NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 11 March
11-03-2010
by Deirdre McArdle
Datapac to create jobs | Contract wins see Realex expansion
ICT solutions provider Datapac has announced it is to create 10 new jobs at its facilities in Dublin and Wexford. Recruitment for these new positions, which include technical support and customer service, will start immediately. Datapac currently has over 150 employees in Ireland at three locations – Dublin, Wexford and Belfast. Three months ago the firm recruited 14 new staff. The news comes as Datapac reported better-than-expected fourth quarter sales growth of 11 percent.
In more jobs news, e-payments firm Realex Payments is expanding its workforce on the back of two major contract wins since the beginning of the year. The firm is looking for six new people to fill roles such as Java developer, systems infrastructure operations engineer and grails developer. Realex signed a deal with 32Red this week and earlier in the year hooked up with Cryptologic. Find out more about these positions here.
A report launched by the Government's Innovation Taskforce has been welcomed by Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin, who together have formed an 'Innovation Alliance'. The pair also announced the launch of a dedicated website, www.innovationalliance.ie, to mark the one-year anniversary of their partnership. Also welcoming the Innovation Taskforce report was e-Net, the firm that manages the Government's metropolitan area network (MAN) programme. In particular, e-Net has responded to the report's call to "make significant further capital investment to upgrade Ireland's broadband network". Not so enamoured by the report is Fine Gael innovation spokesperson Deirdre Clune, who said she doesn't expect to see many of the recommendations implemented by the Government. Click here to take a look at the full report (PDF).
Two second-year Electronic and Computer Engineering students from NUI Galway -- Finn Krewer from Tubber, Co. Clare, and Padraig Meaney from Cloghan, Co. Offaly -- have won the annual XNA Ireland Challenges College Cup, which was held as part of the Games Fleadh event in Tipperary Institute on Wednesday. The pair won the competition with their updated version of Pac-Man called 'Pac-Man Unleashed', which features four variants on the classic game including a multiplayer version, a limited visibility version, a 'ghost infection' version, and a combination of all three. As well as winning the overall award, the students won the individual award for 'Best in Game Play'.
Pink Floyd has won a court battle with EMI, which prevents the record company from selling downloads of the band's tracks individually. Judge Andrew Morritt of the British High Court accepted arguments by Pink Floyd that EMI was bound by a contract prohibiting it from selling its songs other than as complete albums, without written consent. EMI had argued that the contract applied to physical albums only. The judge also ordered EMI to pay the band's legal costs of STG40,000.
An interactive horror film called 'Last Call' has taken the novel approach of making the main character call an audience member for help. On their way into the screening audience members are asked to supply their mobile phone numbers and during the movie one phone is selected to receive a call from the character on screen. Voice recognition software is used to respond to the moviegoer's commands and the film unfolds based on their instructions, reports Gizmodo. The company that developed the film, 13th Street, has billed the film as the "first interactive horror movie". Take a look at a short clip from the film here.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 