Compiled by LAURA SLATTERY
Image of the week
It has been a busy week for German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, but it’s not an emergency or anything – he still had time to pick up the Charlemagne Prize, an award traditionally given to people who have done their bit to promote European unity. Schäuble was honoured in the German city of Aachen for his attempt to steer the euro zone through the debt crisis and bring about further political integration. It is going really well so far. (Photograph: Reuters)
Getting to know... Keith Dart
Kenneth Dart, the Michigan- born heir to the Styrofoam cup fortune, has a rather large disposable income that he would quite like to hold on to – euro zone or no euro zone.
The US tax exile’s hedge fund Dart Management is one of several “vulture funds” that snapped up Greek debt and then threatened to take legal action if the interest payments were not handed over.
Dart Management owns a chunk of the 5 per cent of Greek debt that was not included in the debt restructuring in the country’s bailout in March, so Greek authorities paid the Cayman Islands-based fund an estimated €400 million this week.
The lexicon: Muppett bait
Facebook’s shares will be “muppet bait”, according to sceptics who think the company’s imminent stock exchange listing is more of a media event than the arrival of an attractive investment opportunity.
Henry Blodget, chief executive of BusinessInsider.com, favours the term "muppet bait", arguing that hype surrounding the IPO is so great that the chance of random investors gaining any kind of "edge" is tiny.
He also points to decelerating growth, a peak in profit margins and the shift in usage patterns from web to mobile, where Facebook’s chances of making cash are substantially diminished (and not just because it has an embarrassingly bad app).
In numbers: RTÉ Digital
60
In terabytes, RTÉ’s hard disk storage array requirements, and they’re growing fast, says Jonathan Lundberg, RTÉ Digital’s technology infrastructure manager. In 2000, its storage was similar to what you would now get in an average laptop, he says.
16
The number of fridge-like cabinets needed by RTÉ to house all the equipment it needs to deliver its online services, writes Lundberg in a new RTÉ Digital blog. Cloud computing and server power means this number is likely to fall.
7
The number of hours between the peak time for RTÉ’s online traffic before the introduction of the catch-up service RTÉ Player and after. Peak traffic time is now 11pm, when once it was 4pm.
50
The percentage of RTÉ’s 135 million monthly page impression count that comes via mobile devices, with mobile views almost entirely coming from users of the RTÉ News Now app.
