NEWS IN BRIEF
For the record 27 March
27-03-2008
by Charlie Taylor
Kerry Technology Park to expand | Adobe takes Photoshop online
Shannon Development has announced that it is lodging a planning application this week with Kerry County Council for a new 2,500m2 office building at Kerry Technology Park (KTP), Tralee. If successful, the facility, which is being built to provide additional space for some of the firms located at the park, will be the third Shannon Development building situated at the centre. In addition to the proposed development, a number of firms at the park have come together to construct their own purpose-built facility. This building, combined with the proposed new Shannon Development facility, will bring the total enterprise space at Kerry Technology Park to almost 11,150m2. At present there are 17 companies employing 280 people located at KTP.
Adobe has taken its best-selling image editing application Photoshop online with the launch of web-based Photoshop Express. The app enables users to touch up, share and store up to 2GB of photos online for free and to display them either via Photoshop Express or on social networking profile pages. Adobe is rumoured to be planning to offer access to more advanced image editing features to those prepared to pay a yearly fee and it also intends to build a client which will allow users to edit photos offline as well.
Over half of UK companies now allow staff to access their systems remotely, according to the 2008 Information Security Breaches Survey (ISBS) carried out on behalf of the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR). This compares with just 36 percent in 2006. The study also indicates that the proportion of businesses restricting internet access to some staff only has nearly halved (from 42 percent to 24 percent), and only 9 percent give no staff access to the internet. Eight out of ten large companies block access to inappropriate websites and 86 percent of firms said they logged and monitored staff access to the internet.
Belfast-based StreamOn.net has launched a new video based e-learning site for healthcare professionals which enables doctors, dentists and pharmacists to polish up on their skills whenever and wherever they want. www.edcastmedical.com provides training from a number of leading medical professional bodies including, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Northern Ireland Medical and Dental Training Agency; the Northern Ireland Centre for Postgraduate Pharmaceutical Education and Training; and iPath, a QUB spinout company from the School of Pathology. Courses in general practice, dentistry, pharmacy, obstetrics and gynaecology and pathology are available direct to the user's PC from STG20.
Sony has launched a number of new cameras in Europe. These include the SNC-DM110, its sister model the SNC-DM160 and the SNC-CM120, which is Sony's first C-Mount security box camera with megapixel resolution. All three cameras feature Sony's Distributed Enhanced Processing Architecture (DEPA) technology.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 