BUSINESS

The Australian sharemarket improved for the sixth consecutive day, with the All Ordinaries Index (XAO) rising by 0.3 per cent or 13.8 pts to 4472.6. While this perhaps doesn't sound overly impressive, it is the best winning streak for the local market since December 2011. The gains haven't been backed by a rise in volume though, with investors still shying away from truly diving headfirst into equities.

Microsoft announced on Wednesday that Javascript was developed with complex applications and at the same time made available a new plugin for Visual Studio. The plugin, known as Typescript, will make Javascript more user friendly for newbies who want to create large-scale web applications.

Sales of newly purchased vehicles in Australia jumped 9 per cent in September, an indication that consumers prefer to spend their money on high-ticket yet essential items compared to lower-priced yet unnecessary items such as probably those sold in retail sales.

Hotels in Australia will soon be transporting guests in electric-charged service vehicles.

The Australian share market started of strong up near 10 points but as the morning went on the market lost ground. By lunchtime the All Ordinaries Index (XAO) moved into the red and was off 1pt to 4,460 points, hit by the slide in the oil price overnight and weak economic data.

In what seemed to be a fitting testament to its strategic higher educational programmes and methods, the Melbourne University continued to lead Australia's universities in this year's Times Higher Education 2012-13 World University Rankings.

There is a vast amount more to this story than we can cover. For example, Denise pointed out to the Senators on the Economic References Committee that the government is currently profiting from this behaviour, as it owns a huge amount of the dodgy mortgages.

It appears Samsung’s Galaxy S3 is well on its way to record sales figures before 2012 ends, based on a new report recently issued by global marketing and research firm Localytics.

The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Chief Economist Oliver Blanchard has warned that the fiscal problems in the U.S. stemming from the 2008 Financial Crisis remains unresolved till today; and said that it will take "at least a decade" for the global economy to recover from the crisis.

Experts have been claiming that mobile phones carry with them health-risk chemicals but a new study now indicates that the hazardous materials inside the ubiquitous devices have whittled down considerably.

By David Eller, Investment U ResearchWall Street likes simple stories. If you can't fit an idea into an elevator pitch, it gets glossed over or distilled down into a one-liner.

Macquarie Telecom won five-year outsourcing contracts to provide 12 Australian federal agencies with Internet services. The agencies include the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Fair Work Australia.

By Greg PeelThe Dow closed up 12 points, or 0.1%, while the S&P gained 0.4% to 1450 as the Nasdaq jumped 0.

The highly contagious norovirus has recently struck some 20 Australians who were out in New Zealand for a skiing holiday.

Delays in securing much needed regulatory approvals in India have compelled Australian coal miner India Resources to cancel developing new projects in the power-crisis stricken country.

Pakistan denied a published report last week that some of the 21,000 imported Australian sheep suspected of carrying the salmonella bacteria and ordered culled by Karachi authorities were killed in a brutal manner.

Oracle big boss Larry Ellison is not only embracing cloud computing, he’s making it as the core business of his software firm, which Forbes said was mainly responsible for building up his estimated net worth of $41 billion.

Even though we were only 13 at the time, the decision to move to Australia was made by your editor.

The Australian share market continued its solid run this morning. The All Ordinaries Index (XAO) opening 20 points higher, despite the weak close on overseas markets and falls in gold and oil futures.

State teachers in Queensland have decided to suspend a planned 24-hour strike later this month to mull over and decide the new pay offer forwarded by the state government.

Investors want to know, "What happened to all of Mr. Bernanke's money?" You'll recall that, a couple of weeks ago, the central banking industry's most famous beard announced that he would flood the markets with another round of quantitative easing, or "QE."

We're down here in the Andes, continuing our tour of the future. What have we learned so far? It might be too early to sell America and buy Argentina, but we'd keep an eye on the trade.

It's not only the falling terms of trade that's making Australia poorer by the day. It's the fact half the country has the day off! It's a public holiday in four Australian states and the ACT today. No wonder there's a productivity crisis in the economy. C'mon Australia. Do you think anybody has the day off at the Foxconn factory in China?

How do you zero in on the best that Android can offer? Take for instance Sony’s Xperia Acro S and Motorola’s Droid RAZR HD, which are slated to hit the global market in full force just in time when people are in the mood for spending – the holiday season.

Uh. Things are heating up in 'The Code War.' Last week we wrote about the rise in un-armed conflict between...well between pretty much everyone (organised crime, hackers, governments, terrorists etc). This week there are a lot of 'pre-incident' indicators that suggest we're on the verge of a new era of permanent on-line conflict in which systems that control information are one of many targets.

Credit card giant American Express (Amex) has agreed to pay $85 million to around 250,000 consumers for violating consumer protection laws in marketing, billing and debt collection practices, reported the New York Times on Monday, with the financial institution also expected to pay up to $27.5 million in fines to regulators.

The Bank of Queensland said on Wednesday that it would cut by 20 basis points is interest rate following the Tuesday decision by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to reduce the overnight cash rate by 25 basis points.

- Christmas will be very competitive- Retailer inventory levels high- Discounting to be unprecedentedBy Eva BrocklehurstOnce again, retailers are expecting a very competitive Christmas shopping season.

Snappy and responsive! These words were directly from Paul Allen, one of Microsoft’s co-founders, and which mostly described his experience while immersing himself in the new Windows 8 environment.