Perth-based internet provider iiNet has now moved quickly to secure capacity on the brand new Pipe Networks’ $200 million Sydney-Guam undersea cable. The new cable also sees the Southern Cross cable (owned by Optus and Telecom New Zealand) no longer having a monopoly on the US-bound cable.

The third largest ISP has said that it will switch between 40 and 50 percent of international bandwidth onto the cable when it goes live in 18 months. The switch is part of a 15 year supply agreement between the two companies.

Spokesman Greg Bader said the deal would allow the ISP to keep its prices in reach of customers.

“The cost of international IP is the single biggest cost issue for broadband plans in Australia. The larger the (download) quota you have the more you pay and that’s a direct relationship to the cost of international transit.”

International bandwidth accounts for around 15 percent of the company’s cost, iiNet said in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy officially announced the project in Melbourne earlier today.

The cable, dubbed the PPC-1, was part of a plan to spend $4.7 billion on a new national Fibre-to-the-Node (FFTN) broadband access network.

“This $200 million project has the potential to improve Australia’s international communications transmission capacity and increase competition in the Australian telecommunications marketplace,” the minister said.

“This is great news for Australia’s internet users because the result will be faster and cheaper broadband,” he added.

Mr Bader said that iiNet would continue to retain some capacity with its current providers after the new undersea link is completed.

The 6900km pipe will run through government protected zones, some which are up to nine kilometres under the sea surface and will connect to the current infrastructure in Guam. Primus, Internode, Telikom PNG and VSNL have also signed up.

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) has published its final report on Microsoft latest products in its Office and Windows product lines, Windows Vista & Office 2007. The agency is sticking with its previous recommendations that schools should stay clear from Vista in existing deployments and also not to use Office 2007 altogether.

Schools have used Microsoft Office for producing documents that can be presented by the student. Students will regularly use Word and Powerpoint, with other subjects using Excel, Access and other applications. Office 2007 introduced new changes, including a new document file format.

Windows Vista, the successor to the popular Windows XP, sees a brand new graphical interface as well. That new graphical interface, which is named Aero, is also a resource hog if it is installed in existing computers.

Becta Recommedations

Vista

In the document, Becta recommens that schools should not deploy on the current existing computers in schools, saying that the upgrades aren’t worth the cost. According to Becta, only 22% of the school PCs in the UK can run Vista “effectively”; while 66% falls under Microsoft’s definition of being “Vista capable”. The agency pegs the upgrade will cost at £125 per machine for primary schools and £75 for secondary schools. This means £175 million will be needed if all the machines were upgraded to Vista in England and Wales alone; with one-third will be from licensing costs.

They also advise schools not to deploy Windows Vista and an older Windows OS side-by-side. “We advise that… mixed Windows-based operating-system environments should be avoided.” Schools are also advised to stick with XP with they want to extend a current Windows set-up.

Office 2007

Becta, in its interim report last January, called Microsoft to come up with a reason why schools should use Microsoft Office 2007. The company, according to Becta, has not responded.

The main reason was the concern of interoperability with the new Office Open XML file format. In contrast, the ODF format used by OpenOffice.org and a handful of others is an approved international standard. The report said that Office 2007 was not effective on running ODF. It has also criticised Microsoft for its efforts of making the OOXML an additional standard.

“The interoperability that Microsoft makes available in Office 2007 for competitor products is less than it makes available for its own family of products,” the report said. “We have complained to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) that this puts competition at risk and is an abuse of a dominant position by Microsoft. The OFT is considering our complaint.”

Schools should not use Office unless schools have a plan to deal with the interoperability and “potential digital divide issues”. As well, Becta advises schools to not use the new file format, instead using the old format. Those running the older versions of Office should install the compatibility pack provided by Microsoft at its website.

Conclusion

They have advised users that you only install the software on institution-wide developments; meaning every computer should be upgraded all together with the same computers.

© 2008 Alphawest

Optus has lost the long-time CEO of its technology services division, Alphawest. Garry Henley has resigned and is to leave at the end of the month, a spokesperson for Optus comfirmed. “Garry has played a key role in the integration of Alphawest into Optus and, now that this is complete, he is seeking new challenges.”

The director of Optus’ southern region business, Rob Parcell, has stepped in and will be acting CEO until a replacement has been found. The spokesperson did not say how long will the recruitment process will take.

Asked by one of the media if the departure was a sign that Optus would be restructure the technology services division, the spokes person said: “Not at this stage.”

Mr. Henley first joined Alphawest in 1994 after it had acquired Integral Solutions, a networking provider. Optus acquired Alphawest for $26 million in October 2005.

Analyst firm IDC said that in 2006 Alphawest generated $232 million in revenue, making it Australia’s eighth-largest technology services company.

Though Vista Service Pack 1 comes with a lot of important updates; for gamers it’s the new DirectX 10.1. However, they will need to buy new hardware to have DirectX 10.1 to be supported; and don’t even try buying NVIDIA, according to APC Magazing, as they are left out on the cold.

Vista brought to the gaming world the latest version of DirectX 10. The newest version saw improvements to 3D gaming on a more resource-hungry operating system. Hardcore gamers only waited unti ATI and NVIDIA provided DirectX 10-supported GPUs before taking the plunge into Vista.

However, early adopters may be left on the curb as well; with Microsoft will release it’s update to Version 10, version 10.1. This includes some of the features that were dumped on the original release.

Image from APC Magazine

The new version offers greater application control of the GPU’s shading and filtering resources, especially multi-sampled and super-sampled antialiasing. The shader model has been updated from 4.0 to 4.1 and also the floating point technology has been beefed up from 16-bit to full 32-bit, which could see a direct improvement in quality for HDR (High Dynamic Range) lighting effects. In addition, all 10.1-capable hardware should be able to run 4xAA (antialiasing) as a mandatory setting.

Early adopters will now have to buy new GPUs as DirectX 10-supported cards cannot support 10.1; unlike 10.1 is fully backwards-compatible. Neither NVIDIA’s GeForce 8 series nor ATI’s Radeon HD 2x series of GPUs can support version 10.1, according to APC Magazine.

NVIDIA currently has no plans for a 10.1-capable GPU, but their next product range - codenamed GT200, will support DirectX 11. According to APC, ATI is set to release 10.1-capable GPUs but no information has been disclosed.

Our media content site, TECH.GEEK Studios has the second episode of our fabulous podcast.

Click Here.

Episode Summary:
CES has come and gone and some pranksters have decided to turn off the TVs around the event. Well, have no fear… Panasonic has a 150-inch plasma that would replace the screens. Well, maybe only one… if you can afford it.

Participants:
James Davis
Stewart Wilson
Tom Wood

Users who are familiar with the site have noticed that we have a bit more information on the site. Yes, we have.

We have now put up our entire archive from March 2007 to November 2007 on this site. All of our archives have been rearranged to the new formats. However, some posts won’t have any tags.

So enjoy the site. We are soon going to put a calendar on the archives and also having a listing of categories on the front page. As well, more advertising on the archive pages. Sorry if you don’t like it.

If you haven’t clicked on the RSS link, you should now. The link will now showcase the feeds on our site. Now you can have the choice of feeds for each category, tag or by your favourite author. Now that’s choice.

So enjoy the new TECH.GEEK.

Terence Huynh
Head Editor

The entire blogosphere has erupted after the Gizmodo prank that saw many televisions being shut off by the TV-B-Gone. Now, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the organizer of CES, has sent a statement to CNET’s Rafe Needleman.

“We have been informed of inappropriate behavior on the show floor by a credentialed media attendee from the Web site Gizmodo, owned by Gawker Media. Specifically, the Gizmodo staffer interfered with exhibitor booth operations of numerous companies, including disrupting at least one press event,” the statement said.

“The Gizmodo staffer violated the terms of CES media credentials and caused harm to CES exhibitors. This Gizmodo staffer has been identified and will be barred from attending any CES events.”

The staffer has been identified as Richard Blakeley.

As well, the CEA are also under discussions over additional sanctions about banning Gizmodo and its parent company, Gawker Media. This could be a blow to them as they are in competition with Engadget and Weblogs Inc.

As well, former editor over Gizmodo and now CrunchGear’s Editor-in-Chief John Biggs has written a post of his view of the prank.

He wrote: “Unless bloggers are ready to act their age and use their skills, energy, and position to help consumers and not piss off PR folks, they’re…sunk.”

“Each stunt like this pushes us back a notch.”

Vallywag, another Gawker Media blog, has said that Blakeley has received “no notice at all” about the banning.

Talking to Portfolio.com, Gawker Media’s boss Nick Denton said that he rather see the Gizmodo team into trouble now and then and criticising CNET for being “so boring”.

Facebook has announced that it will allow users to hide applications on their profile pages after complaints from users.

The “profile clean-up” tool is compared the Unused Desktop Icons wizards where it get rids of the unused icons (they are actually comparing themselves to Windows? I thought they would compare themselves to a Mac.). This new tool will allow users to move application or profile boxes to an “extended portion” of the user’s profile.

If the user wants to move any or all of the boxes; Facebook recommends “that [users] keep their Friends Box, Mini-Feed, Wall, Basic and Personal Information as well as the top 12 application boxes they have added.” Each profile will have a link on the bottom to show the extended portion of the profile.

This new change has been praised by many bloggers, who have bee upset on how their page is cluttered with many applications. They have even compared it to MySpace profile pages (without the ‘artistic’ designs) since Facebook opened up to allow users to create custom applications on their profiles.

Good on you Facebook! We will see if user respond to the extended profile page (or pages).

Security analysts at McAfee have discovered a booby-trapped MySpace profile page that contains malware on users by recreating a Windows Update down the centre of the profile.

The image (seen below, image from The Register) looks authentic enough to those who are uninformed. It is superimposed over the profile page of someone named “Rita”. Clicking on the picture or anywhere near the ‘window’ will initate a window that will unleash the malware which includes downloaders, trojans and backdoors from multiple servers.

The attackers are sending requests to be friends with other MySpace users in the hope of getting them to click on the link. The downloads appear to be coming from Malaysia and Ukraine.

McAfee have contacted MySpace, but The Register is claiming it is still active. We do not know, as we don’t have the link.

If you have the Firefox extension NoScript will not save you, but common sense will. If you are also running McAfee’s security products, you do have a safety net - it will recognize the malware and will stop the installation.

The BBC’s iPlayer website saw a “14-fold” increase in its traffic for the holiday period in the UK.

From the 8th of December 2007 to the 5th of January 2008; visits to the site rocketed following a marketing launch on Christmas Day, according to Hitwise, a web traffic monitoring company.

During the week ending on the 5th of January, the site became the 80th most visited website in the UK and placed 62nd on New Years Day.

The BBC iPlayer has attracted criticism over the downloadable version was only made available to Windows XP users. It has since launched a streaming version of the iPlayer, which uses Flash - so that means it is compatible to Mac and Linux users and also to Vista users.

However, the Head of BBC’s Future Media and Technology Ashley Highfield has suggested in an interview with silicon.com that a version of the iPlayer for all platforms would be released in 2008. The download version just recently became compatible for Windows Vista.

More than half of the traffic came from other BBC websites, with the official sites for Eastenders and Doctor Who being the main sources.

The BBC said that it will release official stats on the iPlayer next week.