New Google data centre in Dublin will create 230 jobs
Google is to invest €75m (£65m) in a new 11-acre data centre in Dublin, creating 230 jobs.
The search giant said Ireland's naturally cool climate contributed to its decision, as it will use outside air to cool equipment instead of costly air-conditioning units. The announcement comes just two weeks after Google opened a €200m data centre in Finland, again chosen because of its climate. The centre in Hamina has pioneered a new seawater cooling system which uses a tunnel of water from the Baltic Sea to save electricity. At a press conference in Dublin on Friday, Google said its data centres use 50per cent less energy than typical facilities.
Guardian

Samsung custom bike wants to take your Tab 10.1 tandem
Samsung has collaborated with bicycle specialists 14 Bike Co to create a customized road bike complete with a holder for the Galaxy Tab 10.1. The tablet holder itself is made from the same carbon fiber as used in F1 cars, 14 Bike Co claims, while the bike itself uses a steel frame and has a two-tone black and white paintjob.  Although Samsung says the tablet holder leaves the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in a position to be “used easily whilst on the move” we can’t exactly see many people reaching down between their legs for some mid-pedaling multitouch action. Better, then, to wait until you’re at the side of the road and snap the 125g case out of its frame.
Slashgear

eBay expects 70 per cent phone surge ahead of iPhone 5 release
With the iPhone 5 expected to be announced on 4 October, eBay is battening down the hatches and preparing its coffers for an influx of older iPhone models. The online auction site reckons it'll see a 70 per cent rise in sales of previous iPhone models as people make room in their telephonic life for the new iPhone. iPhones have enjoyed a wealth of popularity on eBay.co.uk, with over half a million iPhones changing hands since the first was launched, culminating in one being sold every two minutes on the UK site in 2010.
TechRadar

Chrome poised to take No.2 browser spot from Firefox
Google's Chrome is on the brink of replacing Firefox as the second-most-popular browser, according to one Web statistics firm. Data provided by StatCounter, an Irish company that tracks browser usage using the free analytics tools it offers websites, shows that Chrome will pass Firefox to take the number two spot behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) no later than December. As of Wednesday, Chrome's global average user share for September was 23.6per cent, while Firefox's stood at 26.8per cent. IE, meanwhile, was at 41.7per cent. The climb of Chrome during 2011 has been astonishing: It has gained eight percentage point since January 2011, representing a 50per cent increase. During that same period, Firefox has dropped almost four percentage points, a decline of about 13per cent, while IE has also fallen four points, a nine per cent dip.
Computer World

Amazon Kindle Fire: 95,000 Sales on Day One
Amazon and retail partners took 95,000 pre-orders for the first Amazon tablet, the Kindle Fire tablet on its first day, according to a digital marketing firm. That's about a third of the 300,000 first-generation iPads Apple sold on its first day, but still impressive given Amazon is only shipping the Kindle Fire on November 15. On Wednesday, Amazon launched its first and long-awaited tablet, the Kindle Fire, for $199. Though it won't be released until November, Amazon and select retail partners, like Best Buy, began taking pre-orders and expect to have the product shipped out in time for the holidays.
PC Magazine

Single-letter domain names fetch average of £39,000
Internet investors and speculators have spent tens of thousands of pounds to buy just one or two letters in online addresses, after a new set of UK domain names went under the hammer. Twelve single-letter domains – including x.co.uk and 0.co.uk – fetched an average of £390,000 eahc in an auction run by Noiminet, which administers the UK’s internet infrastructure. Including two-letter domains, 2,831 web addresses were sold, raising £3m for the Nominet Trust, an independent charity promoting internet access, safety and education. The buyers are a combination of businesses wanting to promote their brands, individuals laying claim to their initials and speculators betting that they can build a business out of a unique domain or sell it on for a profit.
Financial Times

iPhone app developers paid 9x more than Android developers
A recent report from Dice (the high tech job specialist) found that less than one-in-five (17 per cent) technology professionals have published a mobile app. Dice surveyed over 3,200 respondents of whom around 500 reported having developed a mobile app.] What’s interesting is that Dice has broken those figures down into the amount of time tech professionals spent working on apps by mobile OS. It found here that more spent is spent working full-time on iPhone apps by high tech professional than other OS. iPhone developers also made nine times more than their rivals on Android. However, Android is the OS on which they work most part-time. Surprisingly Windows Mobile comes third – above iPad; BlackBerry; and Symbian. That suggest the survey is definitely US centric. The survey showed that over one third (35 per cent) of tech professionals who have dived in and developed an app have made $1 or more.
GoMo News

Spotify Offers Facebook Privacy Tweak
Spotify is giving users an option to turn off automatic Facebook sharing, for all those times you want to jam out to Kenny G without everyone knowing. As Business Insider reports, “Private Listening” disables Facebook’s new “Add to Timeline” feature, which automatically shares users’ listening habits with their Facebook friends. Private listening does nothing for people who haven’t opted into sharing with Add to Timeline, but for users who usually want to share, this option allows them to temporarily go dark. Private listening may seem like a small tweak to pacify privacy paranoids, but it actually has important implications. Facebook assumes that everyone wants to share everything all the time. Or at least, Facebook is so confident in its vision that the company didn’t spend any time at last week’s f8 conference talking about how to disable sharing from within an app. Keeping things to yourself is not a concept that Facebook wants to promote. (And some Spotify users weren't excited about requiring the Facebook interaction to begin with.)
PC World

GlassesOff iPhone app could help improve eyesight
If you've ever worried about the deterioration of your vision, an app is on the way that could be just a real eye-opener. The GlassesOff app, which is being developed by Ucansi and is expected to be released within a few weeks, has been found to improve the eyesight of people with an average eye age of 50 to that of a 40-year-old. A 10 year reduction was achieved after just 40 sessions using the app. Undertaken by the University of California, Berkley, the early trial also found other benefits included being able to read sentences more quickly.
Know Your Mobile

Google Says Third Of Search Ad’s Now ‘enhanced’
Google says in a new blog post that roughly one-third of searches with ads show an enhanced ad format (featuring video preview windows, prices, images, specific links on a given Web page, recommendations from your friends and whatnot). Or as Google puts it in the blog post:“What started as three lines of simple text has evolved into ads that are multimedia-rich, location-aware and socially-amplified.” The company will talk more about what’s new with search ads tomorrow at Advertising Week in New York City, and according to Bloomberg will launch “Web-based circulars” that are similar to the ad inserts included in newspapers, thus making Google look more and more “like the Sunday paper.”
TechCrunch