NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 20 October
20-10-2008
by Deirdre McArdle
Three Ireland in EUR30m network upgrade | Sony pulls LittleBigPlanet
Three Ireland has signed a EUR30 million deal with Nokia Siemens Networks to upgrade its broadband network. Under the agreement Three Ireland said it will be able to offer Irish consumers and businesses broadband access operating on 7.2Mbps technology this year, with the deployment of 14.4Mbps technology in 2009. In addition to the downlink technology, Three is also deploying uplink technology of 2Mbps. The deal will see Three roll out Nokia Siemens Networks' flat network architecture solution known as 'Internet High-Speed Packet Access' (I-HSPA). The technology is optimised to carry large volumes of data traffic, with its all-Internet Protocol (IP) backhaul. Three currently has over 90,000 mobile broadband subscribers.
The Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) has launched a new website for domestic energy customers and has urged householders to become more 'bill aware'. The website, www.energycustomers.ie, gives customers an overview of the electricity and natural gas markets in Ireland; information on their rights and energy supplier codes of conduct and also explains what customers should do if they experience problems with their bills, their connection to the electricity or natural gas network or some other issue relating to energy supply.
Ireland has the opportunity to become part of a third Industrial Revolution and become a leader in green technology, according to Dr Eddie O'Connor, CEO, Mainstream Renewable Power, who was addressing the Irish Venture Capital Association in Dublin. Dr O’Connor said that because of Ireland's size it could not be a leader in everything. "But we should not be afraid to pick winners, especially in areas where we have a comparative advantage, such as wind, especially off-shore wind, ocean energy and certain forms of biomass." He said that if Ireland does not grasp the opportunity to become a world leader in a few chosen technologies then "we will be left behind and reduced to being followers in them all".
Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) has announced a series of events called 'Be Inspired, Be an Entrepreneur'. The first event in the series will take place on Thursday and will feature Denis O'Brien, who founded the fast growing Caribbean mobile operator Digicel. Brody Sweeney of O'Briens Sandwich Bars will give his insights into becoming an entrepreneur on 20 November, while Eamonn Fallon, co-founder of online property portal Daft.ie, headlines the bill on 3 December. More information on this event series is available here.
Just one in every 15 e-mails to Irish inboxes over the past month were legitimate, according to managed e-mail filtering firm Maildistiller. On Sunday, the firm published its Monthly Spam Index, which also revealed that nine out of every ten mails processed were spam and one in every 388 e-mails contained a virus. Fraud and phishing were the two largest spam categories, while health/pharmacy, adult content and jewellery were the next three highest spam categories.
Sony has announced it is postponing the release of its much-hyped PlayStation 3 game LittleBigPlanet after it emerged that a background music track on the game contained two phrases from the Qur'an. In a statement on the PS3 website Sony has apologised for any offence its use of the backing track might have caused. It is recalling all copies of the game that had been sent to retailers and is manufacturing a new version of the game removing the music track. The changed version of LittleBigPlanet will now go on sale on 5 November in the UK and 29 October in the US.
Three quarters of records management professionals say they don't have a system that manages content across their organisation. That's according to a survey commissioned by CA and conducted by ARMA International, which reveals that as a result of the lack of systems in place, 72 percent of respondents said they feel unprepared when it comes to e-mail management. In addition, 62 percent said they don't have an e-mail archiving system. The majority of organisations said they have retention policies for all content formats, with 66 percent using the same retention policy for both physical and electronic documents. However, consistency in applying these policies is still lacking; one-third said they manage their records according to their retention schedule; 41 percent said they manage their e-mail according to their retention policy; and only 20 percent said they manage their electronic documents according to the schedule.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 