Weekly Digest
Weekly Digest Issue No. 456
12-03-2009
by Deirdre McArdle
Tech giants pour money into Leixlip | 'Visionary' alliance promises new jobs | Eircom quizzed on broadband plans | Security glitch leaves Google red-faced | MicroHoo: 'will they, won't they?' starts again
Tech giants pour money into Leixlip
Ireland got a healthy dose of good news this week with the announcement that computer giant Hewlett-Packard is to invest up to EUR18 million in its Leixlip, Co Kildare base and create up to 500 new jobs there within the next year. HP is expanding its global service desk and is to recruit highly skilled graduates immediately to fill 300 multilingual technical support roles. The expansion will also feature a research, development and innovation capability to support the global service desk, news that is likely to have the Government jumping up and down for joy, as it tries to manoeuvre the good ship Ireland down the smart economy route. HP has also said there is the potential for additional development and jobs at its Leixlip facility. Leixlip also plays host to Intel's base in Ireland, and it was reported over the weekend that the chip giant is working on finalising plans that would see it invest around EUR1 billion in its operations there. The as-yet-approved plans involve the completion of Fab24 and the retrofitting of Fab14, with the Leixlip facility hoping to begin producing Intel's next generation 1270 processors. While no official announcement has been made about the investment or potential job creation, presumably if the plans get the go-ahead staff will be needed to work on the production of these next-gen processors. Coupled with Intel's Shannon investment and jobs announcement from last week, these two developments give a clear indication that there could well be a light at the end of the long, dark tunnel we've been navigating our way through this past year.
'Visionary' alliance promises new jobs
An alliance between Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin could lead to the creation of up to 300 new businesses and as many as 30,000 new jobs over the next decade. The partnership will include a Joint Venture in Enterprise Development, which aims to build on the universities' existing technology transfer operations and enterprise facilities to drive the commercialisation of new ideas, knowledge and inventions. The alliance will also include the development of an Innovation Academy that will straddle the two institutions and will focus on developing innovation as a third arm of the universities, after education and research. Trinity and UCD plan to double the number of PhD students and the alliance will see students being able to move easily between the two campuses, availing of resources and expertise at both institutions. One of the key goals of the alliance is to create a "new breed" of graduates who are "expert in their specific fields of endeavour but who also understand and are familiar with techniques in innovation and entrepreneurship that will enable more of them to rapidly convert knowledge, ideas and inventions into commercial use", said UCD President Dr Hugh Brady. The so-called Innovation Alliance between the two colleges will be funded by a combination of government, industry and private sources over the next 10 years. The Government has hailed the alliance as "visionary" and says it forms part of Ireland's national recovery plan, which is built around the creation of a "smart economy". The alliance has the lofty goal to become a prototype for a national ecosystem that will see Ireland establishing itself as an international hub for innovation. Similar in concept to the IFSC, the partnership will focus on the "creation and scaling up of indigenous knowledge and technology-intensive enterprises and the attraction of multinational employers that will become the cornerstone for the knowledge economy".
Eircom quizzed on broadband plans
The thorny issue of nationwide broadband rollout reared its ugly head again this week. At a Joint Oireachtas Communications Committee meeting on Wednesday, Eircom was grilled about its next-generation broadband plans. Over the past three years Eircom has pumped around EUR1 billion into upgrading its infrastructure, but Eircom's head of policy Pat Galvin told the Oireachtas Committee that given the current state of affairs the telecoms firm would need to consider its investment going forward. "Eircom, given the current economic position, has no choice but to review and look at its business plan on this scale of investment", Galvin said. He went on to say that at the moment the firm was in "no position" to say exactly what its level of commitment will be and that it will need a clear understanding of the demand for next-gen broadband. Also at the meeting Eircom was quizzed about the delivery of broadband to rural Ireland. When asked if it was true that people living over 5km away from a broadband-enabled exchange would never get broadband, Paul Bradley, spokesman for Eircom, confirmed that at that distance from an exchange the DSL signal is too weak. "The technology has a physical limitation, that is the reality of DSL," according to Bradley, who told ENN that the vast majority of people in Ireland will be able to get broadband but that there are a small number of rural areas where DSL just isn't going to be an option. The Government's National Broadband Scheme, the contract for which was won by Three Ireland, ahead of Eircom, features a wireless solution, which could work favourably in areas that are too far from the exchanges. In saying that, even Three's wireless solution could be a no-go in some areas, such as Kerry, where a rule prevents telecommunications masts being erected within 1km of houses, schools and residential buildings.
Security glitch leaves Google red-faced
Just two weeks ago Google was on the receiving end of some criticism following a Gmail outage, which lasted a couple of hours. This week the internet giant faced another backlash when news broke that it had shared a small number of online documents with users who were not authorised to see them. The privacy glitch, caused by a software bug, affected a tiny fraction of documents, according to Jennifer Mazzon, Google Docs Product Manager. The bug hit users who changed their 'sharing' settings on multiple presentations and documents at once, causing Google to share those documents with other users with whom the document owner had shared a document before. Then, just as Google was catching its breath following that incident, it suffered another embarrassing Gmail hitch when the service went down again, albeit on a less widespread scale than the previous outage. On Tuesday the internet giant said it had fixed most of the problems but that a small "subset" of users could be without access until early on Wednesday. These issues have a very un-Google-like character to them. The internet giant has for years exuded an air of invincibility, which in the past two weeks has certainly taken a bit of a battering.
MicroHoo: "will they, won't they?" starts again
It looked like it was all over but, like Lazarus, a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo could be on its way back to life. According to reports, Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner is the latest Microsoft exec to hold out an olive branch to Yahoo's new CEO Carol Bartz, saying in an interview with The Times that Microsoft has made Bartz aware that if she was interested in talking search with the software giant "we'd like to sit down and at least have the conversation". Of course these comments have caused the rumour mill to crank into life again, with all the connotations of a 'MicroHoo' deal being thrashed out on the wires. Last year Yahoo rejected a Microsoft offer of USD47.5 billion for its business. What followed was months of to-ing and fro-ing, a shareholder revolt at Yahoo led by billionaire investor Carl Icahn, and eventually Jerry Yang resigning as CEO of Yahoo. His resignation and the arrival of Bartz have in recent times led to fresh speculation that a deal between the two companies could still be salvaged. However, for her part Bartz said at a recent Morgan Stanley Technology Conference that she is not going to discuss any possibilities in public but would instead "negotiate privately". So, in summary, it seems that Microsoft is pretty eager to get back to the negotiating table with Yahoo and talk about the possibilities of a search link-up. It has also, in recent weeks, reportedly been testing a new search product dubbed Kumo internally as it strives to make more of an impact on the Google-dominated world of internet search, one way or another.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 