LW: Labour day hackfest will have security systems crash and burn

As a journalist at LinuxWorld Australia:

An underground community of Australia's "elite" will meet in Sydney for the fourth annual hacker conference, Ruxcon, this weekend. The two day conference kicks off on Saturday at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Ruxcon began in 2003 as non-profit event to bring together security enthusiasts and provide an opportunity for them to exchange ideas and techniques. While the technical focus of the event initially appealed to a small, specialised group of people, recent years have attracted a much broader audience, according to Ruxcon organizer Chris Spencer.

"We see Ruxcon as a computer security conference by the community for the community," he said.

Trivia, pool, a chili eating competition and of course hacking contests, are among the activities scheduled for the weekend. These are interspersed with 18 one-hour-long presentations on topics such as "Exploiting OpenBSD", "Anti-forensic rootkits", "Bypassing corporate email filtering", "Dynamic port scanning", and "Ajax security".

Highlights include "IPV6: Under the Hood" by McAfee principal security architect Mark Dowd, which will expose methods of subverting firewalls, creating covert communication channels, and discovering information about other hosts.

In another keynote presentation, titled "Attacks Against RFID", wireless and RFID security specialist and self-proclaimed ethical hacker Josh Perrymon will cover the ins and out's of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) attacks, such as passport cloning. In addition to his lecture, Perrymon also hopes to unveil a world record long-range RFID antenna that he is building.

Ruxcon presenters hail from Australia, New Zealand, USA, Belgium, Greece and United Arab Emirates, and are either directly involved in the local computer security community, work professionally in the security industry, or are security enthusiasts.

Presenters and presentation topics were chosen by organisers earlier this year, based on technical merit and interest value.

"Every year we try and provide a unique line up of speakers presenting cutting edge talks with a strong technical focus on either offensive or defensive aspects of computer security," Spencer said.

Spencer expects up to 450 attendees at Ruxcon 2006. Previous years have attracted about 350 "white hat" and "black hat" hackers, who are typically system administrators, IT managers, law enforcers and University students aged between 18 and 40.

"Ruxcon could be described as the Australian version of [U.S. hacker conference] DEFCON," he said. "Obviously we are a lot smaller than the overseas conferences but Ruxcon has a unique Australian flavour and feels a lot more social and friendly."

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CW: Academic study hopes to uncover the secrets of open source

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

Open source projects have produced some of the most sophisticated pieces of software while defying conventional wisdom about collaborative projects, according to researchers at the University of California Davis. The interdisciplinary research team, consisting of academics from the fields of computer science, mechanical and aeronautical engineering and management, has recently been awarded a three-year, $US750,000 grant from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to investigate the open source phenomenon.

The researchers suspect that the structure of open source software will affect the way its developers are organized, and vice versa. The study will focus on the operation of developers of the Apache Web server, the PostgreSQL database and the Python scripting language, through information from message boards, bug reports and e-mail discussions.

Liz Tay speaks with professor of computer science and principal investigator of the study, Premkumar Devanbu.

How would you describe open source projects?

Open source projects adopt the approach of making the source code freely available to anyone who wants to read it. This flies in the face of most commercial software development, which regards the source code as the "family jewels" that must be protected at all costs from the prying eyes of competitors. While this approach may prima facie seem subversive or "socialistic", in fact it follows in a long tradition in scientific research of freely publishing and discussing ideas. If you regard software as nothing more than "hard-coded ideas", it seems completely natural. I'm certainly simplifying a lot here; I would refer people to books by Professor Weber of the University of California in Berkeley (an economist) and Professor Benkler (a Law professor) who have much more authoritative words on the matter. This is just my personal perspective as a computer scientist.

What is most interesting about how open source software is written?

To me, the most interesting part of it is how well they [open source projects] work. They are immensely successful - look at Apache, MySQL, Linux, Perl, etc - they are basically taking over the Web on the server side. I think this success is attributable for the same reasons why most software succeeds: they deliver the features customers want, with great speed and high quality (and of course at low cost). The reason for this, according to Eric Raymond (and others who have taken up this issue since) is the free flow of information about the system, via the source code, to the members of the community. There is a belief that this leads to rapid isolation, diagnosis and remedy of defects that would take traditional projects much longer to fix. Beyond defect isolation, it also makes possible for users to become developers...if you want a feature, you can figure out how to add it, and put it in.

From a researcher's perspective, OSS projects, by their nature, expose comprehensive longitudinal narratives of artifact evolution, social structure of artifact creators, and interactions with general users. This narrative is a valuable source of data for testing hypotheses relevant to software engineering practice.

What prompted you and your team to research this topic? Have you any personal interest in open source?

I have been writing software, teaching software engineering and researching software engineering tools and processes for more than 30 years now, and the phenomenon of open source confounds so many things that we've learned and taught over the years. One striking phenomenon in (traditional) software engineering projects is what is called "Conway's Law": essentially, it states that artifact structure recapitulates social structure. Thus, if you give an organization with two sub-teams the task of writing a compiler, they'll produce a two-pass compiler; if there are three teams, they'll produce a three-pass compiler, and so on. My colleagues and I are eager to see how this phenomenon plays out in open source projects.

First, in open source, the organization is not created by fiat, but evolves organically; second, whatever organization exists, it is more fully observable via the e-mail archives and IRC archives. In traditional projects, people always find ways of doing an end-run around the organizational structures that exist, in order to get their job done. In open source, the interaction between organizational structure and social structure is explicitly observable; the longitudinal study of this, is the goal of our project.

How do you plan on carrying out the research?

It's fairly traditional empirical software engineering - formulate hypotheses, extract data, and test it. The one difference is that we have a very high-powered team, with expertise in complexity physics, bio-informatics, and statistics. We hope to use novel methods in network theory, linear algebra, and physics of complex systems (that have yielded fruit in other areas like biology and social science) to study open source software systems.

What do you expect to find?

We hope to understand how/why some open source projects succeed and others don't; we hope to understand why some open source systems are highly innovative and dynamic while others are not; we hope to understand the process by which people are attracted to, and retained by, open source systems; we hope to understand how the social structure influences the redesign of the system, and vice versa.

It should be noted that while these phenomena are more easily observed and studied in open source projects, the lessons learned are universally applicable to software projects, and perhaps more broadly to complex human endeavours. Efforts are under way to bring the OSS approach to news creation, knowledge creation, etc ... our results would be relevant to these endeavours.

How do you feel about being awarded the grant?

Delighted. Funding for NSF and other research programs in the US have been dwindling, while the competition for grants has increased. Many colleagues have become discouraged, and I know of several who have even left the US and moved to Canada and Europe. We are therefore very grateful to the NSF for its support of our work in these constrained times.

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PCW: Cyber criminal ring targets Australian inboxes

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

Trojan horse malware that provides its owners with credit card numbers, bank details, and other personal information has been discovered targeting Australian Internet Explorer users.

The Trojan was exposed last month by US-based anti-exploit development firm, Exploit Prevention Labs (XPL). However, according to Australian-born Roger Thompson, the company's Chief Technical Officer, it has been known among the whitehat community since April this year.

Victims receive what appears to be a Yahoo Greetings eCard, which directs Web browsers to an authentic eCard via an exploit server. If the exploit server detects browser vulnerabilities, it force-downloads post-logging software onto the user's computer.

This process happens so quickly that it is virtually unnoticeable, Thompson said, adding that some versions of the Trojan also force-download a rootkit which makes it invisible to Internet Explorer's add-on manager.

"It's very, very hard to tell if you've been infected," he said. "If your antivirus program can see it, that's fine. But if it doesn't, then you won't know it's there."

Although it is impossible to determine the exact number of affected users, Thompson expects there to be thousands of Australian computers at risk. XPL researchers have confirmed that accounts at nearly every Australian bank were affected.

The Trojan was found to have been exploiting the Internet Explorer MDAC vulnerability through the Russian-developed WebAttacker script, which XPL has found to be the most prevalent Internet-borne exploit generator. While a patch for the MDAC vulnerability was released by Microsoft in April, Thompson said, many Internet Explorer users remain susceptible because not all users apply patches.

"A lot of work computers don't get patched, because when you patch, a lot of other things can get broken," he said. "A lot of companies don't like patching because of this, and because they think they are safe behind a firewall."

"But browsers are authorized to get past firewalls; that's how they access the Internet," he explained. "And once you're authorized, consumer firewalls don't have enough resolution to distinguish between evil Web sites and clean Web sites."

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ARN: Security appliance battles porn in Brisbane

As a journalist at Australian Reseller News:

To combat time wasted at work, Internet security and productivity firm, NetBox Blue, has produced a security tool with a twist. Besides acting as a gateway that protects against viruses and spam, the NetBox also monitors traffic and generates reports that tell managers how employees have been using the Internet.

"Spam, firewall, etcetera has been done to death," NetBox Blue CEO, Trent Davis, said. "Our focus is mainly on monitoring usage with email and general traffic, blocking inappropriate access, and compliance by recording activity."

According to a recent survey, Brisbane residents conduct the second largest number of porn searches in the world.

Separate studies conducted by Brisbane-based NetBox Blue found that one company spent 18 per cent of Internet time browsing pornography sites. Porn sites were found to be among the top 10 websites used by staff of another large company.

"Firms are losing thousands of dollars in productivity because staff are viewing pornography and other non-work related websites instead of focusing on their proper tasks," Davis said. "The NetBox puts managers back in control of their network. It's designed to do everything to do with managing an Internet connection."

The NetBox is available in a range of models to cater for small and large businesses. Small offices with 5-10 users are typically recommended the NetBox appliance, retailing at $1290. Larger companies with up to 2000 users may purchase $300,000 IBM-certified NetBox software, which has been designed to work on IBM servers.

NetBox Blue has a direct reseller model with more than 60 resellers Australia-wide, although most of their resellers are located in the Eastern states. Margins range from 15 to 30 per cent, depending on the appliance or software model.

NetBox Blue also manages virus definition updates on all NetBoxes to simplify the support role of resellers, who are typically expected to provide end-users with product installation and support.

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PCW: Telco answers call from God, censors mobile comms

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

New SIM card technology launched this week will give parents, companies and even religious leaders greater power to censor mobile phone usage.

The technology relies on a four to six digit second personal identification number, PIN2, that can be used to unlock the "fixed dialling" function on mobile phones. Administrators may nominate up to 50 fixed dialling numbers that the phone is able to call. Outbound calls to any numbers not in the fixed dialling list are restricted.

The service was launched by Australian telecommunications reseller, Telcoinabox, and will be offered by its 70 service providers and franchises.

While Telcoinabox's managing director, Damian Kay, acknowledges that fixed dialling technology infringes on the personal freedom of users, he asserts that it may, in some cases, be a necessary evil.

"The SIM card is not for everyone," he said, "only for people who want to restrict their caller list. For example, a business may want to cap their sales reps calls to stop them from running up a bill the size of Texas. Or a religious group may want to prevent members from making 'inappropriate' calls."

Kay suggests that restricting call access may be the solution to the behemoth phone bill debts that teenagers too often accrue. He expects Telcoinabox service providers to target the new PIN2-enabled SIM cards towards parents and school associations, with the child market in mind.

"There are so many stories around about horrific phone bills from kids," he said. "This gives the parents control and helps control spend."

PIN2 technology has been around for a fair while, Kay said, but as the cost of implementing the technology far outweighs the benefit for major telecommunications carriers, there has been no incentive for these carriers to offer the service.

The service is more commercially viable for niche market MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators), he explained, such as Telcoinabox's service providers, who are essentially mobile service resellers with their own brands. The service only operates on the Telstra network.

Telcoinabox was prompted to offer fixed dialling services upon being approached by a "conservative and reclusive" religious group who could not be named.

"We were approached by a large global organisation, with a specific requirement to restrict the numbers that their members could call," Kay said. "They didn't want to go on a prepaid service because it's quite restrictive with having to get credits and everything, so this provides them with a non-interruptible, post-paid service that still allows them to control spend."

Fixed dialling was found to be the most efficient and easiest way to implement call control restrictions for mobile phone users after more than 12 months of research.

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CW: Gardens Point Ruby programmer on compiling dynamic languages for .NET

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

Developers at the Queensland University of Technology are working on a Ruby compiler that will allow the language to be supported on the .NET platform. Liz Tay speaks with Wayne Kelly, project leader and senior lecturer at the university's School of Software Engineering and Data Communications, about the Gardens Point Ruby.NET project and his interest (or lack thereof) in Ruby, and .NET.

What are the long term goals of the project, and how far are you from achieving this?

We aim to achieve complete semantic compatibility for all programs written entirely in Ruby. This includes use of the building classes and modules but not other Standard libraries commonly shipped with Ruby - unless they are implemented entirely in Ruby.

Our solution will be fully compiled and produce entirely managed and verifiable .Net code.

Following that, we will work on improving interoperability between Ruby and .Net (such as allow programs written in other .Net languages to conveniently use Ruby.Net code and vice versa), and optimization of special cases so that our implementation runs faster.

We hope to be close to achieving compatibility by the end of this year and will complete interoperability and optimization goals sometime next year.

Why are these goals important?

The .Net platform was designed to support many different programming languages so that developers could choose to use their favourite source language while still providing high levels of interoperability between components implemented in different languages. All these languages are also able to make use of a large collection of libraries, used for example to connect to databases, process XML, help implement Web applications, and the like.

So, to existing .Net programmers, the Gardens Point Ruby compiler adds Ruby to the set of languages they can make use of to develop .Net applications.

Ruby is an increasingly popular language with many fanatic users.

For existing Ruby programmers, the Gardens Point Ruby compiler provides them with access to the facilities of the .Net platform and libraries, including, for example, a rich API for developing Windows forms applications.

The fact that .Net is managed (and so provides sandboxed type security) is also very important in some security-critical scenarios - for example implementing SQL Server stored procedures using fully verifiable .Net code.

This is why we aim to generate only fully verifiable managed code with no native invokes to untrusted code.

One of the wider research goals is to investigate support for dynamic languages on mainstream managed execution environments and to consider how interoperability might be achieved, especially with other dynamic languages such a Phyton.

How long has your team been working on this project for?

I started work on the project in early 2005. The project is co-directed by Professor John Gough and myself. John organized the project proposal and funding with Microsoft, and I have led most of the day-to-day development with John providing higher level guidance.

I led the initial implementation efforts.

How did you get involved in Ruby and .Net?

My research interests lie mainly in the area of parallel computing. The main way I got into Ruby is in the area of parallel computing; the way it's usually done is using a special compiler [like Ruby] to convert sequential code into parallel form.

We've been doing research related to Ruby from around 2000. Our faculty was invited by Microsoft to create compilers for .Net before it was released to the public, so we had a relationship with Microsoft from the pre-testing days.

The original project was to create a Perl compiler and we hadn't had much experience with Ruby before this, but after the project with Perl and .Net we decided to go with Ruby instead. It's cleaner.

I wasn't actually involved in the decision making. John Gough did all the communication with Microsoft.

What are your favourite languages? Have you any special interest in Ruby?

I've done most programming in C#.

I'm not sure if I want to admit this to the Ruby world, but I wouldn't list Ruby as one of my favourite languages - I'm not a big fan of dynamic languages.

But others love it, and there's certainly a demand for it. There is a very fanatical following in terms of the language. In the real world, there are many people who can't wait for us to get this done.

The reason why Microsoft wanted this done is to test that .Net would work with dynamic languages. So this project, from a research point of view, is to investigate what the issues are in compiling dynamic languages on the .Net platform.

What are you currently working on?

We're still trying to complete the implementation. What was released in June was incomplete; we need to work on it so that it supports all Ruby functions.

I'm currently working on getting a few benchmark applications running so we can get an idea of our baseline performance. The shootout benchmark was easily accessible so I've just grabbed those.

Have you made any significant progress or encountered any difficulties since the last beta release of your Gardens Point Ruby .Net compiler?

The release was in June, no. Progress has been relatively slow since then due to other commitments. (If only I didn't have to teach :)

When will the next version be released, and do you still expect to achieve a version with fully semantic compatibility by the end of the year?

We will definitely have the next version out by the end of the year. We may release earlier versions if we feel we have made sufficient progress.

We hope the version at the end of the year will have full semantic compatibility but we are probably a bit behind schedule due to other commitments.

We currently have a couple of casual research assistants working on the project, but we could do with a few more - so, if anyone in the Brisbane area would like a job ...

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CW: Netspace to go national with ADSL2+

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

Melbourne-based ISP, Netspace will join the handful of providers that offer high-speed, ADSL2+ broadband to Australian homes. On Tuesday it announced that it has embarked on a national rollout of ADSL2+ technology, and expects to start providing ADSL2+ to new and existing customers within the next three months.

The move comes shortly after Telstra's recently announced impasse with its Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) plans. According to Netspace's regulatory affairs manager, Ben Dunscombe, the company was hesitant to make a decision with Telstra's plans still up in the air as there was still some uncertainty as to how the broadband market would react.

"ADSL2+, at its inception point, was a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario," Dunscombe said. "We weren't sure if it was the products [such as streaming video files] that were going to drive the need for high-speed broadband, or if it was the high speed broadband that was enabling new products."

Now, Dunscombe said, "there has been some regulatory clarity with Telstra kicking the FTTN rollout."

"The market has matured a little more now, so the value propositions we can offer our customers have become a little clearer," he said.

The company's cautious approach towards ADSL2+ also involved a beta trial that took place in Melbourne early this year.

"We deployed a number of Melbourne exchanges and with a couple of test cases going forward," Dunscombe said. "It really proved to us that we had the capability to deploy the infrastructure and the technology to support it."

Netspace's ADSL2+ network will operate on a combination of its own new infrastructure and existing framework via wholesale agreements with infrastructure providers that could not be named.

When fully deployed, the combination of new and existing infrastructure is expected to form a network with a breadth and reach of ASL2+ services that rivals any other Australian provider, the company claims.

No details on pricing or when new services will become available have yet been released. However, Dunscombe expects the launch to take place early in the fourth quarter this year.

"It's not expected to be a Christmas present," he said.

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ARN: Great Bay Software signs inTechnology

As a journalist at Australian Reseller News:

Queensland-based distributor, inTechnology, has entered into an exclusive agreement to distribute Great Bay Software's end-point profiling solution, Beacon.

The platform is a software and hardware application designed to facilitate the timely deployment of 802.1x, and systems that rely on this framework, by allowing a network manager to control all devices on the network from a centralised location.

Great Bay joins major vendors Juniper, InfoExpress, Cisco and Microsoft in the distributor's five-step Endpoint Security (NAC) solution. According to inTechnology director of sales and marketing, Mark Winter, Beacon is a fitting addition to its portfolio.

inTechnology was approached by Great Bay Software about three months ago, Winter said.

The distributor is looking for new channel partners to help it grow the brand locally. The product is expected to generate revenues of more than $1 million in the coming 12 months.

Services that could be offered by resellers include training programs and marketing campaigns. inTechnology already has a product awareness campaign planned for the first week of December. Following that, Winter expects there to be a market for training programs held at channel partner venues or as webinars.

The partnership is Great Bay's first step into the Australian market, which Winter said was a perfect launch pad into Asia-Pacific.

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CW: Industry effort aims to advance women in computing

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

Eight of Australia's leading CIOs and technology leaders have come together to initiate the second phase of the Women in IT Executive Mentoring (WITEM) program. The program aims to address a number of issues which women face in the technology sector.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics 2005 Labour Force Survey found that women make up only 20.5 percent of the IT workforce. According to Joe Kremer, vice president and managing director of Dell Australia and New Zealand, the percentage of women in the IT workforce further diminishes in senior positions.

Because there are so few female IT executives, Kremer suggests that women in the industry may lack role models on whom to base their career development. To this end, WITEM puts volunteer mentors together with high-potential female executives. The mentoring program is expected to accelerate the development of leadership competencies, such as general management expertise and confidence, of mentees.

"We're trying to create more balance in the organization," he said, "because I think if an organization under-represents women at senior levels, then they are at a disadvantage because they lose a certain point of view."

The first phase of WITEM was initiated by Dell in December 2005. It involved managing directors from eight technology companies, including Cisco, EMC, Ingram Micro, Intel, Lexmark, Altiris and LAN Systems, each mentoring a female executive from across marketing, sales, legal counsel and channel management functions of another company.

Phase II, launched in July this year, takes a different approach, as it targets women working in IT departments of companies that are not necessarily in the IT industry. The eight phase II mentors come from seven companies in the public and private sector, including Centrelink, Deloitte, Department of Finance and Administration, Ernst & Young, NSW Department of Education and Training, Westpac and Woolworths.

The phase II view of IT careers gives the program a wider spread in the Australian labour force, which reflects the pervasiveness of technology in businesses, Kremer said.

"When they [the public] think about IT, they think of someone writing code in a dark basement somewhere. But I think the potential for CIOs is amazing now," he said. As businesses become increasingly dependent on technology to succeed, Kremer expects there to be greater potential for IT professionals to advance their careers. "I think that 15 years from now, CEOs will be chosen from CIOs," he said.

Even in early stages of the mentoring program, Kremer has already noticed changes, for the better, in the dynamics of his own organization. Employees are more communicative and more readily raise concerns such as the conflict arising between early morning meetings and childcare, which led to renegotiated timing.

"This program has opened doors," he said. "We have found more of a voice for women in the company. I think that if people are talking, then it's a very good thing for the company"

CW: Ballarat camp to EXITE girls about IT

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

Twenty-four girls in Year 10 will attend IBM's Exploring Interests in Technology and Engineering (EXITE) Camp in Ballarat this week.

The camp aims to introduce girls living in the Ballarat area of Victoria to career opportunities in IT, and to encourage greater learning of technology. It will be held at the Mt Helen Campus of the University of Ballarat from September 18-21

"We want to highlight career opportunities to people living in rural areas, and particularly to women who aren't very well represented in the industry," said Cameron Woolfe, EXITE Leader of the Ballarat camp.

"[Computing is] a non-traditional area for girls," he said, "so the camp is really targeted towards having fun and showing that computers are not just about programming and cutting code."

This will be the first EXITE camp to be held in Ballarat and follows a Gold Coast camp as the second of three EXITE camps to be run in Australia this year.

Students from Ballarat Grammar, Ballarat High School, Ballarat Secondary College, Beaufort Secondary College, Damascus College, Daylesford Secondary College, Loreto College, Mt Clear College and Sebastopol Secondary College have been chosen to attend the Ballarat camp.

Participants will attend a career expo and a site visit to the Sovereign Hill historical park to see the evolution of technology, as well as workshops on online media, programming, robotics, and crime investigation.

Girls will also be paired up with volunteer female mentors from IBM's Ballarat facility, who will provide academic assistance and career counselling during the camp and throughout the remaining school year.

"Women in IT can pretty much do anything they want to do," Woolfe said. "The sky's the limit."

CW: Wireless alcohol purchasing puts users in high spirits

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

Imagine buying your best mate a birthday drink at a classy Sydney establishment even if you can't be at the pub with him. You may be somewhere across the world, but hey, at least you're there in ... spirits. It's all a matter of sending an SMS, thanks to some handy technology by mobile ticketing provider bCODE.

The bCODE-Drinks consumer portal was launched last week to allow the wireless purchase of drinks via a "pervasive Web" service that connects the current PC-based Web with mobile devices and wireless systems in the physical world.

Drinks purchased through the online portal are sent as text-based SMS vouchers that are optically decoded by specially designed readers at the bar. Users can also create and customize multimedia messages, which appear on video screens at the point of redemption, to accompany drink purchases.

"We have a very sophisticated back-end that provides the bar or retailer with an instant marketing capability, and campaign redemption metrics in real time," said bCODE marketing director, Paul Christy.

The most significant feature of the technology, Christy said, is its text-based code. Unlike 2D barcode and RFID-based mobile ticketing technologies that require a phone-specific chipset or graphics, bCODE expects its code to be supported by 99 percent of all mobile devices in the market, including PDAs, BlackBerry, Treo and portable music players like the Apple iPod,

"In essence, it's an SMS, so it's cheap and easy to use and can be used on any handset on any mobile network supporting SMS anywhere in the world," he said. "Reading a bCODE from a screen is also far more reliable in terms of scan rate than scanning some of the 'old school' barcode SMS tickets that are sent as images via EMS or MMS."

bCODE readers have been deployed in 15 Sydney metropolitan pubs and clubs. Wireless connectivity is powered by either EVDO, WiMax or 3G, depending on location.

The technology, dubbed m-commerce, operates in a similar way to e-commerce pay-per-click advertising. The company profits through redemption fees for driving traffic into specific bar and club venues, Christy said.

The company expects that wireless alcohol purchasing is only the beginning of mobile commerce.

"We are looking to prove the technology here in Australia, in the retail and entertainment markets mainly, and have advanced discussions with leading players in these sectors," Christy said.

The company hopes to demonstrate to retailers the possibility of converting a Web visitor into a store customer, using mobile technology, and to inspire organizations and applications developers to bring newer and better mobile commerce experiences to consumers.

CW: Elementary, Watson: Open source textbooks to educate developing nations

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

A project based on the open source software model aims to create free online textbooks for developing nations. Under careful academic oversight, the Global Text Project will produce 1000 textbooks for undergraduate studies in a range of subjects including business, science and arts.

The project was initiated by South Australian-born Professor Rick Watson of the University of Georgia Business, who found that discounts currently offered by textbook publishers to developing countries simply cannot bring prices low enough for education to be affordable.

Even at half the usual cost, he said, a textbook that costs $100 in the US would still chew up a large percentage the average Ugandan's $US250 annual income.

"Textbooks are just not affordable for people in the developing world," he said. "The Western model just doesn't work, because the for-profit model just can't get costs down to zero."

The Global Text Project will provide free, Wiki-based textbooks that can be accessed via a number of methods. Text can be viewed online, downloaded as pdfs and printed locally, or saved on CD-roms. The project also has developers in China who are currently working on a PDA-sized eBook reader, similar to the Sony Reader, that are estimated to cost between $US40 and $50.

Content will initially be provided by volunteer writers or taken from open texts. Watson is also negotiating intellectual donations from authors and publishers of textbooks that have been taken out of print.

While the project is similar in concept to the popular open source encyclopedia, Wikipedia, Watson aims to give it more authority and credibility by having an academic responsible for editing each chapter's content. Only the editors will be allowed to accept changes that any reader might suggest.

"The problem with Wikipedia is that anybody can go in and change an entry," he said. On the other hand, he said, "one of the great beauties of the open text model is that the text is freely available for people to edit and localize it."

Watson hopes that textbooks written by international volunteers will eventually be localized by their users in developing nations. This will be especially useful in business texts, in which case studies about small local enterprises would be far more relevant than studies about multimillion-dollar international corporations.

The project's first textbook currently involves a team of 17 professors from five countries, each writing one chapter. The book is expected to be completed in January.

Going in to the future, Watson hopes for the continued support of academics and their students. He cited a course he taught in 2004, in which students were told to write a textbook for their assignments, as an example of how students might contribute to the project.

"I talk to my students about the massive intellectual waste in me throwing away their assignments after every term," he said. "There are 12 million students in the world and that's a massive intellectual resource, if only we can get these students and their professors involved, and use their assignments instead of throwing them away."

The project has already received donations of time and money from several individuals in the business and academic worlds, and Watson said the first text will serve as a proof-of-concept that he will use to solicit support from corporate sponsors. Ideally, Watson said, each of the 1000 texts will have a corporate sponsor.

"The goal of the Global Text Project is improving education in the developing world," he concluded. "And this is an area where you can get really good return for your money - the World Bank has a report that found that education produces 12 times the yield of material investments."

Global Text Project is in a similar vein to The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, previously dubbed the "$100 laptop" initiative, that is lead by Nicholas Negroponte, the former head of the MIT Media Laboratory However, OLPC is targeted at K-12 education, and at providing hardware, whereas the software-based Global Text Project targets university students.

CW: UTECOM supercomputer celebrates 50 years, programmer reminisces

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

When the 1.2 tonne, $149,000 (£60,000) DEUCE II computer was officially opened on September 11 1956, it was heralded as one of the first three computers in Australia and was quickly put to use as what the newspapers of the day called the £50 an hour "super-brain".

The computer, dubbed UTECOM, was built in England, then dismantled and shipped to Australia. Measuring an impressive four metres wide, one metre deep and two metres tall, it took three months to install in a designated room at what was then the NSW University of Technology.

Reflecting on how far computing has come since those days, ex-UTECOM programmer John Webster, now of the Australian Computer Museum Society, reminisces about the past 50 years of computing in Australia and his involvement with "super-brain".

How have you been involved with computing in Australia?

UTECOM [the University of Technology Electronic COMputer] was started in 1956 and I started there in mid-1960 and worked on that until it closed down [and was dismantled] at the end of 1966. IBM and its new System 360/50 replaced it. I'm in the Australian Computer Museum Society and our aim is to preserve whatever we can that's related to the Australian History of computing. We've got a lot of old equipment in our warehouse. Most of the machines they've got at the university here that haven't been thrown out are things we'd like to see preserved.

Other, less tangible aims, is to try, in a couple of years, to get together with the Australian Computer Society to contact the people in Australia who worked with computers then - and they may just have been people behind the desk who used computers -to find where they worked, how they were trained, what they did, what the machines meant for them, what it meant for their families. I think it's fairly important.

We're also trying to judge what the Australian cultural outlook is about computers, and the effect on our lives. They affect almost our mental development, our outlook towards developing products.

How do you think computers have affected Australian society?

Surely it's a type of industrial revolution on its own. There were a number of people who spent their lives doing calculations using little machines: mechanical calculators. All vanished very quickly once computers came. You could do years of work in only a couple of hours, even in the 1950s and 60s. Now, computers are billions of times cheaper and faster too.

What was computing like in the 1950s and 60s?

A lot of the staff at the UTECOM computer were about to leave to go work for Remington Rand and their Univac computer. Our two major engineers on UTECOM went; a couple of other heavies went. I was a first-year student in 1960, trying to become a lecturer in mathematics of all things. About mid-year, they said to me, "How would you like to work on a computer, on the university's computer?" And being a 16-year-old kid - and they owned my scholarship - I thought they meant, "We'd like you to work on our computer". The next question was "What do you know about computers?" and I said, "C-O-M-P-U-T-E-R". That was it.

The following week I was led down to the computer, and essentially I was expected to learn the machine code - the machine instructions that drive the machine. And Ron Smart and [colleagues] had so little time to spare that I was hunting around for someone to help me get more complicated instructions. So I went to the engineers, and they gave me logic diagrams that showed how the bits flow through the machines, to show what happens when they go through addition, subtraction and all that. And by doing that, I learnt the machine instructions so well that within a few months of arriving, we suddenly had a very large clientele. A lot of programming was done in machine language.

It was very exciting.

These days, kids who play games and try to discover cheats, develop smart bits of software - and you could probably include hackers in there - are probably somewhat similar-minded. We have the same style of excitement. I found nothing better than having some two-tonne item sitting on the concrete floor, getting it to do what I want. It gave me a bit of a high. Of course, all I was doing was crunching numbers and re-arranging data.

The Australian Computer Museum Society's booklet on UTECOM mentions that at that time in the 50s, "almost all computers were still women operating calculators". Was this what the industry was like?

I know in the early days of the electrically operated punch-card machines, the use of card drivers - women were probably used for that. I believe women are better typists than men on average, that's just from my personal experience. Women were core computer operators in those days. A lot of women were doing computing - of course the Second World War was important.

One of the guys over in England [whom] I communicated with was upset because when he registered his occupation as "Computer Programmer" following his marriage to one of his co-workers, [the register office for marriages] would not allow that. They put him down as "Production Clerk", because there was no registered job title as computer programmer. Her job title was "Computer", and they allowed that, because they'd heard of a computer, but they hadn't heard of computer programmers. This would have been just after the War.

In those days, someone who was very useful in computing was so valuable, though, of course, they'd have to be skilled as well as trained.

UTECOM was purchased from the UK English Electric Company on September 11, 50 years ago. It was only one day later when the University of Sydney unveiled its first, self-built computer, SILLIAC. What prompted the NSW University of Technology (now the University of NSW) to buy UTECOM, instead of designing and building its own?

I'm sure Rex Vowels, the professor, wanted to build a machine. It happened in later years - we were building our own computers in Electrical Engineering. But I think the problem back in 1954 [when the decision to purchase the computer was made] was that so many big institutions around the world with whom we were kind of in competition already had access to a machine. In Australia we had only CSIRAC; and UTECOM and SILLIAC were many tens of times faster than CSIRAC. Therefore, [if we built a computer] we'd be depending on CSIRAC, then spending many more years building the machine and all the ancillary equipment.

So it was a matter of catching up with other organizations?

It was a matter of joining them.

The most important thing is probably that UTECOM came with a fairly enormous quantity of ready-written software in many scientific, mathematical and engineering fields. And that was a great start.

When UTECOM arrived, the university knew it had to do a lot of lecturing and training, educating people to use the machine. They probably could not have guessed in advance whether it would mean having to write machine instruction programs themselves, or use programs that already existed. If the programs already existed, then people could use them to get a real head start. But they had to wait for other programs to be written - the average person probably couldn't really write them.

I suppose, people who use COBALT and FORTRAN and the like don't have to worry about intricacies of timings within the machine and the placement of information with various storage components in the machine, but then they have to worry about timing dependencies when reading your outputting data to the machine. We had to worry about all that stuff.

What, in your opinion, is the most significant event in the history of computing in Australia?

I can think of two things, really. One is the communications: the ability and universality of communications today and the improving technology permitting such an enormous growth in communications capability. The second, perhaps, is the ability to store an increasingly vast amount of information in smaller and smaller devices.

IBM releasing the 360 range [which replaced UTECOM in 1965] had a dramatic effect worldwide on commercial enterprises, which outnumber all other kinds of organizations.

What would you say are the main hurdles for computing now?

Things are transforming all the time. Some of the disciplines we learned even five years ago are no longer relevant. We have to keep studying. Now, ICT jobs have expanded in number too, so we need to train more people. So many people have to learn to use such a wide variety of software that instead of being able to concentrate in a small field and learn it and work in that field, people are being forced to learn a wider range of topics, which I think is detrimental.

I think there is so much commercial drive behind a lot of developments rather than well-researched scientific style.

I'm starting to wonder whether people will burn out with all the involvement of computing devices in their lives. A lot of people my age are retired and after a few months, they start saying things like, "Thank God I can finally throw away this pager, or mobile phone, and don't have to be a full-time member of a communication society and can stop worrying about work when I'm not in the workplace."

How do you think technology will progress in the future?

I think the likelihood is that we will see increasing diversity of the use of really, really small computing devices. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a very rational argument for us to have microchips in the next 10 to 15 years. And fields like entertainment may even be drivers for the technology.

These nano-machines and things are going to be a very large part of our lives, probably inside our bodies and not just around it. I can't see why people driving a car couldn't have an honest, innate sensation of what the traffic around it, without having to look.

CW: Businesses find a friend in local search firm

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

When its Web site was first launched, US plus-size clothing store Avenue was virtually invisible to search engines - and therefore consumers. Now, a Google search for products as generic as "black skirts" finds Avenue at the top of 20 million hits. The Web site has enjoyed a four-fold increase in its natural search revenue, and it's all thanks to an Adelaide-based start-up named YourAmigo.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) company, YourAmigo, was among the four Australian start-ups selected for US publisher Red Herring's list of the Top 100 Private Companies in Asia, announced last week at the Red Herring Asia 2006 Conference in Hong Kong.

This latest endowment joins YourAmigo's previous, long-standing accolades on the US magazine KM World's "100 companies that matter in Knowledge Management" lists from 2003-2006. Despite its awards, however, the company remains relatively unknown in Australia, said its vice-president of Global Sales and Marketing, Gary Smith.

"When we first started, and even today, a lot of Australian companies still don't regard the Internet as a place for conducting business," he said. "We started marketing this technology overseas and we've had so much demand in the US and Europe that we've spent all our resources overseas."

YourAmigo exports 99 per cent of its business to the US and Europe, Smith said. While its engineers are based in Adelaide, the company has sales teams located in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York and London, and has clients such as McGraw-Hill, Reebok, Sony Europe, Sky TV and Orange.

Likening high search engine rankings to a good position in a shopping mall, Smith boasts that YourAmigo has accomplished up to 800 per cent increases in its clients' online revenues through SEO technology that was acquired from Adelaide-based Flinders University in 1999.

"People spend significant amounts of money to be at the front of the mall," he said, "because that's where there's the most traffic; that's where you're going to have the most eyeballs - it's an investment in marketing."

The problem with many Web pages, he explained, is that they feature dynamic elements, such as Flash content, frames, databases or forms. Content stored in these formats are invisible to search engines, so they become what Smith calls "barriers to getting indexed".

YourAmigo handles these barriers by aggregating content stored in dynamic elements against common search keywords, into a different, more search engine friendly format.

"YourAmigo forms a bridge between Google [and other search engines] and the Web site," Smith said. "We've been able to solve the problems of what the barriers are between a search engine and large Web sites. We take out these inhibitors by providing an alternate, smooth path between search engines and the Web site."

But getting indexed is only the first of many steps towards a Web site that is optimised for search engine visibility. According to Smith, all pages of an optimised Web site must also rank highly in a search, and must be constantly updated to keep in line with regular changing search algorithms employed by the leading search engines.

"I think the major issue of search engine optimisation is continual change," he said, speculating that sudden losses in search engine revenue could be very damaging to businesses dependent on search for income.

YourAmigo has been able to keep abreast of changes in Search Engine algorithms through its membership in Yahoo's search marketing ambassador program. The company uses Yahoo's information about optimisation in an automated process that updates its clients' Web pages accordingly.

With the rapid growth of e-commerce and online revenue, said Smith, the future looks promising for YourAmigo - especially with the endorsement of Red Herring, which once awarded the same recognition to current e-commerce monoliths Google and Ebay.

Smith suspects that most of YourAmigo's business will continue to be exported.

"There are some smart Australian companies wisening up to the potential of the Internet, but we [Australian companies] don't generally think as competitively here," he said. "We'd like to get more Australian business, but the fact is we can make more money overseas."

The company is now looking towards listing on the stock exchange, Smith said. While its plans are currently "too premature" to be released, wheels are expected to be set in motion from 2007.

ARN: GPS devices: this summer's new iPods?

As a journalist at Australian Reseller News:

They find restaurants and golf courses. They locate your child or pet. They navigate in the bush, across the ocean and through the urban jungle to wherever you want to go - all to the maximum accuracy of about one centimetre.

And with Synnex reporting an overall market increase of over 80 per cent from 2005 to 2006, there is little doubt that the consumer market for GPS (Global Positioning System) devices is heating up.

While the Australian market is not yet displaying a demand for other GPS applications, Dick Smith Electronics' buyer for navigational devices, Tyson White, said the retailer was experiencing good results across its current GPS unit range.

GPS consumers fall across a wide range of demographics, White said, including young, technologically savvy people and retirees who might be doing a round-Australia trip and need to know how to get from one road in Alice Springs to another.

"[There exists] a pretty broad offer [of devices], and the units are usually pretty easy to use for different levels of understanding," he said.

While some units include many high-tech features, others were fairly simple and well-suited to those less acquainted with button-pushing, he said.

National sales manager of Synnex, Arthur Gimisis, said GPS products were categorised into different channels, with PDA/GPS units dominating the IT consumer base. The pure navigational systems enjoyed most popularity in the retail space.

"My understanding is that the retail space still occupies around 85 per cent of GPS sales," Gimisis said. "This is mainly from dedicated GPS, but we are seeing subtle changes to buying behaviour where the traditional channel is starting to promote and sell feature enriched, pocket PC GPS units to enthusiast and business users."

But will GPS devices this Christmas enjoy the popularity of iPods last year?

"It wouldn't surprise me," Dick Smith's White said.

Gimisis noted that a recent Sensis forecast predicting 108,000 GPS sales this year had recently been updated to 150,000 units.
"It's expected to be a GPS Christmas," he said.

The market was expected to continue to expand to 420,000 units in 2007, Gimisis said.

But IDC research director of telecommunications and consumer markets, Landry Fevre, wasn't so sure.

"It is certainly a hot product," he said. "Price points have come down so I guess it becomes affordable to the mass market.

"But I see the GPS devices more as a utilitarian device ... I doubt this will reach iPod fever; the brand and status are nowhere close to iPods."

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CW: Mobile devices to defend against phishing

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

Researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new antiphishing tool to address the growing problem of fraud.

The university says the Phoolproof Phishing Prevention system provides an additional layer of security at sensitive sites, such as banks, e-commerce and investment sites, by leveraging a mobile device, such as the user's mobile phone or PDA.

Phishing fraud typically occurs through fraudulent e-mails requesting sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, which may then be used to plunder financial accounts, make purchases, or apply for additional credit cards.

There were 28,571 unique cases of phishing fraud in June 2006, according to an Anti-Phishing Working Group report. This nearly doubles the number of reports from a similar period a year ago.

"While it is difficult to collect accurate data about the extent of phishing fraud, what data we do have suggests that phishing is a growing problem," said Carnegie Mellon researcher Bryan Parno. "Estimates suggest that millions of consumers have been affected by phishing attacks, while businesses have lost billions of dollars."

And it appears phishing is a problem for Web surfers of all levels. A separate study, conducted by researchers at Harvard University and the University of California Berkeley earlier this year, found that a well-designed fraudulent Web site fooled 90 percent of participants, Internet newbies and 'Web savvy'-types alike.

The prevention system eliminates the risk of a user being fooled, through the use of a secure electronic key that is stored on the user's mobile device. The device communicates with the Web browser, and will only reveal its authentication key to the appropriate Web site, researchers said.

"The Phoolproof Phishing Prevention system rests on the observation that users should not be authenticated based on information that they can readily reveal to others," Parno said. This way, phishers will not be able to access a user's accounts, even if they obtain information about the user.

The system also defends against keyloggers and other malicious software on the user's computer, the researchers said. And even if the mobile device is lost, the finder will still require the username and password to access accounts.

"An attack on the device itself will not produce enough information to allow an attacker to access the user's accounts," Parno said. "Beyond that, we expect mobile devices to adopt many of the defence techniques currently employed on desktops.

"In the long-term, mobile devices will include hardware support for enhanced security measures, and we can leverage these to enhance the security of our system."

Researchers do not expect there to be many additional costs in adopting the system. It was deliberately designed to be as simple as possible for both users and businesses to implement, Parno said.

The system uses the standard SSL protocol to minimize changes to a business' existing infrastructure. After being adopted, the system also allows legacy clients to authenticate as they normally would, which means that the system could be rolled out gradually without affecting too many customers.

Complicating the concern for more secure financial sites is a looming deadline for new security guidelines from the US Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, a group of government agencies that sets standards for financial institutions. Last year, the council set a December 31 deadline for banks to add online security measures beyond just a user name and password. Failure to meet that deadline could result in fines, the council said.

CW: Quantum cryptography networks unlock security issues

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

A team of researchers from Northwestern University in the US and BBN Technologies have demonstrated the world's first working quantum cryptography network. Northwestern University's Dr Gregory Kanter, who coordinated the demonstration, talks to Liz Tay about the basics of quantum cryptography and its potential for use in security systems of the future.

What is quantum cryptography?

A broad definition would be any system that utilizes effects arising from quantum physics to aid in creating cryptographic systems. Quantum key distribution, quantum data encryption, and quantum bit commitment are some examples. Key distribution generates shared secret keys usually for use in data encryption, which protects data from unauthorized observation.

You can view key distribution as the combination to a safe and data encryption as the safe itself. If I want to send a package over an insecure distribution system without allowing it to be tampered with, I could put the package in a safe, send the safe to the desired party, and have them open the safe with the combination. In order to do this I need to securely share a secret (the combination) and have a safe which is not easy to open without the combination. These two functions are distinct, but necessary for end-to-end security.

One can classify quantum cryptography into two types. One type exploits effects that are fundamentally 'quantum' and have no classical analog. An example would be quantum key distribution (QKD) based on entangled photon states. Such techniques can be very powerful, but are also quite fragile, making them difficult to implement in fibrer links greater than about 100km.

Another class would be systems that exploit certain immutable properties of quantum physics, such as the ultimate limit on signal-to-noise ratio dictated by quantum optical theory, and exploit these phenomena in a classical (macroscopic and easily observable) environment. This latter classification is much more robust. An example of such a system would be the AlphaEta method of data encryption.

One type of quantum cryptography is not strictly better than the other (although some quantum cryptographic systems are better than others) as both types have different beneficial properties.

Why is there a need for quantum cryptography?

Cryptographers, who try to build systems which can securely communicate information, are forever hounded by cryptanalysts who try to break into these systems. Methods of providing security that were effective some years ago may, due to advances in computation power or analysis techniques, become vulnerable. In fact, there are cases where new systems designed for security are shown to have critical flaws very early in their life cycle (for instance, security issues associated with WiFi).

Using quantum effects is a new tool which can greatly increase the power of a cryptographer. In principle quantum effects can also be used to increase the power of an eavesdropper, but this requires a quantum computer which is extremely difficult to build.

Some researchers think useful quantum computers will never materialize, but the field is still very young. If a quantum computer can be built, it could wreak havoc on many traditional cryptographic protocols, particularly those based on the difficulty of factoring large numbers which are often used to distribute secret keys (so called public key cryptography).

However, in principle some quantum cryptographic objectives, such as quantum key distribution, may be proven to be invincible to any advances in technology including a quantum computer. Although no concrete quantum system has been proven to be fully (unconditionally) secure, this is one of the goals of the community. Note that the quantum effects used in cryptography are much easier to produce than a quantum computer, and commercial quantum key distribution systems currently exist.

Thus, it appears that quantum cryptography has the upper hand over quantum cryptanalysis, as it is both achievable and probably more powerful. In any event, users must continue to improve their cryptographic systems as attackers can also benefit from new technologies.

What was new about the NU/BBN demonstration?

Northwestern University researchers developed a new method to encrypt data which uses quantum noise to help improve the security of optical communication systems. This quantum-enhanced encryption technique is called AlphaEta.

AlphaEta is inherently compatible with the current fibre infrastructure. For instance, the signals can travel through long-haul amplified fibre links. AlphaEta has been demonstrated in realistic environments previously. However, previous demonstrations required the secret keys to be directly coded into the system (pre-shared).

Note that AlphaEta is an encryption system which is a fundamentally different function than a quantum key distribution (QKD) system. QKD systems are severely hampered by the fragility of the quantum states used, and thus are not amplifiable and can not propagate long distances (about 100km). AlphaEta, in contrast, is much more robust and performs similarly to traditional optical communication systems.

How many other working demonstrations of quantum cryptography have been developed?

Quantum key distribution systems have been demonstrated in several laboratories around the world, and commercial systems also exist. In 2004 BBN demonstrated the first Quantum Network which provided fully functional, end-to-end key distribution in a networked environment. The NU/BBN demonstration interfaced an AlphaEta cryptosystem with BBN's QKD network such that fresh keys were periodically loaded into an AlphaEta encryption system. Since both encryption and key distribution are needed for secure communications, this combination of QKD and quantum enhanced encryption forms an unprecedented cohesive security model.

How much did your systems cost and what did they involve?

QKD systems typically require certain special equipment such as single photon counters which increase their cost beyond traditional communication systems. However, the cost is seen to be manageable as multiple companies have developed commercial systems. AlphaEta encryption systems use commercially available components and would likely require only a modest premium over traditional high performance optical links.

Is there a limit to the geographic span of a quantum computing network? If a hacker tries to intercept information, is the information destroyed?

As previously mentioned, there is a practical limit to the geographical size of a QKD network (typically less than 100km for a direct fibre link). When functioning properly, a QKD network determines when a hacker is intercepting information and adjusts accordingly to limit the information an attacker can get to an acceptable level.

AlphaEta encryption can in principle work over distances of the same order of magnitude as traditional optical communication systems. AlphaEta does not stop hackers from intercepting the signals but instead makes the signals so difficult to interpret that they are useless to the attacker. Technically the information is not destroyed; it is just extremely well hidden.

What do you think the future will be like for cryptography?

Several companies currently have working commercial quantum key distribution systems, and BBN's QKD network has been operational for years. Additionally, a new company called NuCrypt is developing an AlphaEta encryption system for commercial use. Thus, in some sense, quantum cryptography is already here today.

However, it will likely be a few years before more complete systems such as the NU/BBN quantum cryptography network will be attempted for commercial use. New techniques such as distributed entanglement are being researched that could lead to exciting new applications as well. There is great potential (but also many technical hurdles) in the quantum world making it difficult to predict where it will be 10 years from now.

The current functionality of quantum cryptography, namely key distribution and encryption, are important parts of secure systems. However, there are many other parts to a fully secure network such as preventing denial-of-service attacks and protection against viruses. IT security is an incredibly vast but also extremely important field, and we need all the tools we can develop in order to help preserve our modern way of life.

CW: IT job ads surge in the past year

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

The number of jobs advertised online has risen by a massive 35.76 percent in the past 12 months, according to the Olivier Internet Job Index (IJI), released last week. Along with reflecting the state of the job market, the results reveal that the Internet is fast becoming the preferred medium for employers advertising job vacancies.

The Olivier IJI was established in January 2000, and analyses jobs advertised on Seek, CareerOne and MyCareer, across 21 sectors including trades and services, engineering and mining, and IT&T.

IT&T job advertisements in August 2006 rose 1.17 percent from July and 39.5 percent over the past 12 months. The 24,449 IT&T job ads also revealed a 1.63 percent increase in networks, communications and security roles, 2.36 percent in database development and administration, 4.44 percent in Internet graphics and multimedia, 8.87 percent in instruction and training, and 11.16 percent in hardware engineering systems.

"The overall message is that despite the interest rate rises and despite oil prices, the job market is still very strong," said director of the Olivier Group, Robert Olivier.

But it's not only the employment market that is driving the increasing Olivier IJI. "IT recruitment firms and direct employers are using job boards more," Olivier said.

A survey conducted by the Olivier Group in July 2006 found that 40 percent of online job advertisements were posted by direct employers, rather than recruitment agencies. This is a significant increase from the 5 percent recorded in 2002.

"It's a tough employment market; it's still very hard to find skilled people," Olivier said. "So even though job boards put their prices up, employers will continue to advertise online, because there's where the candidates are.

"Particularly in IT, the Internet's the first place people look for a job. You're going to get more choice online - you can look at job boards all around the world. The trouble is that there are so many jobs, it can sometimes be a bit of a minefield.

"From the employer's perspective, advertising online is a darn sight cheaper than in print."

Olivier said that although the popularity of online job boards is taking advertising revenue from print advertising, newspapers will continue to be of some use to employers. Due to the demographic of senior candidates, he said, advertisements for senior level positions tend to remain in print.

CW: ITIL certification courses increase

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

ICT consultant and educator Pink Elephant said increased demand for ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) skills drove the addition of more certification courses this year in Australia.

The ITIL Practitioner course modules: Configuration, Change & Release Management and Service Desk, Incident & Problem Management will be held in Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane and Melbourne.

The courses are targeted at IT managers, supervisors or team leaders, as well as application developers and helpdesk staff, and aim to provide an understanding of integrating key ITIL processes and enabling a stable IT environment.

"ITIL is definitely reaching new heights in this region," said Rachel Pennings, vice president at Pink Elephant, Asia-Pacific. "Many more organizations are recognizing ITIL as a priority, are getting past the foundation level, and are investing in more role-based study for their IT staff."

The courses, for which Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management is a prerequisite, cost $3930 each.

CW: Trainers take lessons in Novell GroupWise 7

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

System administrators, corporate trainers, helpdesk staff and power users of Novell GroupWise 7 will learn the skills to teach end users during a two-day train-the-trainer course in Sydney.

The course, run by US-based end user training provider BrainStorm, will be held at Novell's Sydney office on September 14 and 15 where 'students' will receive in-depth, hands-on instruction from GroupWise experts, according to company officials.

The $1696 training fee also includes a copy of the Novell GroupWise 7 Training Workbook and each of the GroupWise 7 Quick Start Cards containing information on the client, Web access, document management, and the cross-platform client.

Students will receive continued support after the program via a subscription to the BrainStorm GroupWise Train-the-Trainer online support forum.

Novell has previously offered training services for Australian administrators on deploying and administering its systems through channel partners, but BrainStorm will be the first of the vendor's Authorized End-User Training Partners to conduct a course in Australia.

Eric Farr, principal of BrainStorm, said the course's Australian debut is a trial run. However with the level of interest it has already received, he expects it to be successful.

LW: Melbourne SFD celebrants go for world record

As a journalist at LinuxWorld Australia:

In keeping with the philosophies of Software Freedom Day (SFD), three Melbourne teams are inviting the public to participate in their events for free on 16 September 2006. The teams join 12 others in Australia and about 150 teams worldwide in celebrating the virtues and availability of Free and Open Source Software.

SFD 2006 will be the third time that Linux Users of Victoria (LUV) take Software Freedom to the streets since the annual event was made a tradition in 2004. This year, LUV will host a free installfest and barbeque at the Unitarian church in East Melbourne, providing expert assistance to Linux newbies wanting a first taste of open source technologies.

At Melbourne Town Hall, Computerbank Victoria is organising a Software Freedom Day Bazaar that features a kids' software demo zone, a geek fashion show, a world record attempt at having the most laptops running from Live Linux CDs at one time, and, of course, the opportunity to network with important members of the Melbourne-based FOSS community.

"It's a great way to find out about Free and Open Source Software," said Donna Benjamin of Open Source Victoria, one of the Melbourne-based organisers of SFD 2006. "It's a great family activity, a non geeky end of things. It's fun and informative.

"The most exciting thing about SFD this year is the fact that I'm hearing about stuff that's happening around the world - in Kenya, Nepal, New Zealand, South Africa - it's fantastic to be involved in such a grassroots, community driven event."

The third team will be celebrating SFD at Victorian School of Languages in Box Hill, where the Dutch class will commemorate free software, such as Audacity, that has assisted their learning of languages.

Other schools taking part this year include St Michael's Grammar School, and Westall Secondary College.

"Westall is one of the most disadvantaged schools in Australia, so for them, Free and Open Source Software is fantastic," Benjamin said. "St Michael's is one of the more privileged schools, and they've been using Free and Open Source Software for teaching programming."

The participation of these two schools demonstrates the spectrum of FOSS users, she said.