National broadband company Internode has become SA's 23rd largest company according to the annual inBusiness T100 report, after reporting revenues of $170 million for the past financial year.

Internode, and its associate company Agile Communications, have climbed from position #31 on the T100 chart in the past year, a period when its employee numbers have topped 320. About half of the company's revenues come from outside its home state of SA.

Internode is the largest technology company on the list, significantly ahead of memory manufacturer Legend Corporation and communications manufacturer Codan Ltd.

Internode's Chief Executive Officer Patrick Tapper said he expected Internode's rapid growth rate to continue for the foreseeable future. "Internode has grown by about $30 million annually during the past two years," he said. "We expect to maintain that volume of growth as the company diversifies its products and services to meet the needs of our customers, especially corporate and government organisations.

National accounting firm RSM Bird Cameron has recruited information security veteran Jo Stewart-Rattray to head up its new Risk Management Services team in Adelaide.

Jo has 20 years experience in the IT field, including as a Chief Information Officer for a major utility. She has worked in the information security arena for 12 years. In her most recent role, at Vectra Corporation, Jo provided strategic advice to organisations across industry sectors including banking and finance, utilities, automotive manufacturing, tertiary education, retail and government.

Jo specialises in consulting in information security issues with a particular emphasis on governance in both the commercial and operational areas of businesses.

As RSM Bird Cameron’s Director for Information Security, Jo said her focus was on the business side of risk management rather than the technical element. “Information security is all about risk management, so my role is to identify where the risk lies and to reduce it,” she said.

Many retailers are basing business strategy and investment decisions on inaccurate data gained from poorly-calibrated or malfunctioning people counting systems warns industry leader Beonic.

The Melbourne based company, a world leader in people-counting and retail intelligence systems, has launched a new service called Accuracy Counts , which will benefit users of all people counting technology, regardless of the sensor type or manufacturer.

Beonic operations manager Adam Barrow said the Australian marketplace had a wide variety of people counting technologies available. "Regardless of the technology you use to measure your foot traffic, you still need to know how accurately it is performing," he said.

"A surprising number of retailers are basing decisions such as marketing effectiveness or sales conversion results on incorrect or outdated accuracy benchmarks."

Clarksdale, Mississippi

With fields of the rogue weed kudzu lining each side of the road, Mississippi’s Highway 6 leads from Oxford to Clarksdale.  But despite this asphalt artery being only 46 miles long, it links two towns that otherwise exist in different worlds.

Named after the English university town, Oxford is a leafy prosperous town filled with boutiques, bookshops and bars to meet the needs of students attending Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi whose alumni include writers William Faulkner and John Grisham.

Oxford shot to world prominence today when it hosted the first debate of US Election 08 between presidential aspirants John McCain and Barack Obama. After threatening a no-show, McCain arrived in town for a last-minute ambush that seemed to have Obama on the back foot for most of the debate.

Robbie and I arrived in Oxford about 30 minutes before the Election 08 debate started after a long-haul drive from Louisville, a 460 mile journey that traversed the states of Kentucky and Tennessee. We managed to find the last vacant room in town, at the Comfort Inn on Jackson Street.

Broadband trailblazer Internode is now offering its business customers access to a high-grade spam-filtering service to turn back the deluge of unwanted trash-mail that assails private email servers.

Internode's just-launched Business Mail Filter service provides spam and virus protection for business customers that operate their own email servers. Using the IronPort spam and virus filter system, Internode has based the new service on its internal email protection system.

Costing from $25 a month, the Business Mail Filter is aimed at small to medium-sized businesses that run their own mail servers but cannot justify purchasing an industrial-strength spam filter. Benefits of the Internode Business Mail Filter service include:

• Reduced downloads by rejecting unwanted email before it reaches your server
• Reduced costs and time by eliminating the need for spam and virus filters on your email server
• Increased productivity by freeing employees from having to sort through unwanted spam email
• Improved security by minimising the risk of viruses attached to email.

Internode product manager Jim Kellett said the Business Mail Filter service delivered an immediate payback to business. "If you place any value on your time, you will redeem the monthly cost of this service within a day or two of using it," he said.