Irish Facebook users more than double

The use of social networking site Facebook has more than doubled in the last 12 months, according to a new report from the Irish Computer Society.

Last October 131,600 Irish people were using the site, but this has now reached 308,200. Of these, 69 per cent are 25 years-old or older, proving that it attracts an older audience than competitors such as Bebo.

Irish site Nimble.ie has meanwhile grown from 5,000 users a year ago to almost 117,000 members.

Nokia ups pressure

on BlackBerry

Nokia has upped pressure on RIM’s BlackBerry with the launch of the E66 and E71 devices, designed to offer full mobile e-mail – including ability to read Microsoft Office attachments.

Nokia claims that at 10mm thick, the E71 is the world’s thinnest device to have a QWERTY keyboard. The E66 has a more compact slider design. With 3.2 megapixel cameras, integrated GPS and MP3 players, pricing starts at €280.

Price cuts for Xbox gaming consoles

Microsoft has introduced significant price cuts on all three of its Xbox 360 games consoles.

From today the Elite model, with a 120 gigabyte hard drive, will retail for €299 rather than €359. The price of the Xbox 360 Pro, which now has 60 GB of storage rather than 20, has been cut from €279 to €239. The entry level Xbox 360 Arcade will sell at €179 rather than €199.

ESB and HP push low-energy servers

ESB Customer Supply and HP have formed a partnership to promote the energy-saving benefits of HP servers to small businesses.

The two firms claim a 48 per cent cut in energy costs can be achieved by moving to HP’s latest generation of blade servers. An online calculator to allow firms calculate the savings available through upgrading is available at www.hp.com/go/HPESB.

Jinny’s missed-call service for Zain

Dublin-headquartered Jinny Software has won a significant contract with Zain Jordan, part of the telecoms group in the Middle East and Africa formerly called MTC.

Jinny will provide an enhanced missed-call notification service which sends a text to phones when they miss a call. The notification message includes the calling number, the number of missed calls and the date and time of the call.

Smart urges review of LLU process

Smart Telecom has written an open letter to the Government and European Commission calling for “urgent intervention” and to review failure of the local loop unbundling (LLU) process in Ireland.

LLU allows other operators to provide broadband and other services on Eircom’s network. Smart has invested €50 million to unbundle 14,000 of the 19,000 LLU lines in the Republic.