Erik Pineda

Popular internet auction site eBay said on Friday that as more Australians turn on online shopping, the country’s web-based retailers are experiencing growth while delivering services required by consumers who have little time for traditional purchases.

With its prepaid credit recharge system experiencing a downtime much of the whole day on Thursday, Vodafone was forced to resort on providing free calls and text services to its prepaid customers yesterday.

Sony has brought its unlimited music streaming service in Australia and New Zealand, launching on Friday its Music Unlimited that opens the door for accessing more than six million songs from its wide-ranging catalogue.

It used to be that video killed the radio star. Now another culprit is decimating an industry that used to be so secure in Australia its gradual demise is taking everyone by surprise, save of course for those who long abandoned the traditional bookshops in favour of online bookstores and publications.

The downgrade warning on Australia’s four major banks sent out on Wednesday by Moody’s will leave little effect on their standing, according to analysts, who insisted that concerns over the sluggish recovery of credit demands have overshadowed the banks’ financing issues.

Telstra Corporation’s decision on Wednesday to shut down its Moe call centre will render 114 workers out of job, leaving Latrobe Valley executives in doubt whether the soon-to-be separated employees will find replacement works within Telstra, as pledged by the telco yesterday.

Windows-powered Nokia handsets will enter the mobile industry by 2012, according to the Finnish company’s board chair, who added that more partnerships are being worked on by the phone maker besides the already sealed deals with Google and Microsoft.

Pursuant to its aim of delivering wireless services to parts of Australia yet to be reached by fibre-optics network, the National Broadband Network Company (NBN Co) inked a million-dollar deal with satellite television provider Austar.

An East African jumping spider could pitch in considerable help on Australia’s efforts in decimating the numbers of malaria-causing mosquito Anopheles Gambiae, according to a recent study conducted by a combined team of UK and Kenyan scientists.

Along with the emerging trend of traditional publications migrating to the burgeoning iPad platform, Apple has implemented its new system of automatically getting a 30 percent cut on new subscriptions availed through its publication services.

National carrier Qantas Airways saw its first-half profit for fiscal 2011 soaring by more than 400 percent and declared in a statement released on Thursday that it anticipates underlying earnings for the rest of the year to reach a materially higher level.

Vodafone has been cleared by the Privacy Commissioner of accusations that the company had permitted the data leakage of its four million subscribers but it was ruled that the telco failed to institute appropriate safeguards that would shield its clients’ information from the public eye.

The ripples spawned by the $10 billion profit achieved by BHP Billiton for only a half-year operation reached and thrilled the South Australian government, host of the resource giant’s Olympics dam expansion plan in the outback part of the state.

Microsoft once suggested that internet service providers need to block online access for computers teeming with viruses but that appeared to have changed this week.

An American radio show reportedly obtained the original recipe of famed soda drink Coca-Cola and decided to read out the full contents of the ingredients during a weekend airing.

Apple has admitted on its latest report auditing the tech firm’s contracted suppliers and manufacturers that some 91 child labourers were employed by mainly Chinese companies assembling the popular gadgets marketed by the US consumer electronics giant.

The successive record profits posted by giant mining firms BHP Billiton Ltd and Rio Tinto Ltd should further sway the government to pursue its proposed mineral resources rent tax despite the numerous recalibrations that it has undergone.

Two of the majors are now clashing head-on and soon enough, experts are expecting to see a four-corner brawl from Australia’s biggest banks, a competition that should be fierce enough it would blow some burdens away from banking clients’ shoulders.

The current cash rates in effect is the right one considering the prevailing economic indicators, which has prompted the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to keep it at 4.75 percent, according to the minutes of its board meeting on February 1.

Telstra-owned Sensis announced on Tuesday that it has been forced to axe a total of 120 staff working on its Melbourne and Sydney offices, which the Yellow Pages company was largely caused by declining revenues on its traditional printed directory business.

The federal government is happy to see that major Australian banks are starting to actually compete with each other by bringing on to the table service offerings that intend to lure more customers and in the process deliver considerable benefits to their banking clients.

The country’s winter crop is expected to produce some 19 percent more bountiful harvest this year as compared to the 2009/10 yields, this despite the flooding that ravaged large areas of Queensland and Victoria and the drought that denuded tracts of farmlands in Western Australia.

The federal government is looking to lift Australia’s compulsory employer superannuation contributions from its current level of nine percent to 12 percent by year 2020, with part of the funds to be culled from the revenues set to be delivered by the planned minerals resource rent tax.

A commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission welcomed the proposal of putting out people from the disability pension and deploying them back to the country’s workforce.

The figures most expect hover at around $9.98 billion and with that incredible amount of cashflows, many analysts are almost certain that BHP Billiton Ltd will move for a share buybacks once its financial results come out on Wednesday.

Giant telco Telstra Corporation unveiled on Tuesday its plan to boost the capability of its wireless services by upgrading to the new 4G technology, which the company said would adequately meet Australia’s growing demands for mobile data.

For more than four decades, Japan flexed its economic might and ruled as the second biggest economy in the world, next only to the United State, and that changed today as Asia’s rising sun was finally eclipsed by global factory powerhouse China.

Heralded by the aircraft maker as its airspace footprint into the future, the new Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental shed the traditional blue imprint of the old days and instead opted for a flaming red and orange colour scheme, which the company hopes will bring in more fortune and prosperity as it races against fiercest rival Airbus.

Melbourne hotel workers are up in arms as prospects of work overload loom anew on Valentine’s Day.