Exodus Growing Fast in Irvine; Sugar
Ray’s Eerie Flight
The tech news keeps on comin’: Exodus Communication, which just opened a 110,000-square-foot data center in OC, may already be looking to expand. Exodus chairman and CEO Ellen Hancock, Fortune magazine’s fifth-most powerful woman in American business, flew down from the Bay Area in a chartered jet the other day just to talk to UCI prof Judy Rosener’s MBA students. Hancock mentioned that the Internet-hosting company was doing so well in Irvine that it may add space. No further comment from the company Chapman University is getting into the seed-money game. The Insider is told the university is planning after the first of the year to roll out ChapmanAngels.com, an on-line network matching alumni investors with alumni and student entrepreneurs. The network plans to link up with the international UniversityAngels.com OC’s next mega-IPO? Some smart money is watching Irvine Spectrum-based Access360, the fast-growing business software startup run by Xylan Corp. founder Yuri Pikover Fashion Island is again claiming the world’s largest Christmas tree, a 115-foot white fir from Mt. Shasta Hot off the presses: The inaugural issue of Arab-American Business, a monthly magazine edited and published by OCBJ contributor Nidal Ibrahim “Straw Men,” the third novel by former OC Register columnist and current LA Times Magazine senior editor Martin J. Smith (www.martinjsmith.com), is set for release in January. And he’s working on his fourth Former OCBJ staffer Tim Eigo is now editor of Arizona Attorney magazine PR pro Mike Stockstill’s sabbatical was short-lived; he’s rejoined a former employer, the Irvine Co. Murphy Karges still shudders when he thinks about the Oct. 31 crash of Singapore Airlines Flight 006 at Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport in Taipei. A month earlier, bass player Karges and the rest of the Newport Beach band Sugar Ray took off from the same strip, in the same type of 747, at the same time of night, flying the same route to LAX, likewise after a delay caused by torrential rain. (The only difference was that the band flew Malaysian Airlines.) Karges recalled expressing concern to vocalist Mark McGrath about their own takeoff: “It was creepy, man. Mark said, ‘Good, we’re cleared for takeoff.’ I said, ‘Are you sure it’s good?'” The Music Man: Jeff Bitetti sang the National Anthem at the Lakers’ preseason game at the Pond. Last year he was the warmup to Orgy at Henry Nicholas’ 40th birthday bash. If you call his office at developer Nexus Companies in South Coast Metro and get placed on hold, you’ll hear his CD playing.
