NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 8 March
08-03-2010
by Cian Ginty
Irishman wins FX Oscar | Vodafone apologises for overcharging error
Dublin-born Richard Baneham has won an Oscar for best visual effects. Baneham, who studied at Ballyfermot College of Further Education, was animation supervisor on the film Avatar. Meanwhile, a number of Irish nominees lost out in this year's Academy Awards: Tomm Moore for The Secret of Kells in the best animated feature film category, Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty for best animated short film, The Door by Juanita Wilson and James Flynn with Bray-based Octagon Films for best live short, and Belfast-born sound engineer Peter J Devlin in the sound mixing category for work on Star Trek.
Deloitte has revealed the 20 winners of its 2010 Best Managed Companies Awards Programme. The list includes technology and web companies FreeFlow, Killarney Telecom, Qumas, Singularity and Taxback.com. Deloitte said an independent judging panel reviewed a broad range of criteria including strategy, capability, commitment, financials and growth potential across all key functions of the businesses. It added: "Given the turbulent economic environment, the judging panel recognised that business and management success can no longer simply be measured by increased sales, profit or turnover. For that reason, a holistic view of the companies, their performance in relation to their peers, and the industries that they are operating in was considered in order to determine management success."
O2 has said it will extend its fixed-line business offerings for both the SME and larger business sectors. It said the new services will deliver a "one stop shop" for communications needs. Bundles start from EUR49.99 per month (ex VAT), which includes broadband, free calls to O2 mobiles and free calls to local, national and UK landlines. O2 pointed to recent ComReg research which said only 8 percent of Irish businesses currently use a single supplier for fixed and mobile communications, although nearly 60 percent would prefer to use the one provider, according to ComReg and O2's own research.
In other news of mobile telecoms, Vodafone has apologised for charging double to customers who pay their bills via direct debit using credit cards. The company said it identified the "processing error" immediately last week and reversed charges to customer's credit cards within days. Vodafone said it will also refund any additional charges customers may have faced as a result of its error. The company says it has contacted all affected customers and apologised to them. The mobile phone operator said the error affected several thousand customers, but added it was an isolated incident and it will take steps to ensure the error does not happen again.
A poll of more than 27,000 adults conducted across 26 countries for BBC World Service found nearly 80 percent of adults think internet access is a fundamental right. More than seven in ten (71 percent) of non-internet users also felt that they should have the right to access the web. Nearly early four in five (78 percent) said they felt the internet had brought them greater freedom, 90 percent said they thought it was a good place to learn, and just over half said they now enjoyed spending their spare time on social networking sites. But there was a near even split on how safe it is to speak your mind online: 48 percent said "the internet is a safe place to express my opinions", while 49 percent disagreed. Just over half said the internet should never be regulated by governments. The aspects of the internet that caused people the most concern include fraud (32 percent), violent and explicit content (27 percent), and threats to privacy (20 percent).
Salesforce.com, which has offices in Dublin, has been ranked sixth in Fast Company magazine's list of top ten most innovative web companies. Fast Company said "Salesforce.com is the undisputed leader in helping sales hordes track prospects and win business." Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com, said "Salesforce.com and our millions of users have shown that the internet has the power to revolutionise business just as it has the consumer world."
Irish company Go2mobile has set up a system allowing insurance customers to send photographic and video evidence to their insurers from their mobile phones. The company highlighted how AccidentMMS allows camera phones to become traffic accident "witnesses", with the results accessible long after crashes are cleared away, allowing insurance assessors to view what had occurred. AccidentMMS enables an insurance agent to view photographs and videos online, respond by SMS, or forward the evidence to colleagues. Go2mobile also said the system was useful for other cases where assessors cannot arrive quick enough, like flooding and boat accidents.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 