Daily Digest 5 August

05-08-2008

by Billy MacInnes

Ryanair acts against screenscrapers | Saaspoint boosts Irish jobs with new arm

Ryanair has forced Irish price comparison website Bravofly to stop using the airline's booking agent to sell flights online. The budget airline also revealed plans to cancel all passenger bookings made through sites using similar 'screenscraping' techniques. Ryanair spokesman Howard Millar claimed passengers had been "suffering long processing times and slower access because of the huge volume of information being downloaded" from its website by screenscrapers all over Europe. He confirmed the airline was planning to introduce new procedures on 11 August that would cancel all bookings made through screenscraping websites. "We believe this is a quicker and more effective way of discouraging this unlawful activity and we hope that by getting rid of screenscrapers we will speed up passenger processing times on Ryanair.com," Millar said. Ryanair claims screenscrapers are in breach of its copyright rules, often levy unjustified and unnecessary handling charges and fail to provide passengers with up-to-date flight information.

Software-as-a-service specialist Saaspoint has announced plans to create 50 jobs by 2010 with the establishment of a consultancy division in Ireland. The company, which is headquartered in Delgany, Co Wicklow, currently employs 55 staff in Dublin, London, Stockholm and San Francisco. It has recruited Tim Pullen, a UK consultancy veteran with stints at UBS, HSBC, Orange and First Active, to lead the Saaspoint Consulting division. The company said it expects the unit to generate EUR10 million in revenues by the end of 2010.

More than 2 billion global mobile phone users will pay for digital goods downloaded to their handsets, including music, tickets, TV and games by 2013, according to a new report. Among other predictions, Juniper Research expects mobile users to make at least two transactions per month for digital goods within five years. Report author Howard Wilcox claimed many digital content goods and services were becoming 'must haves' for people below 35 years old. "People who are 15 to 20 today will expect to buy directly with their phones and will drive this market over the next few years," he said. While typical transaction sizes would remain in the USD3 to USD5 bracket, people would be using mobile phones to buy music, games, tickets, infotainment and other digital goods often enough "to see gross transaction value grow nearly seven-fold by 2013", Wilcox added.

Professor Patrick Fottrell has been reappointed for a second five-year term as chairperson of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan said Professor Fottrell had spearheaded SFI's bid to establish "a world-class research environment in Ireland" since his initial appointment in 2003. SFI has been a key player in the Government's attempts to place a knowledge-based economy at the heart of Ireland's economic and social policy and has significantly expanded its range of programmes and support under the professor's tenure, she said. Professor Fottrell is a former professor of biochemistry at NUI Galway, serving as president of the university from 1996-2000, a board member of Teagasc and chairman of the Teagasc Research Committee.

Strong demand from PC and mobile phone manufacturers contributed to a 5.4 percent increase in worldwide semiconductor sales in the first half of 2008, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). The association also reported that emerging markets were likely to become a major factor in driving worldwide chip sales. SIA president George Scalise said: "In 2008, developing countries -- with sales of over 153 million units -- will account for half of worldwide PC sales. In mobile phones, developing countries are expected to account for 66 percent of total worldwide unit sales of over 1.3 billion." However, the SIA noted price attrition was taking its toll on memory products, revealing that the value of total memory sales declined by 6 percent year-on-year, despite a sharp increase in unit sales.

Ice Broadband and Ardencom have launched the 'Ice Telephone Box', which they claim can provide businesses with a complete telephony solution with a single phone call. The companies say it provides a single point of contact for the specification of the telephony system, as well as all customer after-sales service and support. "With one phone call, we can provide a solution that covers everything from handsets to broadband to switches," said Ice Broadband managing director Yvonne Rooney.

Bebo.com edged ahead of rival Facebook.com in the league for UK internet searches during June, but Google continued to dwarf all other sites, accounting for 75 percent of the 3.9 billion searches conducted during the month. Figures from comScore revealed that Bebo has reached number five in the table, with 2.3 percent of internet searches. eBay is second with 5.5 percent and Yahoo is in fourth place with 4.3 percent. The figures also revealed that 31 million UK internet users conducted at least one search during the month and there was an average of 4.1 searches per searcher every day.