For the record 26 March

26-03-2008

by Ciara O'Brien

Irish trade mission to Silicon Valley kicks off | Facebook suffers privacy glitch

A major Irish trade mission is underway in the US, with Silicon Valley in California and Austin, Texas on the agenda. The mission, which includes up to nine Enterprise Ireland-backed companies, hopes to help the firms secure significant deals and sign up high-tech partners in Silicon Valley. The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheal Martin, is planning to hold talks with a number of groups promoting Irish business in Silicon Valley, such as the Irish Technology Leadership Group.

NovaUCD, the innovation and technology transfer centre at University College Dublin, is kicking off its 2008 Campus Company Development Programme (CCDP). Eleven new high-tech and knowledge-intensive business enterprises will be supported in the drive, with ventures this year including commercialised research from biomolecular and biomedical science, bioprocessing engineering, electronic engineering, physics and physiotherapy. The nine-month programme offers monthly workshops, mentoring and one-to-one consultancy.

Facebook users suffered a security glitch when a technical error made private pictures public. A Canadian computer technician, Byron Ng, discovered code that allowed people to view private pictures on the social networking site, and posted it on his blog. This latest glitch is the result of updated code, which he said allowed users to view the album that the person last tagged themselves in. However, Facebook is already on the case, and claims to have fixed the bug.

Hostelworld.com has launched a version of its accommodation service optimised for the iPhone. The new site includes hostel ratings, photos and content, allows users to make and review previous bookings in an iPhone-friendly layout, and allows them to bookmark the site onto their iPhone home screen.

Xerox has taken another environmentally-friendly step with a new calculator that measures how green your office is. The Sustainability Calculator is a software tool designed to help customers pinpoint where they can reduce their environmental impact and also cut costs by measuring the overall impact a company's document technologies have on the environment. It evaluates the office printers, copiers and multifunction devices, from Xerox and other companies, and measures environmental benefits in terms of energy and paper use, solid waste, water, air and greenhouse gas emissions. For more information, see Xerox's website at www.xerox.com/thoughtleadership.

Smart Telecom has launched of a new suite of high-speed broadband business packages, which are customised offerings aimed at the SME market. The packages include 2Mb, 4Mb, 6Mb, 8Mb, 10Mb and 15Mb products, which are contention-free and have no usage limits, according to the firm.

GameStop has been nominated for the 2008 MCV Industry Excellence Awards, the first Irish retailer to make the list. The award, which recognises success and contribution from the UK games market, will be announced on Thursday, 10 April in London. GameStop has been nominated in the "Specialist Video Games Retailer" category, which is open to any specialist video games/home computing retailer on the High Street or online that is judged to offer the best customer service, product knowledge, range, window and in-store merchandising.