This year promises to be a watershed year for laptops. Really thin will be in and internal optical drives out, while some designs venture into hybrid territory. Hybrids, like the Asus Transformer Prime, shouldn't be rare in 2012.

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MacBooks, ultrabooks mix it up in 2012

Microsoft has had a change of heart and may allow Linux virtual machines (VMs) and other services to run on its Azure cloud platform thanks to new support for persistent VMs. It's great to see another company not forcing its customers down its proprietary route, but is it because Microsoft has realised that the former strategy might be hurting itself in the long run?

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Microsoft allowing Linux on Azure?

So, you're a struggling start-up, wondering why others are getting ahead while you're mired in red tape and disillusionment.

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Start-up secret 12: 1% of a gajillion dollars!

As head of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch is one of the most powerful media personalities on the planet, and he has finally joined what some call the "new journalism": Twitter. The 80-year-old media tycoon who "never learned to email" joined the social media service on New Year's Eve and has since posted 17 tweets, with one of the most recent congratulating New York mayor (and competitor) Michael Bloomberg.

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Rupert Murdoch joins Twitter

For all the talk of the barren wasteland that is Research In Motion's developer ecosystem, there actually have been successes.

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How Poynt rode BlackBerry to success

More than 4000 Australians were connected to the National Broadband Network ( NBN ) in 2011 and more are expected this year as new service providers begin offering internet plans to customers. NBN Co, the company set up by the Federal Government to deliver the $36 billion infrastructure project, said on Monday it was pleased with the connection numbers now that the high-speed network has been rolled past 18,200 homes and business premises. While connection take-up appears small in comparison to activations, the company said this was because a number of internet service providers still had to bring their plans to market

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NBN expects lots more customers in 2012

ZDNet Australia is proud to bring you a serialised version of Phil Dobbie's novel The Incumbent . A new chapter will be published here as part of his blog each week on Tuesday. You can also buy the entire book by clicking here

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The Incumbent: Chapter 12

It's never quiet for the telecommunications industry, and 2011 was no different.

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LTE, NBN, iiBorg: 2011 in telco