Weekly Digest
Weekly Digest Issue No. 474
16-07-2009
by Deirdre McArdle
Eircom net users hit with disruption | Intel results point to PC sales recovery
Data retention bill sparks concern
Over the past week Justice Minister Dermot Ahern has published the Communications (Retention of Data) Bill 2009, which allows for the retention of telephone and internet data, and for their retrieval by the Garda, Defence Forces and Revenue Commissioners. According to the bill, telephone data must be retained for two years, and internet data will be held by service providers for one year. While the bill does not allow for the content of communications to be stored or retrieved, the identity of the senders and receivers, the date and time sent, and, in the case of mobile phones, the location of the phones, will all be retained. Gardai are to have access to this information in order to prevent, detect, investigate and prosecute for serious offences; for the saving of human life; or for safeguarding the security of the State. This last point applies to the Defence Forces also, while the Revenue can access the retained information for the purpose of preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting for specific revenue offences. The Data Protection Commissioner has expressed his concern over these new Revenue powers, while Digital Rights Ireland has said it is worried that specific information regarding monitoring will not be published. The public safeguards governing the use of the new powers will only entail the compilation of a statistical report for the European Commission to show how many requests have been made by each state body. As yet, it is not clear if this report would be subsequently published by the Commission.
Eircom net users hit with disruption
It was a trying week for Eircom, which suffered a suspected denial of service attack that caused disruption for some of its customers' internet service. While such an attack has not been confirmed, Eircom has said it believes the outage was related to "an unprecedented volume of traffic deliberately directed at our network". A denial of service attacks involves inundating a site with requests so it can no longer function properly or respond to valid traffic. The disruption lasted for several hours on Monday and follows a similar disruption on 8 July, during which some of Eircom's internet subscribers who tried to connect to sites such as RTE, Facebook or Bebo were redirected to incorrect websites. The telecoms firm is currently trying to figure out where the attack originated, and though Eircom has said it was too early yet to consider calling in the Gardai it has informed the Department of Communications and ComReg. On Tuesday Eircom confirmed that its service is fully operational again; however, it has come under fire from a number of its users, who have turned to sites such as Twitter and Boards.is to voice their frustration and annoyance with the situation.
Intel results point to PC sales recovery
Promising signs emerged this week with the news that chip giant Intel had posted better-than-expected revenue and profit margins for its second quarter. Revenue for the period came in at USD8.02 billion, a solid 13 percent increase on the previous quarter, albeit 15 percent less than the year-ago period. The firm's profit margins were perhaps more significant, however, coming in at 50.8 percent, considerably better than Intel's own projections in April, when it said second-quarter margins would be in the "mid-40s". Looking ahead, the chip giant said it expects revenue to rise again in the third quarter, and predicts further improvements to its profit margins. The positive results from Intel provided some hope that PC sales are starting to improve for some vendors, and indeed that hope was realised on Thursday when IDC reported that sales for the second quarter were stronger than had been expected. Global PC shipments for the quarter fell only 3.1 percent year-on-year, a notable improvement on the expected decline of 6.3 percent and less than half of the first-quarter's 6.8 percent drop. All regions either met or surpassed expectations, which IDC said lessens fears over the extent of the PC sales slump. According to IDC, portable PCs continue to be the primary growth driver, with all regions seeing strong laptop and netbook shipments. The consumer segment is out-performing the commercial sector, according to the report, which said that continuing demand from consumers "should support the expected return to growth [in PC sales] by year end".
Office takes to the web
The Microsoft/Google battle continued this week, with Microsoft releasing a technical preview of Office 2010. Perhaps one of the most compelling features of Office 2010 is its free web-based applications, which will include Word, PowerPoint and Excel. The move is the latest milestone in an 18-month-old concerted effort by the software giant to offer more of its core products via the web. Of course, the fact that it is also a solid shot across Google's bows won't have escaped the attention of the Redmond-based behemoth. Unlike Microsoft's recent Bing launch, where it tried to battle Google on the search giant's home ground, business productivity software is Microsoft's home turf. Not much is yet known about the web-based Office apps and how trimmed down they will be compared to the conventional Office suite; with web-based apps, there is a limit to the features that can be offered, and industry observers have suggested this may level the playing field somewhat. However, Microsoft's experience in this area is incomparable. With Office 2010 and the accompanying web-based apps set to launch in the first half of 2010, it will be interesting to see if Microsoft will be able to offer users more than what they can currently get from Google Docs. Industry opinion is that this is a crucial battle that Microsoft needs to win.
App Store reigns supreme
Apple's App Store celebrated its first birthday last Saturday. The store, which offers third-party software for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, has reached a significant milestone, with 1.5 billion downloads since its launch last year. In all, there are some 65,000 different apps available from the App Store ranging from the useful -- Skype -- to the not so useful -- a lie detector 'test'. "The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality," boasted Apple co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs. "With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up." Indeed, it is going to be difficult for other app stores to make a dent in App Store's popularity. They are trying though; just this week LG became the latest mobile maker to launch an app store. The catchily-titled LG Applications Store will initially focus on the Asian market, eventually making a global move. For now, it currently has around 1,400 apps. Other mobile makers who have unveiled app stores include Google, with Android Market; Nokia, with Ovi Store; and BlackBerry, with App World.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 