Marketing services provider Salmat has formed a joint venture, Roamz with Australian "e-entrepreneur" Jonathan Barouch designed to deliver location specific information to users of mobile devices.

Pitney Bowes MapInfo has announced a $76 million plan to buy Portrait Software, which will plug a CRM and marketing analytics gap in its portfolio and ultimately extend the range of services the company can bring to the market through its emerging cloud based strategy.

For years mobile operators have dabbled with "home zone" technologies that enable them to apply a reduced tariff when a mobile is operating in its home zone, and thus compete with fixed line offerings. These have had limitations but Australian company Seeker Wireless reckons it has the problem licked with the latest release of its SeekerZone technology.

Iridium Satellite LLC - operator of a constellation of low earth orbit communications satellites - has formed the ProTECTS (Promotion of Two-way Emergency Communication and Tracking Systems) Alliance "to foster the rapid and orderly adoption of portable, two-way satellite-based location, tracking and messaging technologies."

Although the 802.11n standard should receive final approval this Friday, there's more to come in wireless networking.

Australia's first Internet-enabled bus has gone on the road in Adelaide for a six month trial providing real-time passenger information; free Internet access via WiFi and other services.

A new Twitter feature will allow an exact geographical location to be associated with a tweet.

Vodafone group has struck a deal with Tom Tom subsidiary Tele Atlas to use its digital maps and location-based content the provision of location-based services  and navigation offerings in its networks worldwide.

As promised, Firefox 3.5 was released on June 30, bringing a healthy performance boost and new features to the widely used open-source browser.

It looks like Mozilla will just meet its prediction of a June release for Firefox 3.5. The new version of the open-source browser is expected to appear on June 30.