IN THE PAPERS
In the papers 14 September
14-09-2007
by Sylvia Leatham
Google offers Moon race prize | Disability lobby criticises broadband progress
The Irish Times says that excessively high valuations on tech firms are deterring technology services group Horizon from making further acquisitions in the Irish market. "We have the ability to buy for cash; unfortunately we can't get people to be reasonable about price," said Cathal O'Caoimh, chief financial officer with Horizon. O'Caoimh confirmed that Horizon was in talks with a number of takeover targets but said it was highly unlikely that any deals would be closed until early next year.
The paper also says that mobile marketing firm Puca has launched a new platform for delivering advertising on the mobile internet. Read the full story on ENN.
The same paper notes that Ryanair has emerged as one of the first customers of Sligo software firm Nooked's "feed commerce" platform, which uses RSS technology to connect online shoppers and retailers. Nooked has created a desktop widget called Ryanair Bargains which users can download to their desktop in order to get live updates of special offers from the airline.
The paper also notes that the Revenue Commissioners are to begin a consultation process with tax practitioners, industry representative bodies, software providers and customers about compulsory electronic filing of tax returns through ROS, the Revenue Online Service.
The Irish Examiner says that a disability lobby group has criticised the Government for restricting opportunities through delays in rolling out broadband access. People with Disabilities Ireland said its members rely heavily on broadband to develop professional careers.
According to the Financial Times, Google will on Friday attempt to take the high ground in the debate over internet privacy, by calling for new international laws to be set up to protect personal information online. An international body such as the UN or the OECD should draw up new guidelines, Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel for Google, will tell Unesco members at a conference in Strasbourg. Fleischer will also say he believes existing internet privacy rules are out of date.
In other news of Google, the Wall Street Journal says the search giant is bankrolling a USD30 million prize for the first private company that can safely land a robotic rover on the Moon and beam back a gigabyte of images and video to Earth. If the competition produces a winner, it would prove a major boon to the emerging private spaceflight industry and mark the first time a non-government entity has flown a lunar space probe. Google has partnered with the X Prize Foundation for the Moon challenge, which is open to companies around the world.
The paper also reports that Salesforce.com plans next week to unveil technology to help companies build web-based services for business tasks, according to sources. The new initiative, Force.com, marks the company's latest effort to turn itself into a "platform", allowing other web developers to build their own web-based services using Salesforce.com's technology and host those services on Salesforce.com's computers.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 