HP’s chairman, Ray Lane, has stepped down after being narrowly re-elected at this year’s annual meeting. Meanwhile, regulators in six European states are looking at laying fines on Google for its 2012 changes to its privacy policies. [ + ]

In the last week, the ACCC rejected NBN Co’s special access undertaking (SAU), while a confidential NBN Co document has revealed the organisation’s doubts about its own contractors. [ + ]

Robotics researchers are set to revolutionise how robots ‘think’, by mining the now-familiar model of cloud computing. [ + ]

If you haven’t done it already, it’s a fair bet that you’ll be putting together a mobility strategy for your business sometime soon. [ + ]

BYOD is the latest trend to portray how far IT has come in understanding and responding to what employees want and need in order to be productive. While the mobile workforce can work very well to accelerate productivity, because BYOD brings with it a fundamental shift in networking practices, costs can add up. According to Aberdeen, enterprises spend an extra $170,000 per year to deploy 1000 mobile devices via BYOD. To put that in more general terms, a typical BYOD model costs 33% more than the traditional corporate-wireless model. [ + ]

In the news this week: spam-fighter Spamhaus comes under largest cyberattack ever, two new Dell suitors enter the picture and Telecom New Zealand reveals pricing for its Ultra-Fast Broadband services. [ + ]

The huge proliferation of social media and mobile technologies is fast becoming a game-changer for Australian organisations and their relationships with customers. This explosion in data, from consumers who are continuously connected, is now viewed by many companies as essential for effective customer engagement. [ + ]

In privacy news, the NZ government’s Earthquake Commission leaks 83,000 citizens’ personal data, while Microsoft details how it handed over information of about 2600 Australian users to authorities. [ + ]

The IT industry has once again called for Australian businesses to move online, warning that they risk getting left behind by their more innovative competitors. There are some free tools to help - and we’re looking for more. [ + ]

Oracle’s founder and CEO Larry Ellison today announced two new processor families and server ranges that, according to independent benchmarks, deliver markedly better bang for buck than IBM. [ + ]

US feds are investigating claims Microsoft and some of its business partners bribed government officials around the globe in return for software contracts. Meanwhile, executives at Microsoft, Apple and Adobe faced tough questions from Australian MPs at an inquiry into why Australians are charged more than those in the US for identical products. [ + ]

In the last week, NBN partner Syntheo handed over construction duties in NT over to NBN Co, and NBN Co revealed a three-month delay in construction of the network. [ + ]

The panic in Cyprus surrounding plans to levy private citizens’ bank accounts to pay for a bailout has driven a steep rise in the value of digital currency, Bitcoin. [ + ]

The Asia Cloud Forum, an online media portal, has been created to represent the interests of enterprise users, governments, telcos, vendors, policy makers and others with a stake in the development of cloud computing in Asia.

At the recent NICTA TechFest, held at Parliament House in Canberra, we had the opportunity to speak with Professor Robert C Williamson, the leader of NICTA’s Machine Learning team, about some of the big innovations he thinks CIOs need to keep their eyes on. [ + ]