Don’t like the route Google Maps has given you to get somewhere? Now the map program will not only give you what it considers the “best” route, it will also let you drag and drop the suggested route to create your own customized alternate route as well.

There seems to be more news each day of how user generated videos, the former darlings of the media, are becoming a little less welcome on the Internet.

In what could possibly be one of the oddest matchups in technology history, Apple may be sniffing around a purchase of Twitter.

Vodafone representatives have declared that mobile advertising is on the upswing, whether users like it or not. With revenues from mobile ads set to reach $108 million dollars AUS within the next few years, you know the next level of assault on the consumer is set to begin. The companies, like Vodafone who are gearing up to bring these ads to the masses certainly don’t seem to care whether the consumer wants one more area of invasion or not.

In a move that will be much appreciated by many who want to register domain names for actual use, Australia is set to begin retaliating against domain squatters. Domain squatters by domains only for their salability. They never have any intention of using the domain - they simply buy it and hold it until someone who needs it comes along and offers to buy it, often for exorbitant prices.

Actor Heath Ledger, who died at a tragically young age recently, has become the latest tool in the ongoing cybercrime attacks on computer users. Cybercriminals are using fan sympathy for the actor’s death to trick unsuspecting internet users into downloading malware to their computers via bogus web sites.

Telstra has started a person to person campaign seeking converts to their new Next G technology. They plan to go door to door to people currently on the older CDMA network and try to talk to them about the virtues of switching to Next G.

Telstra is a telecommunications giant in Australia that is already involved in a number of legal battles over its services. The Australian government seems to be gearing up to be added to the list of people waging legal war against the telecommunications firm. Recently, the government put out an ad seeking legal counsel for all things related to the Telstra network roll out and any related fields, including construction of the telecom lines and more.

The Internet is a fabulous place full of both distractions and tools. Those free and low cost tools come in handy when you are trying to keep track of your life, including keeping those New Years resolutions. Much more than just a social place, the Internet can be useful in ways you never imagined.

Want to see what the search engine of the future might look like? Microsoft has it up and running now. And while the results are from Microsoft, and not Google, which might make you want to not use it, at the very least, this is a search engine you need to see!

Grey goo has infected the virtual world, with golden rings visible that once touched, start replicating. Second Life had to be shut down and cleansed of the problem before users could get access again.

The Nintendo Wii is launched in the US at last, with our own launch scheduled for December 7. All the next-generation of games consoles will be in Australia once the PS3 launches in March 2007, but the Wii will be hard to resist for purchase this Christmas!

With millions of MySpace pages featuring commercial music tracks, Universal Music have decided that they’ve had enough. Licensing negotiations between Universal and MySpace have failed, and now the lawyers have been called in to sort out the mess. 

In a bit of an oopsie daisie, Microsoft’s OneCare anti-virus and Internet Security service claimed that Google’s Gmail contained a virus. It’s yet another false positive by protective software - will we ever be rid of the false positive syndrome?

The latest browsers from Microsoft and Mozilla, IE7 and Firefox 2.0, promise to protect you from phishing sites trying to steal your data. But a new report shows just how hopeless and unreliable both browsers are at this task. Psst… we’ve found a product that does the job much, much better - and it’s free!

Remember the Opera browser? Now in version 9 for PCs, it’s free and has advanced features you won’t find in Firefox or Internet Explorer 7. It also works with a range of devices and not just PCs, meaning that ‘a night at the Opera’ can now be a 24×7 browsing experience!

Gmail’s massive 2.7Gb of email storage space, plus the integration with Gtalk, their IM software, has proved enormously popular on the Web. But even so, Yahoo Mail still has 10 times the users that Gmail enjoys. So why are Yahoo copying Google?

Mcrosoft’s long awaited follow up to their most successful software besides Windows finally goes RTM. It’s only been three years since the last version, but oh so much is different – both within Office and the suddenly hyper competitive marketplace. Can Office survive the latest threats to its dominance?

It seems these days that Microsoft’s biggest competitors are free - Windows against Linux, Office against OpenOffice, and of course Explorer against Firefox.

Microsoft is the last company in the world to finally deliver a working, reliable and free anti-spyware solution for their own OS, Windows XP. Better late than never, it works remarkably well, and for most home and small business users, is a must-download new program.