America Online has reopened almost two dozen Irish Heritage message boards it shut down in mid-December after claiming they included profanity, personal attacks and threats of violence, all of which are banned under its terms of service. The online service was accused of following a "politically motivated", pro-British agenda by the Irish People newspaper, the self-proclaimed "voice of Irish republicanism in America".
In a separate move which appeared to exacerbate the row, AOL's British subsidiary temporarily banned people from posting messages in Irish. According to an AOL representative, this was because AOL in Britain was overwhelmed by a sudden increase of Irish-speaking users after the closure of the Irish Heritage forums.
"After the boards in the US were closed there was an influx of postings about Northern Ireland, many of which were in Irish, from people who wanted to continue the dialogue," according to AOL's Maggie Gallant. "We put up a notice asking people not to post in Irish until we had found someone who was able to do translations. We have done that and are now accepting postings in Irish. It is completely untrue to suggest that there was any political motivation behind the move."
The Great Leap Forward: Iona Technologies has been acknowledged as one of Europe's leading entrepreneurial organisations, according to research carried out by Europe's 500 - a Brussels based non-profit organisation. The research focuses on company performance across all industry sectors between 1992 and 1997 and examines factors including turnover, growth and employment creation. Iona occupies the number one position in terms of percentage job creation over that period - it recorded a five-year employment increase of 8,300 per cent.
Net Not Adding Up: Investment in technology by Irish accountancy firms has yet to yield significant benefits in terms of cost saving or improved service to clients, according to a new study published by Dr Martin Fahy of the Department of Accounting and Finance in NUI, Galway, in conjunction with the Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Ireland. The study found that technology in the sector had been acquired on a piecemeal basis and had done little to reduce the cycle time for producing accounts.
Smart Move: Card Services International, of Dun Laoghaire, has announced capital investments totalling $3 million. Participants in the investment include JAFCO, Japan's largest venture capital firm, and CSI's current venture partner ICC Software Partners. The funds are being used to strengthen CSI's position as a supplier of smart card software to the international banking market and the airline industry.
Intelligent Sapphire: Norkom Technologies is to invest £2 million in a software development programme over the next two years. The business intelligence consulting and research company has received a substantial investment from Enterprise Ireland and was recently given funding from the EU-sponsored Research Technology & Innovation fund to allow for the initial development of a new customer and marketing intelligence software product, code-named Sapphire.
Intel's Next Generation: Intel is today expected to reveal the official name for its next-generation Pentium chip, code-named Katmai. Despite being "the best kept secret in Silicon Valley", the company is widely expected to leverage its Pentium brand and christen the new chip Pentium III. The new processor builds on the current Pentium II core, but adds 70 new multimedia-enhancing instructions known as the Katmai New Instructions to the existing MMX instruction set.
At The Races: Tramore Racecourse is the first of the major European tracks past the post in the provision of a commentary service via the Internet. Using RealAudio, a live feed from the January 1st meeting was successfully broadcast. The site can be accessed at www.tramore-racecourse.com and the next meeting is on January 14th.
Size Matters: Toshiba claims to have developed the world's smallest memory chip, in cooperation with IBM and Siemens. Using 0.175 micron technology, the three companies have achieved a chip-size reduction of 40 per cent, according to a Toshiba spokesman who said the company plans to start mass-producing the new DRAM chip in Japan in late 1999, and then transfer the technology to its joint venture plant with IBM in the States.
New Buzz: Forget content aggregators and portals, the buzz phrase for 1999 is "destination sites" which is what traditional portals and television networks must become if they are to survive online in the next century, according to the word on the floor at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In the recent past, individual sites have used strong brand awareness to draw users into specialised portals. Destination sites however will bring together several content sites such as Disney, ABCNews, Mr Showbiz and ESPN under one umbrella.
Shiny Apple: Apple has unveiled its latest Macintosh computer line, boasting it to be the fastest in the industry. Speaking at the MacWorld Expo, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said the new 400 megahertz Power Mac G3 was up to 20 per cent faster than the next fastest computer on the market and predicted that the new models would further boost Apple's financial fortunes.
Further Growth For EMG: Educational Multimedia Group has announced that its development facility in Dublin has reached full capacity. The company employs over 80 people and is multimedia and Macromedia development.
Amiga's Mag: A new monthly Amiga magazine, Amigactive, is about to be launched, complete with a softwarepacked CD-Rom for fans of this old-school machine.
- Info: btinternet.co.uk/pppsales/amigactive.htm.
In Brief...Lotus Development Ireland has signed its first contract with International Translation & Publishing, the international localisation service provider to the IT industry. . . Inter- national Financial Systems has signed contracts with several major banks to install its MarginMan Version 2.0 risk management system. . . A 52 per cent increase in workstation sales by Sun Microsystems helped to drive a nearly 15 per cent growth in the Unix workstation market in the third quarter of 1998. . . Tinet has launched Global Doras, comprised of website listings and evaluations from throughout the internet divided into 11 principal areas of interest. . .