More technology news in brief.
Virtual technology
Citrix Systems has released a new virtualisation product, Citrix XenDesktop, which it says can have the effect of providing a user "with a new PC every morning".
Virtualisation has been one of the hottest areas in IT for the last year, but the technology has had relatively little impact on end users. It enables computers to run multiple versions of an operating system at the same time as "virtual machines" and, as a result, enables much more efficient use of servers.
Using XenDesktop, all applications and data reside in a central data centre rather than the users desktop PC.
15,000 are all of a Twitter
More than 15,000 people have applied to use Twitterfone, a new web application launched by Cork telecoms entrepreneur Pat Phelan this week, despite the fact the technology is still in private trial.
The software allows people to ring a local phone number and leave a short message which is then automatically posted to their account on the Twitter micro-blogging service.
Twitter, a social networking service, allows users to post short messages or "tweets" which are then broadcast to others who have chosen to follow them. It has been used by everyone from democracy protesters in Egypt to British prime minister Gordon Brown.
Phelan has pulled the service together using technology from a number of international software companies but the core speech recognition is provided by Dublin firm Dial2Do.
Windows on the world
Microsoft has extended the bird's eye view feature on Windows Live Maps to cover a number of Irish towns and cities. In addition to map and satellite views, the bird's eye view provides full aerial photography of locations from a 45-degree angle.
The aerial photographs are available for Carlow, Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Navan and Wexford with Microsoft saying it plans to add additional locations over time. The service provides a high level of detail enabling users to zoom in and identify landmarks and even particular cars on a streets.
Although bird's eye view is only available in selected areas, Windows Live Maps has maps and satellite images for the whole island. Users can also get driving directions.
Live Search Maps is available at http://maps.live.com.
Web trafficking not widely used
StatCounter, the Irish firm which provides free web traffic analysis, says publicly quoted Irish companies are missing a valuable source of data on the effectiveness of their investor relations communications.
A survey by the firm found that 62 per cent of companies on the Irish Stock Exchange do not use web tracking software and 77 per cent of IEX-quoted companies are not using a tracker.
StatCounter was founded in 1999 by Businessweek.com 2007 European young entrepreneur of the year, Aodhán Cullen and now provides analysis tools to more than 3 million websites globally.
