Weekly Digest
Weekly Digest Issue No. 451
05-02-2009
by Deirdre McArdle
One hand giveth… | …and the other taketh away | Japanese giants falter under pressure | Illegal filesharers: Eircom agrees to take action | Google makes the world smaller | Facebook turns five
One hand giveth…
There was some good news and some bad news on the jobs front over the past week. Online tax agency Taxback.com said it would be creating 100 jobs at three of its bases around the country -- Cork, Kilkenny and Dublin -- almost doubling its Irish workforce. The firm provides online income tax services for overseas workers and local services and accountancy expertise for people in their home country. Meanwhile, in the North, financial technology firm First Derivatives, which provides software services to financial institutions, is to create 142 jobs at its base in Newry. The bulk of the jobs (132) will be consultancy posts, while 10 will be managerial roles. The news follows on from the firm's solid performance in the six months to April 2008, when it posted a 21 percent jump in pre-tax profits to STG2.2 million. Revenue at the firm, which is listed on the IEX and the AIM, came in at STG6.8 million, also a 21 percent increase on the year-ago revenue figure. Still in Northern Ireland, software and services provider ICS Computing is poised to create 50 new jobs at its Belfast headquarters on the back of significant contract wins with the NHS. The contracts are to provide payroll services to around 17,000 employees across two NHS trusts. The services will be managed from ICS's Belfast office. Finally, on Thursday, Irish firm Ergo Software Solutions opened an R&D facility at the the Incubation Centre at the Regional Development Centre at Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT). Research activity at the centre will focus on developing the next generation of Ergo’s financial services software technology platform. The facility will initially employ six full-time software developers but by 2010 the plan is to have a 10-strong development team. A further 12 jobs will be created in sales, marketing and integration at the firm's head office in Dublin. Ergo currently employs 130 people.
…and the other taketh away
On the other side of the coin, Donegal took a body blow on Wednesday with the news that medical device manufacturer Boston Scientific is to close its plant in Letterkenny, where it employs 120 people, in 2010. The firm, which employs around 4,500 people in Ireland, said that manufacturing at the plant would be transferred to its Galway base and that it would try to make opportunities for its Donegal workers to transfer to Galway. Staying in Galway, Canadian electronics firm Celestica confirmed that it is seeking 80 voluntary redundancies at its facility. The firm employs 380 people in Galway and has said it has no immediate plans to close its operations there. News of job cuts at Celestica was not entirely unexpected. Just last week the firm had reduced working hours at its Galway plant and had closed a factory in the US, with the loss of 590 jobs. Finally, on Wednesday, in what was a bad day for tech jobs, IBM announced it was also looking for redundancies at its Mulhuddart plant. Big Blue is looking for 120 redundancies as it moves the manufacturing of high-end servers to Singapore. The company is looking for 120 voluntary redundancies from its server manufacturing area, which includes high-end and low-end server manufacturing, and the jobs are expected to go by April. IBM employs approximately 3,700 people in Ireland.
Japanese giants falter under pressure
As the economic slowdown continues, more and more big name firms are announcing major job cuts on the back of widening losses. Two Japanese electronics giants in particular have been in the news this week, with both NEC and Panasonic saying they are to slash thousands of jobs worldwide. As NEC announced a dismal set of results for the nine months to December 2008 – net losses ballooned 13-fold to JPY129 billion, compared with losses of JPY9.98 billion in the year-ago period – it said it will be cutting 20,000 jobs globally. The cuts come as the electronics firm struggles to cope with a significant slack-off in demand as consumers ease off on their spending. And, the firm thinks things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better: it's predicting a net loss of JPY290 billion for its full fiscal year which ends in March 2009. Meanwhile, fellow Japanese giant Panasonic is dealing with similar difficulties. The firm recorded a net loss of JPY63.1 billion for the October-to-December quarter, down from a profit of JPY115.2 billion in the year-ago quarter. The firm said it expects to make a substantial loss of JPY380 billion for its full year ending in March, compared to a profit of JPY281.88 billion for the previous year. Panasonic too is slashing jobs: it will shut 27 factories around the world, cutting 15,000 jobs in the process. This latest series of major job cuts follows Japanese giant Sony's announcement in late December that it is going to be cutting 8,000 jobs globally.
Illegal filesharers: Eircom agrees to take action
The fight against illegal music filesharing took an interesting turn last week with the news that Eircom had reached an agreement with four major record companies -- EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner – that could see persistent illegal filesharers lose their broadband connections. The decision came as a result of a lawsuit settlement with the record companies, who had alleged that Eircom had knowingly facilitated copyright infringement. Eircom has agreed to implement a system known as "three strikes and you're out". The first time a user's IP address is detected infringing copyright, a warning is sent out. The second time, the user will be cautioned that they will be disconnected. If they continue in their 'activities' the final step will see Eircom unhook them from the net. The four music companies will supply Eircom with the IP addresses of users they claim are illegally uploading or downloading copyrighted music "on a P2P basis". As part of the deal, the record companies have said they will take "all necessary steps" to put similar agreements in place with all other internet service providers in Ireland. For its part though, the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators (ALTO) reacted negatively to the Eircom agreement, saying the alternative telecoms sector is "not party" to the deal. "As [the] agreement between Eircom and the record companies was a direct action against Eircom it is not enforceable on Ireland's other broadband providers. While we obviously do not condone illegal downloading or any illegality on or over the internet, we firmly disapprove of any draconian measures that would compromise the privacy, speed or services offered to broadband users. We do not need measures to further impede the development of next generation broadband in Ireland," said Ronan Lupton, chairman of ALTO.
Google makes the world smaller
Google has had a busy week, unveiling an interesting new application and updating others. In a new development with its webmail offering Gmail, Google has made the application available to users when they're offline. Gmail has been added to Google's browser add-on project Gears, which downloads a local cache of a user's mail, and as long as a user is connected, that cache is synchronised with Gmail's servers. When a user loses their connection or goes offline, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on a user's PC instead of the information sent across the network. Google Earth has also been updated with the release of Google Earth 5.0. The new version allows users to explore three dimensional images of our planet's underwater terrain. The upgraded software also includes articles and videos about marine science from various scientific organisations like the National Geographic Society. The program can also examine the changing landscape of different regions of Earth and lets people create their own narrated tours. Then on Wednesday Google launched a service that allows users to find out where their friends are automatically. By downloading the Google Latitude software to their mobiles, users in 27 countries will be able to broadcast their location to others constantly. A spokesperson for Google said there was "no definitive timeline" for rolling out the service in Ireland yet, according to reports. The service is likely to raise some privacy concerns, however, although Google has made it clear that privacy controls will make it possible for people to select who receives the information, or to go offline at any time.
Facebook turns five
Hugely popular social networking site Facebook celebrated its fifth birthday on Wednesday. The site, which currently has 150 million registered users, was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. In order to celebrate its birthday Facebook is giving its users a virtual 'thank you' card. "To express our appreciation, we've created a 'Thank You' gift... for you to give freely to others. In the spirit of celebrating connections between people, we encourage you to use this gift to give thanks to your friends, colleagues and family members with whom you are connected on Facebook," wrote Zuckerberg in a blog posting on Tuesday. Facebook has now eclipsed its main rival, MySpace, in terms of popularity; MySpace, at last count, had around 130 million users. Unlike MySpace, which tends to attract a younger demographic, the fastest-growing age group on Facebook is people in their thirties. Now that it's officially the world's most popular social network, the next question is how Facebook will capitalise on that popularity. Up until now Zuckerberg has been eager to go it alone and has resisted floating Facebook on the stockmarket. Though it has no official value, in October 2007 Microsoft forked over USD240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in the company, technically valuing it at USD15 billion. Certainly, it's not worth that, but there's no denying the huge potential the site has for making money. For now though, we'll have to wait and see what Zuckerberg comes up with next.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 