GoPublicNow.com Less Public; AlphaServe.com adds Brains to Web Searches
Don’t write that Rambus obituary just yet.
Though some Orange County memory makers are rallying against the controversial new technology, developed and licensed by Rambus Inc. of Mountain View, chip superpower Intel Corp. is pushing manufacturers to commit to what it hopes becomes the next-generation standard.
Days after memory-product makers gathered at a San Jose trade summit organized by Santa Ana-based Simple Technology Inc. subsidiary SiliconTech Inc. to support an alternative to Rambus, computer news Web site CNet.com reported that Intel was hosting a summit of its own in Arizona. According to the report (co-written, incidentally, by former Business Journal reporter Ian Fried), Intel is leaning on memory makers to boost Rambus production.
Rambus offers a new way of making memory chips, circuit boards and internal computer slots that speeds the flow of data.
Double data rate random access memory, or DDR for short, is a competing technology developed by an industry consortium.
Critics say Rambus requires heavy upgrades in manufacturing gear and with only lackluster production results, both of which drive up prices and drive away consumers. Manufacturers also have to pay royalties to Rambus for chips based on its design, which galls many in the industry who say Intel should have sought an industry consensus rather than unilaterally sanctioning a privately-owned standard.
Intel officials wouldn’t comment about the meetings but have stuck by Rambus in the face of mounting opposition.
GoPublicNow Goes Slightly Private
GoPublicNow.com, the Newport Beach company that wants to guide tech companies through the initial public offering process, is tweaking its own public offerings in hopes of rescuing ailing stock.
The company recently repurchased and canceled 200,000 shares in itself, which will reduce its free-trading shares to about 550,000. The company hopes the move will raise its share price, which has languished in the 4 to 5 range from its opening-week high of 7 1/4.
The company also plans to cancel another 200,000 non-trading shares held by a former employee, reducing its total shares outstanding to about 10.9 million. The company’s shares trade on the low-profile Nasdaq over-the-counter exchange.
Bruce Berman, the company’s chief executive, said he hoped the move would demonstrate his company’s commitment to shoring up shareholder value.
The company, whose business model hinges on how many companies use its services to go public, has been hit with a double whammy. Not only are its shares receiving increased scrutiny as a dot-com, but other tech companies have put off or canceled plans to go public, hurting GoPublicNow.com’s business.
Getting Smart
AlphaServe.com is getting smart about the network database market.
The company’s Network Query Language, a mini-operating system designed to make it easier to gather information from the Internet, is getting a bit of artificial intelligence in the form of what’s called neural networking technology.
Neural networks, long a foundation of software applications that feature rudimentary “learning” and predictive capabilities, will become a part of NQL’s intelligent agent technology, paving the way for better searches and the ability for software written on the NQL platform to adapt.
The technology attempts to mimic the brain by considering a variety of factors in a given task, giving weight to certain factors based on the success of previous attempts. The trial-and-error process usually results in better searches and the ability to predict outcomes, find relationships and detect anomalies in things like credit card purchases, weather patterns and other situations that produce high volumes of data.
AlphaServe officials, who recently added another artificial intelligence technology called fuzzy logic to the NQL platform, said even mid-level programmers will be able to use advanced techniques to seek out and incorporate data from a variety of sources on internal networks or the Internet.
For more: www.nqlsolutions.com.
And the Winners are
The American Electronics Association’s Orange County chapter announced winners for the group’s seventh annual high-tech awards, an event designed to highlight achievements by the area’s high-tech community.
The winners: Datum Inc., Rainbow Technologies Inc., IPNet Solutions Inc. and FieldCentrix for innovative product or technology; Quest Software Inc. for outstanding company; Masimo Corp. for outstanding medical device company, Conexant Systems Inc. for outstanding public company; and Entrepreneur.com for outstanding Internet company.
Bits:
GoShip.com, Laguna Niguel, signed an agreement that will allow e-commerce companies using the services of Long Beach-based Netgateway Inc. to offer their customers a variety of shipping options from different carriers and over different times.
