Showing posts with label Northern Ireland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Northern Ireland. Show all posts

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Gasta News:Hibernia Atlantic to link Northern Ireland to an underwater transatlantic communications cable for the first time.

NI links up to underwater cable
Northern Ireland is to be linked to an underwater transatlantic communications cable for the first time.
The fibre optic cable, a telecommunications link which runs along the seabed, connects North America with Europe.
It will improve the speed and extent to which firms in NI can trade information with the rest of the world.
A new 22-mile extension will be built from an existing cable and will come ashore near Portrush.
Access to the new telecommunications will be available in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, according to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment.
Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster said the 30m euro investment (£28m) "would provide opportunities for Northern Ireland companies selling goods and services overseas and also improve our attractiveness to knowledge based inward investment".
"Northern Ireland businesses are competing more than ever for business in global markets," she said.
"This project will deliver the kind of international telecommunications, companies located in London, Amsterdam, Dublin and New York already depend on."
The department said Project Kelvin would involve connecting a new submarine cable to the Hibernia North Transatlantic cable located 22 miles off the north coast of Northern Ireland.
It said the new cable would come ashore in the Portrush area initially and then go onto a location where it could interconnect with Northern Ireland's existing telecoms infrastructure.
The department added that the new link could be interconnected at a number of different locations including Armagh, Ballymena, Belfast, Coleraine, Londonderry, Omagh, Portadown and Strabane.
The contract to construct the link to North America has been awarded to Hibernia Atlantic Limited.
The project is being funded by the European Union and the British and Irish governments.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Gasta Marketing News:UK searches for online discount vouchers grows 133%

UK internet searches for discount vouchers have increased by 133% over the past year, according to Hitwise UK.
Visits to voucher websites have also increased by 45% over the same period, and UK internet users searched for over 20,000 variations on the term voucher, during the 12 weeks ending 15 November.
Hitwise said UK consumers are more likely to visit retailers offering discounts and sales in the run up to Christmas.
Marks & Spencer's recent 20% off sale generated one in every 33 UK internet visits to an online retailer and ranked third behind Ebay and Amazon in Hitwise's Shopping and Classifieds category.
The retailer almost doubled its share of visits to the Department Stores category to 15.72% (from 8.32% the previous day).
During November online retailers received 5.47% of their UK internet traffic from social networks, up from 4.3% the previous year, while 3.87% came from online email services, this was lower than the previous year when 4.9% of online retailers traffic came from Email Services.
Robin Goad, director of research for Hitwise, said, "Fashion is currently the fastest growing retail sector online, and it now accounts for over 10% of all UK ecommerce traffic. One of the key factors in this success has been the way that online fashion retailers have built user communities on social networks."

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Gasta News:New domain to be web's phone book

source: BBC
The .tel addresses will be reachable via mobiles too

From 3 December companies will be able to buy addresses associated with a new web domain.

Called .tel, the domain is intended to act as a universal contact point rather than as a hook on which to hang websites.

Owners of .tel domains will be encouraged to populate it with details about how they can be contacted.

The domain is designed to work on the web and with mobile phones such as the Apple iPhone and Blackberry.

"All other top level domains like .com use the net's domain name system in the same way," said Kash Mahdavi, head of Telnic which runs the .tel registry. "They all store IP address and they are all about websites."

By contrast, he said, .tel had been designed to act as a repository for all a company's or individual's contact details. A .tel domain, said Mr Mahdavi, could feature phone numbers, e-mail addresses, GPS data or buttons that kick off a Skype call.

Mr Mahdavi said it had some similarities to the Enum projects that aim to bind phone numbers and e-mail addresses into a unified contact system.

The flaw, he said, with Enum was that it demanded people be on the web. By contrast, .tel will work with many different devices such as smart phones.

Phase one

Owners of .tel domains will be able to manage their contact details via a simple dashboard and surrender as much or as little information as they desire, said Mr Mahdavi.

He added that .tel domains have a "friending mechanism" that will grant close friends access to private areas that give more ways for a person to be contacted.

"It will become their place on the cloud," said Mr Mahdavi.

Access to the domain is being granted in three phases. The first begins on 3 December and is the "sunrise" phase for trademark owners to get domains related to their brands.

The second phase begins on 3 February 2009 and is a "landrush" phase open to anyone though domains will be on sale at a premium.

The final general availability phase starts on 24 March 2009 when the domain will be open to all comers.

Phil Kingsland, director of communications for Nominet, the firm that manages the .uk domain, notes that a number of new domains will go online when a new process for allocating them rolls out next year.

"Businesses will need to be aware of the potential uses of .tel and how it can work for them," said Mr Kingsland.

"They should have a clear and robust domain name strategy in place, so that when new top-level domains such as these come onto the market, they are ready for them."

Mr Mahdavi would not be drawn on the final price for a .tel domain but said it would be in line with that charged for other domains.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Gasta search convergence

The Register reports that Microsoft is to acquire Norwegian business search engine company Fast Search and Transfer for 6.6bn kroner ($1.23bn)

The software giant said it would pay 19 Norwegian kroner a share for the Oslo-based firm, which represents a 42 per cent premium to the closing share price on 4 January, the day before Microsoft stepped in with its bid.

Fast's board of directors and nearly half of its shareholders have already voted in favour of the buy-out and urged its remaining shareholders to accept Redmond's hefty offer.

In recent months Microsoft has beefed up its Web 2.0 intentions by investing in a number of data centres inside and outside the US as it clambers for a larger chunk of the search engine pie.

The Fast deal, which should be completed in the second quarter of 2008 subject to the usual regulatory approvals, will give the firm tailored internet search functions for corporate customers that include the likes of United Parcel Services and Deutsche Telekom AG.

Publicly-listed Fast said it welcomed the arrival of the Bill Gates jamboree, perhaps unsurprising given that in its last set of results the firm reported a third-quarter loss of $100m.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

GASTA WEB 2.0

We will soon be launching our next generation web.20 multimedia search, this version is almost complete and has simple push button administration areas that control search feeds, adverts, links, and keywords, all linked by our InstantLinks, InstantAds, and SearchMatch products. Gasta disseminates information and like an electronic amoeba spreads the information across networks, when a search is made on Gasta the search keyword is collected and collated for popularity, the most popular keywords are then added to the list of Gasta directories; this is all carried out in quantum nanoseconds (on the fly). Web marketers and SME’s then have the opportunity to create an IntantLink ™ to that directory. Users can also bookmark videos, images, webpage’s, and view their search history.

This is a new innovation in web directories and dynamic linking, and part of the new exciting Gasta interface. Gasta’s new interface is designed to give the maximum use of directories but at the same time make easier to use the search tool. Having morphed from an old school directory like Yahoo, Gasta has now harnessed the minimalist elements of Google and tied these to the directory listing by popular keywords. This is very new and very creative design for the launch of Gasta web2.0 with the additional tools of predictive search assists, playlists, and transparent search history we give the user more power to search faster, and more precisely.

Please feel free to have a look around http://www.mysearchmachine.com

And let us know what you think, we would like the opportunity to discuss future strategies partners and individuals.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Gasta mobile world congress, Barcelona 2008

Gasta to attend mobile world congress in Barcelona on 11-14 Febuary 2008, InestNi have kindly invited gasta to attend the mobile world congress in Barcelona. The event is aimed at the wireless telecommunications sector but is also relevant for ICT/Digital Media/Web Development, and mobile marketing companies that supply services and technologies to the sector. This is a great idea by InvestNI as outlined in the recent strategy document converging technologies and industry collaborations are the way forward.