eMedia to distribute Making Music titles
Seattle-based eMedia Music Corp., publisher of a series of guitar tutorial CD-ROMs, announced it would be distributing the line of Morton Subotnick software titles from Viva Media. These titles include Morton Subotnick's Making Music, Morton Subotnick's Making More Music and the upcoming release Morton Subotnick's Hearing Music.
Birdstep technology adopted
Seattle-based Birdstep Technology said the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's (CDF) purchase of RDM Embedded running on Win32 and Solaris operating systems. CDF is dedicated to the fire protection and stewardship of over 31 million acres of California's privately-owned wildlands. CDF's firefighters, fire engines and aircraft respond to an average 6,300 wildland fires, and more than 286,000 non-wildfire emergencies each year.CDF uses Birdstep's embedded databases as the core database management system for their InciNet System. InciNet is CDF's mobile computer network and software program used to assist with the management of large-scale emergency incidents. RDM Embedded's portability, small footprint, and performance allows InciNet to be used on everything from a single laptop running the Windows operating system to a multiple user network running the Solaris operating system.
UW offers free IT course
The University of Washington is offering a new online course, available at no cost, that allows students to upgrade their knowledge of Information Technology, skills, concepts and capabilities. The National Science Foundation (NSF) granted $500,000 to the UW to develop an online version of its Fluency with Information Technology (FIT) class, an introductory technology course for students without training or experience in computers. The course is offered jointly by the department of Computer Science & Engineering and the Information School. The course is available now at http://courses.washington.edu/benefit/
The goal of the class is to help people understand how information technology works and how to apply it to the real world, a concept known as fluency with information technology.
Onyx buys technology from Visuale
Bellevue-based Onyx Software Corp., a maker of customer-relationship software, has acquired the business-process management assets of Visuale Inc. of Los Gatos, Calif., for about $4 million. Onyx said the deal begins with an initial payment of $400,000 in cash and 504,891 Onyx shares, presently valued at $1.6 million. On the one-year anniversary of the deal, Onyx will pay another $1 million, and has the option to make to payment in the form of cash or shares at the then-current market value. Thereafter, on years three and four following closing, Onyx will make minimum royalty payments of $500,000 in cash based on sales of Onyx products incorporating the acquired technology.
Cray completes OctigaBay buy
Seattle supercomputer maker Cray Inc. said it has completed its purchase of OctigaBay Systems Corp. of Vancouver, British Columbia, a developer of a high-performance computing system designed to make supercomputing performance accessible to more users. Cray paid $15 million in cash and 12.4 million shares, along with assuming about 400,000 stock options held by OctigaBay employees. The OctigaBay system, formerly known as the 12K, will be called the Cray XD1 product.
EnCompass sells silicon wafer business
EnCompass Materials Group Ltd. of Vancouver, agreed to sell its silicon wafer manufacturing business to Isonics Corp. of Golden, Colo., for $3.5 million. The deal, which is subject to several conditions, is expected to close in the second quarter. EnCompass is a silicon-reclaim service provider for the wafer-fabrication segment, as well as manufacturing virgin test wafer products and distributing silicon products. Isonics makes isotopically engineered wafers used in the semiconductor and health-care industries.
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