australia

Australia to get its first utility-scale solar plant

First Solar, GE Energy Financial Services, and Verve Energy announced today a partnership to build Australia's first utility-scale solar plant.

At 10 megawatts, Greenough River Solar Farm will be the largest operating solar plant in the country, and the solar energy it generates will be put to a very specific use.

All of its energy will go toward supporting a seawater desalination plant in Western Australia currently under expansion.

The Southern Seawater Desalination Plant in Binningup, Australia, which is run by the WA Water Corporation, has signed a 15-year contract to purchase all of the solar energy generated from … Read more

Samsung delays Galaxy Tab in Australia

In the latest developments in the ongoing patent saga between Samsung and Apple, Samsung today revealed a plan to countersue Apple for patent infringement within its flagship iPad tablet while pledging to push back the official launch date the Australian version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to the end of next month.

Legal representatives from both parties met for a directions hearing in the NSW Federal Court today, where barrister David Catterns, acting for Samsung, revealed to the court a plan to countersue Apple once the case made it to trial.

In a statement, Catterns added that Samsung's counter-claim would also encompass the Apple iPhone.

Read more of "Samsung fires back in Apple Oz Galaxy suit" at ZDNet Australia.

Stoned wallabies fingered as crop circle culprits

Stoned wallabies, high after snacking on local opium plants, are responsible for carving out crop circles on Australia's southern island state of Tasmania.

OK, we had the same "say what?" reaction upon first hearing about this story. But Lara Giddings, Tasmania's attorney general, recently told a parliamentary hearing on security for poppy crops that the animals get "as high as a kite after munching on the plants before trying their artistic touch with the local terrain.

"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Giddings told the hearing, according to the BBC News.

And then they do what any self-respecting wallaby would do in such a state: They crash.

"We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high," Giddings said.

OK sure. But who got the wallabies stoned? Aliens, that's who.

This article originally appeared on CBSNews.com.… Read more

Samsung plans Apple-OK'd Galaxy Tab Down Under

Following yesterday's report that Apple and Samsung had come to an agreement in a federal court in Australia to have Samsung not sell the U.S. version of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country, Samsung has confirmed the agreement.

A Samsung spokesperson responded to Android-focused blog Austdroid, noting that the company's plans to release a version of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 for the Australian market "in the near future":

Apple Inc. filed a complaint with the Federal Court of Australia involving a Samsung GALAXY Tab 10.1 variant that Samsung Electronics had no plans of selling in Australia. No injunction was issued by the court and the parties in the case reached a mutual agreement which stipulates that the variant in question will not be sold in Australia.

A Samsung GALAXY Tab 10.1 for the Australian market will be released in the near future.

This undertaking does not affect any other Samsung smartphone or tablet available in the Australian market or other countries.

Samsung will continue to actively defend and protect our intellectual property to ensure our continued innovation and growth in the mobile communication business.

That statement obviously does not go into detail about what changes will be made to that device in order to keep Apple from going on the legal offensive once again. … Read more

Could laptops be recharged by typing alone?

What if you could power your laptop just by typing on it? Researchers in Australia are studying how piezoelectrics could charge devices through the mechanical pressure generated when using them.

In a study published in Advanced Functional Materials, Madhu Bhaskaran from RMIT University in Melbourne and colleagues for the first time managed to precisely measure voltage and current generation for nanoscale piezoelectric thin films.

"The power of piezoelectrics could be integrated into running shoes to charge mobile phones, enable laptops to be powered through typing or even used to convert blood pressure into a power source for pacemakers--essentially creating an everlasting battery," Bhaskaran said.

As she explains in the interview below, Bhaskaran says the amount of energy that can be generated by the thin films is about 10 times less than what's required for portable devices. … Read more

Algae machine to reduce Australian coal plant CO2

Australia-based MBD Energy is installing an algae system from OriginOil at its coal power station in Tarong, Australia, both companies announced today.

The system will capture flue-gas emitted from the coal-fired power station using a bio-based carbon capture storage device containing micro-algae. The micro-algae uses the captured CO2 to reproduce more algae biomass, which can then be used for fuel or plastics.

The Tarong power station in Queensland will be able to process up to 300 gallons of algae culture per minute, but is only a one-hectare site. The small station will serve as the test site for a larger … Read more

Upercool-say! Aussie Lingodroids create own language

I've always felt like Australians had their own language going on, what with all the Vegemite and Walkabouts and such, but now some Aussie researchers have set a few robots loose on the linguistic landscape. The result is that the Lingodroids have actually managed to create their own language. Using only their shared understanding of some apparently nonsense words, the Lingodroids more-or-less successfully communicated directions to each other and even created fairly accurate maps of their surroundings.

Here's the basic gist of how it works. The Lingodroids assign a randomly chosen syllable combination to name a specific location. … Read more

The 404 822: Where there's too many chefs in the kitchen (podcast)

The Internet can be a breeding ground for bad ideas, and today's show highlights a few of them, like naming your kid after a Facebook button, making a fatal planking error, and replacing McDonald's cashiers with robots. There's good news today too, though--Seth MacFarlane just got the green light to reboot "The Flintstones."

The 404 Digest for Episode 822

Israeli couple names their kid "Like." Australian man planks to death...this is probably the Internet's fault. McDonald's in Europe to replace cashiers with touch-screen terminals. "The Flintstones" getting a reboot by Seth MacFarlane.

Episode 822 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Aussie coal partners with solar

An Australian coal-driven power station plans to install solar reflectors on its property to augment its electricity generation process.

CS Energy plans to install 44-megawatts worth of solar on about 30 hectares of its Kogan Creek Power Station property in Queensland within the first half of 2011, and have it complete by 2013, the company announced Wednesday.

The $104.7 million project has secured the backing of the Australian government, with $34 million coming from the government's Renewable Energy Demonstration Program. CS Energy is spending $70 million. The remaining funds will be drawn from a $35.4 million Queensland … Read more

iPad 2 sells out internationally

After launching Friday in 25 countries outside the U.S., Apple's iPad 2 was already sold out by Saturday afternoon across major markets, according to several reports.

The long lines of iPad 2 buyers in the United Kingdom apparently scooped up all the available stock from Apple's stores and other retail outlets throughout the country.

Speaking with Apple stores in Regent Street and Covent Garden areas in London, the Web site Pocket-Lint found that supplies were depleted on Saturday with no more stock expected yesterday and no indication of new iPad 2s today. The situation was generally the … Read more