EUROPRINT BUYS MAJORITY STAKE IN PCB POWER

Ahmedabad
The Hindu Business Line

The Europrint Group of Belgium, through its subsidiary Eurocircuits, has acquired a majority stake in PCB Power (India) Ltd, for an undisclosed consideration, the company announced here on Monday.

PCB Power will now be a subsidiary of Eurocircuits, a printed circuit board maker based in Gujarat, a senior company official told Business Line on condition of anonymity.

“We are excited about the Indian market and its future,” says Dirk Stans, Managing Partner of the Europrint Group and Marketing Manager of Eurocircuits, which specialises in prototypes and small series rigid PCBs of up to 16 layers, according to a press release.

Eurocircuits has operations in many European countries, including Benelux, Germany, the UK, Switzerland, France, Poland, Hungary and Italy with over 5,000 customers. With the support, technology and experience of Eurocircuits, PCB Power will offer new services, features, prices and online customer interface available in the market, the release said.

Stans said Eurocircuits planned to focus on prototypes and small volume requirements. It wanted to provide services ranging from PCB to stencil to its target customers, including the PCB designer community, embedded designers, industrial electronics developers, universities and high school laboratories and any other electronics development community.

RELIGARE TECHNOVA TO BUY OLIVERAYS

Financial Chronicle The Hindu Business Line Mint

Diversified group Religare Technova Global Solutions said it would acquire OliveRays Innovations, a company engaged in developing software used in share broking business.

HCL TECH OPENS OFFICE IN ISRAEL

Jerusalem, January 2, 2009
The Hindu Business Line

HCL Technologies Ltd is opening an office in Israel at one of its high-tech parks, a media report here said. The Indian software firm has rented a 400 sq.m. office in Yokneam from Meshulam Levinstein Contracting and Engineering Ltd along with 15 parking places on a five-year lease with an option to extend the term by the same duration, business daily Globes reported. HCL Technologies will be paying its Israeli contractors a rent of about $6,700 a month for the office and the parking place, the daily said.

YOUR PC MAY SOON RESPOND TO GESTURES

Deepshikha Monga, New Delhi
The Economic Times

HP Labs India is developing the next-generation user interface for computers and mobile phones that will recognise gestures and understand voice inputs. HP Labs is the central research arm of the world?fs largest PC maker Hewlett-Packard.

?gThe primary way for a user to interact with a device is through the keyboard or touch. In future, interfaces will be multi-modal and gesture-sensitive. Some of the exciting work in this area is being done in India,?h HP research senior VP and HP Labs director Prith Banerjee said. The first prototype of such an interface could be ready in the next couple of years.

HP Labs work on technologies of the next 5-10 years. The India lab focuses on the theme of innovation for the next billion. ?gThe India lab is not for cheap outsourcing of R&D. These engineers work on problems that are relevant to other emerging markets and once solved, the solutions can be replicated,?h Banerjee said.

While speech recognition technology has been around for some time, it hasn?ft yet reached a level of satisfactory accuracy that an average user is comfortable with. HP Labs?f multi-modal interface, which uses modes of interaction beyond the traditional mouse and keyboard, would be able to understand verbal inputs much better.

OBAMA ONLINE SUPPORTERS KEY TO PUSHING HIS AGENDA

Honolulu
The Economic Times

President-elect Barack Obama's top asset in pushing his agenda will not be his Cabinet secretaries or aides, but rather his online network.

Obama's political e-mail list tops 13 million names, a digital force that the incoming White House can tap to push for his legislation, tamp down critics or bolster popular support. It's also a way for Obama to reach into every state, every city, and every neighborhood.

A study released today found that a quarter of Obama voters said they would continue to work online to support the new administration. The nonpartisan Pew Internet and American Life Project also found 62 percent of Obama's voters say they would ask others to support Obama's policies.

Welcome to the Democrats' new permanent campaign, one planned online and executed on Main Street.

If it works the way Obama's top lieutenants plan, the White House will marshal hundreds of thousands of phone calls within hours if it looks as if the president-elect were losing a policy battle. With the click of a keyboard, Obama's aides could ask supporters to flood the phone lines of Congress, making it untenable to ignore the clamor.

That, at least, is the idea. Obama's unmatched database gives his incoming administration a clear advantage over its Republican rivals, who have seen decades of datamining overcome in the matter of months. Republican leaders, though, insist they are not deterred. (AP)