Weekend takeaway: 10 tech stories you need to read right now

4 Dec 2015

Apple's Swift goes open source; LinkedIn catfish scam; and the game-changing gadget of 2015

Ten nuggets of knowledge to take away for the weekend, including: Apple’s Swift goes open source; LinkedIn catfish scam; and the game-changing gadget of 2015.

1. Dublin defeated 10 European cities to land 300-job Sage investment, says CMO (video)

Ten cities were considered for Sage’s 300-job European customer business centre but there was only one clear winner, Dublin, said the chief marketing officer of Sage, Santiago Solanas.

 2. BT to continue sponsoring Young Scientist Exhibition until 2018

BT Ireland will continue to sponsor the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition for the next three years, the telecoms giant has confirmed.

 3. 14 books for burgeoning entrepreneurs and fledgling CEOs

For most, Christmas is an opportunity to spend a few days with family, live in pyjamas, binge on everything from turkey to cake to Netflix and, about a week later, begin to regret all of your spending decisions – but it’s also a time to read some books.

 4. Santander’s $100m bet on fintech start-ups: Interview with Mariano Belinky (video)

“Ours is a global mandate,” says Mariano Belinky, head of Santander InnoVentures, Santander Bank’s $100m investment fund for fintech, and the man responsible for scouring the planet to invest in the future of finance.

 5. Odd ideas clearly do well on Kickstarter

Kickstarter continually throws up some truly bizarre projects that seek anything from €100 to pretty much any figure you can think of. This week we’ve found three such oddities.

 6. 100 jobs at LinkedIn as Dublin HQ nears 1,000 employees

LinkedIn’s five-year anniversary at its Dublin base sees the social networking site closing in on the magic 1,000 employees figure, with 100 new roles to be filled at the company.

 7. Game-changing gadget of the year 2015

Each year, we wade our way through a sea of the same gadgets that are often cool to look at, but rarely make a long-term impact, but this year there was one gadget we felt rose above the rest.

 8. Smartphone market slowdown is happening now

After almost a decade of unstoppable growth, the global smartphone market will finally slow to single digit growth in 2015, analysts have warned.

 9. LinkedIn users being warned of ‘catfish’ profile scammers

It seems even LinkedIn can’t escape the armies of spammers that exist online, with hundreds of fake accounts being created on a daily basis.

 10. Apple’s Swift programming language is now open source

Apple has revealed that its Swift programming language is now open source, allowing a whole new generation of coders at all levels to built exciting apps.

Xmas weekend tech image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com