by the printer.

Panasonic Dumps Patts For Palace The Campaign Palace has nabbed Panasonic’s Australian creative account after George Patterson Y&R pulled out of the bidding war, having been told in November last year that Panasonic was ‘reviewing’ its agents. Now LG is set to move to Patts.

1.8 Million Extra Premises Gain Telstra ADSL2+ More than a million extra families and businesses will be able to access high-speed Telstra broadband after the telecommunications dodged a roadblock today in Canberra with the Government announcing it didn’t plan to regulate Telstra’s ADSL2+ service at this stage.

Thrifty Car Rental Spooks Market There is no better indicator of an economy than the performance of car rental companies. When the going is good Companies rent. So when Thrifty recently reported a major downturn analysts got spooked.

EBay Shelves Auctions For New Model EBay is to switch its emphasis from online auctions to Amazon.com-style fixed priced listings, after the US company confirmed it is replacing CEO Meg Whitman with John Donahoe, currently president of eBay's auction business.

Telstra Support Staff Visiting CDMA Homes Telstra will be sending out 57 trained ‘coverage experts’ around Australia to visit personally customers who are having trouble making the transition from the outdated CDMA network to the new Next G platform, following a government ruling that the telco must try harder to assist the population to make the change.

Harvey Norman Gets Serious About Taking On OfficeWorks In an effort to expand its share of the stationery and computer market Harvey Norman has selected Pronto Software to launch a new business venture called Harvey Norman OFIS, a stationery and computer chain designed to take on Officeworks.

Telcos To Revolutionise SMB In 2008 Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are in for a “deep transformation” over the next few years due to the increased availability of tier-two service providers that offer solutions designed especially for SMBs including mobile broadband and IT outsourcing, according to IT analyst, IDC Australia.

Telstra Rescues Flood-ridden Residents Telecommunications giant Telstra is coming to the rescue for hundreds of North Coast homes and offices isolated by severe floods and storms over the past week, with a relief package for those using its services.

ACCC Still On StoresOnline's Back Online retailer StoresOnline has been busted by the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) for providing false and misleading information to its customers in relation to the price of its e-commerce software packages.

Gotalk Attacks Engin With VoIP Package Aussie VoIP provider, Gotalk, is launching a “direct Engin VoIP attack” in an attempt to cash-in on struggling VoIP provider Engin’s continuing bad luck.

Telstra Spruiks Next G To Businesses Telstra is talking up the benefits of its Next G wireless broadband and mobile services for business users by citing statistics from a study commissioned by the telco in conjunction with Ericsson, that states that according to a sample of Australian businesses using Next G, their productivity has risen 9.3 per cent.

An Easy Way To Begin Online Trading A new website launching today makes history with a new concept that allows users to view an aggregated list of offers advertised in traditional retail catalogues, along with press placements advertising sales and discounted goods, allowing them to find a desired product at the best possible price.

Small IT Training Business Wins Big Award A four-year-old IT and training company that employs 17 staff members in Adelaide has beaten a pack of small businesses from the retail, service and manufacturing industries around the country to win Australia’s first Small Business Champion Entrepreneur award.

Collect Payment Easily Via Your Mobile Phone Telstra business-owners can now collect payment using their Next G mobile phone using a new concept in conjunction with American Express which will see various third-party mobiles able to connect to a compact Telstra credit card swipe terminal, allowing small business customers to pay on the spot.

ACCC Nabs Dodgy SMS Service Ads Premium mobile phone SMS service provider, B33hive Pty Ltd, has been forced to alter certain of its radio advertisements after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) raised concerns about the adequacy of the information provided to listeners.

MapData Offers Online Mapping For Businesses Microsoft’s Virtual Earth has formed a partnership with MapData Sciences Pty Ltd, to provide customised mapping solutions and support to meet demand from small and large businesses in Australia and New Zealand.

Engin Primed To Shine In 2008 The past 12 months have seen a “significant transformation” for Australian telecommunications provider, Engin, with the company moving from providing straight VoIP services to announcing in the new year it will cover three large communications areas – VoIP, ADSL2+ and TiVO – according to the results of its annual general meeting, released today.

Austar To Carry Ten In Overlap Areas Austar units will carry Network Ten’s digital signal in metropolitan/regional ‘overlap’ areas when its new MySTAR service launches.

Momentum Wins For Work With Caulfield Grammar Australian Momentum Technologies Group this week won a prestigious 3G AList Award for its work supplying Victoria-based Caulfield Grammar School with a live wireless video streaming service over the Internet, allowing them to speak to locations in rural Australia along with a campus in Nanjing, China.

Telarus Now Offering Business WiMAX Telarus, the national infrastructure-based service provider, is now able to offer fixed WiMAX wireless broadband services across Sydney following a Master Services Agreement with BigAir, the only wireless broadband provider currently operating fixed wireless networks using 802.16d WiMAX equipment in Sydney and Melbourne metropolitan areas.

Internode Top Choice For Customers Choice magazine has given the nod to Australian broadband company Internode, which has topped the list of national ADSL2+ providers for customer satisfaction.

Commander Services for 1,600 Victorian Schools Business telephone and communications systems provider, Commander Communications Limited, has just announced a $23 million contract to manage Microsoft software licenses to 1,600 schools in Victoria.

Commander Ups Price For Government IT The Department of Finance and Administration has renewed its contract with IT solutions provider, Commander Communications Limited, which will provide a further two years of desktop and storage support services for the department, a deal which is now worth $5 million each year.

Web Analytics A Necessary Evil Web analytics services are evolving rapidly but still confuse users, according to the Forrester Research team which has identified eight web analytics companies that top the pack of an infinite number of products online, with Coremetrics leading the race for large corporations and Google Analytics gaining a mention for its streamlined approach to ecommerce for small businesses and first-time users.

Seagate Gets System Builders Vista-Ready Seagate has unveiled a hard drive ‘toolkit’ to assist system builders boost profits and capitalise on the increasing convergence to Windows’ Vista operating system by providing the support to market and sell high-capacity storage that operates in harmony with Vista.

Yahoo!7 Director Joins Engin Engin has appointed outgoing Yahoo!7 director, Ian Smith, to its board of directors alongside a raft of members with technology and communications backgrounds.

Envirosys Developer Wins Telstra Business Award A corporate custom software solutions provider from the Northern Territory was among the companies awarded an honour at the 2007 Telstra Australian Business of the Year Awards last night in Sydney, in one of the most competitive years ever in the event’s 15-year history, according to the organisers.

QLD Gets Gizmo In-Home IT Support IT and CE in-home support service, Gizmo, has expanded its coverage to the Gold Coast, joining existing services in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane.