NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 17 October
17-10-2008
by Deirdre McArdle
Lincor Solutions tops Deloitte's Fast 50 | Netbooks drive EMEA PC market
In its first year entering the awards, Lincor Solutions, a provider of next generation interactive digital media solutions for the delivery of content and communication services to the healthcare sector, has taken home the top prize in this year's Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Awards. Founded in 2003, with offices in the Digital Depot in Dublin and in Cork Technology Park, Lincor achieved an aggregate growth rate of 3,145 percent over the last five years. Coming second, for the second year in a row, was mobile firm Zamano, which recorded an aggregate growth rate of 1,627 percent. Technology solutions provider iSite took third place with a growth rate of 1,503 percent. In the Rising Star category there were two winners -- Roomex Limited, an online hotel reservation site, represented the Republic of Ireland, while Stirk Lamont Associates, which provides technology business solutions, represented Northern Ireland. The Rising Star category honours younger firms with the fastest turnover over the past three years. Details of the final Technology Fast 50 ranking are available here.
The burgeoning laptop market, as well as the increasingly popular netbooks sector, is behind the 27 percent growth in PC shipments in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) market. That's according to research firm IDC, which revealed that growth in the laptop market alone was 52 percent year-on-year. Mini notebooks, or netbooks, saw a surge during the back-to-school season with IDC estimating over 2 million units were shipped in EMEA during the third quarter. Acer made a somewhat surprising debut at the number one position for the quarter. Its success has primarily been driven by its performance in the netbooks sector. Overall, it shipped just shy of 6 million units during the quarter, representing massive growth of 90 percent year-on-year. Pushed into second position was Hewlett-Packard, which shipped 5.2 million units and achieved 21.3 percent growth. Asus, which is perhaps best known for its Eee PC, is worth a mention in fourth position. It shipped just over 2 million units during the three-month period, clocking up impressive growth of 156 percent.
National youth organisation SpunOut.ie has joined up with the Credit Unions of Ireland to launch a nationwide video clip competition called 'What I Love about My Place'. The competition asks entrants to record a 60-second video clip on what makes their 'place' special, whether it's a village, school, house, or bedroom. Clips can be recorded on a mobile phone, camcorder, or digital camera. Visitors to www.yourplace.ie will be able to vote for their favourite video, with the most popular video winning a Viewers' Choice Award. Separately, all entries will be hosted on a dedicated YouTube page and a panel of judges will decide on the overall winners. There is EUR10,000 in cash prizes available to the winning videos. The closing date for entries is 31 October 2008.
Viviane Reding put out the call for more women with information, communications and technology skills (Reding calls them 'Cyberellas') to join the workplace in a speech to the Global Meeting of the Women's Forum for Economy and Society in Deauville, France on Friday. Reding believes that with more women in the ICT sector, the current skills shortage affecting Member States could be solved. "Forget that ICT was once a man's world! That is the past. Today, IT jobs are more than engineering. They require interactivity, creativity, social networking and emotional intelligence. Skills that certainly many men have. But women as well. All doors should therefore be opened wide to train and recruit more women for ICT jobs," Reding declared. "… as the classical 'Cinderella' probably would have done -- a 'Cyberella' will use her science or engineering degree to get an attractive job in the ICT sector and make her way to a decision-making position… She will thereby be able to have a strong impact on shaping Europe's economic and societal future." Reding failed to indicate whether one should wear fibre-optic slippers to the ball.
Google has rolled out an updated version of iGoogle for its US users. iGoogle is a customisable homepage, which allows users to have all their favourite content such as mail, news, stocks, and feeds all in one place. The updated version includes full canvas views for 'gadgets' and support for full-feed reading. This means users will be able to get full-page views of all their 'gadgets' such as The New York Times, YouTube, Gmail, etc, and will not have to leave their iGoogle page. The previous version of iGoogle was a bit cramped with all your 'gadgets' squashed into one page. So far the list of canvas gadgets is limited, with more to come on stream soon, according to Matt Gundersen, iGoogle Engineer, who said the updated iGoogle will also be rolled out to other countries "very soon".
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 