Entrepreneur John Hui carved out a low-cost niche in the PC business with eMachines. Now he wants to do the same with video conferencing and “change the whole conference room.” InFocus, a Portland company he runs from an office suite in the Irvine Spectrum, has rolled out a 55-inch, I-pad-compatible touch screen and whiteboard with video conferencing capability. Price: about $6,000, much cheaper than Cisco’s well-known conferencing systems. Hui says InFocus is targeting small and medium-size businesses, not Cisco’s corporate clientele. The Hong Kong-born Hui (pronounced hooey) is part of the local Asian-American business elite. Friends/colleagues include Vizio’s William Wang, Kingston Technology’s John Tu and David Sun, SRS Labs’ Tom Yuen and former Gateway CEO Wayne Inouye. Hui started eMachines in 1998 and sold it to Gateway in 2004 for $266 million. He doesn’t plan to move any InFocus jobs to this area, given what he calls California’s unfriendly business climate. Why doesn’t he leave, too? “There’s no good Chinese food in Texas” …
Arizona boys: A few years ago part-time OCer Jeff Moorad ran the Arizona Diamondbacks, Josh Byrnes was his general manager and Jerry Dipoto was director of scouting and player personnel. Moorad and Byrnes have reunited with the San Diego Padres, Moorad as general partner/CEO and Byrnes as new GM. And Dipoto is the Angels’ new GM. Moorad says he didn’t interview Dipoto for the Padres’ opening because of a “gentleman’s agreement” with Arizona (Dipoto was still there, Byrnes wasn’t.) But he says Dipoto is “as ready to be a GM as anyone in the business” and calls him an “incredibly good talent evaluator” with a “photographic memory that allows him to instantly recall any player at any level of the game” …
Tim Naftali, who is leaving after four years as director of the Nixon Library to return to book-writing, makes no apologies for the new warts-and-all Watergate exhibit that has enraged many of the late president’s loyalists. “My job is to ensure this is a credible research institution,” Naftali said on “Inside OC.” Asked what he personally thinks of Nixon, Naftali said, “It’s irrelevant…
I neither like him nor dislike him.” Naftali has transitioned the library from Nixon Foundation to National Archives control. Deputy director Paul Wormser will serve is interim director …
Alan Greenberg says he gets asked “every day.” No, he doesn’t run Greenberg Traurig and no, he isn’t related to Mel Greenberg, the late co-founder of the 1,800-lawyer, Miami-based firm. “I wish,” kids Alan, who is a shareholder (partner) in the firm’s OC office. However, he is making a name for himself: Along with fellow shareholder Wayne Gross, he recently won a $50.3 million judgment for Newport Beach developer David Zak’s Newport Capital Advisors in a dispute over the halted restoration of the landmark Hollywood Palladium. Loser Commonfund of Connecticut was represented by Philadelphia-based Ballard Spahr. The non-profit investment firm said it “will pursue all legal remedies to overturn the verdict.”
