thinfilmmfg.com Around the Web Weblog Home

WWW thinfilmmfg.com

Katherine's Blog

Obsessions: Thin films, writing, small business, and random web flotsam

February 16, 2002

 
As the Hynix-Micron negotiations drag on, the Far Eastern Economic Review explains that South Korea's lack of a bankruptcy mechanism to restructure corporate debts leaves potential buyers wary of ugly financial surprises.

Walter Mathews, co-founder of Mathews & Clark Communications (now Positio Investor and Public Relations), died Thursday after a long illness. He was 68. Walt was a pioneer in industry public relations. More important, he was a wonderfully warm and funny person. He'll be missed.
posted 14:29 |

February 15, 2002

 
The links are spreading. There's a link to this page over at Jeri-Tallee Dawson's weblog, just me and my muse. Thanks! And welcome to any visitors coming from that-a-way.

Speaking of links, anyone with a blog should register it at blogdex. They track links to and from registered blogs, and use them for all sorts of statistics about blogs and connectedness in general.
posted 20:24 |

 
From the mailbag:
International Sematech announced it has named Motorola's Betsy Weitzman as VP and COO for advanced technology. She will oversee the operations and strategy of the Lithography, Front End Processes, and Interconnect Divisions.
posted 14:57 |

 
CERN, home of the world's most powerful particle accelerators, has a habit of revolutionizing computing. The Web itself began when CERN researcher Tim Berners-Lee needed a way to make data collected at one lab accessible to scientists around the world. Now, the lab is working on plans for a mammoth distributed computing system called the European DataGrid. Particle accelerators produce a lot of data, so much that they outstrip even Moore's Law-driven increases in computing power. CERN's Large Hadron Supercollider (LHC), now under construction, will generate more than 10 million gigabytes of data each year, enough to fill about 20 million CD-ROMs. With the DataGrid, CERN hopes to get a thousand times more computing power by 2006, when the LHC is due to become operational.
posted 12:17 |

 
Kionix has built a new fab for MEMS accelerometers from the ground up. The company hopes to ramp its capacity from 10 million to 20 million devices per year in the next six months.
posted 12:01 |

February 13, 2002

 
Add Vietnam to the list of emerging semiconductor suppliers. Saigon Investment Group (SIG) plans to invest US$30 million to build a wafer manufacturing plant west of Ho Chi Minh city. SIG did not say what wafer size it is targeting. I would guess 300-mm, since it plans to sell them for US$500 each. First production is planned for August or September 2002, with target capacity of 10,000 wafers/month.
posted 17:13 |

February 12, 2002

 
Most of the world's population may be celebrating something today. For people who observe the Chinese (and Korean and Vietnamese) lunar calendar, it's the first day of the Year of the Horse. For Roman Catholics, it's Fat Tuesday, also known as Mardi Gras, the last day before Lent. For those locked in the February doldrums, it's the best excuse to get out and do something since New Year's. Enjoy!
posted 09:20 |

February 11, 2002

 
From the mailbag:
Optical glass supplier Corning rolled out a new web page recently. A nice contrast to the VLSI Research page I complained about earlier. Company contact information, basic facts, and news releases are all easy to find. Scripts and graphics enhance navigation rather than obscuring it. The whole thing runs fast, too, which is unfortunately not true of many corporate sites. Well done!
posted 15:31 |

 
VLSI Research is one of the top analysis firms in the semiconductor manufacturing business. Too bad their web site is one of the most annoying I've seen. The home page features three different scrolling windows, all of which are too small to actually read. The navigation links are badly named: where the heck does a link called "Definitions" go, anyway? Worse, gratuitous use of Javascript makes it impossible to link or bookmark anywhere except the home page or to break out of the user-hostile frames scheme.

Oh, and the site also hasn't been updated since last year.
posted 11:10 |

Back to top