In short

More technology news in brief.

€150,000 for Wubud from Bebo founder

Wubud, a mobile social networking service founded by Irishman Paul Walsh, has attracted €150,000 in angel funding from Bebo co-founder Paul Birch.

Bebo was sold to AOL this year for $850 million (€610 million), with Birch, his brother Michael and his wife reportedly sharing 70 per cent of the proceeds.

Walsh is chief executive of Irish firm Segala, which provides accessibility and usability certification for websites. Details of Wubud are under wraps, but it is being developed in Hong Kong and will enable users to find social network friends who are physically nearby.

Hi-tech FotoNation for Casio cameras

Technology from Galway- based FotoNation will be embedded in Casio's Exilim range of digital cameras following a deal with Tessera Technologies, which acquired FotoNation for $29 million (€20.8 million) earlier this year.

The Galway firm's face tracking and recognition technology will be used to ensure human subjects in photos are well-lit and well-focused. Casio is the latest manufacturer to use the technology, already used in Canon, Kodak, Nikon, Olympus and Sony cameras.

TIF conference on tech-savvy punters

The Virtual Generation - a Digital Life is the title of the Telecommunications and Internet Federation (TIF) annual conference, to take place in Dublin Castle on October 21st.

With contributions from Minister for Communications Éamon Ryan and senior executives with RTÉ, ComReg, the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, Eircom, Vodafone and Cisco, the conference will look at how the telecoms industry has to adapt to meet needs of technology savvy consumers.

Virtual taste of the fresher life

DIT's latest crop of fresher students got a virtual taste of student life yesterday with the help of Second Life.

A student orientation session was held in the online game last night in a virtual representation of DIT created by John O'Connor from the Faculty Of Applied Arts.

New HP laptop with 24-hour battery power

HP this week said it would release a new laptop that can provide up to 24 hours of continuous operation from a single battery charge.

Measured using an industry-standard benchmark, the new HP EliteBook 6930p, with its optional high-capacity battery, ran for a full day.

"All-day computing has been the holy grail of notebook computing," said HP senior vice president Ted Clark. "With the HP EliteBook 6930p, customers no longer have to worry about their notebook battery running out before their work day is over."

HP has achieved day-long computing by introducing energy saving features such as solid-state hard drives and power-efficient Led displays.

Microsoft unveils new Zune range

The day before Apple announced its updated line of market-leading iPods this week, Microsoft announced details of its new range of Zune media players.

The new Zune devices are able to automatically identify and buy songs that are played on a built-in FM radio.

The models, which go on sale in the US next week, also enable millions of music tracks to be streamed or purchased while in Wi-Fi hot spots.

MaxRoam aims to cut roaming costs

MaxRoam, the Irish firm that provides a service to reduce mobile phone roaming costs, claims it has signed up 100,000 customers and saved them more than $1 million (€717 million) on roaming bills in its first year of operation.

The Cork-based firm has now released MaxRoam V2, which it says reduces the cost of roaming in the US by 90 per cent. It also now supports roaming in 75 countries.