The SupplyChain.com Debuts; Net Pack to Bow in Triangle Square on March 4
A senior Microsoft Corp. researcher speaking at UCI’s Information & Computer Science Research Symposium last week provided a rare glimpse into the software giant’s top-secret skunkworks lab.
Eric Horvitz showed off some technology expected to become a part of popular office applications in the near future, including an on-screen character that reads and interprets e-mail from Outlook and offers to schedule appointments with people whose messages appear to be requesting one,all through voice commands.
The system is an attempt to make computers seem more personable by reacting to a variety of cues from users, including tone of voice, rate of mouse and keyboard movement and other subtle behavior. Horvitz, who appears in at least one of Microsoft’s television commercials, works for the company’s Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group.
The real stars of the event, however, were UCI’s Ph.D. students, who demonstrated projects that ranged from broadband multi-casting compression techniques to souped-up search engines that displayed results graphically instead of the usual text lists.
School officials used the event to announce a contest that offers a “nominal” cash prize to a team of students who come up with the best business plan based on their research work.
As if the students there need the push. Several Ph.D. candidates I spoke with over lunch mentioned that they’d already begun thinking of ways to attract venture funding to commercialize their projects.
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It appears businesses are finding ways to use those high-speed Internet connections besides giving workers new ways to goof off. Application service providers, a concept that was barely a blip on the technology radar screen a year ago, seem to be popping up all over the place.
ASPs are designed to simplify companies’ information technology systems by housing the computers and hosting software applications remotely, to be accessed by the firms as needed over the Internet.
In addition to well-known ASPs such as FutureLink Corp. and Aspeon Inc. (formerly Javelin Systems Inc.), a slew of smaller Orange County providers are sprouting up to cash in on market niches. One of the newest of those is Newport Beach-based the SupplyChain.com, an ASP that, as the name suggests, focuses on inventory management, procurement and fulfillment.
Ian Arcuri, who co-founded the company last year, touts his company’s use of XML web standards and compliance with Microsoft’s BizTalk protocols.
The company’s scEngine is geared toward companies that want to create online trading hubs. For more: www.theSupplyChain.com.
Net Pack Inc., the Irvine company that hopes to merge the best of online and offline commerce with placards that give purchasers a code to download software over the Internet, is set to launch March 4.
The company will unveil its first retail kiosk at Triangle Square in Costa Mesa and has signed on several software makers,Legacy Interactive, Alarice Multimedia, Apollo Software, Reflexive Entertainment, BrainwareMedia.com, Avid Press, E-Bookstand and Above Black,and is in talks with six more. The Business Journal first wrote about the company a few months ago.
Company officials said Triangle Square’s eclectic mix of trendy clothing and entertainment stores will provide the perfect type of consumer for Net Pack’s delivery system.
Instead of putting software on CD-ROMs, Net Pack puts other companies’ applications on its own servers, allowing users who purchase Net Pack’s access card in stores to download it from home. Net Pack officials say the system profits from consumers’ deeply ingrained impulse buying habits while saving on the traditional software publishing model, which requires expensive packaging and shipping.
For more: www.netpackage.com.
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Bits:
Irvine smartcard system maker Litronic Corp. has joined the Public Key Infrastructure Forum, an industry group pushing for public-key encryption as a standard for secure e-commerce Farmchem Corp., an Iowa company that sells equipment to the fertilizer industry, has signed on to use an e-commerce system developed by Newport Beach Internet service provider IPNet Solutions Inc. Nexgenix Inc., an Irvine e-commerce services provider, is launching a $10 million branding campaign with ads in Forbes, Business 2.0, Industry Standard, Red Herring and Upside and a few airport displays Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., Irvine, introduced two new laptop computers, the Satellite 1605CDS and the 1625CDT, which go for $1,199 and $1,599, respectively Conexant Systems Inc. completed its previously announced offering of $500 million worth of convertible subordinated notes. The company plans to use the money for general corporate purposes, possibly including more acquisitions.
Ken Spencer Brown can be reached at (949) 833-8373, Ext. 239, or preferably by e-mail at Kbrown@ocbj.com
