Judges include Liam O'Reilly, former CEO of IFSRA, and Sean Fitzpatrick of Anglo Irish bank.

"These awards are an opportunity for organisations operating in Ireland's financial services industry to gain recognition for business excellence, " said KPMG's Brian Daly.

About 60,000 people are directly employed in the Irish financial services sector with a further 40,000 in auxiliary support services. Employment in the sector has grown by over by over 50% since 1998 and is estimated to increase by 75% between now and 2020. It is responsible for over 5% of Ireland's GDP. JM

IRISH BUSINESSES are wasting more than Euro20 million a year unnecessarily by not switching-off office equipment according to business solutions provider, Office Evolutions Group.

A survey undertaken by the group shows that Irish businesses are quadrupling their business running costs as a result.

The company issued a statement saying corporate energy costs can be reduced by as much as 70% with "little or no cost".

According to their statistics, business equipment, such as PCs, photocopiers and printers, accounts for 15% of energy use.

Fax machines only being used for 5% of the time they are on while the same figure for multi-function printers is 10%.

Commenting on the statistics, Brian Whyte of Office Evolutions said it is an "astounding waste of energy". JM

ADOBE SYSTEMS is developing photoauthentication plug-ins for its Photoshop software in association with Reuters in response to an image-manipulation scandal at the news agency during last summer's Lebanon war, according to a report in Wired.

Adnan Hajj, a freelance photographer based in Lebanon, was found by bloggers to have used Photoshop to alter photographs he then filed with Reuters. Reuters distributed the photographs on its news wire before being alerted to the scam. The agency later fired Hajj and removed the images from its archive.

INTERNET RADIO STATIONS based in the US are facing a de facto government shutdown after the US copyright office issued a ruling requiring them to pay royalty fees on the basis of listenership, rather than revenue.

The payments would cost a webcaster with an average audience of 1,000, $134,000 - or $11 per listener per month - for 2007, scaling to $220,000 by 2009. The ruling also calls for back payments to 2006.

Internet radio operators say they make nowhere near that amount or money.

The fees would go to the Recording Industry Association of America, the industry body representing the major record companies, and would be in addition to payments webcasters are already required to make to songwriters.

AM and FM broadcasters will not have to make these extra payments, leading some commentators to speculate that the copyright office is protecting the RIAA's preferred revenue model at the expense of the more independent webcasting community.