For the record 14 May

14-05-2008

by Bryan Collins

EU approves TomTom's acquisition of Tele Atlas | MySpace wins landmark spam case

Over 200 teachers from around Ireland will be converging on Thurles on 22 May for the Internet Experience in Education conference. They will hear from Ewan McIntosh, the national adviser for Learning and Teaching body in Scotland. The teachers will also be shown why the internet and gaming should be part of the curriculum. "The internet, gaming and mobile technologies are encouraging more collaboration across greater distances and cultures than ever before. Such stories should be encouraging rapid change in the nature of schooling and what we need to do is examine what routes educators should go to maximise the opportunity presented by this change," said McIntosh.

Anam, a provider of SMS applications, has partnered with Nordic telecommunications company, Telenor. The partnership will see Telenor use Anam's Smart Services Message Centre. This will allow the Nordic company to create messaging-based services. Telenor is to also implement Anam's SMS anti-spam solution to protect its customers. "SMS is one area which has significant opportunities for the implementation of new services," said Ingrid Lorange, vice president of operations at Telenor.

Version 1, an Irish IT services organisation, is holding a breakfast briefing on 21 May in the Royal College of Surgeons to promote desktop virtualisation. The company says desktop virtualisation maximises client infrastructures, reduces power consumption, saves physical space by consolidating servers and lowers the cost of hardware and maintenance. "It is essential that the project be thoroughly planned and all possible costs and complications factored into the budget and roadmap. Items like licensing, management, application support and security can often be over looked," said Richard Nunan, the head Version 1's Infrastructure Services. Anyone interested in attend should e-mail breakfast@version1.com or call (01) 8657816.

The European Commission has approved the proposed acquisition of Tele Atlas by TomTom. Both of these companies are located in the Netherlands. Tele Atlas provides navigable digital maps while TomTom produces portable navigation devices or sat-navs. The EU started examining the merger proposal in November 2007 and concluded that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area. "The sat-nav market is important for consumers. After thorough investigation, I am now satisfied that the innovation and competition we have seen in SatNavs until now will continue after this merger, and that consumers will continue to benefit from new and innovative products," said EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

The Minister for Education and Science, Batt O'Keeffe, has launched a report by Trinity College's Institute of Molecular Medicine documenting five years of bioscientific research. There are currently 180 clinician researchers and scientists working together at IMM focusing on areas like infection and immunity, neurosciences and cancer. The seven recently discovered gene regions linked to celiac disease was just one of the findings outlined in the report. "Communicating scientific and technological developments is of particular importance in the context of a maturing knowledge society," said O'Keeffe at the launch.

MySpace has won a USD234 million legal case over the 735,925 junk mails sent to its members. A judge found in the social networking website's favour after Walter Rines and Sanford Wallace failed to turn up in court. Even though the judgement is the largest ever fine handed to senders of spam, MySpace has little chance of getting the cash. John Levine of Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email told the BBC: "The giant judgements are all defaults, which means they don't necessarily even know how to find the spammer."