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Local Techs Showcase New Products

Local Techs Showcase New Products

Conn Steps Down as Dean of UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering

High Tech

by Brad Graves, Staff Writer

Orange County , the one in Florida , was the place to be for wireless telecom execs and aficionados last week.

The occasion was the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association Show in Orlando. Several San Diego County companies used that venue to make new product announcements.

– Jabra Corp. said it is coming out with a headset that can connect a person to a cellular phone, wirelessly, up to a distance of 30 feet. The headset communicates with the phone using the Bluetooth short-range radio standard. The phone has to be Bluetooth equipped, but if it’s not, Jabra will market an adapter for the handset.

Jabra’s FreeSpeak product should show up in stores in September. Suggested retail price for the headset and charger is $99. With the adapter for Bluetooth-less phones, the package will cost $179.

– San Diego-based LG InfoComm (the U.S. wireless handset business of South Korea’s LG Electronics) unveiled five handsets at the convention. All can use advanced CDMA 2000 1x networks, which are slowly being introduced to the United States. Three models have global positioning electronics and can report a user’s location in compliance with federal 911 call requirements.

– Sunnyvale-based BeVocal, Inc. will provide voice-command software for the telematics services being developed by San Diego-based Wingcast, LLC.

Telematics is vehicle-based Internet, and voice activation is seen as a key to keeping those services safe for people on the road.

BeVocal’s technology will be used for voice dialing, voice activated voicemail and e-mail. The technology will also integrate with global positioning system data, allowing drivers to obtain directions to a given address.

Wingcast is a partnership of Qualcomm Inc. and Ford Motor Co.

Analyst Daniel N. Miller of the Kelsey Group in Princeton, N.J. predicts that in four years, there will be 40 million autos equipped to tap into voice-activated services.

– San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc. used the convention for announcements like the availability of its BREW technology to an American audience. BREW lets people customize their wireless handsets by downloading games and other computer applications over the air. Verizon Wireless recently introduced BREW to the San Diego County market.

BREW software developers are many. One of the latest, announced at the show, was San Diego-based Sony Online Entertainment Inc. The fact Sony specializes in multiplayer games may signal BREW’s potential for real-time contests between far-flung players. Qualcomm and Verizon officials recently said the BREW experience will get better when it’s used in conjunction with faster networks, like CDMA 2000 1x.

Other new BREW developers are THQ Inc., Cinemaelectric, Inc., Com2us Corp., Gameloft Inc. and Mobliss Inc.

Carriers like Verizon will decide whether to make finished applications available to customers. Customers typically download applications for small, recurring fees.

– – –

Jacobs School In Transition: Frieder Seible will serve as acting dean of the Irwin and Joan Jacobs School of Engineering at UCSD, effective July 1. Robert Conn, the current dean, announced earlier this year he would step down from the post. Conn has been engineering dean since January 1994, and will return to life as a professor.

Send high-tech news to Graves via e-mail at

bgraves@sdbj.com.

Or send it by fax to (858) 571-3628.

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