SOCIAL networking giant Facebook has blocked access to the spectacularly successful Scrabulous application in the US and Canada amid legal concerns about whether the game breaches someone else’s copyright.

ACCOUNTING software giant Intuit has announced early version of both iPhone and BlackBerry integration with its QuickBooks Online service – giving small business owners access to their while on the move.

YAHOO and Intel have announced a development partnership aimed at bringing more internet-based interactivity to the standard television medium.

AS the curtain was coming down on the Beijing Olympic Games, pro-Tibet advocates claim China has blocked assess to the iTunes music store, apparently to try to limit downloads of Tibet freedom album.

ONLINE phenomenon Facebook has passed the previous phenomenon – Mypace – as the world’s most popular social networking site, more than doubling its number of users in a year.

GLOBAL roaming charges have been put under the spotlight with a new report to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy saying they are confusing and expensive.

GOOGLE has quietly offloaded its search marketing business unit Performics, which it acquired through the DoubleClick buy-out, to the global communications firm Groupe Publicis.

IN the looming shadow of the Olympic Games, Google has launched its Music Onebox service in China, a music search service that lets users download music legally on a site reportedly backed by some major record labels.

COMMUNICATIONS Minister Stephen Conroy has taken a step closer to the introduction of internet filtering, welcoming a report that says technology is now available to introduce ISP-level filters without degrading network performance.

ANY predictions that revenue growth in the Internet market was heading for a slowdown may be premature, with the Europe set to enjoy an increase in returns of more than 10 per cent in 2008, according to a leading market intelligence agency.

IT was inevitable that the toy-maker Hasbro would end up in court over the very Scrabble-like Facebook application Scrabulous.

IF online pioneer Yahoo is feeling the stress of a depressed share price and a bitter spat with both Microsoft and billionaire investor Carl Icahn, its founder and chief executive Jerry Yang keeps it well hidden.

SEARCH giant Google knows better than most just how much rubbish there is on the Web: “Vast amounts of information, but not everything worth knowing” is the way the company diplomatically phrased the situation in a statement.

AFTER a storm of privacy complaints related to a court ordering YouTube to hand over user data logs to Viacom as part of a copyright infringement battle, the companies have agreed to a compromise that will “anonymise” the data.

Viacom and the other copyright holders involved in the dispute have agreed to let YouTube hide the user ID in the massive logs of user data that tracks which users have viewed what videos – and at what time.

ON Wall Street they call it ‘the Number’, the result a company commits to reach for any given quarter. For many companies the pursuit of the number is everything, and the executives are rewarded o their ability to meet that number/

DOMINANT UK carrier BT has unveiled plans for a £1.5 billion (A$3.1 billion) plan to roll-out super-fast, fibre-based broadband services to as many as 10 million homes by 2012.

JUST a day after the regulator announced new guidelines for community broadcasters to ensure they meet licensing conditions, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has found the Ten Network in multiple breaches of it licences obligations.

THE gloves have come off in the already bloody carrier war over broadband pricing, with Optus unveiling a report that says Telstra is the most expensive company in the world for internet services.

CHANGES to network architecture as well as consumer usage patterns will increase demands on bandwidth by many orders of magnitude. And event with the current plans for network investment, networks will become choked without a rethink of how services are delivered.

TELSTRA has unveiled iPhone pricing that underlines the depth of the company’s confidence that its service is better than its competitors: It remains orders of magnitude more expensive than rivals.

APPLE has unveiled an online store selling third-party mini applications for the iPhone to coincide with the worldwide launch of the 3G version its fabulously popular iPhone device.

THE launch of the Apple iPhone in Australia is a prototypical demonstration of the better, fast, cheaper principal in action.

SEARCH goliath Google has fired a canon across the bow of virtual world pioneer Second Life, launching ‘Lively by Google’ – a service that lets users meet online to talk as 3D avatars.

A NEW generation of “adware” that refines the tracking of user behavior and sells the results to advertisers has been put under the spotlight by a powerful Senate committee in the US looking into its privacy implications.

SOFTWARE heavyweight Microsoft has thrown its weight behind billionaire investor Carl Icahn’s bid to overthrow the Yahoo board.