NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 11 January
11-01-2010
by Sylvia Leatham
Crospon completes funding round | Realex signs Cryptologic deal
Galway-based medical device developer Crospon has completed a EUR2 million funding round. The latest funding round includes continued investment from Enterprise Ireland and private investors, as well as new funds from The Wellcome Trust in the UK. The company also said that its flagship gastroenterology product, EndoFLIP, has been cleared by the US Food and Drugs Administration, allowing it to sell the product in the US. Crospon established a US operation in California last year.
Cryptologic, a provider of internet gaming and gambling software, has signed a three-year deal with Ireland's Realex Payments that will see the Irish company support Cryptologic's card processing needs. Cryptologic provides support services and manages payments for some of the world's biggest gaming companies, including Party Gaming, 888.com and Virgin Games. Realex will provide payment processing for Cryptologic across a variety of currencies, regions and card types. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
PR company Edelman has launched TweetLevel, a free online tool that it says can calculate any Twitterer's level of influence on the micro-blogging site. Following input of a user's Twitter name, the online service performs the calculation using a "unique algorithm which takes into account the quality and quantity of someone's tweets, how engaged and trusted a tweeter is, as well as how popular they are", the company says. Edelman has used the tool to determine that 'Father Ted' co-creator Graham Linehan is the "most influential Irish celebrity Twitterer". The tool is available at Tweetlevel.com.
Irish mobile app development firm OS3 has created an iPhone app called 'News Break'. The software is described as a news reader app and promises to deliver breaking news from 36 international sources, as well as seven Irish and one Northern Irish source. The Irish news sources include RTE, the Irish Independent, the Irish Times and the Irish Examiner. The app costs EUR2.99 to download from the iTunes App Store. For more details and a demo of the app, visit Os3.ie/apps/newsbreak/.
The UK government is to provide free laptops to over 270,000 low-income families under the Home Access scheme. The STG300 million scheme will allow some of the most in-need children -- for example, those in care, those with specific educational needs and those from the poorest families -- to apply for a grant for a free laptop and broadband connection. The aim of the project is to bridge the digital and educational divide between rich and poor, according to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who announced the rollout of the scheme at the Learning and Technology World Forum in London on Monday.
Google says it wants to work out an agreement with authors over the rights to Chinese texts, in the hopes of quelling fears in the region over its book-scanning project, reports the Wall Street Journal. In a letter to the Chinese Writers Association, Erik Hartmann, head of Google Books in Asia, said Google's communication with Chinese writers was "not good enough". He said Google was in talks with the China Written Works Copyright Society to create a new plan for authors and publishers to participate in Google Books, the internet giant's plan to create a digital library of millions of books.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 