NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 22 April
22-04-2009
by Emmet Cole
Falling roaming prices welcomed | Company data insecure: survey
Communications Minister Eamon Ryan has welcomed the vote by the European Parliament to cap mobile phone roaming costs across the European Union. "Ireland has strongly supported the regulation of mobile phone roaming charges and has been working closely with our EU partners on this. Today's vote will cut costs and facilitate more frequent business travel. It is welcome news for the Irish customer. It is evidence that through connection around and across Europe the cause of Ireland is best served," said Minister Ryan. From July, the retail price of sending text messages in the EU will fall to EUR0.11, compared with the current price of EUR0.29. Wholesale data roaming prices will also be reduced, costing EUR1 per megabyte, with prices expected to reach EUR0.50 per megabyte in 2011. Telephone calls will also be reduced to EUR0.43 per minute to make calls and EUR0.19 per minute to receive.
Meanwhile, Eircom is reminding those interested in applying to the company's second annual Web Innovation Fund to submit their entries by Thursday, 30 April to be in with a chance of winning a share of EUR100,000 in funding. First launched in November 2007, the fund is designed to sponsor, promote and mentor innovative web applications in the Irish internet industry. A panel of industry experts will evaluate all applications and those short listed will be called to present their plans to the judges. From those, four innovative ideas will be selected from the shortlist and will be announced on Eircom labs at http://labs.eircom.net.
Xerox has launched a new version of its enterprise-level managed print services tailored for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Xerox Print Services is a set of services and tools to help SMEs assess their current printing environment, fine-tune their printing networks and manage their printing infrastructure -- regardless of manufacturer and device type.
In its first fiscal quarter of 2010, enterprise cloud computing company Salesforce.com approached 10,000 customers in the Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, according to the company. The figure is an increase of roughly 70 percent compared to the same period last year.
Barry O'Leary, CEO of IDA Ireland, has welcomed the start-up of operations by Hovione at its new API (active pharmaceutical ingredients) manufacturing facility at Loughbeg, Ringaskiddy, Co. Cork . Its services cover every level of production -- laboratory, pilot and intermediate -- and include R&D support and commercial manufacturing. Over the next two years, Hovione will employ 80 people and is expected to create processes that can be used to manufacture new compounds.
Over three quarters (77 percent) of people believe that it is easy to remove sensitive data from their place of work, according to a survey conducted in Ireland by business advisory firm, Deloitte. The survey also found that 35 percent of people know somebody who has taken information when leaving employment. In addition, 26 percent would consider doing this themselves. Meanwhile, 56 percent of respondents indicated that sensitive data is left unattended in their workplace -- in either hard copy format or on the organisation's network.
Finally, with the immortal words "HI TWITTERERS!" Oprah joined the ranks of online twits on Friday -- and caused Twitter traffic to rise 43 percent in the process. Traffic tracker Hitwise reported the huge surge in traffic on Wednesday. According to USA Today, 37 percent of the visitors were new to the site.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 