NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 9 July
09-07-2009
by Emmet Ryan
Boston Scientific invests in Cork | Decisions for Heroes claims iQ Prize
Medical devices firm Boston Scientific is to invest EUR21.7 million in a research and development initiative at its site in Cork. The investment will be supported by IDA Ireland. The decision to invest in Cork follows the US multinational’s plans to build a pipeline of research projects across all of its businesses. Just last month, the firm announced it would invest EUR91 million at its Galway plant, creating 45 new jobs in the process.
Ambulance provider Lifeline has fitted all of its ambulances in Ireland with data displays from provider Minor Planet. The new displays will replace two-way radios and ensure that all communications and actions during call-outs are logged and monitored. The Kildare-based ambulance service, which caters to 25,000 patients annually, said the move would substantially help it to modernise its services.
e-Net has been appointed to manage and operate the second phase of the Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) programme. MANs are State owned, telecommunications networks located in towns and cities throughout the country. As manager and operator, e-Net will offer a variety of products to service providers so they in turn can deliver high-speed broadband services to their retail customers. These products would include wholesale duct space, dark fibre, co-location facilities and managed services.
Robin Blandford’s business Decisions for Heroes has been named the winner of iQ Content's EUR10,000 internet start-up competition, the iQ Prize in Dublin on Wednesday. Out of a total of 249 entrants, eight start-ups were shortlisted and took part in Dragon’s Den style presentations to the panel of five judges. Blandford’s business, which provides assistance to rescue teams and emergency services, took the top honours. Decisions for Heroes' technology automatically performs analytical charting, draws heatmaps, and benchmarks reports to outline areas of strength, weakness, and expertise for the emergency services.
A new report from ComReg on next generation broadband (NGB), has said Ireland may not see a substantial roll-out of such technology for the next three to five years. A discussion document from ComReg said that while trials had been conducted, no telecoms operator had yet committed itself to invest in making NGB widely available. "At a time when other countries are developing their next generation broadband infrastructure, such a scenario would open up a gap between Ireland's capabilities in this regard and those of other comparator countries in the EU and beyond," ComReg says.
Fujitsu Technology Solutions and Citrix Systems have announced an agreement that aims to reduce the cost and complexity of implementing a virtual desktop infrastructure for enterprise customers. The agreement, which sees Fujitsu integrate Citrix XenDesktop into its virtual workplace solutions, aims to enable customers to considerably speed up the deployment of desktops to end users and roll out thousands of personalised desktops in a fraction of the time, and manage all changes centrally.
South Korea is experiencing a third wave of suspected cyber-attacks, which are co-ordinated attempts to paralyse a number of major websites. One of the country's biggest banks, a leading national newspaper and the South Korean spy agency appear to have been targeted. Reports suggest North Korea may be responsible for the denial of service attack, in which thousands of virus-infected computers are hijacked and simultaneously directed to a particular site, overwhelming it with the sheer volume of traffic.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 