ABL Newsletter

January 6, 2005

		MEMBER NEWS
	>	Acquisition Expands Product and Service Offerings DocuSource, where Les Walker is CEO, one of the largest independent document management companies in California, has acquired Document Control Solutions, a division of The Smead Manufacturing Company. Prior to its acquisition by Smead, Document Control Solutions CEO Steve MacWilliams was an ABL Member and has now joined DocuSource as Senior VP. >>
	>	Free Web Optimization Portal for PDA and Cell Phones Greenlight Wireless Corporation, where Kevin Perkins is CEO, has released a

1/7	210 Corridor Tech Execs
1/13	OC Technology Execs
1/14	LA Technology Execs
1/18	OC Technology Entrepreneurs

>> Member News

>> Technology Trends

>> Looking Back & Ahead

>> Welcome New Member

Please Feel Free to Forward
This e-Newsletter to
Other Technology CEOs

		free version of its popular Skweezer portal, which optimizes Web pages, searches, and e-mail for use on PDAs and cell phones. Mobile Internet users can access the free version by visiting www.skweezer.net from any wireless data-enabled handset. >>
	>	Line 6: Best of the Decade Europe’s Total Guitar magazine recently named the top 50 products from the last decade, narrowed down from more than 1,500. Congratulations to Line 6, where Mike Muench is CEO, which took the top two spots: POD at #1 and Variax 500 at #2, as well as GuitarPort at #12 and Spider II at #24. >>
	>	Triple-Digit Growth Again Congratulations to CyberU, Inc., where Adam Miller is CEO, on its announcement that it is on track to double both its annual revenues and its client base in 2004, making this the fourth consecutive year of triple-digit growth for the five-year-old company. >>
	>	$6+ Million in New Contracts Comarco, Inc., where Tom Franza is CEO, has been awarded contracts from San Bernardino Service Authority for Freeway Emergencies, Santa Barbara County, and the State of Hawaii Department of Transportation that include digital call box upgrades and related service and maintenance agreements. >>
	>	Heinz Chooses Esker-Powered Solution Esker Software, where Mitch Baxter is a senior executive, is providing automated fax delivery capability to H.J. Heinz Company, as part of SAP Direct Packaged Services. The Esker solution enables Heinz to achieve time savings and overall communication cost reductions as a result of faxing purchase orders direct from its SAP system. *Meanwhile,* Esker has developed a Fax on Demand Connector for its VSI-FAX product to send faxes through Esker’s outsourced fax service. This service offers highly efficient and cost-effective fax processing without additional hardware or telephony. >>
	>	Rated #1 in Technical Design Survey The LX1701 Class-D audio amplifier from Microsemi Corporation, where Jim Peterson is CEO, was recognized as the #1 analog integrated circuit introduced during the third quarter of 2004 in a survey of 1,000 readers of EE Times, making it a finalist for EE Times "Ultimate Product of the Year" to be awarded in March. Meanwhile, Microsemi has announced two new high voltage Schottky barrier rectifiers. >>
	>	Increased Performance for Fast, Secure Net Access ZyXEL Communications Inc., where Howie Chu is President, has unveiled its new ZyXEL P-334WT Wireless G+ Firewall Router, which increases wireless data transmission speeds by more than seven times compared with the IEEE 802.11b standard. >>
	>	Ting Hui Foresees Convergence Following a recent Round Table discussion, Ting Hui, CEO of VPC - Marketing Automation, provided some examples of current and future convergence. Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Intel have partnered to create Digital Joy, a home PC / digital entertainment center that delivers movies, music, photos, TV, Internet and home computing all in one place. *Meanwhile,* the promise of TV over Internet protocol - IPTV - will mean broadband at speeds 10, 100, or even 1,000 times faster than today's DSL or cable. Combine VoIP, truly high-speed broad band, and totally on-demand TV, and, in effect, every channel will be streamed on demand. The system will be able to track viewing habits as effectively as Amazon tracks its customers, so ads will be targeted with scary precision. (ImpactLab, 12/10/04)
		TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
	>	Engineering Salary Drop Recorded The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers USA reports that its latest salary survey of U.S. members shows a 1.5% drop in median income for electro-technology and IT professionals, the first drop reported in the survey since 1972. The survey showed a drop from $101,000 in 2002 to $99,500 in 2003. Accounting for inflation, the drop is actually a 3.68% decrease in purchasing power. (socalTECH.com TechNews, 12/27/04)
	>	Blog Readership Surges in 2004 The readership of blogs - online diaries or where Internet users posts their opinions, thoughts, observations, or whatever else they choose - increased in 2004 by 58%, with six million Americans getting news and information fed to them through RSS aggregators, according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project study. There are over eight million people creating web-based logs, the study finds, however 62% of online Americans do not know what a blog is. (socalTECH.com TechNews, 1/4/05)
	>	Worldwide PC Market to Double by 2010 By the end of the decade, the number of PCs in use worldwide will reach almost 1.3 billion, up from 575 million today, according to Forrester Research. Significant growth will come from emerging markets - such as China, Russia, India and Mexico. (Business Wire, 12/14/04)
	>	Indemnification Could Become Open Source's Nightmare As Linux and open source gain more acceptance, indemnification - or the lack thereof - becomes more crucial, thus the Yankee Group advises insuring adequate indemnification coverage. In the absence of indemnification or specific indemnification provisions, corporations could be the target of an intellectual property lawsuit that they would be forced to defend on their own. (Business Wire, 12/13/04)
	>	HP Leaves the Chip-Making Business Hewlett-Packard has reached an agreement with Intel that would see HP's Itanium processor design team move to Intel this month, effectively putting an end to the last microprocessor development effort within HP. (IDG News Service, 12/16/04) *Meanwhile,* AMD and IBM have developed a new and unique strained silicon transistor that results in up to a 24% transistor speed increase, at the same power levels, compared to similar transistors produced without the technology. (Business Wire, 12/13/04)
	>	Wal-Mart Suppliers Spend Minimum to Comply with RFID The top 100 Wal-Mart suppliers have invested only $250 million on RFID systems to meet the minimum requirements for the January 2005 Wal-Mart mandate deadline, according to AMR Research. The suppliers do not view RFID as a strategic investment and have patched systems together just enough to meet Wal-Mart's compliance deadline. (PRNewswire, 12/20/04)
		LOOKING BACK & LOOKING AHEAD
	>	LOOKING BACK: Top Trends of 2004 Open Source is in the spotlight, including Winston Damarillo's Gluecode Software, which is developing an open source Java application platform, including an application server, database, and more built on the open source Apache Software Foundation components. Other companies are also leveraging Open Source to build their own application suites, like Mozilla's Firefox browser, with over 11 million downloads since November 9th. (socalTECH.com TechNews, 12/27/04) The handheld is now the platform: Smartphones were the gizmo of 2004. Consumers dropped $9 billion on the miniature multitaskers this year. Cellular data services now account for about 9% of the monthly cell-phone bill, or $5 per phone - 67% more than in 2003. During the next five years, that share is expected to rise to 30%, or $16. *You can* do more with less:** The $1.7 trillion that corporations spent on software and hardware infrastructure between 1990 and 2000 is paying huge dividends in productivity: After creeping up about 1.5% a year in the late 1990s, productivity has gone on a tear since 2001, rising 14%. At the same time, many of those who didn't lose their jobs to silicon saw them outsourced to developing nations. Of the 372,000 tech jobs lost between 2000 and 2003, an estimated 104,000 went overseas. (Business 2.0, 11/10/04)
	>	LOOKING AHEAD: Business 2.0 Predicts 2005's Big Ones 1. The year of the DVR. The number of digital video recorders in people's homes will finally push well above the 10 million mark, and DVRs will achieve the critical mass that advertisers have long feared they would. 2. Apple introduces the iPhone. Long craved by the Mac faithful, a sleek, beautiful cell phone that doubles as a digital-music player is coming soon from Apple's iPod division. Meanwhile, the iPod is spawning potential new growth opportunities in “Podcasting" and “Podvertising." 3. Google searches everything. The Web is not enough for Google. It will continue to add new categories of information to its searches. Its downloadable software already searches your desktop computer. Any digitized or digitizable information will soon be fair game, including offline databases, music, photos, video and millions of books in university libraries. 4. Blogs go mainstream, and podcasting catches on. The more sophisticated bloggers will add audio commentary and become podcasters, producing daily Web radio shows that listeners can download to their computers and iPods. The first video podcasts will appear. 5. Tech consolidation continues, to no avail. After Oracle digests PeopleSoft, Larry Ellison will be on the acquisition trail again, which will force everyone from Microsoft to IBM to consider preemptive takeovers. Meanwhile, Web-based enterprise software companies that bake business processes into subscription-based software will become the flavor of the year. 6. Nanotech makes fuel cells feasible. As long as oil prices stay high, interest in alternative energy sources will continue to grow. One of the most promising is hydrogen fuel cells, but they require a leap in performance and a steep drop in costs to gain a foothold. 7. Chinese IPOs party like it's 1999. Already China boasts the second-largest number of Web surfers in the world (more than 90 million), and Chinese Web startups are at the stage where their U.S. counterparts were five years ago. Chinese tech IPOs will flood the Nasdaq. (Business 2.0, 12/27/04)

		WELCOME NEW MEMBER!

	>	Paul Van Den Berg, CarParts Technologies Inc.
		Paul Van Den Berg is President of CarParts Technologies, a leading provider of open, eCommerce and business automation software solutions to more than 3,000 automotive aftermarket outlets. CarParts is a subsidiary of Auto Data Network Inc., a group of established companies that provide software products and services to the auto industry. Paul was previously CarParts’ VP of Product Management and Services. Before joining CarParts, in 2002, he was VP of Marketing and Business Development for Telelogic North America Inc., a software company; VP of Product Management and Business Development for Continuus Software; and held management positions with worldwide sales and marketing responsibilities for MapInfo, Unisys, and SHL Systemshouse. Paul has joined the Orange County Executives Round Table.