Microsoft Ad Features Buy.com; ZLand Suffers E-Mail Snafu
They’re half a world away, but Orange County’s Rainbow Technologies Inc. and Litronic Inc. are two of the many companies breathing a sigh of relief at China’s recent approval of the encryption included in Microsoft’s Windows 2000.
Because of new restrictions on encryption products from foreign companies, it wasn’t clear whether Windows 2000 would be allowed in China, putting a serious cloud over products designed to work with the software giant’s new operating system.
Rainbow makes the iKey, hardware devices used to identify computers on a network, and the CryptoSwift eCommerce Accelerator security software. Litronic, meanwhile, makes smartcard-based authentication systems that work closely with and are partly integrated into Windows 2000.
Humphrey Chan of Rainbow’s Asia-Pacific division said China’s approval creates a big opportunity in what is expected to become the world’s fastest-growing technology market over the next few years.
Rainbow operates a China-based joint venture called Rainbow-Goldensoft.
Buy.com Sells Self
Buy.com is getting some national exposure, thanks to an advertising campaign by Microsoft Corp. promoting its Windows 2000 operating system.
It’s hard to miss Greg Hawkins, chief executive of the Aliso Viejo e-tailer, in last week’s Newsweek and other publications that ran the Microsoft ads, which feature the executive apparently posing as the world’s most clean-cut homeless person.
In the ads, Hawkins is pushing a shopping cart full of jumbled merchandise on an apparently abandoned street in the dark of night.
Actually, the ad is designed to highlight Hawkins’ point that e-commerce outlets, which unlike their bricks-and-mortar equivalents stay “open” 24×7, require reliable network infrastructure. Online convenience store SmartMart and lender VirtualBank also appear in the campaign.
Microsoft’s corresponding web site features videotaped testimonials from Hawkins and Buy.com’s vice president for information services, Tony McAlister.
They’re available at: www.SeeMyStory.com/greg.
Fishing for Compliments
Laguna Hills tape-array hardware maker Ultera Systems Inc. is getting some national exposure of its own from a recent profile in this month’s upcoming Red Herring magazine.
Ultera was one of 20 companies featured in the edition, and as Ultera’s vice president for sales and marketing likes to point out, one of only four profitable companies featured.
For more: www.ultera.com.
Redundancy redux
Even web developers suffer problems with the Internet sometimes.
ZLand.com, the Aliso Viejo maker of Internet applications, got a little more than it bargained for March 7 when its PR agency tried to publicize a lecture its chief executive planned to give via an Internet broadcast.
The announcement was promptly sent to media outlets. And sent. And sent. And sent once every hour, at least 18 more times by our count.
Someone at the Irvine PR firm Allen & Caron Inc. hit the “send” button once, but through some unexplained technological chain reaction, the agency’s computer system transmitted the item again and again.
When notified of the problem by angry recipients the next day, the firm notified its Internet service provider, which promptly shut the system down.
And Allen & Caron president Rene Caron quickly sent out apologies,by fax.
Bits:
Conexant Systems Inc., Newport Beach, has completed its previously announced merger with Maker Communications. Maker will operate as a part of Conexant’s Network Access Division The backup tape drives produced by Seagate Technology’s Costa Mesa operation have been recognized by Winmag.com, an online trade publication. The publication added Seagate’s TapeStor DAT 40 to its WinList 100 list, which recognizes the top products in a variety of categories DoubleClick Inc., the controversial online advertising technology maker, has increased its use of networked storage from MTI Technology Corp., Anaheim, to more than 100 terabytes of space. DoubleClick needed MTI’s multi-platform technology for its Unix and Windows NT systems Foreshock Inc., Irvine, has won national recognition for its own logo and another it created for client PSP Mortgage Broker, both of which will appear in the upcoming publication “All American Logos.” Of the more than 2,500 logos submitted in the competition, 500 made the final cut. For more: www.foreshock.com OhGolly.com, Huntington Beach, forged an agreement with EXP.com, a Menlo Park creator of an Internet hub that links experts in different fields to people seeking advice. OhGolly will link to EXP.com to help counsel small business owners who’ve set up shop online.
