Australian telco IF Telecom leaks customer details via a publicly accessible server, and Google is reportedly set to buy social mapping developer Waze for more than US$1 billion. [ + ]

The Asia Cloud Forum, an online media portal, has been created to represent the interests of enterprise users, governments, telcos, vendors, policy makers and others with a stake in the development of cloud computing in Asia.

Microsoft’s latest operating system has been subject to much derision, confusion and rejection. The new tiled interface has received the greatest criticism, but perhaps Microsoft’s game is to take a longer view. [ + ]

Today, Australia is facing disruption on a number of fronts. Our resources boom is cycling down, equity is volatile and investment credit available to business is entering a new era of caution. Many eyes are looking to ICT even as technology itself continues to disrupt key areas of our lives such as health, retail, education, entertainment and even our sense of community and identity. [ + ]

The NBN asbestos debacle has deepened this week, with more dangerous sites continuing to be identified, talk of legal liability, the formation of an asbestos register and the head of one Telstra subcontractor leaving his company following the asbestos revelations. [ + ]

Adding even more ambiguity to the ASIO building blueprint hack story that first surfaced last week, Australian national security officials have denied reports that building plans for ASIO’s new headquarters were stolen by Chinese hackers. [ + ]

Last week during the Ethernet Innovation Summit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the establishment of the CloudEthernet Forum was announced. What is this forum, who’s in it and will it make a difference? [ + ]

The government wants to use an open standard for the common document format to be used by government agencies, loosening the current reliance on formats with Microsoft requirements. All archived documents should be saved in a standard format. [ + ]

The Australian federal government recently claimed that the IT industry accounts for “most” of the 457 visas granted to allow overseas workers to work in the country, and that IT salaries have dropped as a result. But these claims aren’t necessarily supported by official Department of Immigration statistics. [ + ]

Australian telcos accuse NBN Co of delaying finalisation of the special access undertaking, while NBN Co drops $9 million on TransACT’s FTTP network. [ + ]

A US judge reckons that the country’s Justice Department has evidence showing that Apple conspired to raise e-book prices; and in local news, the federal privacy commissioner has launched an investigation into Telstra’s recent leak of some customers’ personal data. [ + ]

The plagues of natural disasters do more than devastate infrastructure, communities and local economies. In the age of the connected global economy, natural disasters have the ability to transcend much further than streets, towns and country borders to impact economies all over the world. [ + ]

Every CIO will, at some point, have to create or update a strategic plan for how technology will meet the needs of the business. This can be a daunting task. [ + ]

Cloud services adoption will accelerate the creation of smarter cities by overcoming organisational inertia and enabling more rapid propagation of innovation. Cities that remain bogged down with outdated ICT capabilities will fall behind their peers and be overlooked by globally mobile investment, businesses, events and citizens. [ + ]

The federal government has been caught quietly blocking access to websites, leading some to declare that it has attempted to sneak mandatory web filtering in on the sly. [ + ]