Telecom Council Starts The New Year With Thompson as President
Move aside, zebra stripes. A major West Coast airport is planning to tag its baggage with radio frequencies, thank you.
San Diego’s SCS Corp. is supplying a radio frequency identification system for the rebuilt and renovated San Francisco International Airport.
To use the system, a ticket agent will put a 2-by-2.5-inch, self-adhesive label on a bag that needs enhanced security screening. A fixed reader will spot the marked bag on the conveyor system, divert the bag to an X-ray explosive detection system for screening, then send the bag back to the main conveyor system.
SCS, located in Rancho Bernardo, develops and manufactures radio frequency tags and scanners. Officials there say their technology is an improvement over “zebra-stripe” or bar coded tags, since it does not require tags to be in the scanner’s line of sight.
– – –
Thompson Takes Reins: The San Diego Telecom Council will start the new year with Marco Thompson as president. He’ll serve a one-year term.
Thompson, a council founder and board member, has played a role in launching, funding and advising more than 15 telecom companies throughout Southern California over two decades. In 1984, he founded Doctor Design, Inc., which was later acquired by Wind River Systems, Inc. Thompson is a San Diego native and graduate of UCSD.
In other news, the council is:
– Teaming up with UCSD Connect to deliver executive mentoring programs, as well as develop an electronic telecom newsletter for distribution among nearly 1,000 members that make up both organizations.
– Building five special-interest groups, covering optical networking, mobile wireless, fixed wireless, telecom semiconductors and home gateway/Internet appliances. The council wants to double its number of special interest groups by this time next year.
Executives from prominent local telecom companies, and those who serve them, work on the council to advance San Diego County’s telecom industry.
Megs Of Music: MusicMatch Jukebox software, a product of San Diego’s MusicMatch Inc., is off to more places, this time hitching a ride with Iomega Corp. products such as the Zip storage drive.
The Rancho Bernardo product is also going out with Iomega’s HipZip, a compact device that plays MP3-format files the same way older devices cranked cassette tapes to replicate tunes.
MusicMatch Jukebox software allows users to play, record and organize digital music. It can also select new music for a user based on the user’s taste.
Iomega, based in Roy, Utah, has put the “Plus” version of MusicMatch Jukebox on its worldwide shipments of the HipZip and its newer-model CD-RW drives.
The standard version of MusicMatch Jukebox is available today with Zip drives shipped in the Americas, and will be featured with all Zip, Jaz and PocketZip drives shipping worldwide by mid-2001.
MusicMatch officials estimate that by year’s end, nearly 10 million copies of MusicMatch Jukebox will have shipped with more than 50 brand-name hardware devices.
These range from portable MP3 players to notebook computers to home jukebox systems , including the Music Store from Carlsbad-based DigMedia, Inc.
The software also comes with wireless telephone handsets and accessories that have MP3 capability: the Samsung Uproar and the Ericsson MP3 Handsfree HPM-10.
– – –
Into New Territory: San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp. has opened a 5,300-square-foot branch office in St. Petersburg, Fla. Included is a 700-square-foot lab. The staff there designs and develops prototype hardware and software for advanced military communication systems. Carlsbad-based NTN Communications, Inc. will expand its Digital Interactive TV network from 100 to 175 Bennigan’s Irish American Grill & Tavern locations nationwide. NTN’s network features its Buzztime trivia channel and the QB1 Predict-the-Play interactive football game. Players at one pub can compete against other NTN players elsewhere in the country. Bennigan’s is one of several eatery formats of Metromedia Restaurant Group of Plano, Texas.
Send high-tech news to Graves via e-mail at bgraves@sdbj.com.
