Jamelle Agbuis

The company building the national broadband network has put a call out for providers to train workers needed for the $35.9bn project.

Right now the standard for invalidating patents is pretty high, using what's called a "clear and convincing" standard, which Microsoft wanted to be "preponderance of the evidence" instead.

Despite the growth of social networking platforms and people’s increasing online presence, the resume is not dead. It is merely changing, according to leading recruiters.

Federal agriculture minister Joe Ludwig last night announced the resumption of the live export of cattle to Indonesia, which was suspended a month ago after a graphic broadcast by ABC's Four Corners showed ill-treatment of Australian cattle in Indonesian abbatoirs.

Microsoft has released a minor update to its Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite of free tools, which includes Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker and Messenger. Live Essentials 2011 build 15.4.3538.0513 is available for download now, while existing Live Essentials users will be prompted to update later this month.

For all the talk about Apple innovation, it's still old school in one respect. While Google product managers make major announcements in blog posts, usually accompanied by helpful videos, information control-freak Apple does it the old-fashion way by issuing a press release. Today it's 15 billion downloads from the App Store.

vMozilla has started the Firefox development merry-go-round again, updating its Beta, Aurora and Nightly 32-bit and 64-bit builds to versions 6, 7, and 8, respectively.

Google is in process of changing YouTube's look and feel in startling and refreshing ways. How this new experience comes to market depends in part on how users respond to it.

The Australian Dollar showed remarkable resilience during yesterday's domestic session with support holding around the 1.0670 area. Along with exporter interest, buyers of the unit included Asian central banks resulting in an intraday high of 1.0732 which came less than 24 hours after a somewhat dovish statement by the Reserve Bank of Australia on Tuesday.

Australian stocks ended flat as gains in the retail sector were offset by losses caused by uncertainty over the government's carbon price plans.

US same store sales rose by 6.5pct in June - well ahead of expectations for a 4.9pct rise. Of the 23 chain stores tracked by Thomson Reuters all but four of the chains reported an increase. The ICSC expects sales to rise by 4.5-5.5pct in July.

Beach Energy says it and its 30% partner, Cooper Energy, plans to spend $24 million on nine exploration wells in the Cooper Basin region of Central Australia.

China has lifted interest rates a third time this year and for a 5th time in the last eight months.

The Australian Dollar showed remarkable resilience during yesterday's domestic session with support holding around the 1.0670 area.

The US ISM services index eased from 54.6 to 53.3 in June, below forecasts centred on a result near 54.0. While employment rose slightly and prices paid eased, the new orders sub-component also fell.

Overnight, The Peoples Bank of China raised interest rates by 25 basis points, taking the one year lending rate to 6.56% and the one year deposit rate to 3.5%.

The multi-billion-dollar listings of QR National and Westfield Retail Trust on the Australian share market should be ignored in looking what was a weak financial year for public floats.

The next five years isn't going to be just about active users, Zuckerberg said. "The rate at which they're sharing more stuff." He said it's growing at an "exponential rate" -- "that's really profound".

Ninety-three percent of phone users downloading apps pay for games, says Nielsen. Those who pay, play. The average downloader plays 7.8 hours on his or her phone per month. By comparison, iPhone users play 14.7 hours per month -- yeah, nearly twice as much.

Queenslanders are spending $6.9m globally to push their state to the forefront in the competitive worldwide incentive travel arena.

Nestlé has confirmed it is in talks about a possible takeover of Chinese confectionery company Hsu Fu Chi.

Early this afternoon, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg debuted three new personal connection service updates -- group chat, chat redesign and video calling.

Rumors continue to indicate that the next version of the iPhone is getting ever closer to launch, with the Wall Street Journal saying sources have told the paper that orders have been placed for "key components."

Japanese beverage giant Asahi has announced takeover bids for two major Australasian beverage companies, P&N Beverages and Charlie's Juices. Asahi, which purchased Schweppes in 2009, has entered into a binding agreement to purchase 100% of shares in P&N, which it will then divide, selling the company's carbonated soft drinks and cordials arm on to Tru Blu Beverages, while retaining P&N's water and juice businesses.

Microsoft is demanding that Samsung pay it $15 in royalties for every Android phone it sells, Korea's Maeil Business Newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The US ISM services index eased from 54.6 to 53.3 in June, below forecasts centred on a result near 54.0. While employment rose slightly and prices paid eased, the new orders sub-component also fell.

They claimed that President Barack Obama had been shot while campaigning, which itself is red flag something wasn't right. What president would campaign on America's Independence Day nearly 18 months before the election?

The softness in the Australian labour market was underlined by yesterday's ANZ job ads survey for June.

No rate rise today, and possibly not in August.