Tag: AUSTRALIA

It's no secret that Facebook has plenty of underage users, but, according to a report from the Daily Telegraph, the social network is doing its best to keep them out. Facebook's chief privacy adviser, Mozelle Thompson, confirmed yesterday that the site bans about 20,000 underage users every day, as part of its campaign to tighten its 13-and-older age limit. Speaking to a Parliamentary ...

A boy from Sydney, Australia has gone from victim to Internet hero practically overnight. A recently posted video shows the 16-year-old Casey Heynes absorbing abuse from a much smaller (and younger) bully before finally snapping, lifting the other boy in the air and slamming him to the concrete -- hard. The footage has made the rounds not only online, but onto mainstream media news shows in the ...

Posting an event on Facebook used to be a quick and convenient way to let your friends know where a party was, or when your band was performing. Now it's becoming a good way to hand your home address over to thousands of anonymous strangers. An Australian girl joined an exclusive league of Facebook event planners who saw thousands of revelers RSVP to their low-key parties. The girl sent the ...

Australia didn't technically ban the new 'Mortal Kombat' video game, but it might as well have. According to Kotaku, the game was deemed too violent to fit the country's MA15+ rating -- which, believe it or not, is Australia's highest classification. Because the country doesn't have an adults-only rating, 'Mortal Kombat' was refused classification, meaning that it can't be sold at retail outlets. ...

With its astronomically high skin-cancer rate, Australia has decided to inform its people about sun safety with a new iPhone app. Called 'SunSmart,' the free app gives users a daily forecast of UV levels, helping -- the government hopes -- to dissuade Aussies from exposing their skin to carcinogenic levels of sun. We'd think just showing them all a picture of Snooki would do the trick, though. ...

Share Four years ago, Peter Trayhurn and Geoff Tosio found themselves floating adrift five miles off the coast of Australia, and facing the terrifying possibility that they might never be found. They had been exploring underwater caves when the anchor line on their boat snapped, and the vessel drifted away. Miraculously, Trayhurn and Tosio were spotted by a ship, plucked from the water, and ...

An accused cyberbully in Australia will have to stop terrorizing his ex, after receiving a formal court order via a decidedly informal medium: Facebook. In a video sent to the suspect, an officer from the Australian state of Victoria explains what the court's intervention order means, and says that the bully must stop contacting the ex who filed the complaint against him. Police had reportedly ...

Share Tragic news from Facebook, yesterday: a plant has died. The flora, named 'Meet Eater,' was originally planted in Australia by Queensland University student Bashkim Isai, who wanted to find out whether or not random online strangers would care enough about a plant to collectively "water" it. To test his theory, Isaid created a Facebook page for his Eater; whenever someone became a fan of the ...

Share According to his website, Peter Craig holds more world records than any other Australian. Spinning, clapping, one-legged jump roping -- you name the weird record-setting feat, and Craig's probably done it. He's also, it turns out, the proud owner of a Wagnerian e-mail address which, at 345 characters, is the world's longest -- according to the URDB. And it works, too. So go ahead and ...

Share How far will travelers blindly follow a GPS device? According to The Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian family of four (and their poor pup) followed directions given by their GPS onto a road closed by heavy rainfall and became stranded for three nights in a pickup truck. The family, believe it or not, ignored posted warning signs and turned onto the Darling River Road while traveling ...

Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws' saw its 35th anniversary last month, and your writer reignited an irrational, but very real, childhood galeophobia by re-watching the entire toothy franchise just before a July 4th trip to the beach. It didn't help matters that the original Jaws (yes, we know, fictional) attacks occurred around Independence Day on Amity Island, and that the real-life Coast Guard issued ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... Next fall, Adobe may be further distancing itself from HTML5, as an Adobe blog has claimed that the company will reveal details concerning a "Flash Player 3D" at October's Max 2010 conference. [From: Mashable] Hezbollah has come to the defense of fired CNN editor Octavia Nasr, saying that the Twitter-provoked incident represents ...

If you pay exorbitant amounts for ink cartridges, you might as well make sure they go to good use, right? That's exactly what Australia's National Park Service has decided to do -- by utilizing used cartridges to create a 347 mile (170 kilometer) bike path between Alice Springs and Simpsons Gap in the Northwest Territory. Australian company Repeat Plastics Australia is constructing the trail out ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/06/04/rafael-lozano-hemmers-solar-equation-brings-out-the-sun-at-ni/'; As part of the 'Light in Winter' Festival in Melbourne Australia, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has created one of his largest projects ever: a three-dimensional, animated scale model of the Sun, tethered in the sky above Federation Square, called 'Solar Equation.' Lozano-Hemmer employs a ...

Soon, Australian travelers will have a new way to kill time while on a plane. According to The Next Web, Jetstar, a budget Aussie airline, will be offering an iPad rental service later this month to passengers on select flights that are longer than 90 minutes. For just $8.40 (A$10), passengers can bypass lame romantic comedies and SkyMall magazine for a selection of e-books, movies and games ...