A round-up of today's other stories in short.
Symposium on film-making
The 2007 Darklight Film Festival Symposium will take place at various venues in Dublin from June 21st to 24th.
As well as the usual screenings, discussion forums, master classes and workshops with a particular focus on digital film-making, the eighth year of the event introduces the YouTube Video Lounge.
Users can register in advance and stream and mix their favourite YouTube videos during a 30-minute slot. Further info at www.darklight.ie
Big Apple best to buy iPhone
If you want to be first in line for Apple's iPhone you will need to be in New York or some other city on the eastern seaboard of the US at 6pm on Friday, June 29th. Apple has confirmed the phone will go on sale at 6pm local time in each time zone giving east-coast buyers a three-hour headstart. The iPhone is programmed to work exclusively on AT&T's mobile network so any potential Irish purchasers will not be able to use them on home shores.
Talk by BT's 'futurologist'
Ian Pearson, the man who has acted as BT's "futurologist" for the last 15 years, will make a rare Irish appearance at the BT Small Business Show which runs in the RDS today and tomorrow. Pearson will present a seminar entitled "Accuracy is impossible but blurred vision is better than none at all", which will look at where technology is going and how it might impact on business and personal life.
ParkMagic wins Chicago deal
Limerick-headquartered ParkMagic has won the contract to provide a mobile parking payment system for Chicago. On the back of the deal the company will double its workforce from 15 to 30, with the extra jobs mostly in the US. ParkMagic chairman Brian Geoghegan said that within a year the company would hope to have a 10-15 per cent share of the $165 million annual spend on parking in the greater Chicago area.
NewBay chosen by Swisscom
Irish software firm NewBay has been chosen by Swisscom Mobile to provide mobile blogging and multimedia album services to its four million subscribers. NewBay's FoneBlog platform will be rebranded as a Swisscom service and will be available in German, French and Italian.
'Summit' on software
Following on from its "2006 Web 2.0 and Software as a Service" event, Enterprise Ireland will host a "Software-as-a-Service Summit" in Dublin on June 28th. The event will provide an insight into how hosted software models are being used by businesses in Ireland and the US.
Notebook offer by Toshiba
For the month of June purchasers of selected Toshiba Satellite Pro and Tecra A8 notebooks will receive a free 2GB USB flash drive and a Toshiba carry-case. Using Windows Ready Boost the flash drive can be used as an additional memory cache which will boost performance without the need to add additional system memory. Pricing starts at €€499 while the Tecra A8 is from €€879.
