A round-up of other technology stories in brief.
€1m BT training centre in Dublin
BT Ireland has invested €1 million in a new IT training centre in Dublin city centre which will be capable of training more than 8,000 IT professionals a year.
The training facility is BT's largest in Britain and Ireland. It will focus on areas where there is high demand for skills including advanced networking, security, unified communications, knowledge management and best practice professional skills .
Buyers of certain high-end Nokia phones through the Carphone Warehouse will get free one-year membership of the Nokia Concierge Service. Members can avail of a range of VIP perks such as having holidays booked for them or nabbing a table at a top restaurant.
Nokia says the offer, worth more than €500 a month, applies to Nokia N95, N95 8GB, E90, E61i, 8600 Luna, 8800 or 6120 phones bought from Carphone Warehouse.
CTC in €5m distribution deal
CTC, a subsidiary of Irish- owned BPI Telecom, has signed an exclusive agreement with Europe's largest iPodaccessory brand, GEAR4, to distribute its products in Ireland. CTC estimates the value of the three-year agreement to be more than €5 million.
Google Android challenge
Google is offering $10 million (€6.8 million) in awards for the best applications submitted to its Android Developer Challenge. The 50 best entries submitted between January 2nd and March 3rd will receive $25,000 to further develop their idea and potentially win one of 10 $275,000 awards or 10 $100,000 awards.
World's fastest computer
IBM's Blue Gene/L supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, has set a new record for the world's fastest computer following an upgrade this summer. Its position at the top of the official TOP500 Supercomputer ranking was confirmed with a sustained performance of 478 trillion calculations a second (478 "teraflops").
But according to Guinness World Records, the machine's computing power is eclipsed by the Folding@home project. The network, which includes 670,000 PS3s, surpassed one petaflop, one quadrillion operations a second, last September.
Recovery service
Savenet Solutions has launched ResurrectIT, a hosted disaster-recovery service for small- and medium-sized firms. Lorcan Cunningham, Savenet managing director, says it is less expensive and less cumbersome than other disaster recovery services.
Fastcom's rally data
Sligo broadband provider Fastcom is providing the high-speed data connectivity that will transmit live data from the Irish leg of this weekend's World Rally Championship (WRC). Fastcom is providing a a 10MBit/sec core connection, with a 4MBit/sec back-up link, which will transmit data to WRC headquarters in London which can then be accessed by participating teams from Rally HQ at the Sligo Institute of Technology.
New Windows security
Microsoft has released version 2.0 of its Windows Live OneCare service which provides automated security and important updates for home and small business PC users. It provides a range of functions such as anti-virus protection, setting up and managing wireless networks as well as back up of data such as photos and documents.
Such a level of security will cost $49.95 (€34.08) a month
