Blum’s ThinkTank.com Gives Birth Again; Gamer Plays Off Y2K
Garden Grove peripheral maker Bridge Technology Inc. is bolstering its presence in China with a few acquisitions designed to give it a bigger foothold in the emerging market. Less than a month after purchasing a 90% stake in Hong Kong electronics distributor Centennial Electronics Ltd., Bridge has paid $7 million for a 70% interest in CMS Technology Ltd., a computer distributor also based there. In addition to its controlling interest, Bridge has the right of refusal for the remaining 30% of CMS.
Officials with the Orange County company said the deal gives it a much-needed distribution channel in China to sell its voice and data communications products. Rather that haggling with existing distributors, said chief financial officer John Gauthier, it’s often easier to just buy them.
“One of the most difficult things in the world when you develop a product is to sell it,” he said. “Creating marketing from scratch is very expensive. This is a much more practical way to go.”
Bridge will pay $3.5 million now and another $3.5 million Feb. 1. CMS reported revenue of about $50 million last year. And it probably won’t be Bridge’s last acquisition. Gauthier said the company is looking at acquiring Internet-related products from other firms as well as distribution channels over the next several months.
For more: www.bridgeus.com
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ThinkTank.com, the Dana Point-based Internet incubator launched a few months ago by Buy.com founder Scott Blum and Softbank Corp., appears close to unleashing another hatchling.
Along with the firm’s three existing companies, eJets.com recently appeared on ThinkTank’s web site, though what the business is exactly remains a mystery. The company posted no telephone or address information and e-mail sent to the company was not answered. On the site, eJets calls itself “the executive airline.”
The three other Internet startups appearing on ThinkTank’s web site include BuyNow.com, FreeComputer.com and Fax.com.
BuyNow.com is an e-commerce support service that promises to help merchants go online in 30 days or less, FreeComputer.com is making the dubious claim that it plans to give away high-end computers “with no strings attached,” and Fax.com is a web-based fax broadcasting service.
Blum left Buy.com in October to concentrate on ThinkTank.com, a $220 million venture capital firm that also acts as a technology incubator by providing funded companies the expertise of industry veterans.
For more: www.thinktank.com
The predicted Y2K computer meltdown turned out to be the first dud of the century, but Irvine based Interplay Entertainment Corp. is hoping to milk what it can from the fin de siecle phenomenon with a new adventure game.
Y2K: The Game puts users in the shoes of Buster, a millionaire whose computer-controlled mansion goes haywire. In retrospect, perhaps a little unrealistic, but company officials say they wanted to make some fun of the hysteria.
While it isn’t clear how well that game will sell, the company could have a hit on its hands with its upcoming Messiah action game. The game’s preview demo is setting records for Internet downloads, despite its whopping 70 megabyte size.
More than 200,000 have taken the trouble of downloading the demo from Internet game site Gamespot,a record by a wide margin,and Interplay hopes that translates into off-the-shelf sales when the full version goes on sale.
Interplay’s Laguna Beach subsidiary, Shiny Entertainment, designed the game, in which players play the part of an angel that possesses different characters.
For more: www.interplay.com
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Bad news for teens: underage drinking could be getting a little more difficult, thanks to a Buena Park outfit called CardCom Technology.
The company is releasing a device that reads the magnetic strip on California drivers’ licenses and verifies ages and other information for police and retailers.
The machine allows users to swipe drivers’ licenses to quickly check the validity of the license and determine the age of the driver.
Though the units are being sold as age-verifying machines, company officials say they can be used at border crossings to check licenses and detect potential terrorists.
And in a marketing masterstroke, the device is being sold to retailers as a tool against police sting operations and to police as a law-enforcement device.
For more: (800) 476-7811.
Bits:
Telenetics Corp., Lake Forest, has released a new version of its Omega wireless meter reading system Simple Technology Inc., Santa Ana, announced that its compact flash SmartMedia memory products are now available at Best Buy electronics stores.
