Wednesday, July 19, 2006


Interview with Bill Kehaly, Axion Racing
DARPA's Grand Challenge, the robotic vehicle race held last fall, was a unique competition that provided a $2 million dollar prize to the team to complete a 132 mile course, with a fully autonomous robotic vehicle, in the least amount of time. Westlake Village-based Axion Racing (www.axionracing.com) was ranked seventh in the challenge, beating Caltech, UCLA, Princeton, Cornell, Mitre, and Ford, in the competition. Axion made it 67 miles into the challenge before suffering a mechanical failure. (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006(Full story)

San Diego Sees Surge In Online Job Ads
The Conference Board is reporting today that San Diego leads the nation for the number of ads per 100 person in the labor force. The group, which tracks online job postings nationwide, found that there were 4 job ads for every 100 people in the local labor force in San Diego. San Diego has led the nation for the last three months, and is the first metropolitan area to hit such a high ratio of job postings to labor force. Nationally, there were 1.63 online job ads per 100 persons in the U.S. labo (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006(Full story)

CinemaNow Launches DVD Download Service
Marina Del Rey-based CinemaNow has launched a DVD, download and burn service. The download-to-burn service is the first for a movie download service, and allows consumers to download full length movies and burn it to DVD for playback. The service, which launched today, includes movies and videos from Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Lionsgate, MGM Worldwide Digital Media, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, EagleVision and Sundance Channel. The new download-to- (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006(Full story)

Luminent Calls Off Acquisition
Chatsworth-based Luminent, a subsidiary of MRV Communications, said today that it has called off the acquisition of HG Genuine Opto, a Chinese manufacturer of fiber optic transceivers. MRV said that the two companies mutually agreed to terminate the agreement, based on current market valuations of comparable companies and further due diligence. The two companies originally agreed in May to the transaction, worth $40M in cash plus 15 percent of Luminent's common stock. The companies said in a sta (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006(Full story)

SOA Software Appoints CFO
Los Angeles-based SOA Software, a provider of Web Services management software, has appointed a new CFO. SOA Software said this week that it has hired Janine Bushman as CFO of the firm. Bushman joins from Sendia, where she was co-founder and CFO. Bushman has also served at ISOCOR, Xdrive, and Interactive Systems Corporation. SOA Software provides Web Services and SOA software, used by companies for managing their service-oriented-architecture based software projects.
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Broadcom Claims One Million Draft-802.11n Shipments
Irvine-based Broadcom is claiming shipments of over one million Draft-802.11n chips, saying this week that its pre-standard, 802.11n technology is seeing rapid adoption. The semiconductor maker said that it shipped the million chips in less than four month, to partners such as Dell and other laptop and wireless network gear makers. Broadcom's draft-802.11n Insensi-fi chips are also being shipped in routers from Linksys, NETGEAR, and Buffalo.
posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006(Full story)