Customers flock to iPhone banking

Third party transfers and BPAY coming to iPhone.

Westpac has moved to enhance the features offered on its mobile banking application for iPhone, following a better than expected uptake by customers.
The bank is preparing to launch third party transfers and a BPAY bill payments capability, initially for existing payees, with the ability to transfer funds to new payees coming later this year.
Ean van Vuuren, Westpac head of consumer online, said the bank has been pleased with the uptake of mobile banking, with 105,000 downloads recorded since the bank launched its iPhone application in November last year.
"Sessions have grown from 80,000 a month to 150,000 a month," van Vuuren told iTNews.
The Commonwealth Bank has also seen impressive growth in mobile banking registrations and usage, with over 250,000 downloads of its iPhone application, and around 1 million logons being recorded per month. The bank launched mobile banking in March 2009.
A spokesperson for the bank told ITNews mobile banking use by its customers has doubled in the last six months, with 200,000 active users now logging on around five times per month. Around 375,000 of the bank's 2.5 million active online banking customers have used mobile banking at least once.

Westpac, the Commonwealth Bank and Bank of Queensland offer native iPhone applications to enable mobile banking. ANZ, NAB and Suncorp offer mobile banking that is compatible with the Safari browser on the Apple iPhone, as well as a range of other smartphones.
ING Direct recently joined St George Bank in offering an iPhone application that features a home loan calculator.
Bankers are also closely watching the development of applications that allow business people to use their mobile phones to accept credit card payments, such as iCCPay.
Market intelligence firm ABI Research said the number of mobile banking subscribers around the world has been doubling every year since 2008, and has predicted around 407 million people worldwide will carry out financial transactions with their banks using their mobile phones in 2015.
ABI Research senior analyst Mark Beccue said, "The Asia-Pacific region accounted for the lion's share of the world's 52.2 million mobile banking subscribers in 2009.
"The global number of subscribers more than doubled between 2008 and 2009, and is expected to almost double again in 2010. This growth can be seen everywhere, but Asia - led by India - is pushing it particularly hard."

Photos: Rolling out fibre in Australia's backbone blackspots

Regional Backbone Blackspot Program kicks off.

Nextgen Networks has begun laying the first fibre optic backbone link for the National Broadband Network (NBN) in mainland Australia, offering Communications Minister Stephen Conroy a photo op at Mt Isa in remote Queensland.
The link forms part of the Darwin, Emerald and Longreach route that connects regional centres funded by the Government's $250m NBN Regional Backbone Blackspot Program.
Nextgen Networks will lay nearly 6,000km of new backbone links along five separate routes for the program under a deal announced in December.
Mt Isa is the midway point along the 3,835km route from Darwin to Toowomba, and the longest of the five regional backbone links to be constructed under the program.
Construction of the Darwin, Mt Isa, Emerald and Longreach link is expected to take around 18 months to complete.
"One of the biggest obstacles for fast broadband in Mt Isa has been the lack of competitive fibre optic backbone services," said Senator Stephen Conroy,Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, at the launch [see photos, top right].
"Once complete, this link will allow other broadband providers to enter the market and offer faster broadband speeds, cheaper prices and more choice for people and businesses across the region."

AAPT rivals swear off unlimited market

Telstra, Optus and iiNet keep faith in existing bundles.

ISPs including Telstra, Optus and iiNet have stated that they are unlikely to match AAPT's 24/7 unlimited broadband product, believing they already had bundled offers that could effectively compete.
AAPT earlier today unveiled a $99.95 per month bundle of unlimited ADSL with no throttling, phone line rental and access to an EMI legal music library service.
The telco's chief Paul Broad believed the product would "force our major competitors to do the same thing".
But competitors contacted by iTnews were unconcerned by the move.
Several believed that unlimited usage would appeal to only a small percentage of internet users.
"Our customers overwhelmingly find that plans with defined download limits are adequate for their use, so we believe this plan will appeal only to a small segment of the market," a Telstra spokesman said.
Telstra said it had a bundle with 12 GB of downloads, home line rental "with unlimited local calls, capped rates on STD and calls to mobiles", unmetered BigPond content and "discounts on music, movies and games" for under $100 per month.
An Optus spokesman said its $129 per month ‘yes fusion' plan was comparable. It included "unlimited" broadband capped at 30 GB before it was throttled to 256 Kbps speeds, line rental and unlimited local, national and mobile calls.
iiNet's Naked Home 5 plan was put forward by its spokesman as another alternative.
It included 60 GB of downloads evenly split between peak and off-peak and shaped to 128 Kbps when the limit was exceeded, all local and national calls free on the iiTalk service, access to iiNet's content freezone, and the company's BoB hardware.
"We have had a great relationship with Apple iTunes (the world's largest music retail store)," iiNet's spokesman said.
"For some time now, downloads purchased through the Freezone don't count against quota. For $99.90 per month, customers can get a naked plan with BoB and as much music as they like from what is arguably a better catalogue and a raft of other Freezone content."
Although arguably not a competitor, Exetel chief John Linton believed the $100-a-month AAPT offer was "far too high" to be a market-breaker.
"My view of the ADSL residential market is that once you charge more than $40.00 a month for ADSL the market becomes 'resistant' with $50.00 a month the maximum for any acceptance," he said.
"Beyond $50.00 the market fades away to tiny percentages which are fine in today's markets but are almost not going to be fine as 2010 wears on."
AAPT first introduced unlimited broadband for six hours off-peak. It then doubled the unlimited offer to cover a 12-hour period before extending it to the full 24-hours in its latest announcement.
EMI deal
A key element of the new bundle was access to a new streaming and download service courtesy of a partnership brokered with EMI Music.
The offer included unlimited streaming of all EMI Australia's catalogue via its digital platform, The In Song, and $50 worth of music downloads every month.
Subscribers could stream music with no caps and throttling "and create their own playlists with their favourite songs", AAPT said.
"Existing AAPT broadband customers are able to add the Music package (unlimited music streaming and $50 monthly music downloads) to their existing plan for just $17.99," the telco said.
"AAPT has formed the partnership with EMI to offer music downloads as part of the package because we believe in supporting the music industry and paying artists for their material. It's that simple," Broad said.
"As consumers, we all have a moral responsibility to ensure recording artists receive the royalties they rightly deserve and by offering our Entertainment Bundle we're encouraging Australians to do the right thing."

Nintendo wins lawsuit over R4 mod chip piracy

Settled out of court.

EXCLUSIVE - An Australian distributor has been ordered to pay Nintendo over half a million dollars for selling  video game piracy tool, the R4 mod chip.
The Federal Court ordered that RSJ IT Solutions cease to sell the chip through its gadgetgear.com.au site and any other sites it controlled, as well as paying Nintendo $520,000 in damages.
The chip allows users to circumvent the technology protection measures Nintendo has built into its DS handheld consoles, enabling illegally pirated games to be downloaded online.
Nintendo brought the claim against the gadget accessory distributor and two affiliated respondents Patrick Li and James Li.
The court's ruling further excluded the individual respondents from selling their R4 chips anywhere in Australia, while also ordering them to pay Nintendo an additional $100,000.
They have also been required to file an affidavit by the end of this week identifying all suppliers from whom they purchased their R4 chips.
The R4 is built to fit into the game cartridge slot of Nintendo's DS, and will transfer anything saved on a flash memory chip onto the console. There are even videos on YouTube providing R4 tutorials for first-time users.
R4 chips have plagued Nintendo since their widespread adoption in 2007 and continue to be easily available online. While gadgetgear simply stocked the R4 chip, other distributors have made the piracy process even easier for consumers by pre-loading their R4 chips with ready-to-use counterfeit games.
Australian site Oz Mod Chips offers a range of products that will modify games consoles, enabling them to access pirated games. The distributor advises consumers to use their modification devices for legal reasons only, such as playing legal copies of games from different regions, using homebrew software, and playing backups of games that UPDATbeen legally purchased.
It is the second battle Nintendo has won in the Federal Court over game piracy in little over a week. On February 9,  a Brisbane man was ordered by the court to pay Nintendo $1.5 million for uploading a copy of the Super Mario Bros game for the Nintendo Wii to the internet prior to its Australian release.
UPDATE - The two parties have since informed us that the matter was settled out of court, but in such a manner that the Judge was still permitted to pass down an order. Technically, our original standfirst suggesting that the R4 chip is now illegal may be incorrect.

Operation Titstorm hits the streets

Protest planned in major Australian cities.

Operation Titstorm will hit the streets of Australian cities in a "peaceful protest" against mandatory internet censorship this Saturday.
Dubbed 'Project Freeweb', the protest is organised by members of hacker group Anonymous, which took credit for last week's prolonged DDoS attack on Australian Government websites.
Events are planned in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Newcastle and Canberra at various times on 20 February. More than ten members of Anonymous are expected to attend each event.
However, organisers expect that a majority of the protest will take place overseas. Anonymous members have been urged to lead protests at Australian embassies around the world.
"We wish to oppose this filter because we're not only representing Australia, but the world," a Project Freeweb organiser who goes by the alias 'Infinite' told iTnews.
"If passed, this legislation will set a disturbing precedent at an international level.
"The public, not the Government, should have the right to decide what is deemed appropriate for you or your family to be exposed to."
'Infinite' hoped that Project Freeweb would have more of a 'long term' effect on public perception of the filter than Operation Titstorm, which was criticised for harming more moderate efforts to campaign against internet censorship.
"Many of our number are productive, intelligent members of society," said Infinite, who is a Web designer.
"Some of the members of Anonymous, while feeling that the motivations behind Operation Titstorm were understandable and to a certain extent warranted, also felt that it cast a bad light upon the group as a whole."
Protesters have been instructed to study background information on Senator Conroy's filter plans and ACMA, and have been told not to wear masks.
While Anonymous members may be risking their post-Titstorm anonymity by appearing at the protests, 'Infinite' said that being involved in one event did not necessarily mean the individual was involved in the other.
Those involved in the DDoS attacks had taken precautions to ensure their anonymity, and many were not residents of Australia, he said.
To critics of Operation Titstorm, he said: "Anonymous understands their frustration, yet they fail to comprehend that one of the most important creations in the history of mankind is about to fall into the control of the government. And that must not happen.
"The internet must be protected at all costs. This is more than an opposition to the censorship of porn, this is the protection of our rights as human beings ... to have control over what we should be allowed to view and not have to fear a draconian censor."

Microsoft ‘RickRolls' network leechers

BitTorrent abuse forces internet policy changes.

Microsoft Australia is likely to set quotas or shape traffic on its 150 Mbps Tech Ed 2010 conference internet link, in an effort to stop users killing the network by torrenting large files.

In a blog post, network administrators Codify revealed yesterday that the conference network - which provides free WiFi to the 2,500-plus delegates each year - was "unfairly monopolised" by a small number of users at the conference last September.

Administrators created an unorthodox temporary fix to the problem during last year's event - by ‘RickRolling' the leechers.

RickRolling is a bait-and-switch phenomena where users are redirected to a music video by 80s star Rick Astley.

"We quickly built a list of all of the top torrent trackers around and got the nod from Jorke [Odolphi - a local evangelist] to add them all to the local DNS resolver and point them at a local web server containing some RickRoll scripts," Codify software engineer David Connors said.

"It killed me that I didn't see anyone getting done by this first hand, but there were hundreds of impressions in the server logs containing the the Rick Roll scripts so I did get a fair amount of satisfaction at least.

"It was the most evil of evil Rick Roll scripts too - worse than any that anyone has used to get me in the past."

Microsoft later created a script that could automatically generate a list of offending MAC addresses that was "dropped into a block list in the core switches."

The culprits were "fingered and booted off the network.

"Of course, they then just changed their MAC addresses, in which case they were then re-identified as soon as their utilisation crept up, and the new MAC was banned," Connors said.

Fun and games aside...

The episode - the first in the history of the conference, which is one of Australia's largest gatherings for the technology industry - has left a sour taste for Microsoft.

The vendor now looks set to place limits on the network connection when Tech Ed reconvenes in Queensland later this year.

"The whole thing was a bit sad for me personally, as I took it as a bit of a depressing display of the bad parts of human nature taking advantage of our deliberately liberal and generous policies on network access," Connors said.

"We've been running the network the same way since 2004 and this is the first time we've seen people take advantage of it this way.

"We don't shape the traffic on the network at all and nor do we see it as our role to police or restrict delegate use of the network (a policy that will, no doubt, change for Tech Ed 2010 based on last year)."

Windows 7 Price List India

Windows 7 OS is now available in India at much lower price in comparison to other countries.

Windows 7 operating system versions or editions:

• Windows 7 Home Basic - Entry level OS with no Aero Experience
• Windows 7 Home Premium – Complete home entertainment and multimedia solution
• Windows 7 Professional – For Business users with advance networking options and backup and restore functions
• Windows 7 Ultimate – It includes all features of Professional edition + Bitlocker encryption + Multi Language support

Windows 7 Price in India – All prices are in Indian Rupee (INR)

• Windows 7 Home Basic Price – Rs. 5,899/-
• Windows 7 Home Premium Price – Rs. 6,799/-
• Windows 7 Professional Price – Rs. 11,199/-
• Windows 7 Ultimate Price – Rs. 11,799/-

Microsoft Office 2010 Price

Microsoft office 2010 can be purchased as Retail box pack or Product Key Cards. Later is cheaper than retail box pack which contains only genuine product activation key.

Microsoft Office 2010 is available in Four editions:
Office 2010 Home and Student Edition Price: $149 for the Retail version and $119 for Key Card
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Office Web Apps
Office 2010 Home and Business Edition Price: $279 for the box, $199 for the Product Key Card.
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and Office Web Apps
Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Price: $499 for Box pack and $349 for a key
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, Access and Office Web Apps
Office 2010 Professional Academic Edition price: $99 and it includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, Access and Office Web Apps but only available to “qualified students and educators.”

Norton Internet Security 2010 Price

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Norton Antivirus 2010 Price

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Mcafee Internet Security 2010 Price in India – Rs. 1,750/- Indian Rupee (INR)

Mcafee AntiVirus Plus 2010 Price

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Mcafee AntiVirus Plus 2010 Price in India – Rs. 700/- Indian Rupee (INR)

Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 Price

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Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 Price in India – Rs. 575/- Indian Rupee (INR)

Kaspersky Antivirus 2010 Price

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Kaspersky Antivirus 2010 Price in India – Rs. 300/- Indian Rupee (INR)

AVG Internet Security 9.0 Price

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AVG Internet Security 9.0 Price in India – Rs. 1,599/- Indian Rupee (INR)

AVG Antivirus 9.0 Price

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AVG Antivirus 9.0 Price in India – Rs. 999/- Indian Rupee (INR)

F-Secure Internet Security 2010 Price

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Eset NOD32 Antivirus 4 Price – Home Edition

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Eset NOD32 Antivirus 4 Price in India – Rs. 999/- Indian Rupee (INR)

ESET Smart Security 4 Price – Home Edition

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K7 Total Security Price

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• Syncing of Windows Mobile devices
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BitDefender Internet Security 2010 Price

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BitDefender Internet Security 2010 Price in India – Rs. 1,500/- Indian Rupee (INR)

BitDefender Antivirus 2010 Price

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BitDefender Antivirus 2010 Price in India – Rs. 500/- Indian Rupee (INR)

Apple’s Prices for E-Books May Be Lower Than Expected

Maybe e-book prices won’t be rising so much after all.
Since Apple announced plans to sell digital books on its forthcoming iPad, it has been cast as something of a savior of the publishing industry for allowing e-book prices to go above the $9.99 that Amazon charges for e-books on its Kindle device, a price that publishers say is too low to sustain their business.
But as more details come to light of the actual negotiations between Apple and publishers, it appears that Apple left room to sell some of the most popular books at a discount.
When Steven P. Jobs showed off the iPad last month, he announced agreements with five of the six largest publishers to offer their content through a new iBooks application. Those publishers — the Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, the Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster — agreed to terms under which they would set e-book prices and Apple would serve as an agent to sell the books to consumers. Apple would take 30 percent of each sale, leaving 70 percent for publishers to split with authors.
Publishers indicated that e-book editions of most newly released adult general fiction and nonfiction would sell in a range from $12.99 to $14.99, under a complicated formula that pegs e-book prices to the list prices of comparable print editions. Publishers liked Apple’s deal because it resulted in a marked increase above Amazon’s $9.99 price for most new releases.
But according to at least three people with knowledge of the discussions, who spoke anonymously because of the confidentiality of the talks, Apple inserted provisions requiring publishers to discount e-book prices on best sellers — so that $12.99-to-$14.99 range was merely a ceiling; prices for some titles could be lower, even as low as Amazon’s $9.99. Essentially, Apple wants the flexibility to offer lower prices for the hottest books, those on one of the New York Times best-seller lists, which are heavily discounted in bookstores and on rival retail sites. So, for example, a book that started at $14.99 would drop to $12.99 or less once it hit the best-seller lists.
Moreover, for books where publishers offer comparable hardcover editions at a price below the typical $26, Apple wanted e-book prices to reflect the cheaper hardcover prices. These books might be priced much lower than $12.99, even if they did not hit the best-seller list.
Tom Neumayr, an Apple spokesman, declined comment.
While e-books still represent a relatively small proportion of total book sales, they are the fastest-growing part of the industry. How they are sold and priced has become a matter of fierce debate within the publishing industry.
For Amazon, the $9.99 price on new and best-selling e-books helped it market the Kindle device — which now sells for $259 — and build market share quickly. But Amazon has effectively lost money on each sale at that price because it buys and resells e-books as it purchases printed books, by paying publishers a wholesale price generally equivalent to half the list price of a print edition. That means that on a $26 hardcover book, Amazon would typically pay the publisher $13, losing just over $3 on a digital edition it sells for $9.99.
Under the agreements with Apple, both the publishers and Apple should make money on each book sale.