NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 3 June
03-06-2009
by Emmet Cole
Taoiseach announces EUR1m tech funding | Windows 7 set for October release
An Taoiseach, Brian Cowen has announced details of a EUR1 million investment by Enterprise Ireland in the first phase of the Innovation Value Institute Consortium Competence Centre (IVIC3). The funding will enable companies with common research needs in the area of IT services and IT innovation -- including green computing -- to find solutions to shared problems. NUI-Maynooth, University of Limerick and NUI-Galway will collaborate on the initial research phase with over 40 companies. IVIC3 is the seventh industry consortium to receive research funding through the joint Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland supported "Competence Centre Initiative". The IVIC3 consortium is comprised of over 40 private and public sector organisations including Intel, Microsoft, SAP, ENZO, Xilinx, BP, The Boston Consulting Group, ESB, Ernst & Young, Aviva, Compugen, Chevron and Airtricity.
Meanwhile, ComReg has called on all authorised operators to engage with the new Emergency Call Answering Service (ECAS) provider, BT Ireland. This is part of ComReg's effort to ensure the smooth transition of service over the coming number of months from the current provider Eircom. BT Ireland was appointed to the role of ECAS provider in February 2009. Specification documents are available on the BT Ireland wholesale website. ComReg also reminded consumers to call 112 from a fixed or mobile phone, if assistance is required from the emergency services. The 112 number is a pan-European emergency number introduced in 1991 to complement national emergency numbers.
Windows 7, Microsoft's new personal computer operating system, will be available from 22 October, according to a brief statement from the Redmond- based software giant. Windows 7, which is designed to replace Vista, has received praise from some developers and beta testers. Vista has been roundly criticised for being too unstable and consuming too many CPU and RAM resources.
The number of minutes spent on social networking sites by US web users has almost doubled over the past year, according to web traffic company Nielsen Online. Although the number of minutes rose 83 percent in April compared to the same month a year ago, the research also found that users are quick to move on and that sites can quickly fall from favour. The number of minutes US web users spent on Facebook surged 700 percent year-on-year to 13.9 billion in April (from 1.7 billion a year ago), making it the top social networking site for the fourth consecutive month. MySpace was the second most popular site but the number of minutes US users spent there fell 31 percent to 4.97 billion (from 7.3 billion a year ago). Meanwhile, the number of minutes spent on Twitter grew a whopping 3,712 percent in April from a year ago.
Irish-based cloud computing specialists Salesforce have launched a new feature in its so-called 'sales cloud'. The 'Opportunity Genius' feature is designed to help sales teams collaborate with marketing departments by improving information sharing between the two. Opportunity Genius looks at all the closed deals across an organisation and finds the deals most similar to the sales opportunity a representative is currently working on. The feature then connects salespeople with colleagues who have closed similar deals and can share tips and best practices about what worked well.
The Digital Hub Development Agency is set to launch the results of a survey on ICT use in schools on Thursday. The survey is expected to show that schools in Dublin's south-west inner city -- which participate in The Digital Hub's learning programme -- have levels of digital literacy that are significantly higher than the national average. The Digital Hub works with 16 primary and secondary schools in the Liberties area of Dublin. The survey was completed by 167 teachers from the 16 schools.
Opera overtook the iPhone in May to become the world's number one mobile browser, according to new data from StatCounter GlobalStats. In May, Opera held 24.6 percent of the worldwide market compared to 22.3 percent for the iPhone. Nokia came in third place with 17.9 percent market share. Meanwhile, the BlackBerry was in fourth place with 6.9 percent of the global market -- a steady increase on January's 4.9 percent.
Finally, last weekend's scareware distribution attack on the Twitter microblogging service highlights the fact that firms need to think very hard before allowing staff access to certain social networking applications, according to internet security company, Finjan. The attack saw Twitter users get invited to click on a 'best video' link that quietly infected their computers with a rogue security application via a malware-infected PDF file.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 