NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 2 January
02-01-2009
by Deirdre McArdle
Online game to teach students business skills | IE loses out to rival browsers
Eircom has launched a website -- www.broadbandAtoZ.ie -- that it says will provide clear, up-to-date, local information regarding Eircom's broadband rollout activity across the country. The telecoms firm also announced that it had enabled eight exchanges during the week and that during 2008 over 125 exchanges were enabled across the country. That means there are now 608 broadband-enabled exchanges nationwide, according to Rex Comb, Eircom's CEO.
Meanwhile, Eircom's mobile subsidiary Meteor said that over 450 million text messages were sent over its network during the month of December. In the first hour of the New Year alone 1,743,000 texts were sent by Meteor customers. The mobile operator passed the 1 million customer milestone last year and now controls 19 percent of the Irish mobile market.
Microsoft has linked up with the County and City Enterprise Boards to launch an online game aimed at teaching students business skills. The Small Business Game involves students running a virtual sports shop and teaches them skills such as marketing, finance and stock management. The game will also be closely linked to the Junior Cert curriculum, according to Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe. "This is a wonderful demonstration of how technology can be adapted to meet the needs of the curriculum. Using the game, students will get a very real flavour of what it takes to run a business and if we can continue to provide these types of enterprise experiences to our students it is much more likely that they will decide to try the real thing in the future," said the minister. The game is for Irish secondary school students between the ages of 13 and 18 only. To play the game, schools need to register at www.businessgame.ie.
Safari, Firefox and Chrome all ate into Microsoft's Internet Explorer share of the browser market during December, according to preliminary figures published by Net Applications. The figures revealed that Internet Explorer was used by 68.2 percent of internet users monitored in December, down from 69.8 percent in November and 71.3 percent in October. Meanwhile, Firefox's share rose to 21.3 percent, from 20.8 percent in November and 20 percent in October, while Safari's climbed to 7.9 percent, from 7.1 percent in November and 6.6 percent in October. Google's newly-launched Chrome browser took just over 1 percent share, up from 0.8 percent in November and 0.7 percent in October. Net Applications did however temper the results, explaining that the December holiday season "strongly favoured residential over business usage. This in turn increases the relative usage share of Mac, Firefox, Safari and other products that have relatively high residential usage".
As of New Year's Day it is now illegal to write, send or read a text message while driving in the state of California. If a motorist is caught texting while driving they will receive a USD20 fine for a first offence and a USD50 fine for subsequent violations. This new law follows legislation introduced from 1 July 2008, which prohibited drivers under 18 years old from using any mobile phone or electronic messaging device while driving, while adult motorists are required to use hands-free devices if talking on their mobile while driving. Meanwhile, closer to home, Fine Gael Road Safety spokesman Shane McEntee has called for hands-free kits to be made compulsory for all private and commercial vehicles. McEntee said he believes such a move would have "an immediate and positive result on road safety levels".
There won't be many major new trends in IT security this year, but most of the themes and vulnerabilities from last year will continue, reports VNUnet.co.uk. Spam will continue to be a key threat and will become more malicious, while businesses and consumers will also have to guard against increasingly stealthy and sophisticated malware. Website vulnerabilities will be targeted by criminals, so website owners will need to guard carefully against having their sites hacked. In addition, the credit crunch will be exploited by hackers, who will send fake e-mails purporting to be from ailing banks, in the hopes of harvesting financial details.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 