IN THE PAPERS
In The Papers 22 September
22-09-2009
by Deirdre McArdle
Facebook partners with Nielsen on ads | Oracle frustrated by European regulators
The Irish Times reports collaboration and infrastructure emerged as two key themes from the Telecoms Internet Federation (TIF) conference in Dublin on Monday, at which telco chiefs debated the future of telecoms in Ireland. Read more on ENN.
The paper also reports on Dell's USD3.9 billion acquisition of Perot Systems, as noted by ENN.
According to the Irish Independent, a new virus called the Clampi Trojan could leave online bank accounts open to cyber criminals. Also known as Ligats or Ilomo, the virus has infected around 1,000 computers in the UK running Microsoft's Windows operating system. The virus is installed on a PC when the user unwittingly visits an infected website containing malicious code. Once on a machine, it captures login and password information from banking and other financial websites and relays the information back to hackers and cyber criminals. It currently monitors around 4,500 finance-related websites, including those of several major UK banks. It is not yet known if any Irish banks are being targeted.
The Irish Examiner writes about the launch of SmartShopper.ie, a new comparison site that compares prices across Ireland's top supermarkets. Set up by Dublin entrepreneur Fiona Looney, the site also lists special offers and promotions from all supermarkets to help find the best value for a weekly shop, which supermarket is the cheapest and who has the best offers for the week.
Facebook is to partner with online measurement company Nielsen in a bid to effectively measure how ads perform on its site, according to the Wall Street Journal. Under the partnership, Facebook will begin polling its users about some of the display ads it runs on its site, such as a banner promoting a movie release. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, who will launch the service -- Nielsen Brand Lift -- on Tuesday, said it will help prove to advertisers that Facebook's display ads work.
Also in the Wall Street Journal, Netflix has announced the winners of its USD1 million prize where entrants were tasked with improving its movie recommendation service by at least 10 percent. The winning team -- BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos -- improved predictions for what movies people will like based on their recommendations by 10.09 percent. Over 51,000 contestants from 186 countries around the world took part in the contest, which began back in October 2006. The winning algorithm could have implications well beyond Netflix; any business that uses people's preferences to sell products could learn from the exercise, writes the paper.
The Financial Times reports that Oracle chief Larry Ellison has claimed that Sun Microsystems is losing USD100 million per month, while European regulators examine Oracle's acquisition of the hardware supplier. "The longer this takes, the more money Sun is going to lose, and that's not good for anybody," he said. US regulators approved Oracle's USD7.4 billion bid for Sun in August, but in September Brussels said it was scrutinising the deal. They are examining whether Oracle's control over MySQL, an open-source Sun product, would stymie competition in the database software industry. Ellison expressed frustration in the delay, but said he was confident the Sun deal would be approved.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 