NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 9 September
09-09-2009
by Emmet Cole
Online retailers cheating consumers: EU | Hasbro has online Monopoly
Irish data centre managed services company Servecentric has won a three-year hosting deal with European music retailer CDiscount. The news follows a recent IDA announcement that CDiscount chose to base its regional headquarters for the UK and Ireland in Dundalk. CDiscount is the online trading division of Group Casino of France, and is one of the world's largest retailers with 10,000 stores worldwide and EUR28.7 billion in annual revenues. Servecentric will host CDiscount's UK and Irish IT infrastructure and websites, providing managed security and managed firewall services.
Wireless telecom provider AirSpeed Telecom has won a contract with Dairygold to become the primary telecom service provider between the company's UK data centre and its Irish operations. The three-year contract is believed to be worth over EUR100,000. As part of the deal, AirSpeed Telecom will provide a bandwidth connection of 10Mbps between Dairygold's data centre at IBM in Warwickshire and their headquarters in Mitchelstown, Co. Cork. The existing 2Mbps circuit is insufficient to implement Dairygold's new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
The South Cork Enterprise Board is set to host an awards ceremony in Cork on 16 September for seven IT companies that successfully completed its 2009 IT Business Development Programme. The companies expected to receive awards are DPI, Emoh, Genesis Circuits, ImokillyWebs, InVates, Nomos Software, and Vertoda. The programme, which includes best practice workshops in sales, marketing and project management, is funded by the Irish government and part-financed by the European Union under the National Development Plan 2007-2013. Recruits for its next IT Business Development Programme are required to complete a full business audit before being considered.
Enterprise Ireland (EI) is making its podcasts available to deaf and hearing-impaired computer users, following news that TranscribePod, an Irish podcast transcription company has completed the transcription process. EI's eBusiness Unit podcasts will now be available in text form and indexable by search engines such as Google. The OpenUp.ie website is also aimed at those for whom English is not a first language. TranscribePod is a start-up based in Mountmellick, Laois, offering podcast transcription services.
More than half of European websites selling consumer electronics are misleading or cheating online shoppers, according to EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner, Meglena Kuneva. In a statement released on Wednesday, Kuneva revealed that 55 percent of the 369 websites the EU consumer watchdog investigated in 28 countries were misleading buyers about their consumer rights or shipping costs, or providing incomplete contact details. Meanwhile, around two-thirds of the problem websites failed to inform, or misinformed, buyers about their right to cancel an order within a minimum of seven days and return the product without reason. And a third of problem sites did not properly give their address or contact details, which meant buyers could not contact them if they had problems with the goods. National regulators are now being asked to force those companies to amend their selling practices or run the risk of being shut down if they fail to comply.
The Vice-Chairwoman of Sweden's Pirate Party (the political party dedicated to copyright reform who recently won two seats in the European elections) and the debut of Virtual Cinema 2.0 (the Irish Film Board's latest round of online short films) are two of the highlights of the forthcoming Darklight festival. Billed as a celebration of art, film and technology, Darklight will run from 8 to 11 October in Dublin's Smithfield. Funded by the Arts Council, the tenth anniversary of Darklight will also feature an outdoor EA Hub Gaming Station and work from Irish animation company Brown Bag.
eCall, a pan-European in-car automatic emergency call system, received the full backing of Europe's mobile phone industry on Wednesday. Representatives of the industry's GSM Association signed the EU's Memorandum of Understanding to implement eCall across Europe. eCall automatically dials 112 (the pan-European emergency number) when a car has a serious accident and sends its location to the nearest emergency service. The GSM Association represents nearly 800 of the world's mobile operators and more than 200 other companies, including handset makers, software manufacturers, internet companies, and media organisations. Six Member States have still not signed the eCall Memorandum of Understanding – Ireland, Denmark, France, Latvia, Malta and the U.K.
Eircom and Microsoft announced details of a new strategic partnership on Wednesday. The partnership will provide a range of Microsoft products including Exchange and Microsoft Office Communicator on a software-as-a-service basis across Eircom's broadband connections. Eircom customers will be able to buy their broadband service and their Microsoft software at the same time and pay for it on a single bill.
Dublin-based Macalla Software, a developer of mobile financial services solutions has been acquired by US-based Roamware, a global mobile roaming solutions firm. Macalla will adopt the Roamware brand but the expanded team will continue to be based out of Dublin servicing existing and new clients.
Finally, a massive multi-player version of Monopoly was launched online on Wednesday. Developed by toymaker Hasbro, Monopoly City Streets uses Google Maps or the open source Open Street Map as its playing board and every street in the world is available for purchase -- online at least. Players will be given 3 million virtual dollars to buy property. The game makers have modified the classic game slightly by introducing 'chance cards' that allow players to sabotage nearby rivals' properties by building rubbish dumps, prisons or wind farms on their property to reduce their rent value. The game will close on 31 January 2010.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 