IN THE PAPERS
In the papers 10 August
10-08-2007
by Sylvia Leatham
Child-friendly mobile to hit Irish stores next week | Vonage reduces quarterly loss
The Irish Times reports that governments should focus on education and training to ensure their citizens were qualified for higher-value roles, rather than trying to prevent lower-skilled jobs moving offshore, according to a senior IBM executive. "This is almost Darwinian in that low-skill things move to low-cost locations and what has to come in and take its place is high skill," said Steve Mills, senior vice-president with IBM's software group. Mills noted that the nature of the software development IBM undertakes in Ireland means it is not suitable for moving to a low-cost location.
The paper also reports on Citiranks.com, a new online taxi booking service for the Dublin area that claims to be the first of its kind in this country. Registered users of the service, which is aimed at the business market, can log on, find the taxi rank nearest them and then choose which car in the queue they want to come pick them up. There is a registration fee of EUR200 and a charge of EUR3 per booking, and the service is designed to complement rather than replace existing corporate taxi accounts.
The same paper says that 27 students have graduated with a Masters in pharmaceutical medicine through online institute Hibernia College, as noted by ENN on Thursday.
The paper also notes that Sun Microsystems has introduced the UltraSPARC T2 chip, which it claims is the world's fastest commodity microprocessor, thanks to its eight processor cores and eight threads per core. It claims each thread is capable of running a separate operating system, meaning the T2 offers a 64-way system on a single chip.
According to the same paper, Afilias, the Irish-registered company that provides registration services for the dot-info (.info) and dot-aero (.aero) domains, has emerged as one of the main bidders to administer the dot-us (.us) domain for the US government. It will be hoping to unseat incumbent register NeuStar when the US Commerce Department awards a three-year contract later this month.
The Irish Examiner says that UPC Ireland generated revenues of USD74.7 million in the second quarter of the year. Read more on this story on ENN.
The paper also says that children as young as four are being targeted by a mobile phone company that has created a special child's phone with simple features. The Firefly phone, which comes on the Irish market next week, is a voice-only handset with no text message or photo facilities and just five large buttons that will only ring or receive calls from numbers locked in by parents.
The Financial Times reports that VoIP provider Vonage Holdings has posted a reduced quarterly loss after cutting back on advertising designed to attract new subscribers. The company's net loss in the second quarter fell to USD34 million, or USD0.22 per share, from a loss of USD74 million, or USD1.16 a share, a year earlier. The company, which has also seen customer churn rates climb after the courts ruled in March it had violated patents held by Verizon Communications, has now deployed "workaround" technology that replaces two of the patents in dispute, and has finished developing the third.
The paper also says that businesses should face penalties if they fail to protect individuals from internet crime, according to a UK parliamentary report. The House of Lords science and technology committee calls for internet service providers to take more responsibility for providing internet security. It suggests software companies and hardware manufacturers should pay up if they supply products with security flaws. The committee also proposes introducing a law that requires businesses to notify consumers when personal information in their databases has been illegally accessed.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Universal Music Group is to allow digital tracks from thousands of albums by artists such as Sting, 50 Cent and Stevie Wonder to be sold online without copy-protection technology for a limited time. The tracks will be available for purchase on the recording artists' websites and through several established online music retailers. They will be playable on devices that are compatible with the MP3 format, including Apple iPods. However, they won't be available for sale at Apple's iTunes store.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 