Daily Digest 5 September

05-09-2008

by Deirdre McArdle

Analog Devices welcomes new recruits | Irish gamers battle for place on Team Ireland

Analog Devices, a provider of analogue, mixed-signal, and digital signal processing (DSP) integrated circuits, has on Friday welcomed 18 new graduate recruits to its facility in Raheen, Limerick. The electronic engineers join Analog as part of the firm's graduate recruitment programme. Michael Kinsella, HR business partner, Analog Devices, said programmes such as this play a key role in Ireland's future. "Ireland needs to differentiate itself from low-cost competitors by generating sustainable competitive advantage through human resources. That is why we are continuing to focus on recruiting the best graduate talent out there and we are delighted to welcome our 18 new engineers to the company," he said. The graduates have joined Analog Devices from a number of Irish universities, and the firm plans to hire additional staff over the next couple of months, with the potential to take on as many as 25 next year.

The Digital Hub plays host to the Irish finals of the World Cyber Games on 6 September. Over 100 Irish gamers are expected to attend the event, which runs from 12pm until 10pm. Seven winning gamers will go on to represent Ireland at international level in the World Cyber Games, which will take place in Cologne, Germany, in November. Team Ireland 2008 will be announced at 9.30pm on 6 September. The team will then begin practice sessions to prepare for the world finals.

Mobile operator Vodafone has struck up an agreement with Dell whereby Dell's Inspiron Mini 9 will be sold with built-in mobile broadband from Vodafone. The mini-laptop will also be for sale through Vodafone stores and on the mobile operator's website. "The recent acceleration in the take-up of mobile broadband has demonstrated just how hungry consumers are for internet access. Building on our long relationship with Dell, the availability of the Inspiron Mini 9 will further enhance what a customer can achieve with mobile broadband whilst on the move," said Andrew Sangster, director of PC Connectivity, Vodafone, in a statement. Read more about the launch of Dell's Inspiron Mini 9 on ENN.

Finnish mobile giant Nokia has revised downwards its expected market share for the third quarter of the year. The mobile maker had originally said its share of the market for the quarter would be equal to that of the second quarter, at 40 percent, but has now said that Q3 will come in lower than Q2. Nokia cited overall competition and a slow ramp-up of its mid-range devices as the reasons for the lower expectations. On the other hand, Nokia continues to expect mobile shipments in 2008 to grow 10 percent or more from the approximately 1.14 billion units Nokia estimated for 2007.

More than half of organisations require only passwords from employees who want to access critical data, rather than stronger forms of authentication. So says a study titled "Strong User Authentication" by Aberdeen Group on behalf of software house Quest Software. Other key findings from the study of nearly 150 organisations showed that 88 percent of users have multiple work-related passwords, 64 percent of companies do not require users to change their passwords, and 45 percent of organisations allow standard dictionary terms (such as "password") to be used as passwords. Forty percent of those surveyed said that risk from external users was the main driver for current investments in strong user authentication. This is a result of organisations needing to provide expanded access to more end-users, including remote employees, contractors, partners and customers.

Popular image-hosting service Picasa is becoming the new tool of choice for spammers trying to elude e-mail filters. That's according to a report by security firm Message Labs, which found that the service is being used to host the images featured in spam messages. Message Labs said the use of Picasa was appealing to spammers on two levels. First, because Picasa is a Google service, the domains are rarely blocked by e-mail filters and, second, the streamlined nature of the service makes it easier for spammers to upload and manage albums. Message Labs also highlighted Flash files as an emerging threat, with spammers now using these files to confuse users and redirect them to phishing sites. "Using this latest technique, spammers are able to bypass many traditional content filters since the link in the message relates to a legitimate website," said Message Labs.