Today's other stories in brief
Trade-in offer on Toshiba player by Sony
Sony is offering a fig of comfort to consumers who purchased next-generation DVD players based on Toshiba's defunct HD-DVD standard. Through a trade-in promotion, owners of HD-DVD players will get €150 off a new Sony Blu-Ray player purchased at any authorised dealer before the end of March. Sony's BDPS300 and BDPS500 Blu-ray players retail for €499 and €899 respectively.
Mortgage Brain gives customers options
Share options for employees are commonplace in the technology industry, but Dublin software firm Mortgage Brain is to give away options on up to 25 per cent of its business to its customers.
Three tranches of share options will be given away between 2009-2011. Mortgage brokers will be awarded options based on their usage of software licences and their e-trading activity over each preceding 12-month period. Mortgage Brain supplies a range of mortgage processing technology to brokers.
New Windows update available
Microsoft's Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista is now available for installation through the Windows Update service and from the Microsoft Download Centre website. The main enhancements it offers are improved security and faster file transfers.
Next month Windows Update will begin automatically downloading SP1 to Vista PCs but will not install it without explicit user agreement.
This is because Microsoft has identified issues with a number of third-party drivers which might not work with the update. Microsoft is working with the third parties to update the drivers in advance of the automatic roll-out.
Short film prize offered to students
Cork chilled meals company the Douglas Hide Food Co is offering a €1,000 prize to students in the Film Studies Department of St John's College to design a 30-second animated short film to promote the company.
The winning entry will be used on the company's website as well as being uploaded to YouTube and MySpace to raise the Cork firm's profile.
The winner of the competition will be announced at the end of May 2008 and will be available for viewing from June 1st, 2008.
Safari most popular US mobile browser
The iPhone's Safari browser is rapidly becoming the most commonly-used mobile web browser, according to figures released by free web traffic tool Statcounter.
This month iPhone and iTouch traffic tracked by Statcounter increased by 64 per cent from 0.14 per cent in December to 0.23 per cent. Safari is now the number one mobile browser in the US but globally Nokia still dominates with 0.25 per cent of all traffic compared with Apple's 0.06 per cent.
Irish 'silver surfers' on the increase
Research conducted within the Irish internet population by local analysts iReach has found a growing number of older people are going online - a category the firm has dubbed "silver surfers". iReach found 21 per cent of adult internet users are now aged over 50 and they shop online at the same rate (70 per cent) as 18-34 year olds surveyed.
At €50 million the combined amount they spend online is significantly higher than younger groups and accounted for 30 per cent of the total online spend in 2007.
Music catalogues available on website
Three of the four major-label record companies have made their entire digital catalogues available through a new social networking music website, MusicMakesFriends.com. Universal, Sony BMG and EMI, as well as a number of independent labels, are providing music for the site.
The basic service is free and supported by ads, while a premium service that provides unlimited access to more than 1.5 million tracks costs €9 a month. Users can stream music, ie, listen to it online, but cannot download the music to their PCs or portable music players.
