Computerworld Hong Kong, Computerworld Hong Kong staff

Google will inject US$300 million as a long-term investment in its Hong Kong datacenter that will go live in early 2013, said the company after the ground breaking ceremony in Tsueng Kwan O Industrial Estate last week.

The US$300 million investment includes the cost of land, construction, and technical equipment, Google representatives noted, adding that it will employ around 25 full-time staffers along with some part-time and full-time contractors in various roles including compute technicians, electrical and mechanical engineers, and catering and security workers.

Finally the white iPhone 4 and iPad 2 have hit Hong Kong.

Hong Kong aside, fans in 27 other markets are able to buy the white device this weekend.

Hong Kong organizations need to combat security threats in a collaborative manner, urged Agnes Mak, executive director of the Hong Kong Productivity Council last week after the Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre (HKCERT) reported that the number of hacking and phishing cases were up 34 percent year-on-year in the first 10 months of the year.

According to the HKPC-managed HKCERT, there were 579 active hacking and phishing cases in the first 10 months of 2010. "As new technologies such as cloud computing and mobile apps for smartphones are increasingly popular, such cases set to spiral upward," said Mak who spoke at the opening of the Information Security Summit 2010 yesterday. "The Government, information security professionals, and the community at large must work together to curb these attacks." (See also Don't be Dragooned into the Botnet Army."

Gartner last week announced key predictions that it claims will change the nature of business today and beyond.

According to the research house, its 2010 predictions span 56 market, topic and industry areas, with around 250 predictions in total.

The number of Internet users rose 41.9 percent year-on-year to 298 million in 2008, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

A report by the CNNIC indicated that the country's Internet penetration rate has reached 22.6 percent, higher than the global average of 21.9 percent for the first time. In addition, the number of broadband Internet users in China was 270 million and the number of the national .CN domain names soared 50.8 percent to 13.572 million.

Graphic: Diego AguirreA Hong Kong resident has pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court for his part in a scam where tens of millions of spam emails were sent, artificially pumping up the stock price of Chinese companies between 2004 and 2006.

According to media reports in the U.S., How Wai John Hui, a resident of Hong Kong and Vancouver, was the CEO of U.S.-based China World Trade, one of the companies whose stock was inflated as a result of the scam. As part of his plea agreement with prosecutors the 50-year-old businessman could face a sentence of between 63 and 78 months in jail.

Chinese computer users are the major targets of online attackers, according to the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report released last week.

The report revealed that the most common system locale for victims of browser-based exploits was Chinese, accounting for 47 percent of all incidents, followed by US English with 23 percent of incidents, in the first half of this year.