News

Skype 5.0 for Mac beta has been released, bringing the same group chat functionality enjoyed by Skype 5.0 for Windows users for several months to Apple’s Mac OSX.

Singapore Airlines A380 flights will resume to Melbourne and Sydney after earlier grounding the aircraft for precautionary checks following the explosion of a Qantas A380 engine on a flight from Singapore yesterday.

There are three main factors that differentiate Business-to-Business (B2B) sales from Business-to-Consumer (B2C).

Restaurants charging illegal holiday surcharges have been ordered to pay a penalty of $13,200 each for breaching the all-inclusive pricing lay on their menus by the Federal Court.

Vodafone has reduced international roaming rates in New Zealand and Singapore when calling Australia, but mobile data rates while roaming on Vodafone in New Zealand still remain unacceptably high.

The Aussie dollar has surged past parity with the US dollar, reaching as high as US1.0062 after the US Federal Reserve announced that it would buy $600 billion in treasury bonds in an additional round of ‘quantitative easing’ to prevent deflation.

I’m in the midst of planning for 2011 and I know many of you will also be updating your business plans for the new year. So I thought I’d share a few insights that may help – in the form of a bit of a do’s and don’ts list. This isn’t a ‘how to’ list, it’s some key points that I wanted to highlight to get you thinking.

Optus engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct when advertising Optus Broadband’s “Thing Bigger” and “Supersonic” internet plans, the Federal Court Sydney has found.

Australians receiving tax advice from their financial planner should be aware that they will continue to remain unprotected for a further three months with delays in the recently introduced Tax Agent Services Regime, warns the National Institute of Accountants (NIA).

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has increased interest rates its range of home loan products by 0.45 percent, almost double the official interest rate rise from the Reserve Bank of Australia yesterday.

LinkedIn today announced the launch of Company Pages to help businesses of all sizes attract new customers using trusted, professional product and service recommendations.

The Melbourne Cup yesterday cost the Australian economy up to $1.239 billion in lost productivity, with over half of workers taking a half day off to watch the race.

None of us would fly on a plane that didn’t have any emergency procedures or oxygen masks in place. Yet when you are the owner of a small business it is easy to put-off installing ‘in-case-of-emergency’ measures.

Griffith University is launching a program to connect south-east Queensland small to medium businesses with skilled graduates and students called Griffith Talent.

Kogan has grown almost 50 percent in a single quarter with Ruslan Kogan using the opportunity to take a swing at rival Gerry Harvey and his bricks and mortar retail chain Harvey Norman.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will run free product safety seminars for businesses to explain the product safety system changes under the Australian Consumer Law reforms.

The high Aussie dollar and sluggish domestic demand have been blamed for further contraction in the manufacturing sector in October according to the latest Australian Industry Group – PwC Performance of Manufacturing Index.

James Packer and Lachlan Murdoch have both been offered directors positions on the Ten Network Holdings board after James Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings (CPH) increased its investment in the television network to 18 percent.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts has entered voluntary administration, with the Australian arm of the American doughnut giant placed into the hands of Sydney accounting firm Smith Hancock.

Sage Software Australia has launched Sage My Business, a cloud-based, hosted accounting package designed for small-to-medium-sized businesses.