For the record 20 November

20-11-2006

by Maxim Kelly

Labour wants public wireless hotspots throughout Dublin | Grey Goo attack on virtual universe

The Labour Party's spokesperson on Communications, Tommy Broughan, has called for Dublin city centre to be made into a public access wireless broadband zone similar to US cities such as Philadelphia and San Francisco. Deputy Broughan has suggested a public hotspot should be set up in St Stephen's Green as a precursor to a city-wide network. "Earlier this year I called on the Government and Dublin City Council to transform the city centre into a broadband Wi-Fi zone where anyone with a mobile phone or laptop computer could access the internet from any point within the zone," he said. "An ICT-enabled city will be a hallmark of urban areas as the 21st century progresses. It is deplorable, but unfortunately not surprising, that there have been no real initiatives by Dublin City Council to ensure that Dublin leads the way in providing widespread, accessible and affordable internet access. The development of a public access Wi-Fi zone in St Stephen's Green would be a means to redress the balance."

Heavy RF has won the overall BT Ireland Inspired IT Awards for its voice-enabled warehouse management system, used by C&C Group's Bulmers warehouse in Clonmel, County Tipperary. It's been a busy year for Irish brewery Bulmers, and with cider consumption soaring over the hot summer and a threatened lack of apples to keep up with demand. The Heavy RF solution works by automatically translating electronic orders into speech commands which are relayed to staff picking orders in the warehouse.

Confidence levels are falling amongst SMEs, according to the latest annual O2 Business Survey conducted by TNS MRBI. The survey found 29 percent of firms are more confident about the coming year than they were last year, compared to 43 percent two years ago and 33 percent last year. The number of firms which are less confident has risen from 10 percent two years ago to 17 percent this year. "Overall Irish SMEs remain optimistic but this year's survey finds that cost pressures and competition remain the major threats," said Billy D'Arcy, head of business sales & services for O2 Ireland. "This year's increase in interest rates, fuel prices and other costs may have dampened expectations compared to two years ago." However, the jobs outlook remains positive, with 39 percent of Irish SMEs expecting to increase headcount, up from 31 percent last year. Only 3 percent expect to shed staff. Thirty-nine percent of firms say it is more difficult now to hire suitable staff.

The BBC reports that virtual world Second Life had to shut down briefly on Sunday after a worm attack called Grey Goo upset the online community. The self-replicating worm planted spinning gold rings around the virtual world, which is inhabited by more than 1 million users. As users interacted with the rings they replicated, resulting in a slowdown on the servers used by Second Life's creators, Linden Lab in California.

CNET News reports on a deal between seven US newspaper groups and Yahoo. The groups, which represent 176 daily papers, will share content, advertising and technology with Yahoo. In the first phase of the deal, the newspaper companies will begin posting their employment classified ads on Yahoo's classified jobs site, HotJobs, and start using HotJobs technology to run their own online career ads. But the long-term goal of the alliance with Yahoo, one senior executive at a participating newspaper company told CNET, is to be able to have the content of these newspapers tagged and optimised for searching and indexing by Yahoo. The eventual plan is that local news will become part of a large information network that would increase usefulness for readers and value to advertisers.