NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 24 April
24-04-2009
by Deirdre McArdle
App Store hits 1bn downloads | Yahoo shuts down Geocities
The Irish finals of Microsoft's Imagine Cup will be held at Trinity College Dublin on 30 April. The competition, which is now in its seventh year, sees third-level students develop technology solutions aimed at tackling global issues. In all, 12 teams will compete in the Irish finals, with one overall winning team going onwards to represent Ireland in the global competition, which will be held in Egypt during the summer. The teams competing in the Irish finals are from Trinity College Dublin, Griffith College Dublin, IADT Dun Laoghaire, NUI Maynooth, Dundalk IT, IT Carlow, IT Sligo, NUI Galway and Limerick IT.
Eircom's board issued a statement on Friday reiterating its opposition to the recent approach by Australian group TaemasBridge, which is led by former Babcock & Brown executive Rob Topfer. "Eircom is confident that a different solution can be put in place which is in the best interests of all stakeholders in the company, including the shareholders in BCM, and which secures Eircom's long term future," the statement said. The board said it plans to work with its shareholders -- BCM and the employee share ownership trust (ESOT) -- to achieve a solution and is appointing independent advisers to help with the process.
Apple has announced that 1 billion applications have been downloaded from its popular App Store, which was launched just nine months ago. There are currently over 35,000 applications available for download from the App Store by iPhone and iPod Touch users. The 1 billionth app to be downloaded was the free program Bump, created by Bump Technologies. The app enables users to transfer data from one iPhone (or iPod Touch) to another by simply 'bumping' them together.
Internet firm Yahoo has closed down Geocities, its personal web hosting site. Yahoo bought GeoCities for USD3.57 billion in 1999, and at its peak the site boasted millions of users. For now, existing GeoCities accounts will remain live, although Yahoo indicated that users should start looking for alternative sites. "You don't need to change your service today, but we encourage anyone interested in a full-featured web-hosting plan to consider upgrading to our award-winning Yahoo Web Hosting service," the firm said.
The Pirate Bay lawyers have announced they are seeking a retrial, saying the judge who presided over the case between their clients and a number of entertainment companies including Warner Bros and Sony Music Entertainment had a conflict of interest. The judge, Tomas Norstrom, is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association and sits on the board of Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property. However, the judge said in an interview on Swedish radio: "These activities do not constitute a conflict of interest." Sweden's Court of Appeal would rule on a possible retrial, according to The Pirate Bay lawyers.
South Korea's Samsung Electronics has seen profits drop by 72 percent in the first quarter to SKW619.20 billion, down from SKW2.19 trillion in the year-ago period. The quarterly profit result was better than analysts had expected and compares favourably with a SKW20 billion loss in the last quarter of 2008. Meanwhile, sales for the quarter rose by 8.5 percent, the firm said. Samsung is active in a number of markets including computer memory chips, flat panel TVs and mobile phones.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 