NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 23 February
23-02-2009
by Deirdre McArdle
Ryanair revamps website | Yahoo reshuffle on the way?
Ryanair has launched a revamped version of its website which has more of a focus on advertising as the budget airline tries to grow its ad revenue. The airline also announced a partnership with global digital advertising agency AD2ONE to help it generate income from the 5 billion page impressions that the site delivers annually.
In its first dip into social media, Bewleys has launched Facebook and Twitter pages that focus on the company's Fairtrade coffee-buying activities in Nicaragua. Users can visit the pages to enter various competitions and to find out more about the café chain's Fairtrade initiatives. Check out Bewley's on Facebook at http://companies.to/bewleys/ and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bewleysireland. 'Fairtrade Fortnight' takes place from 23 February to 8 March.
Irish medical devices firm ClearStream Technologies saw its shares jump 15 percent in morning trading following an announcement that its first-half results will beat expectations. The company said in a statement it expects interim results for the six months to the end of January 2009 to be "ahead of market expectations". At a time where profit warnings and lowered expectations are coming thick and fast investors took heart and shares in the Wexford-based firm are currently up 37 percent over the last 12 months.
Word on the street is that Yahoo's new CEO, Carol Bartz, is poised to reveal a management reshuffle this week, according to a blog posting on AllThingsD. The reorganisation is expected to include a structure where executives such as the chief operating officer, chief technology officer and chief marketing officer all report to Bartz, AllThingsD said. The Wall Street Journal-affiliated blog, citing several sources inside and outside Yahoo, said the reshuffle would likely come on Wednesday. Yahoo officials have not commented on the rumours.
Citrix has announced it is offering its XenServer virtualisation platform for free to any user for unlimited production deployment. Although the basic Xen hypervisor is already a free product, Citrix will now provide its centralised management tools for free. The tools include physical-to-virtual and virtual-to-virtual conversion tools, centralised configuration management and XenMotion technology that Citrix says enables virtual machines to be moved from server to server without service interruption. The new free XenServer release will be available for download from the Citrix website by the end of March 2009.
Citrix has also announced a strengthening of its 20-year partnership with Microsoft. As part of the link-up Citrix said it plans to release a new suite of virtualisation management tools called Citrix Essentials that will be offered in two versions -- one for Microsoft's Hyper-V software and another for Citrix XenServer. Analysts say the partnership will allow Microsoft and Citrix to take on VMware in the server virtualisation market.
In more news of Microsoft, the software giant has announced the launch of a website, Elevate America, which is aimed at improving access to job training tools. The site offers free resources to help workers in the US gain technical skills which could be useful when applying for jobs. Elevate America provides access to several Microsoft online training programs including how to use the internet, send e-mail and create a resumé, as well as more advanced programs on using specific Microsoft applications.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 