At the current growth rate of online publishing, in ten years time, a monthly magazine subscription will turn up in your email inbox as well as on your doormat. Initially, printers were fearful of the emerging technology, but many have since recognized the added value it can give to clients.

For example, Pensord prints specialist magazines, but in June it unveiled a new online magazine division designed to allow publishers to develop brands outside their traditional readership. They made this move in order to offer an added-value service and the opportunity to increase the relationship with their publishing clients. Digital editions provide a small and profitable revenue stream. Online publishing has been around for years but it was two years ago that it seemed to turn a corner in its evolution. Dennis Publishing launched Monkey, an online-only title, while NatMags unveiled Jellyfish, an Internet magazine aimed at teenage girls. Even though Jellyfish folded last August, the market is maturing.

Monkey is still going strong and Dennis launched online gadget magazine iGizmo in March of this year and an automotive title called iMotor last month. What all of these examples have in common is that they turned to Ceros to implement their digital publications. The company is a subsidiary of Fresh Media Group and has developed clickable page-turning technology to replicate the look of a magazine. However, online interactivity needs to be provided in order to have a compelling product.

A couple of days ago, Absolute Software, the leading provider of laptop theft recovery, announced that it is to begin using GPS features on correctly enabled laptops. This will allow them to track laptops within a range of 10 metres. Not only the current location, but the history of where the laptop has been as well.

According to the press release, “IT Asset Managers and compliance personnel can:

* Track and manage computers on the LAN or in the field
* Remotely delete sensitive information for regulatory compliance
* Easily inventory all computers regardless of their location
* Remotely inventory software licenses
* Detect hardware changes or prohibited software installations”.

At first you may be taken aback by this technical idea, which may help you to find a stolen laptop, but is this software really a helping hand, or is it a watchful eye?

The software tracks your every move. What if somebody happens to gain access to your account? The hacker then has the location of a potentially expensive laptop, and even worse, you. Obviously, this information could be used to carry out a theft or other crime. To me, that seems like quite a dangerous aspect of this service.

Two IT-themed projects shared the $25,000 runners-up award in the Australian National University’s Innovation ANU program – a staged business and commercialization development program for ANU staff and students. The winner of the Innovation ANU was a start-up pharmaceutical company called Cardishield, which is re-developing an existing drug for treating heart attacks.

The program also provided a sneak peek at Australia’s first local challenger to the very popular and lucrative online photo sharing sites like Flickr and Photobucket. Innovation ANU provided participants with seminars and workshops on commercialization and business planning, mentoring and guidance from professionals, and opportunities to collaborate with in an interdisciplinary team. The competition was designed to “transform the talent, creativity, and energy into tomorrow’s leading business and commercialization ideas with two top proposals receiving $25,000 financial, legal and patent advice from top local firms.

Photos Inkorporated and One Corp were announced joint runners-up at an awards ceremony dinner at ANU in Canberra. Photos Inkorporated will be a freely participatory community photo-sharing Web site deriving revenue from subscriptions, printing, photo storage, stock photo sales, and advertising. The One Corp project is a company proposing a revolutionary concept of providing a free online system that instantly retrieves and organizes consumers’ transaction records.

As a communist state, the Chinese people are often denied freedoms that other democratic countries can take for granted.

The internet is a buzzing outlet for freedom of speech, and is a pinnacle of the free world. The Chinese administration has recognised the internet as a threat to their communist rule.

Many sites have been blocked, like those that discuss freedom of speech, and promote human rights.

The reason for withholding access to the BBC’s China site is probably because the administration controls many news sources within China and they don’t want the news from foreign democratic states influencing the Chinese citizens.

It is not a coincidence that this has happened just before they host the Olympics, it seems the almighty Chinese government are people pleasing on a socio-economic level.

The Large Hadron Collider located on the French-Swiss border is the world’s largest scientific experiment.

Scientists working for CERN, the corporation undertaking this experiment have managed to cool the apparatus near absolute zero.

The aim of the experiment is to simulate and recreate the conditions of deep space, i.e. at the moment of creation.

The reason for the extremely low temperatures is that, in deep space it is obviously very cold, so to get an accurate simulation, these conditions need to be recreated.

The machine will shortly begin firing particles at close to the speed of light, when these particles collide, a new particle should be created, and this will be called the ‘God particle’.

The problem is, scientists are unsure how this particle will behave. Some say it will create a black hole!!