NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 26 June
26-06-2009
by Emmet Ryan
Jackson death crashes websites | DERI launches new tagging app
The internet simply wasn't ready for the traffic caused by the passing of Michael Jackson on Thursday. Google News and Twitter were among the websites to temporarily go down as the world swarmed online to mourn the King of Pop. Internet visits to michaeljackson.com had a 17-fold increase in the UK. Security firm Sophos meanwhile has reported that the first wave of spam messages related to the death has already hit internet users.
In a related story, an online hoax was spread in the hours after Michael Jackson's death claiming that Jeff Goldblum, star of Jurassic Park and Independence Day, had also died. The rumours are false and Goldblum is alive and well.
Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation Conor Lenihan addressed a special commercialisation workshop for the nine Centres for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSETs) on Friday. The CSET programme, established by Science Foundation Ireland in 2003, involved the creation of large-scale research centres with an aim to compete on the international research stage. Lenihan told attendees that all CSETs have a common bond in linking researchers in partnerships across academia and to help foster new Irish companies.
NUI Galway's Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) has launched Common Tag, a new tagging format for webpages. DERI worked with AdaptiveBlue, Faviki, Freebase, Yahoo, Zemanta and Zigtag on the project. Common Tag is part of the research being conducted by over 100 researchers at DERI on the Semantic Web, which is the next incarnation of the internet and is expected to be more intuitive because data will be defined and linked.
Northern Ireland Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster has officially opened the new CyberSource offices in Belfast. Last year it was announced that the US firm, which develops payment management software, would establish a 56-person research and development centre in Belfast, with support from Invest Northern Ireland. CyberSource now has 20 people in place at its new offices in Belfast carrying out a variety of advanced software development in conjunction with its research facilities in the US.
Tanaiste Mary Coughlan has announced that a Green New Deal will be at the heart of the Government's efforts to stimulate the economy. Coughlan said the plan aims to establish Ireland as a leader in certain green technologies. The Tanaiste made the announcement at a seminar titled 'France-Ireland: Shared Perspectives on Innovation and Renewable Energies', which was jointly organised by Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland, the Franco-Irish Chamber of Commerce and Athema and held in Paris.
ComReg has released its latest quarterly report on Eircom's performance as a Universal Service Provider. The telco's performance for in-situ connections was down slightly from the previous quarter for responses to requests being made within a 24-hour period, but up slightly for requests answered within a fortnight. Eircom's performance on fault-rates was unchanged but its speed at resolving faults fell slightly.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 