NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 5 January
05-01-2010
by Sylvia Leatham
Apple rumoured to be prepping tablet | Skype coming to TV sets this year
Apple is set to unveil its long-awaited tablet multimedia device later this month, according to unnamed sources quoted by the Wall Street Journal. The product, which is said to have a 10- or 11-inch touch screen, is due to ship in March. It is expected to let users play movies, TV shows and games, surf the net and read electronic books and newspapers. Sources say Apple has been working on a tablet device for years.
In more news of Apple, the iPhone maker says that its App Store has passed the 3 billion download milestone. Launched in mid-2008, the App Store now offers more than 100,000 apps in 20 categories -- chief among which is games -- for the iPhone and iPod touch.
And speaking of apps, Irish property portal Daft.ie has just launched an iPhone app to enable searches of its sale and rental listings on iPhones and iPod touches. The app is currently number 57 in the top 100 iPhone app downloads for Ireland. More details are available at Daft.ie/iphone.
BT has said another 30,000 homes and businesses in Northern Ireland are set to benefit from its plans to develop super-fast fibre-based broadband across the UK. The company said that 63 locations in the UK, including Bangor in Northern Ireland, would be upgraded to fibre broadband by the end of summer 2010 under the Next Generation Broadband Project. Under the project BT has agreed to deliver a minimum downstream speed of 10Mbps for businesses in urban areas and 2Mbps for ones in rural areas. The new investment will bring speeds of up to 40Mbps to households and businesses in the Bangor exchange area and bring the total number of exchanges delivering high broadband speeds across Northern Ireland to 167. BT is investing nearly STG30 million in the Next Generation Broadband Project, with a further STG18 million coming from the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment.
IT services company Sogeti, which has a presence in Ireland, has rolled out an internal social media platform to encourage greater collaboration among its staff. Sogeti has 20,000 employees worldwide, spread across 200 offices in 14 countries. The new service is called TeamPark and uses social networking tools such as personal profiles, communities, blogs, wikis, discussion forums, and file-sharing facilities to help staff share knowledge and collaborate virtually.
Internet telephony firm Skype has done deals with consumer electronics firms LG Electronics and Panasonic to bring internet video calls to television sets, according to a Reuters report. Skype said both electronics firms would have high-def TV sets supporting the service, which includes free video calls between Skype users, available around mid-2010. LG and Panasonic are expected to demonstrate the service at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 