Internet company moves headquarters to Providence
PROVIDENCE – Orbidex.com, an Internet start-up company, announced the relocation of its headquarters to this city, after operating in three different locations – Providence, Marblehead, Mass., and Hackensack, NJ. Officials of both the company and Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. credit the state’s mass-exodus.com web site and advertising program for luring Orbidex.com and three other companies to Rhode Island. A press release, co-authored by the company and RIEDC, says Orbidex.com is joining SalFirst.com of Bristol, Mirror Image of Pawtucket and bx.com of Providence as companies that have moved to the state as a result of the advertising campaign. Officials said two other companies are expected to move by the end of the month, and another 150 have responded to the campaign.
Orbidex.com is an Internet service company for the art, antiques and other fine objects community. It offers solutions for developing professional web stores and managing business-to-consumer and businesses to business electronic commerce. It customers, the release said, are merchants, dealers, artists and other related professionals.
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Adero to buy StarBurst Software
CHARLESTOWN, Mass. – Adero, Inc. announced that it is buying StarBurst Software of Concord, Mass. as it continues its effort to boost its role in the Internet access market. A week earlier Adero announced that it had purchased Fast Engines, Inc. of Cambridge, a developer of systems to speed up Web-based transactions. Terms of the two transactions were not disclosed. StarBurst specializes in a system that can, at once, push large amounts of content from World Wide Web servers to “caches” contained within the Internet service providers’ networks so that users can get directly to the content without having to travel the Internet.
HarvardNet gets Enron Broadband contract
CHARLESTOWN, Mass. – HarvardNet reported it had been selected by Enron Broadband Services of Houston, Texas, to fill out the Enron Intelligent Network delivering high-content information and streaming videoconferencing to business net users. HarvardNet serves businesses along the Eastern seaboard from Maine to Virginia. HarvardNet is a provider of digital subscriber line fast Internet access and Web page hosting for businesses.
Three directors resign from Network Six board
WARWICK – Three of four directors of Network Six, an information technology company based here, have resigned for what a news release described as “personal reasons and philosophical differences” with Kenneth C. Kirsch, the president, chairman of the board and chief executive of the company. The resigning directors are Ralph O. Cote, Nicholas R. Supron and Peter C. Wallace. None of the three is employed by the company. Kirsch, the remaining board member, named two replacements, Donna J. Guido, Network Six’s vice president for information services, and Henry N. Huta, president and chief executive officer of BIW Tamaqua Cables, which is part of Draka Holdings, NV, which is listed on the Netherlands Stock Exchange. A fourth board member will be named soon from outside the company, a spokesman said. The company’s annual meeting is in May.
Idealab! to open in Boston; funding doesn’t nix IPO
Boston (Bloomberg) – Idealab!, which creates and builds Internet businesses, will open a Boston office in a few months, its fourth, and is considering expanding to Europe and Asia. Bruce Johnston, formerly a principal with Boston-based venture capital firm TA Associates, was named president of idealab’s Boston office. Johnston also previously oversaw corporate development for software maker Lotus Development, a unit of IBM Corp. Idealab, which plans to go public in a few months, last week said it had raised $1 billion from investors that include Dell Computer Corp., T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., and Hikari Tsushin, a Japanese mobile phone distributor. Idealab was valued at about $7.5 billion, based on the $100 million that Hikari Tsushin paid for 1.34 percent of idealab. The funds will be used to expand abroad, help finance new businesses, acquire assets to strengthen ties among idealab’s network of 50 companies, and increase stakes in some of its companies. The Boston office will be idealab’s fourth after New
York; Silicon Valley, and its Pasadena, California, headquarters. Idealab also is looking to expand in Europe and possibly in Asia.
Belo plans personalized weather forecasts
DALLAS – A.H. Belo, parent company of the Providence Journal announced that Belo Interactive, Inc., its Internet subsidiary, has reached an agreement with Digital Cyclone, a privately held Internet technology company, to market and distribute My-Cast, a new customized weather reporting service, through Belo’s Web sites. The service provides current weather conditions within a three- mile radius of most metropolitan areas. My-Cast is free to consumers, who will be able to register on Belo’s Web sites to receive the information via email or the Internet. Belo has made an equity investment of approximately $5 million in Digital Cyclone and will have exclusive rights to market My-Cast in all Belo markets.
