Rumours have that Microsoft could be adding "Private browsing" - also known as "porn mode" - to Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. This was one of the features during the development in Firefox 3, however ended up being pulled - and Safari has already had the feature in 2005.

It has already filed for two trademarks for CLEARTRACKS and INPRIVATE. CLEARTRACKS is stated to be a computer program "computer programs for accessing and using the Internet and the world wide web; and computer programs for deleting search history after accessing websites".

INPRIVATE, however, is stated to be a program "for accessing and using the Internet and the world wide web; computer programs for disabling the history and file caching features of a web browser; and computer software for notifying a user of a web browser when others are tracking web use and for controlling the information others can access about such use".

So, would this porn mode make you use IE8? Comment Below!

Source: istartedsomething, ZDNet

Until now, customers on 3 have only been allowed to use their network for 3G, and anyone who roamed outside of that would be using Telstra’s 2G network. While the carrier will be extending its coverage, it will also provide Telstra’s coverage if a customer roams into an area where 3 does not carry their service.

The new sites that have said to receive the new, extended coverage will include NSW’s Newcastle and the Central Coast; and Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

However, since Telstra and 3 use different frequencies, phones will need to be able to use both frequencies for this plan to work. However, since the deal will start next year, 3 has some time to fix that problem - as many of its phones can support both, but only 2100MHz has been set for the phone.

As well, roaming prices will drop; but there is no information about the new prices.

The Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte has to be the best looking phone I have seen in a while. The Nokia 8800 series has currently two editions - the original and the Sirocco Edition, and will add another one to its line - this one.

The new model is built with Carbon fibre with 3D patterns, sculpted shapes and unique textures to make the phone’s design. It still will have the 8800’s slide design, but will have an OLED display, with a 4GB built in memory, a 3.2 megapixel camera and anti-fingerprint coating on the metal and glass.

However, there is a cost for this phone - €1,100 before the taxes and carrier subsidies. You can expect that the cost was mainly due to the metal, but if you want to appear rich, you might as well start saving.

The phone is expected to be released in Q3. Photos of the phone are after the jump (click the Read More link).

After losing the format war against Sony (remember, the HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray thing), Toshiba has released its new XD-E500. The good things is that it uses Toshiba’s new eXtended Detail Enhancement technology (EDE) - which basically upconverts to fill the void between those upconverting players and Blu-Ray; and it costs US$150.

However, it does not play Blu-Ray; and Toshiba did not try to compare the new player with a Blu-Ray player, but compared it with a unnamed $70 upscaler.

Source: Engadget

Pastor David Ally, from the Mountain of the Lord Christian Church in Mount Morgan, bought the domain names of annabligh.org and annabligh.net in September of 2007, when Bligh took over the role from Peter Beattie. This now allows him to create websites and email addresses using the domain name.

His reasoning - they were available. Telling AAP, he said that, "I actually could not believe that these domains were not taken last year, so I bought them simply because they had not been taken."

Queenslanders are facing an election next year, and Alley has not decided if he will be using them during the campaign. The domain annabligh.com has already been bought - by the Queensland Government, and has not used it.

Tapper joined the South Australian-based internet service provider in 1998, after working with Greater Union, Village Roadshow and EMI.

Another reorganisation includes the creation of CFO, which will be taken by former financial controller Sean Habgood - who has been with the company with four years, two in his previous title. The financial controller role will be given to Bruce Davy.

The company has also announced that they will be looking for a chief information officer (CIO) for the ISP soon.

If you are have, or going to get a Blackberry Bold; you might want to reconsider if you have butterfingers. The phone is, apparently, very fragile as it does not like the concrete once you drop it from two metres.

Oh, and you thought that bezel was real metal; well, you are wrong - it’s not. But the good news is, if you manage to make a skin for the phone, then you’ll be rich!

You can view the rest of the gallery of images here.

"We’re approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision," he said to the Washington Post. "This is like a last stand for webcasting."

This comes as web radio stations will pay music royalties higher than their satellite counterparts; with the terrestrial radio stations pay nothing to play songs from the record labels. By 2010, Pandora and other internet stations will need to pay 2.91 cents per hour per listener. Satellite royalties are 1.6 cents per hour per listener.

According to Westergren, Pandora pays around 70% of their $25 million in yearly revenues just to pay for the royalty fees - and that is driving them out of business; with the music industry saying its the radio stations fault and suggest that they find other ways to make revenue - which is kind of funny, because its not true.

Of course, this is just another way that the record labels are ‘compensating’ for their ‘lost revenue’ because of the internet. As well, this is also ridiculous as there a different pricing plans for terrestrial, satellite and internet radio. At least internet broadcasters are doing something legitimate and legal, because many others just don’t give a crap about royalties.

The new Palm Pro has got more information leaked, including with this photo. We don’t know if this is real - but I can tell you it looks absolutely sexy - but my eyes are still on the Blackberry Bold. As well, you can tell this is going to support Windows Mobile - by that Windows logo on the top left from the ‘Palm’ button.

Here are some other specks we have heard:

• 400Mhz CPU with 256 ROM and 128MB of Ram
• 320 x 320 screen
• GPS
• Full tri-band 3G, Quad-band GSM
• 2 megapixel camera
• Micro USB connector
• 3.5mm Headphone jack, with headphones included
• Support for MicroSD up to 32GB
• HTC Task Manager
• Qualcomm 7201 Chipset

Source: CrunchGear, Engadget, Palm Info Center

Ten HD, Teh Sucks (18/12/07) - Ten HD had launched at that time in Wollongong (under a different name) and he hates the experience.

Flashdance around the playback (08/04/08) - Before iView, there was ABC Playback; and it got me so mad that it was useless, until they revamped it and made it usable again.

The Blogger’s Code (10/04/07) - I hated the blogger’s code of conduct; but now, maybe I’m changing - no wait, I still hate it.

Welcome to the Rapture (21/11/07) - Read Kenny Yeoh’s take on the most popular game of 2007, Bioshock. Does he like it, or not - you just got to read it to find out.

Glide your crap … (24/04/07) - I find that this had to be the worst service ever; and it was so complicated, I just gave up on it, ignored it and had to return to it to finish the review.

Ping.FM review (16/08/08) - We finish off with the latest review, and also the service that I like the most. A good service, a good interface and it does what it says.

Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela launched appeals to the decision, but failed to get the support of two thirds of the members of the ISO, who represent their technical boards.

OOXML is the latest file formats that Office 2007 use, along with Office for Mac 2008. It can be read on Office 2003/2004 for Mac - with a patch to the application.

Source: The Register

But it would not be a celebration without a special recollection of our favourite posts:

Idiot buys US$999 iPhone app, tries to get his money back (08/08/2008) - This has to be one of the most hilarious things that has happened this year alone. I mean, why would you buy a $999 iPhone application - or in his case, stupid enough to ‘joking’ clicked on the buy link.

Major Outage in QLD (15/07/08) - Optus made a big screw up after an outage in one of its exchanges crashed and caused the entire telecommunications network in Queensland to fail. This is one of Stewart’s favourite posts.

Google’s April Fools Joke! (01/04/07 - in the US) - Google’s April Fools Joke about a internet connection made from your toilet. Now that’s innovation!

Late Night Screw Up! (28/06/08) - Optus screws up my internet usage meter, and who better to report the screw up is Stewart Wilson.

Apple offers TV Shows on iTunes - Finally! (24/06/08) - Apple finally makes a move to bring television shows to Australian viewers. Too bad we had to spoil on their parade.

Our Entire Election 2007 Coverage (24/11/07) - Kevin Rudd v. John Howard. Who would win? Covered on TECHGEEK and Twitter, it brought some new found respect on our part. Now only if we had those laptops…

The four songs include the title track, the first single from the album - ‘Sexy Boots’, ‘Moment of Surrender’ and ‘For Your Love’. Of course, the track is most likely to be poor, but many U2 fans are likely not to care about it. Hey, at least its better than a leaked album …

… which is, again, most likely to happen before the release date - in November.

If you are like me - an addict of social networking sites - then this site is a must-look.

Ping.FM will allow you to post the same message on your friends over at Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook, MySpace, and many other services. While it does not say anything to cure that crippling addiction to social networking - well for me at least - it is a very good Web 2.0 service.

You might want to read the review, because at the end of the review, we will give you the invite code to sign up and start using this excellent service.

Ping.FM does what it does, pinging messages to many different services. We’ve tested it with Plurk, Twitter and Pownce, and they all have the same message - but Twitter is more likely to receive the message much faster than the others. The interface is not distracting, nor does it visually impair the site.

Like I said, this can ping messages to the social networking services - and the list is expanding. At the time of writing, they have 21 services available for you, with a choice to add your own domain. And not only does it have a lot of services that it can ping to, it has many ways for you to send that message that you want to ping - with e-mail messages, instant messaging bots, a Facebook application, a iGoogle Gadget and via the web from either your browser, iPhone or mobile device.

To me, this service is just getting better; and it looks like people are happy. It has a strong community, and is more likely to succeed then drop flat-out into the ditch. It’s just a couple of months old, but it feels like the site has been around for years. It is useful for me because sometimes, I want to make a public notice to everyone; but I need a way to do it - and this can do it for me.

And now for the crucial bit - your invite code. The invite code is vivalaping. Now just head over to the sign up page and put that to gain access. Trust me, you will not be disappointed.

The eventual winners were Drew Ginn and Duncan Free; from the Australian team (GO AUSTRALIA!!!). Canada came second, thanks to David Calder and Scott Frandsen; and New Zealand finished with bronze, thanks to Nathan Twaddle and George Bridgewater.

The Aussies posted a 6:37.44, while the ConnectU twins finished the round with a 7:05.58. Germany placed fourth and South Africa placed fifth.

The ConnectU founders had just recently settled a lawsuit against Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, accusing him of stealing their plan and code for the site while the three were students at Harvard and Zuckerberg was hired as a programmer.

Australia, as of 10:30PM on the 16/08/08, is placed fourth with 7 gold, 8 silver and 10 bronze - just beating Japan (who is fifth) in the tally. China is ranked first with 27 gold, US is second with 16 gold and Germany is placed fourth with 8 gold.

In a preliminarily report, it showed that Optus had the slowest network by a significant margin between it and its rivals, especially Telstra and 3.

Times to ping to a Sydney-base server on an Optus network was 898ms; while Telstra took 214ms, Vodafone took 258ms and 3 (which does not sell the iPhone, but offering its network for the phone) took 151ms.

While Optus has refused to report on the report; Novosel said the results was based on 470 tests in various locations, though Optus is disputing it.

While Apple has stubbornly refused to comment on the problem, it has been under pressure to break its ‘code’ of silence as users worldwide are complaining on sites and its own discussion board of poor reception, slow speeds and dropped calls. Poor reception problems are happening in areas where there is good coverage; however, it does not affect other phones.

Vodafone has said that it was working with Apple to find a fix. Internationally, T-Mobile has blamed the iPhone reception problems on Apple.

However, users can use the UK number (+44 762 480 1423) to send updates to the site, but won’t give any updates to users. Twitter has also recommended the use of Twitter mobile or any third-party client like TwitterBerry, Twitterrific, TwitterMail or Cellity.

The company’s US, Canada and India’s numbers are not affected by the move as they have find a "sustainable" agreements. As well, Australian users are not happy with the move.

"It was bad enough to be forced to use the UK number. Now, it appears that Australian twitter users are completely invisible," one of the comments posted on the blog post.

Co-founder Biz Stone has written at a blog post that they are still negotiating with operators in Australia - as well in Asia and China.

Pay TV provider Foxtel has said that it had posted a 17 percent lift in revenue, meaning that its total revenue is at $1.7 billion; and has said that there has been an increased take-up of additional services by the existing subscribers - increasing the average revenue per user (ARPU) to nearly $85 a month.

As well, its high definition service - released in June of this year - has been a major success; with nearly 40,000 subscribers joining the service. Foxtel HD+ sees five high definition channels being available, a new Foxtel iQ2 DVR and the Foxtel Box Office in high definition.

As well, there will be additional channels next year; once a new satellite is up and running so more content can be push through. The BBC, via BBC Worldwide, will launch two new channels on Foxtel - BBC Knowledge, a documentary channel, and CBeebies, a education children’s channel.

This will bring the current offering from BBC Worldwide to five - including BBC World News, BBC HD and UKTV.

Atom-based laptops were not allowed to use the Centrino Atom brand as these devices use a different version of the processor and uses a traditional two-chip chipset. Centrino is the brand that is specifically used for laptop chipsets.

Source: PC World