News (93)

Red Hat CEO in whirlwind Oz visit

Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst arrived in Australia yesterday for the first time, with plans to meet major customers and government representatives. Read more »

E-passport fraud no threat to SmartGate

The Australian Customs Service today said its inbound e-passport authentication system SmartGate would not be fooled by fake details, after a Dutch hacker claimed to have broken through similar systems in Europe. Read more »

Symantec buy creates Aussie millionaires

The Australian founders of PC Tools are likely to be laughing all the way to the bank this morning after the locally based firm was acquired overnight by giant global rival Symantec. Read more »

Q&A: Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield

In an interview with ZDNet.com.au, Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield shares his thoughts with us about the web, Google, Microsoft and Flickr's acquisition by Yahoo, as well as his recent departure from the US search giant. Read more »

Flickr founder knocks Yahoo

During a visit to Australia this week, Flickr founder and former Yahoo staffer Stewart Butterfield criticised the search giant for its lack of an innovative culture compared to rival Google. Read more »

Australian students win global software competition

A group of Australian students have just been crowned winners of the Imagine Cup, a global competition in software design. Read more »

Aussie students close in on Microsoft prize

A group of Australian University students, including one of Australia's most well-known technology bloggers, has progressed to the finals of the Microsoft-sponsored Imagine Cup software development competition in Paris. Read more »

IT mega-projects: First 100 days are crucial

Executives wanting success from major IT projects need to be "ruthless" in spruiking their benefits to staff, and should only give their direct reports three months to win employees' hearts and minds before replacing them, a senior PricewaterhouseCoopers analyst has reported in sharing the results of recent research on CEO effectiveness. Read more »

Photos: iPhone running Windows XP

Citrix used its thin client technology to demonstrate an Apple iPhone running Windows XP, at the Citrix Application Delivery Conference in Melbourne recently. Read more »

Twitter lets staff "trigger nuclear option" on bosses

Mark Pesce, Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney, says that the days of bosses' bad office behaviour are well and truly numbered. Read more »

Features (35)

Improving the mobile Web user experience

Traditionally our experience with the mobile Web was pretty terrible, but the good news is that this is starting to change, at least according to Oliver Weidlich, usability specialist at Ideal Interfaces. Read more »

Effective and affordable User testing

At the recent Web Directions South UX conference in Melbourne, Lisa Herrod, the Principal Usability consultant at Scenario Seven offered advice on usability testing with her presentation -- "User testing for the rest of Us". Read more »

Seven aspects of a great user experience

The spotlight at this year's Web Directions South UX conference in Melbourne was on user experience. Andy Budd, a designer and developer at Clearleft in the UK, contributed to the theme of the day with his presentation -- "Designing the User Experience Curve". Read more »

Interview: Simplifying Web app design

Following the Web Directions South UX conference in Melbourne, we interviewed Robert Hoekman Jr in an email on his presentation -- "Essential elements of great Web application design". Read more »

Seven essential elements of Web application design

At this year's Web Directions South UX conference in Melbourne, Robert Hoekman Jr, the author of Designing the Obvious and Designing the Moment gave a presentation titled -- " The essential elements of Web application design". During the presentation, Hoekman explained seven key design principles that should be implemented when designing Web applications. Read more »

Local game studios face skill shortage

The Australian game development industry is now worth $130 million, employs around 2000 people -- and there has never been a better time to break into it. Read more »

Case Study: AppleBox takes rentals into Web 2.0

Simon Gilligan's attempt to breathe new life into the neighbourhood video rental store has become an unlikely showcase for Web 2.0 technologies. Read more »

Helping yourself by helping others

If you're considered too junior or your lines of advancement are blocked then it might be time to volunteer your time to create future opportunities. Read more »

Microformats and Mapping

We begin by looking at what a microformat is and how they are useful, then progress to introducing the Google Maps API and finally putting it all together to produce the user group map Read more »

Developer Spotlight: Gian Sampson-Wild

Gian Sampson-Wild is an accessibilty expert and one of the speakers at this year's Web Directions conference to held in Sydney this year. Builder AU interviewed Gian via email prior to the commencement of Web Directions to talk about accessibility, how to make it a part of the development process and where to from here. Read more »

Video (22)

Linux is ready to go green: Linus Torvalds

The infrastructure and tools required to make Linux a green operating system are now in place, according to Linus Torvalds, who was in Melbourne attending Linux.conf.au -- Australia's largest Linux conference. Read more »

Ballmer's big Yahoo vision

ZDNet Editor in Chief Dan Farber talks about Microsoft's $44.6 billion cash-and-stock bid to acquire Yahoo. He analyses Microsoft's strategy in search, the potential impact on chief rival Google, and what it would mean, overall, in the competitive online-search market. Read more »

Microsoft's Yahoo bid: word from Silicon Valley

In Silicon Valley, everyone is talking about Microsoft's US$44.6 billion offer for Yahoo. Read more »

Super Techies: Brendan Eich

In a Super Techies interview, Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich talks to ZDNet Editor in Chief Dan Farber about his career as a programmer in Silicon Valley. Eich discusses his early work at Netscape creating the JavaScript programming language, battling Microsoft in the browser wars, and his current role at Mozilla,... Read more »

Europe probes again -- Club Builder

Europe takes another look at Microsoft with new anti-trust claims while we look back at the OLPC at linux.conf.au 2007. Read more »

While you were out -- Club Builder

The holidays are winding down and its time to get back to work. Club Builder brings you up to date with the stories that happened while you were in the sun. Read more »

Gates sees software spreading

Microsoft Chairman Bill gates sat down with News.com's Ina Fried to talk about how Microsoft can outflank rivals as software moves to the phone, TV and other devices. Read more »

A deeper look at surface computing

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, ZDNet director Josh Taylor looks at Microsoft's new surface computing platform, which includes applications for drawing, interacting with media, and manipulating photos that are instantly taken from a digital camera. Read more »

Discussing distributed source control

Ian Clatworthy, a software engineer for Canonical, discuss how moving to a distributed source control system has changed the way that he approaches his everyday work. Read more »

Gmail: Past, present, and future

ZDNet Executive Editor David Berlind interviews Keith Coleman, Google's Gmail product manager, about the current status of Gmail and the future of this popular Google app. Coleman also covers other Gmail issues, including the rebuild of the Javascript engine and how strongly Google feels about users' data. Read more »

Blog (23)

XP stays on life support for longer

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- This week's Roundup looks at Microsoft's decision to extend the life of Windows XP, the release of Microsoft Surface SDK, Firefox's new Geode plug-in, Yahoo's new tool -- Smush It and more. Read more »

Apple's iPhone engineers to tour Sydney, Melbourne

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- Aussie developers will be able to get up close and personal with some of the iPhone engineers in November to learn how to build applications for the platform. Read more »

StartupCamp Melbourne: The review

[blogs:bootstrappr] -- StartupCamp Melbourne looks to have produced just as interesting ideas as the Sydney event which immediately preceded it, but the Victorian start-ups appear to have stumbled during execution. Sydney 1, Melbourne 0. Read more »

ExitReality's CEO exits, really

[blogs:bootstrappr] -- Melbourne-based technology start-up ExitReality confirmed yesterday that it had lost its chief executive just before it formally launched last week. Read more »

StartupCamp comes to Melbourne

[blogs:bootstrappr] -- In early October, Melbourne will get its own version of the StartupCamp project that saw three new technology start-ups launched last weekend. Read more »

Cinergix waves Australian flag

[blogs:bootstrappr] -- Just one Australian start-up appears to have made the final cut for the US-based DEMO and TechCrunch50 conferences this week: Melbourne-based firm Cinergix, which has produced an online collaborative process design tool dubbed Creately. Read more »

Chrome is just another browser

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Hands up if you missed the Chrome release -- didn't think anyone did. Google's browser arrived with all the fanfare and hype that only Google can produce. Read more »

2Vouch refers well

[blogs:bootstrappr] -- Melbourne-based Web start-up 2Vouch yesterday launched the first public beta of what it dubs its "social recruiting platform". Read more »

Bootstrappr comes out of stealth mode

[blogs:bootstrappr] -- bootstrappr is a new blog that will track the fortunes of Australia's technology start-up scene. We'll hang out at Barcamp and keep an eye on twitter, test out the latest and greatest from Aussie entrepreneurs, and be the first to tell you when they fall in a heap. Read more »

Get a discount on Web Directions entry

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- By simply reading Builder AU, you can save money on entry to the upcoming Web Directions conferences. Read more »

Others (1)

Gallery: Jamming it with Web 2.0

"So what is WebJam?" the girl at the bar serving my mate and I a beer asked. She's thinking that maybe there's something to do with music happening tonight, but it's nothing like that. Read more »

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  • Staff XP stays on life support for longer

    This week's Roundup looks at Microsoft's decision to extend the life of Windows XP, the release of Microsoft Surface SDK, Firefox's new Geode plug-in, Yahoo's new tool -- Smush It and more. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Chris Duckett The good and truly awful celluloid depictions of computers

    Ever wonder why your lawyer uncle leaves the room whenever you turn over to Boston Legal? Or why your forensic science cousin can't stand crime drama? You know the answer: it’s the horrid trivialisation and dumbing down of an occupation to make it appear entertaining. Sometimes it is so unbelievable that it actually hurts and yelling at the screen is the only outlet. Read more »

    -- posted by Chris Duckett

  • Brendon Chase Apple's iPhone engineers to tour Sydney, Melbourne

    Aussie developers will be able to get up close and personal with some of the iPhone engineers in November to learn how to build applications for the platform. Read more »

    -- posted by Brendon Chase

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