Move over, the Internet Acess Device, make way for the Information Appliance. It seems the guy that headed Oracle Corp’s Network Computer design effort until last October, Farzad Dibachi, believes that Oracle’s device is still too complicated and expensive, so he resigned his post as senior vice-president, moved up the road to Belmont and formed Diba Inc to put his ideas into practice. All is due to be revealed this week, but what has come out so far is that he is designing a family of single-function products that could be given away like cellular telephones, with the cost bundled into the usage fees for whatever service they come with. Cirrus Logic Inc is a key chip supplier to Diba and reports that its personal computer graphics display controller with TV-out, the CL-GD5425, which converts computer formats for a television, will be used in Diba’s low-cost Internet browser, which uses the television for display and a remote control for user interaction. It notes that in addition to the Internet browser, Diba plans to use Cirrus Logic chips in an integrated telephone and electronic mail device, which is designed to make sending mail as easy as making a phone call. A third device is Diba Kitchen, designed to mount under a kitchen cabinet and provide access to recipes and nutritional information. The electronic mail and kitchen products use a liquid crystal display. Diba’s business model is to design a hardware reference platform and create the operating environment and tools for a family of Information Appliances, and then license the designs to others to make – it claims three or four Asian firms have signed to make devices. The target price is under $300. Diba has reportedly been funded by desktop publishing specialist Quark Inc, which looks to Diba to develop devices that enable users to read multimedia documents created using a new Quark software product.
