NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 9 January
09-01-2009
by Emmet Cole
Magnet to expand Irish network | ICS gets Equalskills funding
Broadband provider Magnet Networks has announced plans to expand its existing network using the new EUR30 million fibre-optic cable system being built by its sister company, Hibernia Atlantic Group. The new cable will connect several locations in Northern Ireland and the Republic including Belfast, Armagh, Derry, Letterkenny, Drogheda, Dundalk and Monaghan. Magnet also plans to establish direct operations within Northern Ireland during 2009. The company's existing network includes 40 unbundled exchanges in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Portlaoise as well as extensive fibre networks across Ireland. Both Magnet Networks and Hibernia Atlantic are wholly owned subsidiaries of US-based international investment company Columbia Ventures Corporation.
ICS Skills -- the training and certification body of the Irish Computer Society -- announced on Friday that it has secured significant funding for Equalskills, its beginner's computer training programme. The project will be supported by funding from the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, under the BenefIT Scheme, meaning that qualified candidates will now pay EUR20 for the course instead of EUR330. Equalskills is aimed at IT novices and provides basic knowledge of computers as well as basic web surfing and email skills. To qualify, individuals must meet at least one of the following criteria: unemployed, a woman in the home, disabled or retired over 55.
Panasonic has announced that it will slash capital expenditure in its television business and pull out of unspecified unprofitable businesses. The company also warned that it may fall short of some financial targets in the fiscal year ending March 2009. Panasonic will cut planned investments in two Japanese factories making flat panels for TV sets by 23 percent, or about USD1.5 billion. The Osaka-based company also said it expects to pull out of certain unprofitable businesses, without identifying which operations might be axed or how many jobs could be lost. The news comes just six weeks after Panasonic slashed its net profit forecast for the fiscal year by 90 percent.
The worlds of television broadcasting and the internet moved a little closer on Friday with Yahoo announcing deals with a range of television manufacturers, including Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Sony and Vizio. The deal, which was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, will see television manufacturers make high-definition TVs that support Yahoo's online service. Expected to be available Stateside as early as next spring, the televisions will support small internet applications running alongside broadcast TV content. The applications will enable consumers to watch videos on YouTube, use Yahoo's photo-sharing site Flickr, network on MySpace.com and Twitter, track stocks and sports teams, and buy and sell on eBay.
Also at the CES show, Palm unveiled its 'Pre' smartphone and webOS. The smartphone space is dominated by RIM (makers of Blackberry devices) and Apple, with Google making a strong entrance last year via its Android operating system. The Pre is aimed at both the business and entertainment markets and comes with a 3.1-inch touchscreen, a physical keyboard, Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth, a full HTML browser, 3-megapixel camera, and 8 GB of storage. Palm's webOS is built on industry-standard technologies like CSS, XHTML, and JavaScript. In an effort to compete with Google's Android, Palm will offer an open development environment for third-party developers to quickly create applications.
Staying with the CES, singer Stevie Wonder attended the Las Vegas show on Thursday to campaign for improved user-interfaces for blind and partially-sighted technology users. Touchscreen interfaces, such as those on Apple's iPhone, do not adequately meet the needs of blind users, Wonder said. Blind users can buy screen-reading software for USD300 upward, but it tends to only work on a limited number of smartphones. Advocates are calling for changes to product design, including easy-to-use "start-over" buttons, different sounds for different menus, and controls with improved tactile feedback.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 