Newcomer En Technology Inc, the Keene, New Hampshire start-up formed to exploit the teletext concept for transmitting multimedia data to personal computers on the blanking lines of the television raster (CI No 2,687), says its $100 Malachi AT board comes with a cable connecting the computer to the television – your television has to have an RCA-style video out jack – and the software, all of which can be installed in minutes by the end user, and a second version is planned that will include a television tuner on the board; the board – for a 25MHz 80386 machine and up running Windows 3.1 up or a 68030-based Macintosh with System 7.0 and up – includes a two-chip set with individual identification numbers embedded in them; these numbers enable broadcasters to send targeted data directly to any individual Malachi user or specific user group; it uses the Data Encryption Standard.
Although the Dutch state railway operator Nederlandse Spoorwegen NV is wooing BellSouth Corp to side with it rather than the cable television operators following the collapse of the Enertel BV consortium formed to build and operate the Netherlands’ second fixed telephone network, the Atlanta company is playing hard to get and declines to say with which parties it will side – and indeed whether it remains interested in the Dutch market – the company said it had not even officially been informed of the break-up of the Enertel partners; Nederlandse Spoorwegen takes away its existing fixed network (all railways have ’em), the power generator-owned cable television firms are left with the Enertel name.
Cray Research Inc has orders for three Cray Superserver 6400 enterprise servers from Bank of America in San Francisco, for the bank’s systems engineering division in Concord, California and its production data centre in San Francisco and the Sparc-based machines will be used to run large data warehousing and decision support systems.
Reynolds & Reynolds Co in Dayton, Ohio has acquired the assets of Dealer Internet Services Corp of Lynnwood, Washington, whose DealerNet service enables car manufacturers, dealers and other auto-related industries to market their vehicles and services directly to consumers over the Internet; the purchase price was not disclosed.
The McCaw Cellular Communications division of AT&T Corp has agreed to raise its bid for the publicly held shares of Lin Broadcasting Corp to $129.50 from the current $127.50 per share, in a revised mergeragreement with Lin’s shareholders.
The decision by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd to start making and selling MiniDisk player-recorders (CI No 2,692) was pretty much a matter of force majeure because only 120,000 Digital Compact Cassette players were sold throughout the world by all manufacturers in 1994, compared with 600,000 MiniDisk systems, the company reckons: in Japan alone, the figures are even more lopsided, with the MiniDisk outselling the Digital Compact Cassette by 270,000 to 40,000; the latter is doing rather better in Europe because of the Philips Electronics NV connection, but the existence of two new rival formats, launched at the same time in the teeth of a worldwide recession was certain to ensure that each would have an uphill struggle and one would fail; both address the same market, and the only attraction of the cassette player is that it plays existing analogue ones too.
Calculator king Casio Computer Co (did you know that only Casio calculators have a powerful percent function that enables you to work out all percentages by entering only two numbers instead of three? Accept no substitute!) is to set up a base in India to make and market its products, the United News of India reported: the news agency said Casio signed an agreement with Dixon Utilities & Exports Ltd which will manufacture Casio products with technical expertise from the Japanese firm, starting with telephone handsets; Dixon’s plant will start work in December and will be equipped to make feature and cordless phones and answering machines.
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q British Telecommunications Plc and the International Telecommunications Authority of Taiwan have launched Concert services in Taiwan: the phone authority will be the exclusive distributor of Concert Packet and Frame Relay Services.
Sprint Corp’s Sprint Cellular Co, under notice that it may be spun off, has a letter of intent with Palmetto MobileNet LP to take a stake in Palmetto’s cellular operations in three areas in South Carolina, and will assume management responsibility for the operations; the deal is subject to Palmetto completing its purchase of the 50% interest owned by BellSouth Corp’s BellSouth Mobility, is currently Palmetto’s partner in the state.
Anam Industrial Co, Seoul, South Korea is to invest about $1,000m over the next five years to double its semiconductor assembly capacity to 500m chips a month: the new plant, in Kwangju city, 156 miles south of Seoul, will be built in three phases, with the first part to be completed by next year; the company claims to be the world’s largest assembler, with nearly all parts re-exported, and it reported foreign sales of $3,700m last year.
It’s delicious to see political correctness maliciously exploited, and Sacramento, California-based Packard Bell Electronics Inc is responding to Compaq Computer Corp’s mischievous lawsuit about its use of restested parts out of returned new computers in other machines sold as new by feigning outrage at comments it says were made by a senior Compaq executive to an Associated Press reporter last week in New York: Ross Cooley’s comments are ignorant, irresponsible and certainly insensitive, it says, without quoting them – to suggest that Packard Bell or any other company would at any time be in jeopardy because it hires Mexican-Americans, Chinese-Americans or members of any ethnic group is uncalled for, said its chief executive Beny Alagem, demanding an apology, adding Cooley’s comments are disrespectful and an insult not only to Packard Bell’s workforce but to all members of the Mexican-American as well as Chinese-American communities – no-one should engage in this kind of behaviour.
