Michael Parkinson coming to Australia

Parky the legendary chat show host will be coming to Perth on the 20 October 2009 at the Perth Convention Exhibition Centre.                                

Parky – The One-Man Show

Michael Parkinson will be sharing his greatest moments, his love of music and sport and sharing the events of his fascinating life, live on stage in his one man show.

Venue  :  Riverside Theatre – Perth Convention Centre – www.pcec.com.au

Admission Price  :  A Reserve $139.00 p/p     B Reserve $89.00p/p   

Events contacts  :  www.ticketek.com.au

Phone  :  132 849

Related Link  :  www.parky.com.au

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WA State Conference – Program announced

The MIA WA State Conference is a ‘must attend’ event, with a host of experienced industry speakers confirmed to participate. This annual event will inform and update migration practitioners on the latest issues affecting the profession and wider community.

The conference is a full day event, taking place at the Frasers Conference Centre, Kings Park, Perth on Friday 21 August, 2009.

The WA State Executive have secured the following DIAC representatives and Immigration experts:

• Paul Farrell, WA State Director, DIAC
• Glen Dival, Manager, 457 Centre of Excellence, Perth DIAC
• Tim McDonald, Assistant Director, Service Channel Support, DIAC
• Bruce Needham, Regional Manager, WA Community and Detention Operations, DIAC
• Wayne Parcell, RMA and lawyer, Executive Director, Human Capital, Ernst and Young
• Kim Hunter, RMA and lawyer, Migration Professionals
• The new CEO of the Office of the MARA, Christine Sykes, has also been invited to present.

  Following the event, a gala dinner will be held at the Frasers Restaurant. This is an excellent opportunity to network with your colleagues, whilst enjoying a three course meal overlooking Kings Park. 

• Source  :  http://mia.org.au/latest-news/WA-State-Conference-Program-announced-209.html

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PM Rudd launches Australia’s WCup bids

SYDNEY (AFP) — Prime Minister Kevin Rudd officially launched Australia’s bid to host the football World Cup in 2018 or 2022.

Rudd told an official ceremony at Parliament House in the national capital Canberra that Football Federation Australia (FFA) had the full backing of the government to bid for the showpiece event.

“The sheer odds are tough against Australia, eight other countries, but the reason the government had got behind the bid is that we as a nation can rise behind this great bid,” Rudd said.

The premier said the chance to host a World Cup was a great opportunity for the nation.                               

“The challenges are great, but the prize is much greater,” he said.

“I salute those who have had the courage and the initiative and creativity to bring forth this idea.”

English Premier League stars, national skipper Lucas Neill and goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer, also spoke at the launch, urging Australians to throw their support behind the World Cup bid.

FFA chairman Frank Lowy said it would be an “unparalleled opportunity” for Australia to earn official acceptance as a World Cup host.

“On the world stage, there is no event with the same level of global appeal or audience reach as the FIFA World Cup,” the property billionaire said in a statement.

Lowy said Australia?s “secret weapon” for winning the World Cup bid was the Australian people, and Australia’s desirability as a travel destination.

“People from all over the world want to visit our country and thanks to the performance of the Socceroos at the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, as well as the many thousands of Australian fans who followed them, the rest of the world has a very positive view of us.”

Lowy also pointed to Australia’s record of hosting successful major sports events such as the 1956 and 2000 Olympic Games.

Australia are among nine bidders, along with Belgium-Netherlands, England, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Portugal-Spain, Russia and the United States, for the 2018 World Cup.

The same nine bidders are also in the running for the 2022 World Cup, along with Qatar and South Korea.

World football governing body FIFA will announce both the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts in December 2010.

Australia have already qualified to play in next year’s World Cup in South Africa.

Source  :  www.google.com

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Look out Outlook, Google’s Wave is coming to swamp you

A team of Google engineers from Australia has unveiled a prototype replacement for standard email that abandons the reliance on the chronological sorting and stacking of messages which has been the hallmark of one of the internet’s first and still most popular applications.

Christened Google Wave, the new feature was given its first public viewing in San Francisco earlier this morning Australian time at Google’s annual developers’ conference.

“I think you will see a form of interaction that you would not have previously imagined,” Google co-found Sergey Brin told a post-launch press conference.

Wave – which began life as a project codenamed Walkabout – is a combination of email and instant messaging and document-, maps- image- and video-sharing all housed under one roof.

Much like a conference call, it also allows for conversations between more than two people to happen simultaneous.

And because it all happens inside a web browser, there is no special software to download or plug-in – which means it can be used from any computer or internet-enabled mobile phone.

“Our communication space is very fragmented today. We have a million different tools for different things with lots of different kinds of overlaps,” said Lars Rassmussen, a senior software engineer with Google Australia

“The most natural way to try and solve that problem is to take all those different tools and try to make them smaller and fit into a single package and maybe integrate them across the boundaries.”

Wave is being released so that the developers – independent software creators – can help iron out the remaining bugs and cook-up a swag of new uses for the service and the platform upon which it is based ahead of a public release later this year.

But Wave is more than just another of Google’s ubiquitous free web services. It’s also a protocol – meaning that it is going after email’s mantle as the predominant internet communications tool.

And despite the recent growth of web-based email services like Hotmail and Gmail, most of the world’s email runs through Microsoft’s Outlook client.

And to encourage organisations to catch the Wave, Google is offering it up as an open source protocol, meaning that anyone – even a competitor – can box it up and host it on their servers.

Wave is the creation of Danish brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen, who together with Australian Noel Gordon and Stephen Ma – founded and later sold what became known as Google Maps to Google for an undisclosed sum in 2005.

Lars has worked for Google and lived in Australia since the sale and enticed Jens to leave Google’s headquarters near join him in 2007.

The pair and the Wave team – who have been given the full backing of Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page – have been working on the project out of Google’s offices in Sydney.

Stephen Hutcheon is attending the San Francisco conference as a guest of Google.

Source: www.watoday.com.au

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Giant liner will dock in Freo next year

FREMANTLE will host the biggest cruise liner ever to visit WA when the Queen Mary 2 squeezes into the harbour next year.

The 152,000-tonne ship, the largest of any type to sail into WA, will be visiting on March 14, 2010.

Built in 2003, the 3000-passenger liner has 10 restaurants, five pools, 8000-book library, casino, nightclub and even a planetarium.

On offer is a 30-night fly-cruise-and-stay deal that includes a 29-night cruise visiting China, Japan, New Zealand, Sydney and Adelaide.

Cruise Express is offering the package, which includes meals, for $8795 per person, twin-share.

www.inmycommunity.com.au

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