The Internet clubs will push the patriotism of the users
3 March is a National celebration day of Bulgaria. It marks the independency of the country from Turkish yoke. The biggest Internet clubs chain Matrix and Mania together with National alliance "Preserve Bulgarian" implemented an initiative called ?1000 computers with Bulgarian flags on March 3. Everyone who comes in the clubs to use Internet will sit before a screen with patriotic wallpaper. The idea is to boast national feelings in users who are mainly young Bulgarians.

SIVECO Romania bought Latona Bulgaria Saga Technology
SIVECO Romania announced the aquiring of Bulgarian company Latona. The investment comes after a long collaboration between two companies, begun as far as in 2003. The two companies have implemented successfully integrated information system in Bulgarian Healthcare Fund. SIVECO Romania has a rich experience in banking and intends to apply it on Bulgarian market with Latona?s assistance. The Romanian company relies on practical experience, marketing approach and cultural and language understandings of Latona staff. SIVECO Romania is the biggest Romanian software company, established in 1992, which export products to European Union, Middle East and CSI region. Shareholders in SIVECO Romania are Intel Capital, Polish Enterprise Fund V and ?SIVECO Holland B.V.?

Bulgaria to share ICT expertise with Mediterranean countries Saga Technology
During the second Euro-Mediterranean ministry conference for Information Society (EUROMED) the chairman of Bulgarian State Agency of Information Society and Communications (SAITC) Plamen Vachkov discussed the specific steps for collaboration with Egyptian Chamber of Information and Communication Industry and with the Ministry of Transportation and Communications of Greece. "Bulgaria has accumulated a big experience in building public centers for Internet access, in the development of regional infrastructure networks and in development of regulation frame, which we are ready to share with our partners from Euro-Mediterranean region", he said. During the conference the ministries from European Union discussed with their Mediterranean colleagues the future relationships between two regions in the Information Society area in modern reality of convergence, cyber security and regulatory challenges.

PC Magazine BG awarded the winners in the 4th round of its Programming Contest itForum
The winner received video board Gigabyte Radeon HD 3870. This award and the awards for the second and third palace were sponsored by i:FAO company. The manager of the company Svezhen Vassilev bestowed the prizes in short ceremony in the PC Magazine Bulgaria office. The winner Plamen Tomov is for the first time on the top. He is an engineer in computer systems and technologies. The next round is under the aegis of Microsoft and the winner will receive a laptop computer. The contest has 13 years of history and many companies, state organizations and non-profit institutions from the industry have supported it. Last six years it is organized in collaboration with software company Musala Soft, since tree years the State ICT Agency awards the winner of the year and since this year PC Magazine BG programming contest is under the aegis of the President of Bulgaria, Mr. Parvanov.

The findings of the report Innovations.bg 2008 Saga Technology
Information technologies are the key factor for innovations and productivity of Bulgarian economy in all spheres of industries, said the report. For now leading in innovations are finance mediation and IT in research, architecture and consultant activities. They achieved innovation levels near to European. The lagging industries are transportation, warehousing, utilities. Report said also that IT segment is the most active to collaborate with universities in Bulgaria in terms of investments in research as well as in training of instructors and students. This is the branch with the most start-ups too, said the report. The new companies are mostly involved in creating new products or services which need high qualified work force. The computerization of Bulgarian enterprises is achieved a good level of 90%. Only 1% of the companies said they need computer but could not afford to buy. 9% said they haven?t computer but they do not need such. The Internet penetration has slowed up in 2007 and the average level is still 75-76%, which is less of EU levels, but much bigger than in Romania for example. The e-commerce is symbolic ? only 1% of the enterprises have received online orders (the EU the

.NET, Java, PHP and Ruby tools will compete for the best web application Saga Technology
The Bulgarian Association of Software Developers BARS is organizing second debate among the leading .NET, Java, PHP and Ruby professionals, who need to prove which system is better. 23 specialists in four teams will make presentations and will discuss the qualities of the development tools. The winner will be defined by the Jury after the direct fight with inflated boxing gloves. The event will be held on March 6, 2008 in Sofia and is sponsored by the company Telerik, world software supplier of .NET components for building Web and Windows based interfaces and systems for visualization and reporting. The .NET team will present ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, as well as ASP.NET enhancements in .NET Framework 3.5. The Java team will defend the JavaServer Faces (JSF), Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Echo Framework and other Java Web based environments. The PHP team will present Web developments with PHP with special attention Symphony framework. The Ruby team will defend Ruby on Rails. The guest speaker will be the Netherland specialist in .NET Alex Tissen, lecturer in international .NET association INETA.

Johnson Controls challenges Bulgarian software specialists itForum
Bulgarian office of Johnson Controls, leading company in auto electronics, is organizing for the second time a contest for software development - Code Racers. The prize for the winner will be Gigabyte U60 Ultra Mobile. The task is to develop program for PC signal generating. The participants should develop a solution for squire pulses generated in real time with predefined levels of frequency and load. The contest started on March 1 and the winner will be defined by Jury and will be announced in the middle of April. The copyright of the developed programs will stay in heir authors.

PC Magazine presented the first test in Bulgaria of Intel E8500 - Wolfdale Saga Technology
The test of the first processor of this type delivered in Bulgaria was made in PC Magazine Bulgaria lab with several different tests as ScienceMark 2.0; PCMark 2004; SuperPi 1M/8M; own processor tests of Everest Ultimate 4.0 and WinRAR, as well as Cinebench 10. The established test configuration was the motherboard Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R with Socket 775 and 2GB DDR2 memory, working in duo-channel mode, HDD Hitachi Deskstar and of course Intel Wolfdale E8500 3,16GHz. The results could be found in the March issue of the magazine.

Scala Bulgaria celebrated five years anniversary Saga Technology
The Bulgarian branch of the world ERP company completed five years. During the seminar company presented its activities till now as well as its future plans. The newest project is implementation of system for online support. The goal is to process the users inquires and to improve the access to user manuals for the Epicor iScala ERP system. The company also said it achieved the fastest implementation of ERP system last year when for a month and half the team build the system in the media group Diema Vision. Among the big clients of Scala Bulgaria are also Selamor and Emerald. Started with 5 consultants now the company has 20 professionals in information technologies and 40 in other industry fields.

Public Tenders
GEODESY, CARTOGRAPHY AND CADASTRE AGENCY: Number of tenders for creating local geodesy network and cadastral maps for different regions of the country.
Municipality of Kyustendil: Delivery of computer equipment, peripherals, firewall.
Municipality of Silistra: Delivery of hardware (desktop configurations, monitors, printers), consumers, parts and accessories.

Source: Saga Technology