As release timescales shrink and development is further outsourced, the software supply chain is becoming more complex and failing to achieve acceptable levels of effectiveness. A new perspective is required. [ + ]

Frankenstein robots are coming; BP's £4bn fat finger fail; Detroit's 'broken' IT system; How random is your smartphone?; Big cat 'bot can bound. [ + ]

Smart connected vehicles have the potential to improve road safety, but primitive network security systems could make them more of a danger, QUT professor Andry Rakotonirainy warns. [ + ]

Acquia has been chosen to provide the cloud platform for the GovCMS unified government web content management system. [ + ]

The explosion of mobile, social, cloud and big data is challenging all of us to come up with new customer-facing solutions. [ + ]

Australian business leaders support the government's proposed telecom data retention scheme but are calling for strong safeguards to limit the impact on legitimate consumers and businesses, a survey indicates. [ + ]

Without a well-designed and unified BYOD management strategy in place, companies risk exposing their most sensitive data to outside sources while stunting employee innovation. [ + ]

By outsourcing at least some sectors of an IT department to a service provider, the department can turn its focus back to its core business. [ + ]

Almost five million Gmail addresses and passwords have been posted online, but not everyone's convinced they're all genuine; and the ACCC says it won't stand in the way of TPG's fibre-to-the-basement plans. [ + ]

Lockheed Martin Australia, NEC Australia and other technology partners will help consolidate the Department of Defence's 280 data centres down to just 14. [ + ]

NASA's Moon computer; $47m idea that sucks; IBM's Watson could cure you; Brain-to-brain messaging; Outages galore this week. [ + ]

Apple did not surprise anybody yesterday by announcing a new smart watch, the iPhone 6 and the large-screen iPhone 6 Plus, as well as a new mobile payment service. [ + ]

Declining voice revenues and tougher competition in business data services caused the Australian fixed telecom market to decline 2.3% last year, and IDC expects the market to continue to contract. [ + ]

The Bureau of Meteorology has launched a request for tenders for a new supercomputer, which will be nearly 20 times faster than its current system, to help more accurately forecast natural disasters. [ + ]

The cloud and virtualisation are changing the data centre playing field, but the technology is not necessarily the most important aspect to consider. Reliability, support, user experience and legal issues remain critical. [ + ]