In short

Today's other stories in brief

New Microsoft security patches

Users of Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Office, Office for Mac and a number of other Microsoft products are being advised to apply the latest security patches, which were released by the company on Tuesday.

Microsoft released nine patches, of which six are described as "critical", the highest rating the company applies. For more details, see www.microsoft.com/security/.

Court rules on Unix copyrights

A US district court in Utah has ruled that software company SCO does not own the copyrights to Unix.

These copyrights were the basis of SCO's claim in its long-running lawsuits against Novell and IBM - namely that their Linux distributions contain portions of Unix code to which it owns the copyright.

Graduate green card proposed

Technology research firm iReach has said the Government should consider granting non-EU graduates who study here an automatic two-year green card to attract high-calibre talent to Ireland.

It said the new green card legislation was actually making it harder for Irish companies to hire skilled staff from outside Europe, as they were required to apply to the EU first.

According to iReach, there is a shortfall of 14,000 skilled IT workers in Ireland.

Technology for Braille users

Two hundred Irish people with visual impairments are testing a new Danish technology which enables them to submit documents by e-mail and have them returned in Braille or as mp3 audio files within minutes.

Robobraille is designed for people who are blind, partially sighted or dyslexic, as well as for the elderly and those who find it difficult to read, and is free for non-commercial users.

Online comedy show launched

ConstantComedy is a new online Northern Irish comedy show that runs 24 hours a day at www.constantcomedy.com.

The website features both amateur and professional content and has a number of social networking features.

An innovative feature of the service is called "synchronised interactive comedy", whereby users watch and vote for the same video at the same time. If the crowd rating for a video drops below 30 per cent, it is voted off.

Bebo attracts 10.6m UK users

New figures from internet audience measurement firm ComScore suggest that Bebo is now the most popular social networking site in Britain.

During July it attracted 10.6 million unique British visitors, just eclipsing MySpace, which attracted 10.1 million.

Social networking is still in a growth spurt, according to the figures, with Bebo's traffic growing 63 per cent since the start of the year and MySpace increasing by 25 per cent.

But the fastest-growing social networking website for UK-based visitors was Facebook, which grew 366 per cent since the start of the year and attracted 7.6 million unique visitors in July.

Scheme to boost PC donations

Microsoft Ireland has launched a scheme to increase the number of refurbished PCs that are available to charities and schools.

The Microsoft authorised refurbisher (Mar) programme enables firms disposing of PCs to contribute them to Mar-approved companies, who recondition them, install new software, and then distribute them to charities and schools.

More than 1,000 computers have been given to charities and schools through the scheme so far.