The man had happened upon a car with its windows open. He had stolen two cellphones and a wallet and walked away. But, upon examining his haul, he found that the cellphones contained pictures of pornographic images of children. He immediately took the phones to the nearest police station, turned himself in and told his story.

The man had already been wanted on an car theft charge and agreed to be arrested. However, his actions allowed the police to arrest the 46 year-old owner of the phones on child pornography charges.

The man went before Magistrates Court on Tuesday and pleaded guilty to the charges against him, seven in all. The magistrate, however, went easy on him and praised him for his actions.

“You did the right thing,” she said. “That kind of offending is very serious. You are to be commended for your conduct even though it placed you at jeopardy of losing your own liberty.” She said that the court would not want to “discourage other like minded people to act in the manner you have.”

The man was ordered to serve only one month in prison and pay a $400 fine.

Even within the prison system, child molesters and pornographers are held in particular disdain by other criminals. Sometimes, they are assigned to separate cells lest they be beaten by other inmates.

“Many die, why should not Sheikh Hasina Die?”.

Sheikh Hasina pictured above with Wen Jiabao

This move by Khandaker may cost him his life.

The Facebook status update has lead Bangladesh’s High Court to seek extradition of the professor from Australia back to Bangladesh where he will face punishment. Bangladesh views this comment as a death wish on their prime minister – not something to be taken lightly.

The comment was made by Ruhul Khandaker who has been living in Australia since 2009, conducting PhD research and lecturing at Jahangirnagar University.

Khandaker does not wish to return to his native country any time soon, and he tells AFP, “If I’m forced to go back to Bangladesh now, my life could be threatened and possibly even get killed”.

So what did Khandaker have in mind by this post? Khandaker was allegedly expressing his grief over the death of a famous Bangladeshi filmmaker, Tareq Masud, who was killed in a road accident.

Khandaker seems to think that the accident is the prime minister’s fault, who is irresponsible about issuing driver’s licenses to unqualified people.

Luckily for Khandaker, Bangladesh does not have an extradition treaty with Australia. Khandaker wishes to remain in Australia where he can continue to do research and not have his, “…life…threatened by a political incident…[when he has]…no involvement in any type of politics”.

It’s an easy enough method for Google to avoid culpability whenever travelers end up lost due to miscues provided by Maps. However, travelers in Australia have reported that, when driving along the east coast between Sydney and Melbourne, Google Maps is diverting drivers from the Pacific Highway to take an alternative route that leads them through a side-route of backroads.

…For seemingly no reason.

Despite no construction problems or other accessibility issues, Google just doesn’t want you to drive along (what I imagine can only be) a scenic trek along the Pacific coastline. You can manually drag the route over to include Pacific Highway but Google Maps doesn’t really like that; it still tries to divert travelers west on certain parts to avoid Pacific Highway, sometimes even for an arbitrary 30-40 miles before redirecting drivers to resume traveling on Pacific Highway. The erroneous directions have led travelers to believe that large swaths of Pacific Highway are closed for travel (why else would someone have to take through less traveled roads, right?).

The problem was reported to The Sydney Morning Herald who contacted Google Australia about the confusing directions.

A Google Australia spokesman yesterday admitted the Pacific Highway error but could not say how long the glitch had been affecting driving directions. This morning, the bug had still not been fixed.

“Thanks for pointing it out, I will let the team know so they can be aware of the issues, and I’ve flagged it to be corrected,” the Google Australia spokesman said.

“We do have a ‘Report a Problem’ tool that enables users to directly communicate with us about any updates they think need to be made to our maps, and we try to make these changes as quickly as possible.”

That last sentence is a bit of non-advice as The Herald says several travelers have already reported the problem to Google. As of this morning, as you can see from the screen grab above that I took about 20 minutes ago, the problem still appears to be unresolved.

A quick note with regards to the timing of this report: don’t blame us.  comScore released it today (or actually tomorrow, since it came out of Sydney), so we haven’t been sitting on it since early January or anything like that.

Anyway, you can see comScore’s table for yourself below, and the company added in a statement, "In December 2010, Microsoft Sites led as the most-visited Internet property in Australia, followed by Google Sites and Facebook.com.  When looking at the top sites by total minutes spent, Facebook.com assumed the #1 spot followed by Microsoft Sites and Google Sites."

Those are some impressive gains for social networking.  Nothing else came close to pulling off the same sort of increases, with the next-nearest categories actually suffering major losses.

Google is doing fine, though, if anybody was wondering.  comScore said, "Nearly 12 million Australians conducted an online search query in December, with an average searcher performing 115 queries.  Google Sites accounted for 80 percent of searches in December."

Last month, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason explained the situation in a blog post. Groupon is suing Scoopon, which is now running as "Groupon Pty Limited". At the time, Mason wrote: 

The worldwide proliferation of Groupon clones has been well documented (of course, none being more sinister than Nopuorg). One particular clone in Australia called Scoopon, created by the brothers Gabby and Hezi Leibovitch, has been making life difficult for us. Scoopon went a little further than just starting their Groupon clone – they actually purchased the Groupon.com.au domain name, took the company name Groupon Pty Limited, and tried to register the Groupon trademark (filing for the trademark just seven days before us) in Australia. 

The way we see things, this is a classic case of domain squatting – an unfortunate reality of the Internet business. As Groupon became internationally known, opportunistic domain squatters around the world started to buy local Groupon domain names, thinking that we’d eventually be forced to buy them at an insane price. In fact, we tried to do just that, reluctantly offering Gabby and Hezi Leibovich about $286,000 for the Groupon.com.au domain and trademark—an offer they accepted. But now they’ve changed their minds, and we believe that they’ll only sell us the domain and trademark if we’re willing to buy the entire Scoopon business from them. Left with no other options, we’ve filed a lawsuit against Scoopon, claiming that their Groupon trademark was filed in bad faith (amongst other things). 

He also said that the suit could take over a year to be resolved, but clearly, they didn’t want to wait that long to launch in the Australian market. 

Stardeals can be accessed at Stardeals.com.au. Notice that it still says "by Groupon Australia".

"We’re thrilled to introduce our network of 60 million subscribers to the world-class merchants of Australia," said Groupon President and COO Rob Solomon. "Stardeals will change the face of local collective buying, leveraging the best practices Groupon has pioneered in more than 40 countries around the globe."

Groupon says its network serves nearly 60,000 merchants in more than 500 markets and 42 countries. In Stardeals’ first week, it will feature deals for surfing lessons, dance classes and upscale spa treatments, currently serving Melbourne and Sydney with plans to expand to eight more territories in the coming months.

Reports indicate that Spreets sold for $40 million – the same amount it’s supposed to have saved consumers in the last year, coincidentally.  Meanwhile, hard data confirms that Spreets is the biggest group buying site in Australia and New Zealand, despite being in business for just a year.

Otherwise, an official statement explained, "The Yahoo!7 business delivers a new audience to the Spreets site through distribution on the Yahoo!7 Network as well as access to the benefits provided in Australia and New Zealand through its joint venture partners Yahoo! Inc. and the Seven Media Group, including marketing and promotions."

So much more growth may soon occur.

This development is supposed to help Yahoo7 branch out in terms of local and social opportunities, and will introduce a new revenue stream to boot.

One last note: Yahoo7 isn’t alone in this line of thought, as other group buying sites in Australia are backed by Microsoft and Amazon.

Kartik Ramakrishnan, who holds the very relevant title "Vice President, Yahoo Search Transition," wrote on the Yahoo Search Blog, "As planned, we are moving forward with the global transition of certain Yahoo! Search back-end functions to Microsoft’s search platform, and have just completed this process for organic search in Australia, Brazil and Mexico."

Then Ramakrishnan added, "This news is another step forward for the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance as we continue our efforts for a quality transition with our worldwide advertisers and partners."

So it sounds like everything is on schedule and going according to plan.  That’s good news for both companies, and for their users and investors.  (Remember, Yahoo in particular thinks this deal will save it money, meaning the sooner the transition process is completed, the better.)

One other important point: Ramakrishnan promised to provide additional updates as Bing and Yahoo continue to integrate their search operations around the world, so stay tuned.

Now, Groupon has revealed that it’s just going to go ahead and sue the Australian Groupon, previously known as Scoopon, which is running now as "Groupon Pty Limited".  Mason says on the Groupon Blog:

The worldwide proliferation of Groupon clones has been well documented (of course, none being more sinister than Nopuorg). One particular clone in Australia called Scoopon, created by the brothers Gabby and Hezi Leibovitch, has been making life difficult for us. Scoopon went a little further than just starting their Groupon clone – they actually purchased the Groupon.com.au domain name, took the company name Groupon Pty Limited, and tried to register the Groupon trademark (filing for the trademark just seven days before us) in Australia.

The way we see things, this is a classic case of domain squatting – an unfortunate reality of the Internet business. As Groupon became internationally known, opportunistic domain squatters around the world started to buy local Groupon domain names, thinking that we’d eventually be forced to buy them at an insane price. In fact, we tried to do just that, reluctantly offering Gabby and Hezi Leibovich about $286,000 for the Groupon.com.au domain and trademark—an offer they accepted. But now they’ve changed their minds, and we believe that they’ll only sell us the domain and trademark if we’re willing to buy the entire Scoopon business from them. Left with no other options, we’ve filed a lawsuit against Scoopon, claiming that their Groupon trademark was filed in bad faith (amongst other things).

It’s hard to say how damaging this ordeal is to the real Groupon. I’d say quite significant, given the company’s success here in the U.S. The average consumer will probably not now the difference unless they follow online business news on a regular basis, but they may hear the name "Groupon" and simply think the clone is the real thing, particularly if it’s offering a similar service. Furthermore, if that service works for them, they probably won’t care. 

It will be particularly interesting to see how the competition shapes up between Groupon Pty Limited and Stardeals in the Australian market until this case is settled. 

Mason says the suit could take over a year to be resolved, so either way, the company is in an unfortunate position in Australia. Groupon (the real one) is encouraging users to join a "Groupon in Australia" Facebook group, and post a note asking Scoopon to accept the $286,000 Groupon is still willing to pay.

That number will likely continue to rise for the foreseeable future, as Groupon appears to be the hot ticket item heading into the New Year. The company of course turned down an alleged $6 billion offer from Google recently. 

Groupon still has plenty of expanding to do too, in a geographical sense. Groupon, which seemingly expands into new areas just about every day, is headed for the Australian market. The Sydney Morning Herald confirmed this with the company. The publication reports:

The company is recruiting people to sign up to its email database before a launch next month into a market that is becoming crowded. The No. 2 player, Living Social, abandoned plans to start from scratch in Australia, opting instead for a joint venture with an existing company, Jumponit.

But because an existing Australian deals company has had its application to use the Groupon name in Australia approved, the Chicago company has been forced to use the domain name of Stardeals in Australia.

Names aside, Groupon is striving to do for local businesses what Amazon did for buying products. This is essentially what Groupon CEO Andrew Mason told Charlie Rose in a recent interview. He also said Groupon is the savior for small businesses. 

According to Mason, Groupon is adding about 40 cities a month in 35 countries, has over 40 million subscribers. It’s been a couple weeks since he revealed these numbers though. They could be significantly higher by now.

We’ll give you the official description of both businesses in case you’re not familiar with Australia’s corporate landscape.  A post on the Official Google Australia Blog explained, "Flight Centre is Australasia’s largest travel agency group with more than 2,000 shops and businesses in 11 countries."  And "Ray White manages over $30 billion worth of real estate sales across Australia, New Zealand and Asia, writing $6 billion in home loans each year."

As for how Google Apps enters the equation, Flight Centre is looking to the software mostly for email, and expects to decrease its email costs by about 30 percent thanks to the switch.  Ray White, meanwhile, wants to give its employees and customers "standardised communication and collaboration platform," and has also created "a dedicated rental property management system" on the Google App Engine platform.

These developments count as major wins for Google, in any event.  They represent losses for Microsoft, too, since both organizations previously made use of Outlook Exchange.

Looking forward, it should be interesting to see if Google’s able to press this advantage.  Other organizations may be eager to follow the lead of Flight Centre and Ray White, after all (at least after making sure nothing goes wrong during the transition process).

We’ll of course be sure to report any significant updates.