Stories by: Rodney Gedda

Social network interoperability went up a notch this week with MySpace releasing Sync, an application to post status updates and other content on users' Facebook pages.

Vodafone Hutchison Australia, the company formed out of the merger of the Vodafone and 3 brands, has increased the data download allowances for its capped voice and mobile broadband plans.

The Google Checkout payment gateway has been available in the US for four years, but Australian online shoppers have been denied the service up until the launch of Google Voice, which uses Checkout to add credit to an account.

Oracle's patent and copyright lawsuit against Google for its use of Java in Android won't be repeated by Microsoft if .Net is used on the Linux-based mobile operating system instead.

Melbourne University's Trinity College has launched a 50 student pilot program to foster creativity and critical thinking, with each participant receiving an iPad to be used with their studies.

South Australia's Royal District Nursing Service (RDNS), a not-for-profit community healthcare provider, has appointed Jodie Rugless as CIO at the tender age of 34.

Oracle's recent patent infringement lawsuit against Google around the way its Android operating system uses Java is contradictory to the apparent joy of former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz in a blog post three years ago still hosted by Oracle.

The National Broadband Network is likely to play a key role in the balance of power with the independents and Greens supportive of the project, however, mandatory Internet filtering remains a bugbear that many of the elected MPs continue to oppose.

Yesterday I was invited to attend the opening of the first HP POD container data centre in the Asia Pacific region. It was located in the regional NSW town of Wyong and, most interestingly, the advanced data centre project will be servicing customers from next month – all without an NBN.

Sydney-based Verb IT is the first company in the Asia Pacific region to provision an HP Performance Optimised Datacentre (POD) next-generation data centre in a shipping container. The new Verb DC site where the POD is located is a standard industrial warehouse in Wyong on the NSW Central Coast (one hour north of Sydney). Verb DC is schedueld to go live in September after a 14-week project, including the POD delivery time. In what is being painted as a big win for the Central Coast IT industry, the new POD will provide computing services to local businesses and the world.