IN THE PAPERS
In The Papers 29 March
29-03-2010
by Sylvia Leatham
Irish Blog Award winners announced | Large Hadron Collider in for smashing week
The Irish Times reports that one of its journalists, Jim Carroll, was among the winners at the Irish Blog Awards in Galway on Saturday. Carroll won the best blog from a journalist award for his 'On the Record' blog, which focuses on music. Three other Irish Times blogs were shortlisted: 'Screenwriter' by film critic Donald Clarke, 'Outside In' by contributor Bryan Mukandi and business blog 'Current Account'. Other winners on the night included Mick Fealty, who was awarded the best political blog prize for 'Slugger OToole' and Suzie Byrne, who won the best news/current affairs award for the second year running for her blog 'Maman Poulet'. Niall Byrne won the best music blog, while Tommy Collison was awarded the best youth blog. The overall winner was 'Beaut.ie', which won the best Irish blog 2010 award and also scooped the best beauty/fashion blog prize.
The paper also notes that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern will on Tuesday begin colliding particles together at energies more than five times higher than existing records. "Nobody knows what is going to happen, that is why we are doing it," said Dr Steve Myers, the Irish physicist in charge of the largest atom smasher ever built, speaking at the annual conference of the Institute of Physics in Ireland at the weekend.
The Irish Examiner reports that Cork country music band and internet sensation Crystal Swing will help Eircom launch its new faster broadband service on Monday. The family trio will record a new music video in Eircom's corporate headquarters in Dublin. An Eircom spokesperson said Crystal Swing is a perfect example of what can be achieved using the internet. She said the next generation broadband service will provide customers with much faster speeds without congestion.
According to the Wall Street Journal, eBay is to start offering high-end fashion brands at discounts of 50 percent or more. On a section of its website called Fashion Vault, the company will offer discounts starting at 50 percent off retail for a limited time, beginning with offerings from French Connection. The new business model follows a trial in the autumn featuring Hugo Boss, DKNY and Max Mara. The move is a departure for eBay, which has generally billed itself as a neutral third-party marketplace that anyone can join, and is aimed at revitalising its online marketplace.
The paper also notes that for the past two weeks, environmental activists have been using social media to wage war against Nestle over its purchase of palm oil for use in KitKat bars and other products. Protesters have posted a negative video on YouTube, deluged Nestle's Facebook page and peppered Twitter with claims that Nestle is contributing to the destruction of Indonesia's rain forest, potentially exacerbating global warming and endangering orangutans. The allegations stem from Nestle's purchase of palm oil from an Indonesian company that Greenpeace International says has cleared rain forest to establish palm plantations. Nestle says it had already decided to stop dealing with the firm, which supplied 1.25 percent of the palm oil Nestle used last year.
The Financial Times says that mobile operator Vodafone is increasingly confident that the balance of power in its relationship with Verizon Communications is shifting in the UK group's favour. Vodafone thinks its negotiating position with Verizon over the future of Verizon Wireless, the US mobile operator, which the two groups jointly own, is getting stronger, according to sources. Verizon Communications, which owns 55 percent of Verizon Wireless, has blocked the mobile operator from making dividend payments since 2005, so that the business can pay down debt. Vodafone, which owns the other 45 percent of Verizon Wireless, has been trying, so far without success, to restore the dividends.
The paper also reports that the de-merger of Carphone Warehouse on Monday saw diverging fortunes for its retail and telecoms interests as they took on separate stock market listings. UBS analysts said they expected shares in Talk Talk to be priced at STG1.15 and those in the new Carphone at STG1.53. Shares in Talk Talk, the old group's telecoms subsidiary, got off to a steady start, rising to STG1.205. However, shares in the new Carphone Warehouse, which holds the old group's 50 percent stake in Best Buy Europe, the consumer electronics retailer, started at STG1.445. Nevertheless, the combined price of the two new companies was far in excess of the value of the old parent company.
The iPhone has been blamed for many things, but the latest, according to the Sunday Independent, is the death of the pub quiz. The device is helping users cheat more easily at quizzes, allowing teams to get top marks. The device allows users to get access to a wealth of information online, with applications such as music-identifying programs helping to frustrate quiz organisers. Some quiz masters have tried to get around the devices by asking more obscure questions such as showing a video clip and asking "what happened next?".
The Sunday Tribune reports that one of the most popular entries in the Your Country, Your Call competition has been deleted from the site after suspicions emerged that it was a spam entry. The website, which has been canvassing for suggestions to help improve Ireland's economy, is offering EUR100,000 in prize money each to two people and with a further EUR500,000 to develop the winning ideas. The suggestion from the Zeitgeist movement called for Ireland to look into a resource-based economy, but it was removed after suspicion an orchestrated campaign was involved to support the idea. The Zeitgeist movement said it had no official statement from the campaign over the idea's removal from the site and denied the high level of interest in it was indicative of "a spamming exercise".
The same paper says that Eircom could breach its banking covenants, according to credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's (S&P). The agency has already downgraded the companies behind Eircom -- ERC Preferred Equity and ERC Ireland Finance – from B to B-. S&P says the company, which has had a succession of owners in the past decade, has an unsustainable capital structure. However, it expects Eircom to take measures to prevent the covenant breach, it said.
The Sunday Business Post says Samsung is now the number two mobile manufacturer in Ireland after company figures said it sold 497,000 mobile phones here last year. The company is now only behind Nokia, which is still the most popular handset maker. Samsung's share equates to about 26 percent of the Irish market, putting it ahead of Sony Ericsson for the first time. Some 300,000 of Samsung's sales were touchscreen phones. The company has also announced its own operating system, Bada, and app store.
The paper also reports that RTE has been ordered by the government to make digital terrestrial television (DTT) available to most of the population later this year. The broadcaster has been given until October to have DTT available to 90 percent of the population. However, the project has been hit with a number of delays on the commercial side with the consortium OneVision as problems emerged with the financial guarantees sought by the broadcaster. Communications Minister Eamon Ryan last week signed a statutory instrument that requires RTE to have its free-to-air digital television service operational and available to most homes by 31 October. An initial launch date of September 2009 has already been missed. OneVision has yet to agree a transmission deal with RTE.
The Sunday Times reports that Irish music acts will now get a cut of revenue from YouTube, as part of a new licensing agreement. Owner Google has done a deal with the Irish Music Rights Organisation (Imro) and the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society Ireland (MCPSI), which will see the company pay copyright holders for every 'view' of videos that contain their music, even if it is only played in the background. The deal will run until the end of next year. It is similar to a deal YouTube made in Britain in 2009. The collection companies will get a lump sum payment, which will be distributed to artists based on the hits recorded by YouTube. The deal is also believed to provide for a retroactive payment back to 2005.
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