NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 24 March
24-03-2009
by Emmet Cole
Mobile roaming costs to fall | Right Booker: on the right track?
The cost of making mobile calls and accessing the internet whilst roaming look set to fall following news that the EU has reached a draft deal designed to cut the price of texting and cap the price charged for web surfing from abroad. Included in the deal: the retail price of a text sent while roaming within the EU has been capped at EUR0.11 from 1 July 2009, compared with up to EUR0.49 at present. The wholesale price of data roaming will be capped at EUR1 per megabyte from 1 July 2009, falling to EUR0.80 from 1 July 2010 and to EUR.50 from 1 July 2011. Retail caps on incoming calls will be capped at EUR0.19 per minute from 1 July 2009, falling to EUR0.15 per minute from 1 July 2010 and to EUR0.11 from 1 July 2011. The deal will also see the introduction of mandatory billing per second from the 31st second of a voice call.
US sensor manufacturer MicroStrain will use Dublin-based DecaWave's ScenSor wireless radio chips in future, it was announced on Tuesday. DecaWave's ScenSor ultra wide band (UWB) radio technology is a complete, single chip CMOS integrated circuit based on the IEEE 802.15.4a standard. ScenSor will enable MicroStrain to develop wireless sensing technologies with "superior" range and ultra-low power consumption. The deal arose following a November 2008 trade mission spearheaded by US Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Financial details of the agreement have not been released.
A beta version of a new website designed to connect service providers and customers, alongside a ratings system, was launched on Monday. The Dublin-based Right Booker website allows customers to find and book services ranging from hairdressing to medical services. The website was developed by University College Dublin graduates Robert Fitzgerald and Johan de Borst and a University of Limerick graduate who goes by the name 'PJM'. Fitzgerald and deBorst were finalists in the Accenture Leaders of Tomorrow competition in 2008 and winners in the Enterprise Ireland College Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008. Right Booker is free to use until 30 June after which time de Borst told ENN they will be introducing a EUR1 fee for consumers, and a one-off EUR5 charge to list your service. From June, the company will also be adding a search function to the site, de Borst said.
A virtual stock market experiment has been launched at NUI Galway in an effort to understand the 'boom and bust' cycles of financial markets. The Virtual Stock Market (VSM) will enable a series of experiments with automated computer agents and humans as economists and technologists aim to understand the factors that underpin 'boom and bust' cycles. The VSM is the result of a multi-disciplinary research collaboration between the J.E. Cairnes School of Business and Economics, the Digital Enterprise Research Institute and the Computer Integrated Manufacturing Research Unit at NUI Galway. The Virtual Stock Market lists 10 companies and has four types of computer agents trading in the market. NUI Galway students have also been invited to trade on the stock market and each participant is given an initial endowment of 10,000 Airgead (virtual currency) and an equivalent amount of shares.
Ten trainees from Accellent, a Galway-based medical device manufacturer, have been presented with 'Certificates of Achievement in Medical Device and Diagnostic Continuous Improvement Processes' at the company's base in Oranmore, Galway. The ten trainees are the first of 800 participants nationwide to receive certificates of achievement. The Irish Medical Devices Association's Manufacturing Excellence Skillnet has provided training for over 600 employees in the medical technology sector since its launch last year. Accellent was recently approved as a FAS assessment centre, enabling the company to assess their staff towards FETAC 5 certification.
Samsung Ireland has appointed Troy Edwards as Key Accounts Manager within its Consumer Electronics Division. Edwards will have responsibility for developing strategic partnerships across Samsung's key accounts, including Euronics, Expert and Harvey Norman. Previously, Edwards was Sales Trainer and Retail Development Specialist at Samsung.
The subscription-based massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) market grew by 22 percent in 2008 and reached consumer spending levels of USD1.4 billion in North America and Europe, according to a new report from Screen Digest. The report predicts that the subscription market will continue to grow "at a good pace for at least the next five years", driven by consumer acceptance of predictable subscription payments and innovative premium subscription business models.
An overwhelming 86 percent of organisations in Europe and the Middle East using a centralised Project Management Office (PMO) perceive their PMO to be a strategic enabler of business change, according to the results of a survey conducted by CA. The 14 country-wide survey also reveals that 72 percent of respondents with a centrally managed PMO 'feel valued' in their organisation. Three quarters of respondents (75 percent) cited four common benefits of a PMO: delivering projects on time, delivering projects on budget, alignment with business objectives, and generating higher customer satisfaction.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 