Voice Recognition and IVR's. In Studio Guest: Jason Stirling Voice recognition has come along way in recent times, but is it up to scratch in the commercial world. In the world of biometrics, what would you say if your voice held the key to your identity? Jason Stirling from Genesys will be in to tell us what's now possible. Has the fingerprint been surpassed by the voice? Find out. Social Networking with Muhammad Saleem Lidija Davis, our Silicon Valley correspondent, speaks with Muhammad Saleem, one of the worlds most influential bloggers. Lid says everything Muhammad diggs, goes gold. So if you're interested in how sites like Digg and StumbleUpon work for both personal and commercial use, especially if you want to use social networking sites to communicate with a specific target market, be sure to tune in. Muhammad finished his degree in economics along with a minor in Slavic languages and literature (with a focus on Russian) at The University of Chicago in June, ‘07. He spent most of his free time on various social bookmarking and networking sites, writing about social media and socially driven content. He started his writing career for the MU life, covering social media, however, after joining Pronet Advertising he stopped maintaining the former site and moved that content to this site. He has also written for The Blog Herald and 901 am. and more recently for Copyblogger, Searchengineland, ReadWriteWeb, our own Problogger, and TechCrunch, Centernetwork, PickTheBrain, and BloggingExperiment. Also on the show this week Conroy and Telstra go head to head over the Rudd Government's ultimatum to hand over detailed plans of its entire network operations to rivals hoping to bid against it in a tender for the $8 billion national broadband scheme, Apple started shipping its first-ever wireless storage appliance, dubbed Time Capsule We'll give you a few reasons to upgrade your wireless technology to the new 802.11n standard, and Adam Turner turns his attention to Apple's iPod Touch, the iPhone to have when you don't have a mobile phone network to support it, and Youtube off air globally last weekend!

HD DVD RIP? It's all over bar the shouting now, and wouldn't you be annoyed of you'd invested your hard earned cash into a HD DVD player! Australian consumers who purchased now moribund Toshiba HD DVD players will receive no form of refund after the company officially announced its exit from the high definition format war. In a recent press release, Toshiba confirmed it's much-speculated exit and announced that come mid march all HD DVD shipments would cease. Toshiba Australia's information systems general manager Mark Whittard said only a few thousand HD DVD players have been sold locally. Toshiba will now push the 'benefits' of its HD DVD players, including the ability to play CDs and DVDs, and internet connectivity that could possibly be used for video streaming in the future. So where does ths leave Bluray? JB Hi-Fi chief executive Richard Uechtritz was reported to say "You're talking three to five years before we start to see Blu-ray outpace standard DVD" Blu-ray libraries are slowly growing, but it can still be tricky to find Blu-ray movies for rent at the local video shop. Don't forget that this is the format that supports High Definition recordings, and the take up of HD in this country is somewhat slow. The writing was on the wall some time ago in Australia, and figures from market analyst GfK show that in 2007, Australians bought 177,000 Blu-ray movies and just 35,000 on HD DVD. So this now puts the dilemma of another Betamax / VHS format war behind us, and we can now all see clearly into the High Definition living room. Also on the show this week What happens now after Toshiba's unceremonious exit from the HD DVD arena? Dodo complaint handling triggers ACMA investigation ABC boosts mobile offering Scammers dressing up as Telstra workers and Telstra 'needlessly denied consumers on ADSL2+'

If you have children or teenagers in the family, chances are they're more proficient on the technology front than you are. After all, which teenager doesn't have a mobile phone or MySpace account these days? Have you ever stopped to wonder what they're doing with this technology? Recent reports have revealed the growing number of children and young people using technology: * 93% of teenagers use the Internet, * 84% use chat rooms daily, * 59% of children use a mobile phone, and * 33% of children aged 8 or 9 started using the Net at the age of 5 or 6. With the ever increasing reports of online preditors and identity theft, just how safe are your kids online? We teach our kids to read and write, we teach our kids to swim, we even teach our kids to drive a cars, but who teaches our kids to stay safe in the online world? The Telstra Foundation has put up $2m in grants to help protect our kids in cyberspace. Today we’ll take a look at where we’re at when it comes to online safety, and talk a little about helping your kids preventing identity theft. Georgia Simmons form the Telstra Foundation will bein to tell us about the $2m allocated to grants to protect people online. We promoted Susan McClean from Victoria Police coming in to the studio, but unfortunately she is unable to attend this week. Apple patches Leopard... for the second time. The latest security updates fix 11 bugs in the Mac Operating system, including eight bugs in the recently released Mac OS X 10.5, known as "Leopard." Apple released the security fixes in conjunction with a 10.5.2 update to Leopard, which includes dozens of other updates. Some of the security flaws are extremely serious, and could be exploited by hackers to run unauthorized software on a victim's computer, although Apple did not report any incidents of this occurring. The 10.5.2 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac. Beware, the 10.5.2 combo download is a small 343Mb Toshiba to give up on HD DVD, says Reuters The format war for next-generation DVDs may be over: Blu-ray is the winner. And now wait for the fallout. Firefox Beta 3 R3 Mozilla has released beta 3 of Firefox 3.0, with around 1300 ‘individual changes’ from beta 2, with fixes for stability, performance, memory usage, platform enhancements and user interface improvements. Also on the show this week BlackBerry's future lies in social networking Telstra gets AU$1 billion 'secret documents' wish Mobile data cash set to eclipse voice Victorian man avoids 'Facebook' defamation Underbelly online a hit in Vic Adam Turner sells the virtues of a good backup system

Telstra gives ADSL2+ a green light, but what's the catch? Telstra has graciously decided to turn on ADSL2+ in 900 exchanges across Australia, but the cynics amongst us smell a rat! A press release titled: More high-speed broadband after Government removes roadblock was published on the company's website on February 6, but strangely didn't make it in the email version, which is sent out to journalists. The announcement was made in Canberra last Wednesday by Telstra Boss Sol Trujillo, with Kevin Rudd and Steven Conroy. According to the Press Release, ADSL2 is now going to be turned on in 900 exchanges because the Government gave Telstra an assurance that it would not regulate 3rd party access to the service. Telstra has been seeking this assurance for over one year. Some history is required here... The ACCC has stated time and time again that ADSL2 services are unregulated and should stay that way. Also, the ACCC has legislative powers to regulate this service if it so desires, and the Federal Government can give no guarantee that it will not be regulated. So what's going on here then? Why, all of a sudden, has Telstra turned on ADSL2+ when it's dug its heels in for so long? It just doesn't add up! Are Rudd and Conroy doing back room deals? Don't get me wrong, it's great news for all Australian's, but what's the catch? Apple iPod Touch and iPhone capacity doubles! The iPod Touch capacity has been doubled to 32GB for $629. That device is now available in three versions, with Apple Australia also selling a 16GB model for $499 and an 8GB model for $399. Federal Government to slash IT spending The Labor Government has taken a blade to some of the previous government's pre-election promises for the 2007-08 fiscal year, including $30 million from the federal technology budget. Labor will cut $642.9 million worth of funding promised by the former Government, affecting environmental, cultural, communications, and technology initiatives. Cuts to technology related spending, include marketing dollars for the controversial NetAlert program, amount to $30 million. According to Tanner $6.4 million will be slashed from the NetAlert program's education ($700,000) and advertising ($5.7) million budget. The initial cost of NetAlert, announced by the Coalition Government in August last year, was $187 million. While $84 million was spent on filtering technology, $22 million was allocated to an awareness scheme to inform parents. Other IT cuts include $6.7 million from the Telecommunications Improvement and Procurement project, and 5 million each from the Innovation Ambassador program, and the establishment of the APAC Network for Energy Technology program. Massive service disruptions to ADSL services If you've looked out of a window where you live recently and saw heavy rain followed by odd behaviour/no behaviour from your ADSL service, be advised that Telstra is under extreme pressure to remedy an escalating number of line and exchange faults caused by weather conditions. The situation is explained here Also on the show this week Youtube to profit split advertising revenue with top content generators Rural NSW Vodafone users stuck without mobile service for almost a week Mobiles and cancer are back in the news again More on the Microsoft $44bn offer for Yahoo and The price of the Xbox 360 heads south in a big way

Microsoft to buy Yahoo in an effort to slow the Google Juggernaut. Watch Video Goolge's response: "This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation." David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer. His full response makes for interesting reading. This week on the show, Telstra has been forced to delay the switch off of its CDMA network until April 28 this year because the government didn’t feel the replacement next G network was up to scratch. If you’re a Microsoft Windows XP user and are running a non genuine version or you just forget install the latest service packs, then you’re one of many, in the sights of hackers. According to Bitdefender, the majority of threats last month targeted a Microsoft Windows graphics vulnerability that was patched post-Windows Service Pack 2. More about this in the show. We’ll also give you and update in the HD DVD / Bluray war as HDDVD takes another blow, And Macworld 2008 was somewhat of a non event compared to 2007, the showpiece this year being the ultra slim, light weight notebook. We’ll have a look at the good, bad and the ugly from Macworld 20008. Also – Firefox 3 beta 2 is out, AOL threatens to launch an Australian Portal, eBay tweaks worry sellers, Foxtel to launch HD. Egyptian internet outage a godsend to everyday Australian’s, and technology and banking take another step forward. There’s all the usual segments plus a new jargon busting segment on Australia’s premier tech talk show, Tech Talk Radio.

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