Earlier this month, Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, gave the go-ahead on a vast project that will establish a national high-speed network providing 90% of homes and businesses in Australia with fiber-optic 100Mbps Internet, courtesy of the government; the last 10% will be covered with a 12Mbps connection via wireless and satellite. Not only will a vast amount of taxpayers be guaranteed an Internet connection, but this will also provide 37,000 jobs at the apex of construction, a plus in these troubling times. Now CSIRO has jumped on the bandwagon with ideas of how to provide the last 10% (and anyone else who wants a wireless option) with a solid wireless Internet connection with speeds eventually reaching 100Mbps versus the government's proposed 12Mbps. They'll be utilizing the analog TV infrastructure for widespread wireless, which is obviously largely in place already. All in all, both networks most likely won't be available to any of the public for at least five years.

"It's possible to use Apple's iPods and iPhone with third-party software, and BluWiki's users wanted to make sure the world could find out how. Apple, however, was not fond of the situation and threatened BluWiki with legal action if the information was not removed. Now, BluWiki's operators are suing Apple in hopes of protecting the free speech of their users and getting a declaratory judgment that posting information does not violate the DMCA."

"A disc that can store 500 gigabytes of data, equivalent to 100 DVDs, has been unveiled by General Electric. The micro-holographic disc, which is the same size as existing DVD discs, is aimed at the archive industry. But the company believes it can eventually be used in the consumer market place and home players. Blu-ray discs, which are used to store high definition movies and games, can currently hold between 25GB and 50GB."

"One of the areas of any release of Windows that receives a significant amount of testing and scrutiny is the performance of graphics - desktop graphics all the way to the most extreme CAD and game graphics. The amazing breadth of hardware supported for Windows and the broad spectrum of usage scenarios contributes to a vibrant ecosystem with many different goals - from just the basics to the highest frame rates on multiple monitors possible. In engineering Windows 7 we set out to improve the 'real world' performance of graphics as well as continue to improve the most extreme elements of graphics. This post looks at this spectrum of engineering as well as the different ways performance is measured. Ultimately we want to inform you about what we have done in engineering Windows 7, while we leave room for the many forums that will compare and contrast Windows 7 on different hardware and in different scenarios."

The ReactOS team has pushed out version 0.3.9 of their Windows NT-compatible operating system. In case you're new to OSNews, the ReactOS project aims to create an operating system that's compatible with the Windows Server 2003 kernel and Vista's Win32. This new release brings a whole slew of improvements.

The past week has actually seen a whole lot of interesting news items. We've seen financial figures from major software companies, Sun Microsystems was bought by Oracle, we found out about Windows XP Mode, Ubuntu 9.04 was released, and it was revealed that the judge in the Pirate Bay case was anything but impartial. This week's My Take is about Jericho, the short-lived TV series.

Linux ordinarily uses Cron to automatically perform routine system maintenance on desktop or laptop computers, however not running Cron routinely can result in monstrously large log files and other problems. You can offload most or all of your usual daily and longer-interval Cron jobs onto Anacron enabling your computer to run regular maintenance jobs whenever the computer is powered on, even if those times are unpredictable.

The first major update for Google's Android platform, based on the Cupcake development tree, was released today in source form at the project's git repository. Now it's up to the OEMs and carriers to deploy it, and the community to port it to other platforms. Dig in for a list of new features.

Microsoft's Surface computer is a revolutionary table-top multitouch computer that can do all sorts of fancy tricks. It makes use of a projector and five cameras to track hand movements, as well as read "Surface tags", which are a sort of barcodes underneath objects. It's a software+hardware package, and for 17000 USD, you'd think it'd be a treat to unbox and install one. Well, no. Near-instant update: Microsoft has replied to the blog post, and as it turns out, the unit delivered to Miller for one of his clients was scheduled to be setup by Microsoft - a service that comes standard with the device. More details inside.

Qt Software (formerly Trolltech) released a new version of Qt SDK. Qt 4.5.1 includes bugfixes and optimizations made since the release of Qt 4.5.0. The list of changes can be found here. Qt Creator has been updated to reflect the feedback gathered since the initial release. A full list of changes is here. Finally, after two betas and an RC, Qt Software released the final version of the Visual Studio add-in. It is now available for download.

"In a recent report, AdMob said growth in requests from devices running the Android and iPhone operating systems continued to outpace other platforms in March, despite the relatively limited number of devices in the market. The HTC Dream (Google G1) generated 72 million requests, giving it a 2 percent share of the overall U.S. market in March."

A common concern when it comes to Linux on netbooks is that, well, they're hard to get your hands on, and even if you do find one, they often feature lower specifications than their Windows brethren. If yuo fear the situation will be similar for nettops, fear no longer: Acer has given out pricing and specification information on its Revo NVIDIA Ion nettop (the first Ion-based machine on the market), and there's good news for Linux fans.

During the conference call yesterday about Apple's financial results, COO Tim Cook reiterated Apple's negative stance towards the netbook market. While many of us might want to see a relatively cheap Apple netbook with Mac OS X, all the recent figures do seem to confirm that it simply isn't a good idea for Apple.

Apple just posted their intriguing news of hitting one billion app downloads, and all in nine months. Apparently, they're also handing out prizes, but the window of entering for the celebratory winnings is obviously closed. Alas. As a note of interest, one billion in nine months equals out to be about 110 million a month, 27 million a week, and a little less than four million a day.