NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 31 October
31-10-2008
by Deirdre McArdle
RTE confirms five digital radio stations | BSkyB profits drop, subscriptions jump
RTE has said that despite speculation to the contrary, it is to go ahead with the roll out of five channels in the commercial launch of its digital radio service. The broadcaster said it is going to provide three music services, a speech service and a children's only radio service. The music services are: RTE Pulse, RTE 2XM and RTE Chill. The speech service, a sister station to RTE Radio 1, is to be called RTE Choice, and a station aimed at children aged between 2 to 10 will be called RTE Junior. RTE has been trialling its digital radio service since March 2007. The trial finishes up on 30 November and the broadcaster intends to have the commercial launch on 1 December.
Web hosting and broadband provider Digiweb has opened an expansion of its hosting facility in the Blanchardstown Technology Campus in Dublin. The expansion increases the facility's capacity by 50 percent, according to Digiweb, which said it forms part of its ongoing investment into datacentre capacity in Ireland. This is expected to expand to tens of thousands of square feet of further capacity over the next three years. "Our initial build in 2007 within the 38,000 sq ft building was designed to give us capacity for twenty four months," said Dan King, hosting and managed services manager with Digiweb. "However, significant market demand has meant that we were reaching capacity far faster than expected, hence our accelerated build-out program."
On Wednesday Apple published a support document outlining improvements that have been made to aspects of MobileMe, including mail, accounts, calendars, contacts and the gallery. Apple said performance in Internet Explorer has also been improved, and users have re-gained the ability to export vCards from MobileMe contacts. MobileMe, a subscription-based service launched in July at USD99 a year, works with the iPhone's calendar, contacts, and mail applications and also with Mail, iCal, and Address Book on the Macintosh, and Outlook on Windows. Users get 20GB of storage space to wirelessly store photos, videos and other data.
BABY MAX - Wings of Love fund and re:charge cartridges have joined together to launch an initiative to help raise funds in order to buy medical equipment for children's hospitals around the country. The initiative aims to collect over 1 million used cartridges by Christmas through re:charge cartridges' 33 stores around the country. These cartridges will be recycled and the money used to buy medical equipment. "We urge local businesses and homes to be proactive and get involved in helping us achieve our 1 million cartridges goal. This can be done by simply dropping used cartridges into your nearest store, details of which can be found on www.rechargecartridges.com," said Paddy Burke, CEO of re:charge cartridges. The launch coincides with the presentation of a Maquet ventilator worth EUR60,000 to Our Lady's Children's Hospital Crumlin by the BABY MAX charity.
Pay-TV firm BSkyB has posted a 13.1 percent drop in net profits to STG73 million in the three months to the end of September, compared with the same period last year. On the flip side, operating profits, excluding exceptional items, surged by 21 percent to STG182 million during the first quarter, while revenue increased by 5.4 percent to STG1.249 billion. The firm added 87,000 new customers during the quarter to bring total subscribers to over 9 million. It said it was on track to hit its target of 10 million customers by the end of 2010.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 