“This is the original concept shot for Fruit Ninja which was pitched to the company during Halfbrick Fridays. This is literally the very first piece of Fruit Ninja imagery ever created, so it’s historically significant,” Halfbrick Studio‘s Chief Marketing Officer Phil Larsen said in an email to me last week after I interviewed him and his colleague Richard McKinney, the… → Read More
Three American companies-Apple, Microsoft and Adobe-have been summoned by the Australian Parliament to explain why they charge higher prices Down Under than in other countries. → Read More
Pandora has fully launched in Australia and New Zealand, the only two places outside of the U.S. where the service is available in its entirety, with the addition of mobile access via iOS and Android apps today. Previously, the service was available in a limited form in both countries thanks to a web-only access trial, but now smartphone users can get in on the action. → Read More
Electronic Arts announced today that it is merging two top mobile game studios, IronMonkey and Firemint, which will fittingly combine to create a new company, called Firemonkeys. (All parties are awarded 50 points for the awesome portmanteau.)
For those unfamiliar, IronMonkey is probably best known for adapting popular EA titles to mobile, like Mass Effect Infiltrator, Dead Space, and The Sims… → Read More
The finals of Microsoft’ Imagine Cup, the world’s largest student technology competition, are taking place in Sydney this week and StethoCloud, the Melbourne-based home team, is definitely making a good case for Australia’s growing tech scene. The competition’s theme challenged students to build apps that “help solve the toughest problems” and the Australian team decided to tackle childhood… → Read More
Here in the States, we’re usually fine with faux-G being called 4G. T-Mobile does it with its HSPA+ service, and AT&T called it’s HSPA+ 4G for a long time too before it rolled out LTE. But I guess people are more picky down under, where the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had accused Apple of misleading the public with its iPad ads touting 4G service.
According to The… → Read More
Getting a new laptop or buying a new license for an operating system is often cheaper in the U.S. than in most other countries. Europeans, for example, are used to paying a hefty premium for Apple products and the situation is similar in Australia, where the cheapest MacBook Air currently costs about 15% more than in the United States. Now, however, the Australian government is starting a… → Read More
Looks like we may see another development today in Apple’s ongoing iPad/4G controversy in Australia. The country’s Competition and Consumer Commission is meeting with Apple in court again today to try to get Apple to officially change the name of the device when it is sold in Australia.
Although many people know it as “the new iPad” since launching the product in March, Apple has also been… → Read More
Australia’s Classification Review Board has refused to rate the upcoming Mortal Kombat re-boot. Without a rating, the game cannot be sold there, ie, the game is effectively banned down under. → Read More
Australia’s Special Broadband Service has warned that the steady increase in broadband speed, and its increasing availability, may lead to “digital ghettos.” The premise is simple: faster and more reliable broadband means that more and more people can participate effectively online. As affordable broadband access spreads to different ethnic groups, argues the SBS, these communities could form… → Read More
Here’s a fascinating privacy debate for y’all to chew on this Friday afternoon. A public official in Australia was sacked after it was discovered that he had searched for “knockers” on his work-provided computer. The computer had been running monitoring software, Spector360, that took screenshots every 30 seconds, so it found him looking for “knockers” even though he had deleted his… → Read More
Sony 1, Linux users 0. A court in Australia has ruled against a man who had brought suit against Sony for removing the Other OS feature from the PS3. (That was done ostensibly to prevent piracy. Hmm.) The court ruled that Sony was acting within its rights to remove the feature. → Read More
Not the biggest story in the world today—it is transfer deadline day, after all—but it looks like the big Sony PS3 modchip courtroom smackdown has been delayed by a few days. The judge who was supposed to preside over the case didn’t show up today (it’ 9pm in Sydney as of this writing), thus the hearing has been moved back to Friday, September 3. → Read More
I’ll keep this short and to the point, if only because I’m sensing the “outrage” surrounding DRM has sorta died down. The movement ran out of fuel, I mean. Anyway, gamers in Australia have been unable to play Settlers 7, which uses that silly DRM nonsense that requires you be to constantly connected to the Internet, because Ubisoft‘s servers have been unreachable. Who saw this coming? Oh, right… → Read More
What do I know about Australia? Not much—I know Jim Jeffries is from there. In recent years, Australia to me has always been associated with weird censorship and video games being banned left and right. Those days may soon be behind us, as Australia seems to be inching closer toward an R18+ rating for video games. That would mean that, instead of outright banning violent games, they could… → Read More
Man, what’s up with Australia? I think we’ve touched on the country’s plan to block all sorts of unwanted content from reaching the country’s computers, but now Google and Yahoo have officially come out against it. Surely Google knows a thing or two about battling state-sponsored Internet censorship. → Read More
Pretty fascinating story coming out of Australia this fine day. (Well yesterday. Or time zones. I don’t know.) A research outfit there has won a AUS$1.01 million grant from the government to develop a 3D surveillance system that has been described as “Doom-like.” Someone call Anthony Cumia, he could use something like that. → Read More
There’s almost a comedy about this next story: Australia has banned another video game because it’s too violent. (What is it with Australia and banning violent video games?) The game is CrimeCraft, and it has been refused classification by the ratings board down there. → Read More
Australia’s crazy anti-violent video game restrictions strike again! Valve submitted Left 4 Dead 2 (aren’t we boycotting that game?) to whatever board is in charge of rating video games down there, and the board replied with this: yeah, this game is too violent for anyone under the age of 18. → Read More
Sorry Australia, apparently you can’t handle the zombie killing action and gore of Left 4 Dead 2. Nope, the government has decided that the graphic violence and gore, is just a little too much for the delicate sensibilities of the people of the land down under. Well, you won’t be able to buy it at a retail outlet at least. → Read More
Here’s a fun story. Police in Australia thought they were being mighty clever when they took over an “underground hacking forum.” (The forum is r00t-y0u.org, though it seems to be down right now.) One of the hackers on the forum then retaliated by breaking into police computers using a simple SQL injection. Security fail. → Read More
Talk about perspective. On this day when Manchester United announced that it had accepted Real Madrid’s £80m bid for Cristiano Ronaldo (who will make something like €211,000 per week in Spain), we here at CG now turn our attention to the efforts being made to improve literacy. One Laptop Per Child—remember them?—has been handing out free laptops to children on Elcho Island, an… → Read More
A recent poll by the Australian Communications and Media Authority found that 90% of Australian children aged 15 and older own a mobile phone. This number could be higher or lower in other countries, but I suspect it’s on par with what you’d expect in the U.S. as well. → Read More
Yesterday’s revelation that China blocks access to YouTube should not have come as any surprise, but did you know that other countries censor the Internet in their own special ways? (Happy families are all alike!) For example, did you know that India’s Computer Emergency Response Team’s has the power to block Web sites wily nilly? Ostensibly it was set up to help eliminate terrorist-realted sites… → Read More
Australia looks to be moving ahead with its plan to censor Internet content on a country-wide level, and will test its array of filters later this month. To refresh your memory, the Australian government wants to block access to illegal material on the Internet, be it genuinely awful material like child pornography or something more controversial like terrorist Web sites. (Who’s a… → Read More
Australia, land of kangaroos and terrible actors, must be beaming today, what with the news that someone there was able to overclock an Intel Atom processor to 2.38GHz. That’s the fastest we’ve ever seen an Atom run, as a matter of fact. Of course, getting the processor, found in an MSI Wind, to run that was quite the challenge, as it should be. Not since Frankenstein pieced together… → Read More
Australia looks set to join China as a state-mandated Internet censor. The measure is primarily aimed at combating online child pornography, but an open-ended statement from the government’s communications minister sounds ominous: …we are talking about mandatory blocking, where possible, of illegal material. “Where possible”? That seems pretty capricious. The government must have… → Read More
Kids, when your friend asks you to lower the volume of your computer while you’re playing World of Warcraft please do so as soon as possible. Because if you don’t you might end up getting stabbed. In the head. With a chef’s knife. That’s exactly what happened in Australia. The victim is doing about as well as one could after being attacked with a knife; only one of his… → Read More
Pending the passage of this amendment, you may be able to use that celly at 30,000ft if you’re flying Down Under. The pico cell technology has been in testing for 18 months and there have been no complaints by the airborne or landside portions of the system, so there aren’t any technical barriers. The plan is to only allow SMS and GPRS, which is awesome and neatly wraps up the problem… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
