NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 9 October
09-10-2009
by Deirdre McArdle
Twitter in talks with Microsoft, Google | Prosperity tussles with Scientologists
Twitter is reportedly in talks with both Microsoft and Google about striking up a licensing deal that would see its 140-character tweets appearing in their search results. According to the AllThingsDigital blog, unidentified sources said the companies are discussing different types of deals. Details could include the micro-blogging site receiving a payment of several million dollars and various types of revenue-sharing agreements to allow Twitter to benefit from the ad revenue that Microsoft and Google generate from search results. Neither Twitter, Microsoft nor Google have commented on the reports.
As it celebrates the third anniversary of its acquisition by Google, YouTube has revealed that the site is getting over 1 billion views a day. In addition, each minute, 20 hours of video is uploaded to the video-sharing site. YouTube was launched in February 2005. Google bought the site for USD1.65 billion in shares in October 2006.
Mobile operator O2 has linked up with iTraffic to provide users with a real-time traffic information system, "Traffic Text". The system provides O2 customers with the latest national inter-city and M50 journey times. Before setting off on a journey, users can text a road name to 53JAM (53526) to receive the latest travel times on that route by SMS. O2 and iTraffic also plan to introduce a range of additional traffic and travel information services later this year, including a live traffic mapping service where roads are colour coded to display the most and least congested routes and a full GPS navigation service with turn-by-turn directions for customers to help them avoid traffic congestion.
Irish recruitment agency Prosperity Recruitment, which focuses on the digital, advertising and media sectors, has won a trademark battle against the Church of Scientology. The issue arose when Prosperity applied to register the trademark of its company name, "Prosperity". The Scientologists objected to the move, claiming they had a similar trademark relating to the word "Prosperity". The objection also said that Prosperity Recruitment's activities were too closely described to those of the Scientologists. Eventually, the Irish firm won out in the trademark tussle.
Gary McKinnon, a British man accused of hacking into American military computers, has failed in his latest bid to avoid extradition to the US. McKinnon's attorney, Karen Todner, said she was not giving up, and suggested that she was considering taking the case back to the European Court of Human Rights, which has previously refused to stop his extradition. McKinnon, an Asperger's Syndrome sufferer, has admitted to hacking into the computer systems of the Pentagon and NASA in 2001 and 2002; however, he claims he was searching for evidence of extra-terrestrial life.
Indian software firm Infosys posted net profit for its fiscal second quarter ended 30 September of INR15.4 billion (USD328 million), up from INR14.32 billion (USD305 million) a year earlier. Revenue rose 3.1 percent year-on-year to INR55.85 billion (USD1.18 billion). The firm is the first of the big Indian tech companies to post its quarterly earnings and is considered a bellwether for other firms such as Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 