Today's other technology news
55% surveyed have MySpace
Entertainment Music Research's annual Digital Music Survey has underpinned the growing influence of social networks in the way people discover, purchase and consume music.
MySpace was the most popular network among respondents (55 per cent) and 27 per cent said they regularly discover music on their favourite social network. The research also found that while legal downloads are growing, it is at a slower rate than before and illegal downloads are at their highest level ever. More than half of music fans also said they would love or like to receive music pre-loaded on USB keys. The research was published in the same week that Apple announced that it has sold over three billion songs from its iTunes Store.
Piczo gets Dublin base
Piczo, the social network which aims to provide a safe environment for teenagers, has signed a deal with Interxion which will see the site hosted at Interxion's Dublin data centre. Piczo has had 10 million unique visitors with over 50 per cent of its traffic originating in Europe. Previously, the user experience for European visitors had not been optimised due to the technicality of having European users' access IT infrastructure based in the US.
Rain has not stopped play
Irish tourism portal GoIreland.com has reported that despite the bad weather it made 22,500 bookings for online users in the first half of 2007. Representing more than 118,500 bednights, the bookings were valued at more than €4.7 million. Irish holidaymakers accounted for 42 per cent of bookings followed by the UK (18 per cent) and US (14 per cent). The site also reported increased interest in Ireland from countries further afield such as Ghana, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and Puerto Rico.
Firefox expert to talk in Cork
One of the long-term contributors to Mozilla Labs, the off-shoot of the open source project which looks at new web technologies, will be in Cork on August 8th to talk about version three of the Firefox browser and what it might mean for web developers. Marcio Galli will be hosted by IT@Cork at the National Software Centre for his speech entitled Read, Write, and Recycle the Web with Firefox 3. Galli says the speech will focus on inter-operability and open standards using Firefox 3 as an example.
Free version of Work suite
Microsoft will begin offering a free ad-funded version of its Work productivity suite, many PC users' first introduction to word processing and spreadsheets, pre-loaded on PCs from a number of manufacturers.
The pilot of Microsoft Works SE 9 will run until the middle of next year. Currently Microsoft Works 9 retails for about $40 or €30.
The move is part of a wider Microsoft strategy to move towards offering software as a service rather than through the sale of up-front licences.
Acquisitions level is down
The level of company acquisitions in the European technology sector was down in the second quarter and is 5 per cent lower than the all-time high of 846 transactions recorded in the same quarter a year ago. The data is recorded in Regent Associates' "European Technology Acquisition Review", which noted that companies from the UK, the Republic, Scandinavia and North America, account for 56 per cent of all acquisitions of European technology firms.
The report suggests that the current peak in acquisition activity may be coming to an end.
