IN THE PAPERS
In The Papers 12 November
12-11-2010
by Sylvia Leatham
PwC sexist e-mails go global | Grace app wins international award
The Irish Times reports that a series of sexist e-mails sent by male employees about young female colleagues in PricewaterhouseCoopers in Dublin were being viewed on internet sites around the globe on Thursday. The e-mails, which included staff photographs of the women, were circulated within the firm at first but then sent to men in other financial services businesses in Dublin. The e-mail thread that appeared on the internet indicated that Stephen Tully of PwC sent an e-mail to 14 male colleagues within the firm. The Irish Daily Mail, the Irish Independent and the Evening Herald published the photographs of the women, as did websites Gawker.com, the Huffington Post and sites in Canada and India. PwC is investigating the incident.
The paper also says that cloud computing firm Salesforce.com has found itself at the centre of a controversy over pricing, as it emerged that Irish and other European customers are being charged more than their counterparts in the US and Britain. The discrepancy was highlighted by Irish website IrishDev.com. In a statement to the website, Salesforce.com's vice-president of EMEA marketing Tim Barker said "Everything from your last Windows upgrade to your favourite iTunes song will cost more in Europe compared to the US. The cost of doing business in Europe is higher."
The paper also reports on the first day of the 2010 Innovation Dublin festival. In a discussion titled "What's so smart about Ireland's smart economy in 2010?", experts agreed that the smart economy will not come from science and technology alone. "The kinds of business which are successful and will be successful in the future have to be far more diverse," said John Fitzgerald, research professor at the ESRI. "It's also about trying to create a culture where people think it's fun to talk about what they're doing, and to talk about ideas."
The paper also notes that the Digital Marketing Institute (DMI) is seeing such demand for its training courses that it has launched a second postgraduate diploma, just weeks after the first. Although it only ran its first course in January 2009, over 1,200 people have taken its 12-week part-time diploma course. Anthony Quigley, managing director of the institute, said he is seeing "huge demand", and believes digital marketing in Ireland is at a tipping point.
The same paper says that an application developed in Ireland to help children with autism to communicate has won a prestigious mobile content award. The Grace app was chosen by a jury of international experts to receive the World Summit Award Mobile (WSA-Mobile) for e-learning and education, ahead of more than 400 other nominations. The app was the idea of Lisa Domican, a mother of two children with autism; she teamed up with Steven Troughton-Smith to develop the application, which can be used on an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.
The same paper says that CMS Peripherals has launched a tablet computing device on the British market through its Disgo subsidiary. The Mayo-headquartered company's Disgo Tablet 6000 costs STG180 and is on sale at HMV stores and through Amazon's UK website.
The paper also says that revenues at Dublin-headquartered Newbay Software grew to EUR18 million from EUR15.8 million during 2009, but pre-tax losses rose from EUR1.8 million to EUR2.7 million. Recently filed accounts show the company raised EUR3 million in venture debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank and Creos Capital.
The Irish Independent reports on BT Ireland's results, and O2 Ireland's key performance indicators (KPIs). Read more on both of these stories in ENN's Weekly Digest.
The paper also reports that Eircom has been given a ratings downgrade by Standard & Poor's. The ratings agency said it believed there was a risk Eircom would breach the conditions of its loans in the coming year. S&P cut the credit rating for the company from B- to CCC+. The new rating is close to the lowest possible for a company not in default and is already under review for a possible downgrade. "We believe that the Eircom Group companies will likely breach one specific covenant within a year or so, absent any remediation measures," said S&P's credit analyst Xavier Buffon.
The Irish Examiner says that the Apple iPad has beat the Amazon Kindle and Sky 3D to win both Gadget of the Year and Readers' Gadget of the Year in the 2010 Stuff Gadget Awards. Microsoft's motion-sensor gaming system Xbox Kinect won readers' votes for Innovation of the Year. The annual awards recognise the best consumer technology released in the past year and are decided by expert judges and readers.
The same paper says that severe cutbacks at the Irish arm of wireless technology firm Option Wireless has reduced the company's workforce from 295 to 40. A spokesman for the Cork-based firm confirmed the reduction as new accounts show the company moved into the red in 2008 after recording post-tax profits of EUR16.9 million in 2007. The figures show the company made a post-tax loss of EUR51,060 to the end of December 2008 when the company employed 295 staff. That was reduced to 190 at the end of last year and the spokesman said that figure is now down to 40. He said there are no further restructuring plans.
The Wall Street Journal says that Yahoo is evaluating job cuts in its consumer products group, according to sources. Yahoo's chief products officer, Blake Irving, has asked unit heads to prepare operational plans that factor in workforce cuts of up to 20 percent, one person said. Irving, who joined Yahoo in April, oversees key properties like the company's home page, finance site and e-mail service.
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Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 