IN THE PAPERS
In The Papers 21 June
21-06-2010
by Sylvia Leatham
Weedle to create 50 new jobs | Eircom displays debt risk
The Irish Times reports that skills networking start-up Weedle is to create 50 new jobs at its base in Blackrock, Dublin, over the next three years. The company, which already employs 19 people in Ireland, will create the jobs in the development of next-generation web applications. Weedle's website allows people with professional services, trades, crafts or skills to showcase their products and services online. The site has been live for three months and claims to have attracted users in more than 50 countries. The jobs announcement came as part of a trade mission to the US organised by Enterprise Ireland.
The Irish Independent says that Eircom is now the fifth riskiest company in the world in terms of the possibility it will default on, or restructure, its debt, according to bond market data. The cost of insuring some forms of Eircom debt is now the fifth most expensive in the world. The cost has been surging this year and spiked in May, around the time of the company's last quarterly results. The company's debt is held through ERC Ireland Finance Limited, which has denied suggestions that a restructuring or a default is on the cards.
The Financial Times says that a new research report accuses the world's second-largest seller of website addresses of knowingly helping companies that sell counterfeit pharmaceuticals into the US. The report criticises eNom for refusing to follow market leader GoDaddy and others, who have suspended the domain names of internet pharmacies after US regulators pointed to forged licences and boasts of 'no prescription needed'. The paper comes from security firm KnujOn.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Acer, the second-largest PC maker by shipments after Hewlett-Packard, is confident it will become the No.1 laptop seller this year. Acer expects revenue in the third quarter to rise between 10 percent and 15 percent compared to the second quarter, Chairman J.T. Wang told shareholders. Wang said the company has been able to weather component price rises, weaker demand and wage increases without having to raise product prices.
The paper also reports that Sony has revealed that Chief Executive Howard Stringer received about JPY410 million (USD4.5 million) in compensation and stock options worth JPY406.5 million during the fiscal year ended March. The announcement is the first disclosure of salary details at the company. At Sony's annual meeting with shareholders, the company also gave the salary figures for Vice Chairman Ryoji Chubachi and Chief Financial Officer Nobuyuki Oneda.
The Sunday Business Post says that UPC and BT have done a multi-million euro deal to provide high-speed broadband services to customers of the cable company. BT's network will bring upgraded UPC services to six towns in Ireland: Sligo, Athlone, Mullingar, Portlaoise, Carlow and Newbridge. The company plans to launch a 100 Mbps service in the future, which will be partly built on the infrastructure provided by BT's Etherflow service. Eircom is planning to launch a similar service to BT's.
The same paper says that house buyers are using a new smartphone application to view potential properties, following an experiment run by Sherry Fitzgerald. The properties were printed in the Sunday Business Post last week with quick response codes for specific houses. The codes were readable with a codereader app for smartphones which opened the property's online brochure on the phone. The experiment will be used more widely by the estate agent in future, the paper says.
The Sunday Tribune reports that Irish IT firm Calyx has won a EUR5 million contract to provide software to the Queensland government. The Dublin-based firm will work with the Department of Education in Queensland, providing its M+ income management software across the Queensland school network to manage the financial transactions of more than 400,000 students.
The same paper reports that Twitter may have broken its own terms of use when it banned the spoof @Madam_Editor account. The account, which was a satirical take on Irish Times editor Geraldine Kennedy, had been posting for a couple of weeks on events that seemed closely linked to the occurrences at the Irish Times. The account has since been suspended. However, Twitter's terms allow parody or fan accounts once it is obvious that the account is fictional and not being operated by its namesake.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 