For the record 1 May
01-05-2008
by Deirdre McArdle
Firstsource Solutions to create 800 jobs in Northern Ireland | PutPlace flies in Under the Radar
Firstsource Solutions, an Indian-headquartered global business process outsourcing firm, has announced it is to create up to 800 jobs in Northern Ireland. The company already employs over 900 people at facilities in Belfast and Derry. With this latest investment, which has been offered STG6.7 million of support from Invest NI, Firstsource Solutions plans to expand its Derry operation by creating over 300 jobs there. The company also plans to set up a third European Centre of Excellence in Northern Ireland to create a further 500 new jobs. It is currently considering a number of potential locations for this third site.
Irish firm PutPlace, a provider of automated, real-time back-up, publishing and sharing services for digital data, has announced it has been selected as a "player of the future" in the social media and entertainment space by start-up spotter Under the Radar. Previous selections in this category include Flickr, PhotoBucket and Blinkx. PutPlace will present at the Under the Radar Conference on 3 June, 2008 at the Microsoft Campus, Mountain View, California. Under the Radar is a conference series and a blog profiling early-stage innovation, showcasing emerging start-ups and identifying trends.
Channel 4 has launched a new online catch-up service that allows viewers to view shows from the past seven days. The new service, available at channel4.com, is separate to the existing 4oD that already offers a selection of free and paid-for content. The service currently only supports Windows PCs using Internet Explorer 6 or 7 due to rights restrictions. However, a plug-in for Firefox users is available.
The Telecommunications and Internet Federation's (TIF) Cable and Broadcasting Industry group has said the EU's new Audiovisual Media Services Directive will pose significant challenges and also present new opportunities to Irish broadcasters. A number of players in the broadcasting sector in Ireland have been discussing the new directive, its implications and how they are planning on implementing it. Among the provisions in the directive are the introduction of new definitions, which extend the reach of the directive to cover any provider offering audiovisual content to the general public, and the need to ensure viewers are informed of what is advertisement material. The directive was finalised in December 2007 and each EU Member State has two years to implement it.
Spam accounted for 95 percent of all e-mails heading for Irish inboxes this week, according to the latest figures from IT Force. This marks a 2 percent rise on last week's figures, the company said. IT Force analysed over 493,653 e-mails received by IT Force and its clients over the past week and revealed that 467,916 were unsolicited.
Tax Computer Systems has announced that professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has become the latest accountancy firm to adopt its Alphatax corporate tax software suite. Tax Computer Systems introduced its tax computational software product, Alphatax, in Ireland in 2004 and can currently count 8 of the top 10 Irish accountancy firms as customers.
Gulliver Ireland has announced the winners of its Tourism Accommodation Awards 2007, with the Temple Bar Hotel in Dublin securing the overall award. The awards, now in their fourth year, identify and honour online marketing excellence achieved by hotel, guesthouse, B&B and self-catering properties throughout the country through their partnership with Gulliver Ireland. Among the reasons cited by the judges for the Temple Bar Hotel's win was: "consistent online availability of various types of rooms through Gulliver's system, GullNet".
