Daily Digest 18 August

18-08-2008

by Deirdre McArdle

Android phone imminent | CAO offers cause concern

Monday's first round of CAO offers to Irish students revealed a low uptake of science, technology, engineering and maths courses. This trend is causing concern among the business community, with head of HP Ireland, Martin Murphy, the latest to weigh in with his thoughts on the issue. "The downward trend in the numbers of students that are taking up these disciplines is very worrying because a skills shortage makes it harder to justify new investments here," he said. In order to tackle the issue Murphy proposes that the Government put a major focus on science, technology, engineering and maths subjects at all education levels. He pointed to the set-up in Northern Ireland; the C2K system there brings technology into the "heart of the classroom", he said.

As part of its partnership with Cisco, BT has added Cisco's TelePresence to its unified communications product range. TelePresence is essentially a room-sized collaborative tool including screens, microphones and cameras that facilitate audio-visual conferencing and instant two-way voice communication, designed to simulate a live meeting. TelePresence will now be offered as a fully-managed service on BT's MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) network.

Irish firm MobileAware has signed a reseller agreement with UK firm Arqiva, a telecoms provider to the public sector, public safety and transport markets. The agreement covers sales to police authorities in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, for three of MobileAware's core products: SmartIP, ExpressQ and IntelliSwitching. MobileAware products are key elements of Arqiva's police mobile data solution, which enables officers out on the beat to access national databases and complete required paperwork without having to return to their desks. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Cable broadband provider UPC Business has announced it has upgraded the broadband speeds it offers SMEs and Single Office, Home Office (SOHO) workers. The broadband provider says it can now offer customers in these sectors speeds of 6Mbps, 10Mbps and 20Mbps. These new speeds will be available to around 300,000 SMEs around the country, according to UPC.

The first handset powered by Google's smartphone platform, Android, will go on sale before the end of this year in the US. That's according to a report in the New York Times, which says that T-Mobile will be the first operator to offer the phone. The handset will be manufactured by HTC, and will feature a touchscreen similar to that on the iPhone. However, it will also feature a slide-out five-row keyboard, according to the New York Times, which quotes sources familiar with the device. Google's Android is free to the operators and manufacturers in Google's Open Handset Alliance. Although Alliance members Sprint and Qualcomm plan to offer Android phones eventually, T-Mobile is the only one that will launch a unit this year.

Staying with much-hyped touchscreen handsets, Apple's iPhone 3G is to extend its reach and launch in Turkey. Apple has signed a deal with Turkish mobile operator Turkcell to release the phone in the Eastern European country. Apple's iPhone 3G was launched in over 20 different countries on 11 July.

Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, has said it is cutting a service that allowed users to receive Twitter updates via SMS. In a blog posting, Twitter has blamed mobile operators for the changes it's had to make. It explained that whenever a user sent an update to Twitter they weren't charged for forwarding the message on to their friends; Twitter had been footing the bill. As the service became more and more popular, this cost has ultimately proved prohibitive. Twitter has said it will continue to try and form some kind of agreement with global operators with a goal towards providing a "full, two-way service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is sustainable from a cost perspective". Twitter noted in its blog that users will still be able to send updates to Twitter over SMS, and, if you're living in the US, Canada or India, nothing will change.