IAB Australia today released its updated Universal Ad Package Guidelines The new proposed standards will bring Australia into line with most other countries internationally and have been updated to make the media planning and buying process easier for media owners, agencies and advertisers. The guidelines have been signed off by the IAB’s Standards and Measurement Council which includes representatives from major publishers and the MFA and have been shared with the AFA. The guidelines are now open to comment from the industry until Wednesday 25th November 2009.

Australia’s online advertising market has recorded continued growth in the most challenging economic period to impact the Australian media industry in decades, according to figures released today by IAB Australia in its Online Advertising Expenditure Report (OAER). The Report, which is compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), showed that online advertising expenditure in Australia for the quarter ending 30 September 2009 was the highest ever recorded, totaling $466 million.

Continuing its commitment to helping people preserve, protect and enjoy their digital content, Seagate (NASDAQ: STX) today introduced a new backup appliance that completely eliminates the need to manually learn, manage, or dedicate any time to the backup process. Unlike most backup utilities, the new Seagate® Replica™ backup appliance is a complete PC backup system, which automatically and continuously stores up-to-date copies of everything on a PC, including installed applications, operating system, e-mail, pictures, music, movies, Internet bookmarks and settings. Available in two configurations, the Seagate Replica solution delivers seamless backup for either a single PC or multiple PCs in a household.

iPhone is set to become the mobile phone brand of choice for Australians, according to new research by Millward Brown, a global leader in brand, media and communications research.

Seagate (NASDAQ: STX), the worldwide leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions, today unveiled its new FreeAgent Theatre+™ [Plus] HD media player, the next generation home theatre solution designed to instantly and easily connect your digital media library to your home entertainment system.

Clemenger has been declared the winner of Creative Showcase 4.1, Australia’s best free online award for creativity in digital advertising for its campaign, Vodafone’s “Make the Most of Now”. The campaign was chosen by a panel of 10 esteemed judges from the industry who praised its cutting-edge creativity and innovation within the online advertising sector.

Just three months after its official Australian launch, mcm media’s Digital Entertainment Network (DEN) has proven its reach and audience appeal, delivering over five million streams per month and more than 100 million streams since the technology was first tested. The streams have been delivered through syndicated partner sites including News.com.au, The Daily Telegraph, APN’s regional sites and Yahoo!7 Music, as well as mcm media’s own Take 40, The Hot Hits and movideo sites.

Brocade® (Nasdaq: BRCD) and Thales© today announced the integration of Thales Encryption Manager for Storage (TEMS) with the Brocade encryption SAN switching solutions. The combination of TEMS, the industry’s first standards-based encryption key management appliance for storage, and the Brocade Encryption Switch protects enterprise data and helps organizations meet growing compliance demands. The solution cost-effectively simplifies the storage encryption process by eliminating the need for storage professionals to deploy multiple storage encryption systems and helps ensure safe and reliable data access.

IAB Australia today announced that Alex Littlejohn, managing director of Adconion will join the IAB Australia Board for a one year term commencing in November 2009. Mr Littlejohn will represent the interests of the non‐founding members on the Board. The announcement followed a competitive nomination and voting process during which IAB Australia members were called upon to select their preferred representative.

Brocade® (NASDAQ: BRCD) announced today that it has selected Renaissance Brands as a Brocade Alliance Partner Network Distributor for New Zealand. Renaissance was selected based on its ability to efficiently deliver both storage area network (SAN) and IP networking solutions to channel reseller partners, as well as its extensive knowledge, skills, and expertise in the networking industry.

DViCO today announced that it will not be seeking endorsement from Freeview (Australia). Although the products currently carry the Freeview UK logo and all marketing material currently displays this, it will remove that logo from materials and packaging used in Australia to avoid confusion.

Seagate Technology (NASDAQ: STX) today reported financial results for the quarter ended October 2, 2009 of 46.3 million disk drive unit shipments, revenue of $2.66 billion, gross margin of 24.5%, net income of $179 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.35. The financial results for the quarter include $10 million of purchased intangibles amortization, $46 million of restructuring and a write down of long-lived assets of $64 million. The aggregate impact of these items is $120 million or approximately $0.23 per share.

Brocade® (Nasdaq: BRCD) today announced that Christchurch City has deployed one of New Zealand’s first major metropolitan local area networks (LAN) offering businesses, schools and health organisations affordable optical fibre connections.

Communications Alliance, the peak body for the Australian communications industry, today released a vision of the network architecture required to deliver a broad range of network, application and content services to end users in its paper, NBN Reference Architecture: High Level Architecture Options for the NBN.

DViCO today announced the Australian launch of one of the most advanced high definition (HD) jukeboxes on the planet, the TViX M-6600N Personal Video Recorder (PVR). The TViX M-6600N is the only PVR to offer full 1080P HD and HDMI 1.3 out. It’s also the world’s first PVR to include built-in 802.11n wireless capability which allows streaming of audio and video content from any PC on the home network. The TViX M-6600N will be distributed exclusively in Australia by Also Technology.

Australian technology distributor IPL Communications today announced the new compact LifeSize® Passport™ video conferencing system, ideal for SMEs, SOHO and teleworkers, will land in Australia in November.

The ABA’s Digital Watchdog Committee, formed following the launch of the ABA Web Audit Service in July, held its inaugural meeting on September 30, 2009. The committee members debated the standards by which online publishers are audited, and how web audience data is reported, and has subsequently released new measurement Rules and Guidelines.

AD2ONE, the global digital group, announced today that it will be the exclusive representative for the advertising sales in Australia of Reuters.com, the world’s leading news and financial information website.

PIPE International’s submarine cable, PPC-1, which has been built from Sydney to the telecommunications interconnection hub of Guam, was officially switched-on today at a special event at Sydney’s Australian Technology Park. The successful completion of Australia’s first independent submarine cable was two years in the making and cost $200m.

Communications Alliance, the peak body for the Australian communications industry, today named Dr Paul Brooks as its new NBN Lead Consultant. Dr Brooks succeeds Gary McLaren who has been appointed Chief Technology Officer of NBN Co.