January 22, 2001

The Otay Ranch housing development in eastern Chula Vista was the top selling new community in Southern California last year, reports the Meyers Group, a research firm that monitors new home sales nationwide.

Homebuilders in Otay Ranch sold a total of 871 homes during 2000, which made it the second top selling new community in California. Since its April 1999 grand opening, the community has sold more than 1,200 homes.

"Otay Ranch has consistently scored high marks with home buyers since it opened, as our numbers bear out,” says Peter Dennehy, managing director of the Meyers Group. “Otay Ranch has a wide variety of well-designed and well-priced homes in a beautiful planned setting that has enabled it to maintain its sales leadership in the county for the past five quarters. With brisk new home sales throughout the county, that’s quite an acknowledgment of Otay Ranch’s good planning and good value."

Otay Ranch currently features more than 30 models offered by a variety of homebuilders, including Pacific Coast Communities, Shea Homes, Standard Pacific Homes and William Lyon Homes. Standard Pacific Homes recently enjoyed a successful grand opening for Blossom Ridge and Rose Creek, two new neighborhoods located next to a homeowner park, starting in the low $200,000s and mid $200,000s respectively.

In late February, luxury homebuilder RWR Cos. will introduce Carriage Pointe and Belmont Ridge, offering some of the largest homes in Otay Ranch.

In March, Oakwood Development plans to open Mariposa and Manzanita Lane, two new single-family home neighborhoods. Later in the year, Otay Ranch will be introducing new neighborhoods by Continental Homes, DR Horton and William Lyon Homes.

The 5,300-acre planned community of Otay Ranch is being developed exclusively by The Otay Ranch Co. and features more than 2,500 acres set aside as a permanent open space preserve.

The Otay Ranch Information Center is located in the community’s village of Heritage at the intersection of Telegraph Canyon Road and Paseo Ranchero in Chula Vista. It is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and can be reached by taking I-805 to the Telegraph Canyon Road exit and proceeding east for two miles. The entrance to the village of Countryside is an additional two miles east at Santa Paula.

***

Qualcomm Inc. has entered into a CDMA modem card license agreement with Matsushita Electronic Components Co. Ltd.

Qualcomm has granted Matsushita a worldwide license under Qualcomm's CDMA technology and patents to build, develop, manufacture and distribute modem cards for current and third-generation (WCDMA, cdma2000, TD-SCDMA) and cdma2000 1xEV applications.

The royalties payable by Matsushita are the same irrespective of the CDMA generation and standard implemented in the modem card.

"Qualcomm is pleased to work with Matsushita Electronic Components as they develop products that support the growing CDMA wireless market," says Steve Altman, president of Qualcomm Technology Alliances. "This license agreement further validates Qualcomm's patent portfolio as essential to all the proposed CDMA standards, and will allow Matsushita Electronic Components the ability to meet the wireless Internet needs of its customers."

"The demand for wireless Internet connectivity in the CDMA marketplace is growing rapidly," says Kevin Utsunomiya, g.m., Matsushita. "Through this newly formed alliance, Matsushita is provided the opportunity to offer the CDMA-enabled devices that are necessary to keep pace with this demand."

Japan-based Matsushita Electronic Components Co., Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., producer of electronic and electric products for consumer, business and industrial use.

***

Privately-held Structural Bioinformatics Inc., a developer of computational proteomics and 3-D protein structure determination, has been awarded U.S. patent coverage on the latest innovative technology for generating 3-D protein structures.

This technology was developed by San Diego-based SBI-Moldyn, the recently acquired subsidiary of SBI located in Cambridge, Mass.

The patent, U.S. Pat. No. 6,125,235, is an important addition to SBI's growing array of rapid and yet highly accurate methods for providing the proteomics and drug discovery world with the best 3-D protein structures "on demand."

The invention known as ASTER-N (Automated STructure Estimation and Refinement for NMR) employs SBI-Moldyn's innovative and unique Nonlinear Recursive Filter (NRF) for the super-fast computer generation of 3-D structures of large proteins.

The NRF recursively processes experimental data (e.g., NMR NOE intensities) to simultaneously produce a refined structure (coordinate set) and a quantitative measure of accuracy (a covariance matrix) for each protein structure.

NMR refinement tests, conducted with the NRF on a variety of proteins, consistently demonstrate computational speed improvements of more than two orders of magnitude compared to conventional methods (e.g., simulated annealing) with equal or better accuracy.

These tests also reveal the ability to rapidly converge on the optimum refined structure even if the starting structure is far from the most favorable (i.e., a much wider radius of convergence).

ASTER-N is currently in beta testing at a number of research laboratories. The development of ASTER-N was partly supported by a Small Business Innovative Research grant from the National Institutes of Health.

***

San Diego-based HNC Software Inc. and Providence, R.I.-based Nestor Inc. have reached a settlement of their differences with regard to claims alleged in the lawsuit in Action No. 98 569 in the U.S. District Court for the district of Rhode Island, Nestor, Inc. v. HNC Software, Inc.

The terms of the settlement are confidential. The lawsuit involved claims of patent infringement and anti-trust. All claims against both sides have been dismissed.

***

Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego will utilize Front Porch Digital Inc.'s media conversion technology and services in solutions offered to its customers.

FPDI, based in Cherry Hill, NJ, is known for its software-based technology and services that can convert — in a single capture — audio, video, text and images into formats that can be accessed, managed and distributed via any digital platform, making FPDI's technology more powerful and less expensive than conventional hardware-based technology.

Using FPDI's technology, SAIC says it will be able to offer a cost-effective, one-stop solution for converting, indexing, archiving, and managing information, for customers who need to update legacy information from out-of-date analog or digital systems to modern, digital platforms, and record, store and distribute new information on modern, digital platforms. FPDI expects the relationship to generate a significant increase in annualized revenues.

"The agreement enables FPDI to quickly penetrate the lucrative commercial and government markets with our technology and services," says Jean Reiczyk, FPDI chairman and CEO. "The agreement also enables us to quickly penetrate other sectors with the information conversion and migration services offered by our Enterprise Data Management Solutions operations, which we recently acquired from StorageTek, and by our other strategic partners, ManagedStorage International and EMTEC Group."

"Coupling FPDI's technology with our storage expertise for our customers will enhance service offerings to our clients," says Robert Young, SAIC group senior v.p. for the global telecommunications group."

***

A 26-year career marked by pride in service and a commitment to continuing education paid off for Nick Hyde, a San Diego automotive parts professional.

Hyde is the recipient of the 2001 NAPA/ASE (National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence) Parts Specialist of the Year.

Now in its second year, the award recognizes a parts professional who demonstrates superior parts knowledge and business practices, shows a commitment to customer service and training, supports the community in which he or she works and demonstrates outstanding service to the automotive parts, repair and maintenance industry.

Award nominees are judged by a panel of representatives from ASE, the trade press, universities and trade associations.

Hyde works out of the NAPA San Diego Distribution Center.

***

With the Super Bowl match up set between the New York Giants and Baltimore Ravens, WebSideStory Inc. is going on the offensive to help Web sites capitalize on the blitz of Super Bowl-related visitor traffic expected in the next few weeks.

Under the promotion, San Diego-based WebSideStory will deliver immediately its high-powered HitBox Enterprise service for 30 days — and for one affordable fee — to a limited number of sites that need a solution that can supply detailed statistics on large numbers of visitors and want to accurately measure their marketing return on investment in the Super Bowl.

This includes everything from advertising and e-commerce activities to special editorial content.

"Big events offline make for big traffic spikes online," says Meyar Sheik, senior v.p. and chief marketing officer for WebSideStory. "Unfortunately, many companies are using outdated measurement technologies that cannot adequately analyze these sharp increases in visitor traffic. To help out, we want to allow a limited number of companies to experience the power of the industry's leading real-time Web analysis service so they can accurately assess their return on Super Bowl-related investment in real-time."

This limited offer is available on a first come, first-serve basis. For more information, call 1-888-844-8269 or visit www.websidestory.com or www.hitboxenterprise.com.

***

Carbite Golf will introduce a new putter and wedge line at the 2000 Professional Golf Association's Merchandise Show in Orlando, Fla. Jan. 26 through 29.

The new CAP series putters feature a combination of Carbite's new-patented "Brass Balls" insert, CAP Hosel design, and the Polar Balanced technology.

The insert is comprised of more than 23,000 miniature brass balls encapsulated in a polymer substrate.

The CAP will be available in three body styles. CAP ONE a traditional blade, CAP TWO a mid mallet and CAP THREE a full mallet. All CAP series putters feature a durable black/nickel electro plate finish.

"The CAP Series putters represent a culmination of Carbite technology and performance in a line of putters with styling flexibility to meet the needs of any golfer," says John Pierandozzi president and CEO of Carbite. "And the new Brass Balls insert truly has to be seen and felt to be believed."

The new CAP series putters have a suggested retail price of $129.95.

The Polar Balanced Wedge series combine Carbite's insert with Polar Balancing.

These wedges have the patented insert that was developed on tour and was used to win all four majors in 1998 and the U.S. Open in 1999.

The insert is made of a soft bronze metal matrix with hard particles of diamonds and tungsten carbide.

Carbite's new wedge line also includes Polar Balanced technology where tungsten is molecularly bonded to the extreme toe and heel producing a wedge that resists twisting on off center hits.

***