NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 8 July
08-07-2009
by Emmet Cole
PopCap set to WoW gamers | SaaS fails to impress users: survey
Approximately 2,300 new jobs have been created in IDA Ireland-assisted companies in the year to date, but about 6,000 jobs have been lost, according to CEO of IDA Ireland, Barry O'Leary. The bulk of job losses were accounted for by losses at Dell in Limerick and SR Technics in Dublin. In the first six months of 2009, the IDA oversaw investments from a number of leading international companies, including EUR18 million from Hewlett Packard (500 jobs), EUR25 million from IBM (100 jobs), and EUR91 million from Boston Scientific (45 jobs).
Svenska Handelsbanken, one of the largest banks in Sweden and the wider Nordic region, has selected Irish-based Norkom Technologies' Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Watch List Management (WLM) solutions. The deal will enable Svenska Handelsbanken to comply with both local and international regulations, including the Third EU Money Laundering Directive. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
Ireland ranks seventh overall for protection and enforcement of patents, trademarks, copyright, and domain names, according to the Global Intellectual Property Index (GIPI), which Ireland features in for the first time this year. In domain name protection, Ireland ranked fourth behind the UK, the US and Germany. For trademarks and patents, Ireland was ranked seventh and eighth respectively. For IP protection, the UK ranked number one.
Antitrust regulators in the US have approved Nokia Siemens' bid for a portion of Canada's bankrupt Nortel Networks. Nortel had said Nokia Siemens Networks -- a joint venture of Nokia and Siemens -- would offer USD650 million for Nortel's CDMA and LTE wireless technology businesses. The Nortel auction is set for 24 July in New York. According to court documents, the deal is subject to bankruptcy court approval and a court hearing is set for 28 July.
Casual games publisher PopCap Games has announced the immediate availability of 10 all-new World of Warcraft (WoW)-themed Peggle levels. The new WoW-themed Peggle mash-up is a stand-alone version of Peggle, available for free and combining the sights, sounds and storyline of WoW with the rainbow- and unicorn-infested world of Peggle. Peggle-WoW is a joint collaboration between PopCap Games and World of Warcraft developer, Blizzard Entertainment. Peggle has been downloaded more than 50 million times since its first introduction in March 2007.
Although Software as a Service (SaaS) is more mainstream and less controversial than ever before, many customers are not blown away by their current experience of it and sense that SaaS is not quite the panacea it promised to be, according to a new survey by Gartner The survey, which was conducted in December 2008 among users and prospective users of SaaS solutions in 333 enterprises in the US and the UK, found that the apparent acceptance of SaaS as a viable model has not entirely translated into satisfied users of SaaS. When asked to identify the top three factors that they would consider in making their decision to deploy SaaS, meeting technical requirements was the top overall consideration at 46 percent, followed by security, privacy and/or confidentiality at 33 percent, and ease of integration and functionality needed for business unit owners, both at 29 percent. According to the survey, 58 percent of organisations will maintain current levels of SaaS in the next two years, while 32 percent will expand, 5 percent will discontinue and 5 percent will decrease levels.
Forty percent of people in the UK think that a mobile phone gives colleagues flexible working options, while 33 percent believe it makes them more efficient, according to an online survey commissioned by Cable & Wireless. Nearly a quarter (24 percent) of respondents feel that having a mobile phone gives them a high level of responsibility, with this rising to 41 percent amongst 16 - 24 year olds. Meanwhile, one in ten 25-34 year olds have had a phone thrown at them. The survey was conducted online by Tickbox.net/Opinion Matters with 1,072 UK-based workers.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 