Briefs: Plastic Logic targets business market; Bango sees increased use of mobile internet in US
The electronic reader industry is poised for explosive growth beginning in 2009, according to Plastic Logic. But current products focus on leisure reading and ignore a large and untapped market: business users, it said.
Plastic Logic previewed a "game changing" new device at the DEMOfall 08 technology conference that delivers a range of business information with powerful tools.
Differentiated by a form factor (the size of 8.5 x 11-inch paper), the Plastic Logic reader features a big readable display. Yet it's thinner than a pad of paper, lighter than many business periodicals, and offers a high-quality reading experience - better than alternatives of paper or other electronic readers on the market.
The Plastic Logic reader supports business document formats, such as Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and Adobe PDFs, as well as newspapers, periodicals and books. It has a gesture-based user interface and software that will help business users to organize and manage information. Users can connect either wired or wirelessly and store thousands of documents on the device. The reader incorporates E Ink technology for readability and features low power consumption and long battery life. The Plastic Logic reader is scheduled to ship in the first half of 2009.
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Bango plc, a mobile internet technology company, said it is seeing increasing use of the mobile internet in the US, as evidenced by a four-fold increase in the monthly number of WAP transactions being processed by its billing platform in the US compared with 3 months ago.
Leading content providers including Gameloft and Dada Entertainment are choosing to sell their content using Bango's mobile billing relationships with AT&T Mobility, Sprint Nextel and Virgin Mobile. WAP billing means that the 130 million plus subscribers to these networks can now pay for mobile content either per download or as a subscription, charging it to their phone bill using the same familiar "browse and buy" experience used on the PC internet and their operator's portal.
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Brady plc, supplier of trading and risk management software for metals and commodities, appointed Xavier Dousteyssier to run its Southern Europe operations.
Mr Dousteyssier graduated from ESCP EAP Business School (Paris, Oxford and Berlin) and Dousteyssier has held a number of senior positions in the industry. He spent four years in Reuters in Paris working as a capital markets specialist and business development manager. This was followed by eight years in Sungard Trading & Risk where initially he was the business development manager for France and later took the position of sales director for France, Belgium and Luxembourg. Most recently he was the regional director for Southern Europe for Trema.
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Stratech Scientific APAC is the new exclusive supplier of the Expedeon range of protein processing and analysis technology products. Stratech, located in Sydney, Australia, will supply Expedeon's complete product range, including their Nvoy technology for protein protection and protein folding.
Along with products for protein Quantitiation, staining (InstantBlue) and the RunBlue Electrophoresis range of equipment throughout Australia & New Zealand.
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Lectus Therapeutics Ltd, the drug discovery and development company focusing on next-generation ion channel modulators, said it had appointed Dr Edwin Moses as Non-Executive Chairman and Professor Raymond G Hill as a non-executive director to the company's main board. The company also announced that it had appointed Dr Chas Bountra, as Chairman, and Professor Annette Dolphin to its Scientific Advisory Board.
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Biopharma Domainex Ltd said it had been granted a European Patent for its Combinatorial Domain Hunting (CDH) Technology.
Domainex is a research company developing a pipeline of pre-clinical drugs and targets, specializing in the development of novel drug targets reached by the CDH technology. The Company is also providing its unique structural biology and chemistry services to major pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms.
Domainex's CDH technology enables the cloning and expression of recombinant proteins, or parts of proteins, from molecular targets. These proteins are then screened to select soluble, stable protein domains that are ideal reagents for use in drug discovery programmes.
