IN THE PAPERS
In The Papers 4 June
04-06-2010
by Sylvia Leatham
More census info goes online | Google to hand over Wi-Fi data
The Irish Times reports that the earliest surviving complete Census of Ireland has been put online, giving access to more than 4.5 million records from 1901 to the general public. The latest records to go online are expected to rival the popularity of the 1911 Census records, which went online between 2007 and 2009 and have since attracted more than 260 million hits. Digitisation of the records has cost almost EUR4 million and the work has been carried out by the National Archives in partnership with Library and Archives Canada over the past five years. The census is available at www.census.nationalarchives.ie.
The paper also says that Nokia has unveiled a bicycle charger for mobile phones, aimed at developing countries with limited access to electricity. However, the mobile phone maker says the idea could catch on in Europe where cycling for work, shopping and errands is a common lifestyle. The charger will go on sale for about EUR15 later this year.
The paper also reports that Ericsson has completed a trial of next generation mobile broadband technology which achieved speeds of up to 80Mbits/sec in Dublin last week. The Swedish network equipment maker completed tests of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, delivering high-definition television and video conferencing to laptops in the back of a Dublin taxi. Key parts of the infrastructure for the trial were located at Ericsson offices in Gothenburg and Madrid. Ericsson's Athlone facility was also involved.
The same paper says that credit card company Mastercard has established a global research and development hub in Dublin following last year's acquisition of payments software firm Orbiscom. "Mastercard Labs is a desire by Mastercard to recreate the Orbiscom approach on a wider basis," said Gary Lyons, the former chief executive of Orbiscom, who has been appointed head of Mastercard Labs. Set up in April with offices in Dublin, Singapore, New York and St Louis, Mastercard Labs will initially focus on e-commerce, mobile and peer-to-peer payments, said Lyons. “We are actively looking to hire the best software developers in Ireland into Mastercard Labs now,” he said, but declined to say how many positions the company was seeking to fill.
The paper also notes that Cork firm HR Locker, a developer of online human resources software, has been shortlisted as one of the top 18 European start-ups in Microsoft's Bizspark programme.
The paper also says that nearly one-third of Irish chief information officers (CIOs) intend to increase their spending on outsourcing over the next 12 months. A survey of 180 CIOs by Harvey Nash found that 27 percent of CIOs were planning additional investment despite 76 percent reporting reduced or frozen budgets for 2009. Only 13 percent said they would cut back on spending. Almost 40 percent said they were concentrating on controlling costs.
The paper also says that global internet traffic is set to increase fourfold by 2014, while video will take over from peer-to-peer as the top contributor to traffic by the end of this year, a survey has predicted. Cisco's Visual Networking Index Forecast says video, including TV and video on demand, will have more than 1 billion users by the end of 2010 and will make up 91 percent of global traffic by 2014.
According to the Financial Times, Google will begin handing over to European regulators the rogue data it intercepted from private Wi-Fi connections. Eric Schmidt, chief executive, said the internet giant would hand over information initially to the German, French and Spanish data protection authorities. Germany is considering a criminal investigation into the practice. Google will also publish the results of an external audit into the practice, in which cars photographing streets for Google's Street View service ended up also collecting snippets of personal information from unsecured Wi-Fi networks. Schmidt admitted he could not rule out the possibility that personal data such as bank account details were among the data collected.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 