A round-up of other technology news in brief

New IT service targets infrastructure savings

Irish IT services firm Origina is rolling out a new IT benchmarking matrix to business and public sector groups in Ireland and abroad. The move comes after the group reported savings of €4.5 million in a small number of projects in the Irish public sector, one-third of it from elimination of waste on software licences.

Origina says the new service, developed over the past year, will assess clients’ IT infrastructure against international best practice. Supported by Enterprise Ireland, it hopes to secure 50 new customers and €3 million in revenue for the service by the end of the year. Director of innovation and development Rowan O’Donoghue said he believed the service was “particularly suitable for the Irish public sector”.

Solar deal to boost efficiency

Innovalight, the Silicon Valley firm headed by Dubliner Conrad Burke has teamed up with a Chinese solar cell manufacturer J A Solar to produce more efficient solar cells. The two companies this week signed a three-year deal that will see Innovalight’s solar nanocrystal ink used in the solar cells produced by the Chinese group.

Mr Burke said the company’s silicon ink currently adds one percentage point to the efficiency of a mainstream solar cell. That means that a cell that is 18 per cent efficient jumps to 19 per cent. It expects to double the efficacy of its ink by next year to two percentage points and to three in 2012.

Collaboration to tackle SMS spam

The National Digital Research Centre has announced a collaboration with DIT and Sentry Wireless in an effort to more efficiently detect spam on SMS mobile systems.

Security experts predict that SMS spam will become a major problem in the European market over the next two years – reaching levels close to those for email spam, estimated at up to 92 per cent.

Current anti-spam solutions are not particularly effective on SMS spam. The collaboration hopes to accelerate development of the “Sentinel” product, which hopes to launch globally in 2012.

Antenna expert warned of iPhone flaw last year

Apple’s senior antenna expert voiced concern to chief executive Steve Jobs in the early design phase of the iPhone 4 that the antenna design could lead to dropped calls, a person familiar with the matter said.

Last year, Ruben Caballero informed Apple’s management the device’s design may hurt reception, said the person. A carrier partner also raised concerns about the antenna before the device’s release last month, according to another source familiar with the situation. – Bloomberg