NEWS IN BRIEF
For the record 2 May
02-05-2008
by Emmet Ryan
Pixsta throws down the gauntlet to Google | Beam me up Dublin: an Irish Star Trek convention is in the works
UK based company Pixsta claims it can challenge Google's dominance of the internet search market. Pixsta, which specialise in image searching, claims to have developed a search engine that can do image-to-image searches based around the context of the images used. This would be a step ahead of Google's current platform where searches for images rely on text-based terms.
Pat McDonagh, the chairman of e-learning firm, Thirdforce, has increased his personal stake in the company to 23.87 percent. McDonagh made the purchase after shares in the company fell by 18.75 percent to EUR0.13 from an opening price of EUR0.16 on Friday.
Never shy of a bit of smash-and-grab, Grand Theft Auto IV has shattered the UK single-day game sales record. A total of 609,000 copies of the game were sold on its first day of release. This was well clear of the previous record of 501,000 copies which was held by a previous game in the franchise, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
OneVision has submitted an application to operate all three Broadcasting Commission of Ireland Digital Terrestrial Television licences in Ireland. OneVision is a consortium of Eircom, Setanta, TV3 and Arqiva.
IT managed services provider Typetec has appointed Paul Mahon as the firm's new Solutions Architect. Mahon will lead the presales team, designing IT systems to fit customers' business requirements.
Finally For the Record has good news for all the Star Trek fans that visit this site. Dublin will play host to a Star Trek convention in summer 2009. The organisers of the event have already secured the attendance of several actors who played bit part characters from the sci-fi series and are working on attracting bigger names to the convention, which is expected to be held in the Royal Dublin Hotel.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 