An Post will raise the price of a standard postage stamp again next month, the fourth such price hike the State-owned postal carrier has rolled out in less than three years. From February 1st, the price of a standard national stamp will increase by 5c to €1.40, an increase of around 3.7 per cent. Large envelope and registered post rates will also increase, An Post said, but international letter stamp rates will remain unchanged at €2.20 as will digital stamp prices at €2. Ian Curran has the details.
In the 1980s, just as the new phenomenon of digital arcade games was taking off, I was fresh out of university, living in a small Californian town and working in the local hardware store. A games centre opened across the road, filled with the new upright arcade consoles, featuring fresh excitements such as Galaga, Asteroids, Centipede, and my favourite, Ms Pac-Man. Many years later, Karlin tells us, she has become a born-again gamer after decades of not putting hand to console.
Sretaw PE (Private Equity), the investment and property development company headed up by Eamon Waters, has completed the acquisition of the Chancery Building in Dublin city centre for about €14 million. The price paid represents a discount of 43 per cent on the €24.75 million price that had been sought originally by agent Knight Frank when it brought the property to the market on behalf of its owner Credit Suisse, in September 2022. Ronald Quinlan reports.
Electricity prices could fall further this year, easing the burden on families and employers, experts say, writes Barry O’Halloran. Suppliers cut charges in autumn following two years of sustained hikes that trebled families’ electricity bills to as much as €4,000 a year.
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A photorealistic avatar for a politician, removing any skin blemishes and wrinkles, could be a youthful vibrant virtual alternative to its human political embodiment. Such a political avatar – I call it an “avatician” – could then be used in video footage, digitally animated with appropriate body movements. Chris Horn sounds a warning as we head into a year of elections at home and abroad.
January is a time for new beginnings and lofty promises under the guise of new year’s resolutions. Some will be kept, most will fall by the wayside. But there are plenty of tech-focused resolutions you can make for the coming year that are relatively easy to stick to. Ciara O’Brien has some ideas.
As the dad of four in a sporty household, Colin Deering has attended hundreds of his children’s matches over the years. On many occasions, however, there was no official scoreboard which made keeping up with who was ahead a bit of a guessing game. “I was also a volunteer coach at my local club and had seen first-hand the challenges of keeping track of match scores and communicating the updates to parents and fans. That’s how the idea for Anyscor, a simple to use scoring app for fans, was born,” Deering says. Olive Keoogh reports.
AIB, once the most vocal bank on the “unfairness” of crisis-era executive pay limits, may have kept its head down on the issue in recent years after former chairman Richard Pym, who rarely missed a chance to bemoan the caps, stepped down almost four years ago. However, his successor, Jim Pettigrew, is back on the case. Cantillon wonders how he will get on. Our resident sage also tells us that we shouldn’t be holding our breath over a possible ECB rate cut any time before the autumn.
Virtual reality hasn’t gone away. Apple’s Vision Pro “spatial computing” device is set to arrive soon and Meta has in recent weeks unveiled the Meta Quest 3, both targeting different parts of the market for computer-generated environments, writes Ciara O’Brien. But both of these options are expensive – one significantly more so than the other – and therefore out of reach of those on any budget. The Vodiac VR headset, on the other hand, is not only available right now, it is available for less than €100.
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