A round-up of today's other stories in brief...

Google chairman criticises Arab leaders for blocking internet

Arab leaders were wrong to block internet access in an effort to quell popular revolts as such moves only hurt their own economies, Google chairman Eric Schmidt has said.

Speaking at a briefing yesterday on the sidelines of the G8 summit in northern France, Mr Schmidt said Iranian and Syrian measures to cut off access were “desperate moves”.

“It is a terrible mistake for them to do so,” he said. “Among other things it completely screws up the economy, communications, the exchange of goods, the electronic commerce, the flow of information into these countries . . . It’s not a good idea to shut down the internet in your country.”

After a two-day meeting in Paris at the so-called e-G8 summit earlier this week, Mr Schmidt, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and others were in Deauville to submit proposals on regulating the internet and protecting intellectual copyright.

€1.1m raised for Radisens funding

Kernel Capital, through the Bank of Ireland MedTech Accelerator Fund, has led a €1.1 million investment into Cork-based Radisens Diagnostics.

Kernel contributed €500,000 to the round with the balance being made up by private BES investors and Enterprise Ireland.

Radisens is a medical diagnostics start-up which is developing a single instrument to test for multiple diseases. It would require only a single drop of blood and could be performed and interpreted by doctors within minutes at the point of care. The instrument aims to detect multiple infectious diseases, cancers, cardiac markers and viruses.

Radisens, which employs 11 staff, said the investment would allow it to double its spend on research and development. It expects the current round of investment to fund it towards revenue generating deals with multinational customers.

ZolkC wins three-year Culloden contract

ZolkC, a spin-out company from the Telecommunications Software Systems Group at Waterford Institute of Technology, has secured a three-year contract with National Trust for Scotland to offer a handheld interactive tourist guide at the Culloden battlefield visitor centre. The guide makes extensive use of multimedia.

The Waterford firm designed and managed the guide, which is triggered by GPS, since the visitor centre opened in 2008. That contract has now been extended for a further 36 months.

The battle of Culloden in 1746, between Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites and the army of King of George II, was the site of the last hand-to-hand battle in Britain and Ireland.