Businesses warned of internet registry scam

Irish businesses are being warned not to fall for a scam from a company calling itself Internet Register Ireland.
Internet Register Ireland is a trading name used by a German company called DAD Deutscher Adressdienst GmbH.
If a business signs and sends back the letter it receives from DAD Deutscher Adressdienst GmbH, it will be liable for a sum of €958 for a listing in their directory, as well as entering into a three-year contract. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

Google Chrome first look: it’s fast, very fast

I’m usually quite reticent about installing new browsers on my machines. Generally, they shake the order of things around enough to frustrate me to the point of being cranky and inevitably going back to my trusty Explorer.
While I wasn’t baffled by the revelation that Google had developed its own browser – it was a logical move – I had reservations about how it would pull it off. First thoughts? It has done so with a relative ease that should in turn make software rivals uneasy. Google Chrome is a sturdy operating system that appears simple, but ‘under the bonnet’ is complex. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

eBay wants to do world of good by going green

Online auctioneer eBay plans to chase the hearts – and pockets – of eco- and socially-minded shoppers with the launch of a new ethical marketplace.
The company said the new e-commerce marketplace World of Good will only sell products that will have a positive impact on people and the planet, “empowering consumers to align their social values with their shopping.” Read More

Courtesy:Silicon Republic

Ireland's Olympians return home

Olympians Homecoming : Ireland's Olympians completed the final leg of their journey home after the Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt landed at Dublin Airport this evening, complete with a tricolour flying from the cockpit window.
The plane carrying the Irish athletes, including the three boxing medal winners, was escorted by three fire and rescue tenders as it taxied to Pier C, where hundreds of friends and family waited to welcome their heroes home.
Medal winners Kenny Egan (silver), Paddy Barnes (bronze) and Darren Sutherland (bronze) came down the front steps of the aircraft to much applause before meeting with family and friends. Read More

Courtesy: Irish Times

Keeping data safe and private

WIRED: New technologies are beginning to show how we might have more independent, safer and more private lives online, writes Danny O'Brien

WHOM DO you trust? That's the question that users (and businesses) should be asking - with the entirety of their personal data and their backups in the balance.

From home-spun programs written to dump your computer's hard drive on Amazon's servers, to enterprise-level systems that backup an entire company's digital assets far from the office while its employees sleep, everybody wants to save their data offsite using the internet. Some might even store data on the internet that they don't keep in their offices, for ease of access from any location that has internet access. Read More

Courtesy: Irish Times

You can fool some of the people

NET RESULTS: Adults allow themselves to be duped by websites requesting bank and credit card numbers, writes Karlin Lillington
A COMMON complaint I hear from teachers, whether they are working with young children or young adults, is that students today lack digital media literacy skills.
This does not mean that they are not digitally literate. These are the generations that grew up with and regularly use the internet, downloads, uploads, podcasts, websites, weblogs, social networking, chat and the rest.
The concern, in a world where one UN survey shows that children spend about twice as much time absorbing information from electronic media such as the internet, television and video games as they spend in school, is that they do not have very good skills at interpreting information from online sources. Read More

Courtesy: Irish Times

eBay insect fossil is new species

A scientist who bought a fossilised insect on the web auction site eBay for £20 has discovered that it belongs to a previously unknown species of aphid.
Dr Richard Harrington, vice-president of the UK's Royal Entomological Society, bought the fossil from an individual in Lithuania.
He then sent it off to an aphid expert in Denmark, who confirmed the insect was a new species, now extinct. The bug has been named Mindarus harringtoni after the scientist. Read More

Courtesy: BBC NEWS

Total of 21 million electronic goods recycled in the past three years

The equivalent of over 21 million individual old or broken electrical items have been collected and recycled by the scheme since the WEEE Directive was introduced in Ireland in August 2005. Read More

Courtesy:Silicon Republic

Memories lost forever due to lack of backup

Research out today shows over one third (36pc) of people have lost holiday photos from a memory card without having a backup. As more and more people use digital cameras, there’s a growing demand for new ways to store photographs for fear of losing them. Read More

Courtesy:Silicon Republic

Irish Olympic hopefuls see RTÉ web viewers rocket

If you were online on Tuesday watching breathlessly as Paul Hession took part in the 100m sprint semi-final or when Ken Egan and Paddy Barnes guaranteed themselves at least a bronze medal in the Beijing Workers’ Gymnasium, then you were watching one of the 12,736 concurrent live video streams served from the RTÉ.ie website, making it the highest ever peak online viewership for the broadcasting company.Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic