NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 24 June
24-06-2009
by Emmet Cole
Boston Scientific to create new jobs | Security pros neglect passwords
Medical device company Boston Scientific Corporation is set to invest EUR91 million in a research, development and innovation (RD&I) initiative at its site in Galway, Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan has announced. With support from IDA Ireland, the investment will create 45 new jobs. Boston Scientific already employs approximately 5,000 people in Ireland, with 3,000 in Galway alone.
BT's voice application platform -- which is already used by 60,000 financial traders in 51 countries -- was launched in Ireland on Wednesday. Aimed at Ireland's financial services community, the platform includes a BT "turret" -- a control interface for voice communications when trading currencies, equities, bonds, derivatives and commodities. It also includes the Radianz Shared Market Infrastructure, which will offer Irish traders access to more than 550 application services from over 260 service and content providers, BT said.
Irish business software provider Sysco Software Solutions has partnered with Inspired Software and Services (ISS) to roll out BizPortal, ISS's web-based collaborative platform and business portal. Sysco Software Solutions also signed a strategic partnership that will see it offer Bizportal to its customer database.
Anam, the Irish SMS 'smart services' company, was awarded a Global Messaging Award in the best Social Use Application category on Tuesday for its SMS Bully Filter. Launched in November 2008, the app is designed to give parents peace of mind over their children's mobile phone usage by stopping undesirable, unwanted or distressing messages. The service allows parents to block undesirable text messages from their child's phone. High watermark alarms or warning messages enable parents to monitor and control their child's phone usage. Parents can also impose short periods of "study time" during which messages cannot be sent from or delivered to the child's handset, but are stored for later delivery.
Thirty five percent of IT security professionals don't use a password on their business phones and smartphones, even though the devices contain sensitive and confidential information, according to a survey conducted by data protection specialists CREDANT Technologies. The unprotected information stored on smartphones and mobiles include business names and addresses (80 percent), personal names and addresses (66 percent), business e-mails (23 percent), bank account details (12 percent), credit card information (5 percent), and -- unbelievably -- passwords and PIN numbers (1 percent). The survey was conducted among 227 IT professionals, most of whom were drawn from companies employing more than 1,000 people.
UK internet traffic to micro-blogging service Twitter has increased 22-fold over the last 12 months, according to web traffic analysts Hitwise. In May 2009 Twitter.com was the 38th most visited website in the UK and the fifth most visited social network. In May 2008, it was the 969th most visited website and 84th most visited social network. As a result of this growth, Twitter now accounts for 1 in every 350 visits to UK-based websites. According to Hitwise, over half of this traffic is sent to other content-driven online media sites, like social networks, blogs, and news and entertainment websites. Interestingly, only 9.5 percent of Twitter's downstream traffic is sent to transactional websites.
Demand for secondary PCs -- ones that are repurposed after their use as a new PC has ended -- will outstrip supply for years to come, according to new research from analysts Gartner. However, this reuse does not necessarily mean "greener IT", according to the researchers, because growing exports for reuse or recycling are leading to increasing e-waste in emerging markets, the researchers state. In 2008, 37 million secondary PCs were refurbished and exported to emerging markets. Gartner is predicting that this number will rise to 69 million by 2012.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 