NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 18 February
18-02-2009
by Emmet Cole
NewBay receives Barcelona accolades | Telecoms firm creates Dublin jobs
NewBay's LifeCache Social Networking solution has been named Best Technology at the Global Mobile Awards, which took place as part of the Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona. The LifeCache Social Networking solution supports a host of social networks including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, Flickr, Meetic, Knuddels and Dailymotion. Upcoming releases of the LifeCache Social Networking solution are expected to include the ability to send and receive IM and e-mail, integration with address book contacts, support for face tagging and virtual gifting. The technology is currently deployed by a number of operators including Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Founded in 2002, NewBay is based in Dublin and has offices in Bellevue, USA; London, UK; and Dusseldorf, Germany.
In other news from the Mobile World Congress, it was announced that key mobile phone industry players plan to introduce a universal power socket -- usable across all mobile phones -- by 2012. The mobile industry group GSMA said that handsets would come with a micro USB interface, similar to those used to transfer digital pictures from cameras to computers. The initial group of companies to agree to the change include Nokia, LG, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. AT&T, Orange, Telefonica, T-Mobile and Vodafone are also part of the initiative.
Telecorp, a new Irish mobile communication services provider, announced on Wednesday that it will create 20 jobs over the next 12 months at its Dublin office. The company -- a joint venture between the owner of Infinite Technologies, Michael Corr and directors Conor and John English -- provides a range of mobility solutions including bill analysis, handsets, upgrades and "office on the go" packages for Irish businesses. The company is expected to hire across mobile sales and service roles and applications can be filled out online.
Bray-based application and network performance management company, Data Edge, has won a contract worth EUR120,000 to deploy a network fault management system for Elavon, a multinational financial transaction processing company. Data Edge's solution is being used to monitor the links to every credit card terminal on Elavon's Europe-wide transaction processing network. Data Edge's installation allows Elavon to monitor its network in real time. Elavon processes more than 2 billion transactions worth more than EUR200 billion globally each year and employs more than 350 people at its sites in Dublin and Arklow.
Phishing attacks grew by 66 percent in 2008, according to new research from RSA Security. The firm's annual "Anti-Fraud Command Center Phishing Trends" report found that of the 135,426 separate incidents reported globally in 2008, the UK suffered 40 percent of the total -- the result of a number of concerted campaigns against UK financial institutions during 2008. Meanwhile, the US suffered 37 percent of all phishing attacks. Andrew Moloney, RSA's European marketing leader, said that "fraud-as-a-service" is growing steadily and that the financial crisis is putting firms under increasing pressure to do more with less security resources, placing them at greater risk of security breaches.
LG Electronics and Intel have teamed up to create a new range of mobile internet devices (MID) based on Intel's next-generation MID hardware platform (known as "Moorestown") and the Linux-based Moblin v2.0 software platform. The LG device is expected to be one of the first Moorestown designs to market. The companies already collaborate across their notebook, mobile phone and netbook product lines. Moorestown-based MIDs are expected to reduce idle power consumption by a factor of greater than 10 versus today's Intel Atom processor-based MIDs. The Moorestown platform is expected to come to market by 2010.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 