NEWS IN BRIEF
In the papers 14 August
14-08-2007
by Sylvia Leatham
Eircom COO set to depart | Facebook users risk identity theft
The Irish Times reports that Eircom's chief operations officer, Andrew MacLeod, is to leave the company at the end of September, just over 12 months after joining the telco. It is understood that MacLeod is returning to his native Britain to take up a position with Vodafone.
The Irish Independent says that a campaign is under way on social networking site Bebo to free an Irish teenager jailed in Senegal. By Monday night, almost 10,000 people had visited the profile page of 19-year-old Patrick Devine, who is beginning his third week in prison in the west African state for allegedly 'mooning' outside a provincial governor's house.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft has put aQuantive chief executive Brian McAndrews in charge of its online advertising business, as the company completed its acquisition of the online advertising firm. Microsoft, which announced the closing of the USD6 billion aQuantive deal on Monday, said it would create a new Advertiser and Publisher Solutions unit, headed by McAndrews, to handle its ad marketing.
The paper also reports that some Facebook users are exposing personal information to strangers, increasing their risks of identity theft, virus attacks or other problems, according to a study by Sophos. The security firm found that 41 percent of the social networking site's users were willing to divulge personal information -- such as phone numbers, home addresses and e-mail addresses -- to a complete stranger.
The Financial Times reports that hackers breached the United Nations website over the weekend. Early on Sunday, hackers defaced the official site on pages reserved for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, with slogans accusing the US and Israel of killing children. The UN quickly removed the messages and on Monday stopped updating the site while the system was assessed.
The same paper says that Qwest Communications, the fourth-largest US telecommunications group, has named Edward Mueller as its new chief executive. Mueller will succeed Richard Notebaert, who is retiring on Wednesday, having steered the Denver-based telecoms group back from the brink of bankruptcy. Mueller is the former chief executive of the Williams-Sonoma retail chain.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 