NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 5 February
05-02-2010
by Deirdre McArdle
Ocean Energy in watershed deal | Bumper Patch Tuesday on the way
Two hundred jobs are to be lost in Dunleer, Co Louth, with the closure of electrical manufacturing plant Bitech Engineering. The firm is a subsidiary of electrical giant Glen Dimplex. Trade union SIPTU said Glen Dimplex made the decision after Bitech staff rejected a cost-cutting programme before Christmas, which SIPTU says included a 'significant number of redundancies', with the remaining staff having to take a 20 percent pay cut. Dunleer is also home to a second Glen Dimplex factory called Chilten Electric.
Cork-based Ocean Energy has signed a deal with multinational Dresser-Rand, which will see the US firm develop and supply special turbines for Ocean Energy devices. Over the past two and a half years Ocean Energy has tested an energy-generating buoy at a government test site in Galway Bay. The Ocean Energy buoy is the only device of its type to have undergone and survived such rigorous testing, according to the company. "We are the only company in the world Dresser-Rand have entered into a development and supply agreement with, and we see this not only as an endorsement of our technology but of the Irish government's development strategy for the industry," said John McCarthy, CEO of Ocean Energy. Fine Gael energy spokesman Simon Coveney said the deal could be the essential link between successful pilot testing and the rollout of thousands of commercially viable wave energy generators.
The companies that have made the shortlist of the All-island Innovation Awards have been named. The awards are sponsored by the Irish Times and InterTrade Ireland. In all, 17 companies in six categories will compete for the top prize for "Innovation of the Year". The six categories are: Organisational Systems & Processes, Product and/or Service Innovation, Application of R&D, Green-Tech, North/South Collaboration, and Public Service Innovation. The awards will take place on 24 March. Shortlisted firms include Medtronic, MCor Technologies and InTime Media.
Microsoft's Patch Tuesday for February is coming up, and the software giant has said it will be a biggie. The bulletin will include 13 updates for 26 vulnerabilities, including fixes for Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7, as well as Server 2003 and 2008, Office XP, Office 2003 and Office 2004 for Mac. Five of the 13 updates have been rated critical, seven are important and one moderate.
Social networking site Facebook on Friday celebrated its sixth birthday, with the news that it now has 400 million users. In a blog post Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said its subscriber base has doubled in the past year. To celebrate its birthday Facebook has rolled out some tweaks to its homepage as it tries to improve navigation. Read more about the changes in store here.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 