Mercury Computer Systems, Inc, a leading provider of high-performance computing solutions for HPC and embedded computing markets, announced that Visage Imaging GmbH, a component of its wholly owned subsidiary Visage Imaging, Inc., has reached an agreement to sell the assets of its Embedded Services and Professional Services (ES/PS) businesses. ES/PS were part of Mercury’s acquisition of SOHARD AG in July 2005. The ES/PS buyers are companies held by Orgabit Datenservice GmbH, based in Germany.

Hacker Group, one of the largest direct marketing advertising agencies in the West, today announced that after 21 years in Bellevue, Washington, it is relocating its company headquarters to downtown Seattle. The agency will occupy three floors in the Financial Center building located at 1215 Fourth Avenue in Seattle. The move is scheduled for May 2008.
While other agencies have been moving to the urban fringes, Hacker Group is bucking the trend and relocating to the downtown core. Spyro Kourtis, President of Hacker Group, explained, “This is a major milestone in the company history. This is a rare opportunity to relocate to a vibrant, urban environment and bring new energy to the team. We can build out the kind of space that will help our employees do great work for our clients and position ourselves for even more growth.”

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced in a press release that it has put the wrap on its 31st International Public Meeting in New Delhi after five days of discussions about the future of the Internet.

“These meetings are vital to ICANN’s model of bottom-up, consensus driven policy making in action,” said ICANN’s Board Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush.

A total of 720 participants from 76 countries, including 290 participants from the host country India, took part in the meeting, and helped ICANN move forward on a number of discussions.

The Apple faithful are gathering in San Francisco ahead of Steve Jobs’ annual keynote, in which he is expected to unveil new products.
Top of the most-wanted list, according to reports, is an ultra-slim laptop, using flash storage instead of a hard drive, and movie rentals for iTunes.

Last year, Apple unveiled the iPhone to great fanfare and few observers expect Mr Jobs to be able to top that launch.

The company is expected to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008.

Steve Jobs will be hoping to build on the firm’s success with the iPod and Mac line-up and to boost sales of products, such as the Apple TV, which have not performed so well.

Analysts expect Apple to post record sales this year despite concerns of an overall slowdown in consumer spending.

Ciscoy announced today a series of new technology solutions and multivendor architectures that will help retailers improve security and reduce complexity of store systems in addition to increasing employee productivity to enhance their customers’ experience.

Cisco is launching the Lean Retail Architecture, a new way to help retailers “do more with less” which features information technology (IT) improvements designed to help retailers reduce costs, enhance business flexibility and increase data protection. Additionally, Cisco is jointly announcing the expansion of the Cisco Payment Card Industry (PCI) Validated Network Designs to the Internet edge and data-center environments with NCR Corp.; RSA, the Security Division of EMC; SAP®; VeriFone® and Verizon Business. Lastly, Cisco is working with several software suppliers to create solutions that bolster retail employee productivity and increase the amount of time that staff can spend with customers, and continues to advance its Cisco Digital Media System for digital signage and desktop video.

The European Commission is launching two new anti-competition investigations against US computer giant Microsoft.
The first will look at whether Microsoft unfairly ties its Explorer internet browser to its Windows operating system.

In a parallel probe, the Commission will look at the interoperability of Microsoft software with rival products.

The firm said it would cooperate with the latest enquiry. In October, the EU ruled the firm broke antitrust rules.

“This initiation of proceedings does not imply that the Commission has proof of an infringement,” said the Commission in a statement.

“It only signifies that the Commission will further investigate the case as a matter of priority.”

The latest investigation by the Commission follows after two complaints, one by Norwegian company Opera, the other by pan-European software-makers group European Committee for Interoperable Systems.

The One Laptop Per Child organisation sets up a program to deliver laptops to the poorest US children.

(TP) Mexican telecommunications firm Axtel has selected Motorola as a vendor to provide access points, core network equipment, associated services and customer devices for its initial deployment of WiMAX technology. Axtel will purchase from Motorola equipment to install 802.16e WiMAX radiobase stations, voice and data customer premise equipment and PCMCIA cards. Laptops, PDA’s and handsets with WiMAX embedded chipsets are expected to be available by the end of 2008 or beginning 2009. With WiMAX technology, Axtel’s residential and business customers will have further availability of virtual private network services and access to high-speed internet in Axtel coverage areas. Deployment of WiMAX technology has begun in Monterrey, Puebla and Guadalajara.

(TP) Spain added 182,263 mobile phone subscriptions in November 2007, taking the toal to 49.58 million mobile lines, or 110.9 lines per 100 inhabitants, according to telecommunication regulator CMT. Of the subscribers, 50.7 percent (92,407) signed with Vodafone, 30.2 percent (55,043) chose Yoigo, 10.9 percent (19,867) went with Telefonica Movil’s Movistar, and 1.6 percent (2,916) chose MVNOs. Mobile number portability rose by 7 percent to 328,455 lines in November 2007 compared to November 2006. Telefonica added 18,269 ported numbers and Yoigo added 18,150. Orange had lost 21,945 net lines to portability, followed by Vodafone with 12,131, Euskaltel with 359 and the remainder of MVNOs lost 1,987.

(TP) Canadian cable operator Shaw Communications reported revenue of CAD 743.8 million for the fiscal first quarter ended 30 November, up 10.9 percent from CAD 671 million in the same period last year. Service operating income before amortisation increased 11 percent to CAD 332.9 million, and cash flow from operations increased 17.4 percent to CAD 286 million. Net income was up 38.3 percent to CAD 112.2 million or CAD 0.26 per share, compared to CAD 81.1 million or CAD 0.19 per share previously. Basic cable subscribers increased by 8,138 in the quarter to total 2.23 million at the end of November. Digital customers grew by 39,496 to 802,636, and internet customers grew by 34,719 to 1.48 million. Digital phone lines were up 50,339 to 435,696. DTH subscribers increased by 1,544 to 881,129.