NEWS IN BRIEF
For the record 28 May
28-05-2007
by Emmet Ryan
WestLAN signs contract with Fleming Construction | TCD fights spam
President Mary McAleese announced this year's winners of the President of Ireland Young Researcher Award at a ceremony in Aras an Uachtarain on Monday. The award, which was launched four years ago, is Science Foundation Ireland's most prestigious honour, recognising outstanding early career engineers and scientists from Ireland and abroad. This year there are four winners -- up from three in 2006 -- all of whom are based at universities in Continental Europe and the US. Under the programme, two will conduct research at Trinity College Dublin, one at NUI Galway and one at University College Cork. The four award recipients will receive almost EUR1 million each to conduct their research projects in Ireland over the next five years.
A survey by consulting firm IT Force found that 90 percent of the attendees at a recent seminar held by the firm think using mobility and collaboration technology helps them work better. IT Force's follow-up survey shows the bulk of attendees believed systems from Microsoft in this area were relevant to them and could add value to their business. The consulting firm launched its new website, www.itforce.ie, on Monday.
Data networking company WestLAN has signed a EUR500,000 contract with house builder Fleming Construction for the provision of structured cabling at Fleming's latest residential development at Rockbrook, south Dublin. A second deal worth EUR300,000 for cabling and support services at the Fota Island resort in Cork has also been agreed. When completed, Rockbrook, which is located on the old Allegro site in Sandyford, will consist of approximately 1,400 apartments and 500,000 square feet of retail and commercial space.
Broadband provider Centrecom has signed a contract with Deloitte Ireland to facilitate home-working by Deloitte employees. The Deloitte contract is worth EUR250,000 and involves managing home broadband for over 100 Deloitte employees. Centrecom's Corporate HomeWorker is a managed broadband service specifically designed for companies who want their employees to be able to work from home. The service avails of over 30 different broadband networks across the country to provide a single broadband service for companies and employees.
Trinity College Dublin has dramatically reduced the volume of spam e-mails reaching its 20,000 users. Of the 20 million messages sent to students and staff at the college each month, 80 percent were found to be spam. Trinity has introduced Microsoft's Exchange Hosted Server to try to better manage incoming mail. "Over a period of 20 days 12.1 million emails were sent to addresses in the TCD domain. The service managed to identify and block 11.1 million spam messages which accounted for 92 percent of all our incoming e-mail traffic," said John Murphy, deputy director of Information Systems Services at Trinity College Dublin. The system has now been adopted across all of Trinity's emailing systems.
HP is top of the server charts, according to analysts IDC. Figures released by IDC found HP was the global leader in total server units shipped in the first quarter of 2007. HP captured 33.6 percent of the shipment share in the first quarter and saw its own shipments grow by 16.6 percent in the quarter.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 