Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 27

Austin American Statesman statesman.com austin360.com MONDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2007 SECTION DIALING IN Microsoft and BlackBerry maker competing for consumers in cell phone business; D3 A A I I Spam' a Problem witn computers, an increasing DrU rL.Lr. and costly annoyance for cell phone users DS VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY NCS0FT HAS 'TABULA GOT GAME? Two Statesman reviewers give their impressions of the new sci-fi game from Austin's NCsoft Today in Life 4 Arts PLUGGED IN WEB DEVELOPMENT FiveRuns gets $6.2 million to boost product line, sales and marketing Austin software startup FiveRuns has raised $6.2 million from Austin Ventures to expand its product line and pump up sales and marketing. After years of creating then tweaking Richard Garriott's much-hyped developers, gamers are ready to play The company, founded in 2005, sells monitoring products for the Web 0 (v i development irameworK I called Ruby on Rails and Vf 4 1 3 Jt IT commercial systems. "All the industry signposts are pointing to Rails becoming a significant framework for Web application Olivier Thierry 1 ft Lit? i Laura Skelding AMERICAM-STATKSMAN Starr Long is one of nearly 150 people who have worked almost tirelessly to finish 'Tabula Rasa' in time for its Oct. 30 release.

Amid long days spent working out the game's bugs, Long has been known to sleep on the beanbag in his office. development," chief executive Olivier Thierry said. "We're in a very cool space and we have a very aggressive business plan." FiveRuns, which has raised a total of $9.2 million to date, has 11 employees and expects to double that in the next year. Thierry said. The company's software helps Ruby on Rails developers, administrators and service providers build, run and monitor applications.

CHIP MANUFACTURING AMD building research center, aims to increase factory productivity Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is setting up a specialized research center in Austin to study how to generate more productivity in chip factories. The company's manufacturing is centered in Dresden, Germany, but much of its computerized factory control software is developed in Austin. Traditionally, the enormous efficiency in chip manufacturing comes in part from long production runs of identical products. But AMD is studying how it can create the same efficiencies with more specialized chips that have shorter production runs.

The Austin center, to be built from a converted warehouse on South Congress Avenue, is part of that effort, according to the trade publication Semiconductor International. An AMD spokesman confirmed the project, but offered few details. ENGINEERING Austrian company hires Austinite as executive VP of engineering Austin has a strong base of talented chip engineers who don't want to live anywhere else. As a result, the city has attracted a good number of satellite engineering centers for companies based elsewhere. A case in point is On Demand Microelectronics, a spinoff from Analog Devices, based in Vienna, Austria.

On Demand has hired Austinite David Baker as its executive vice president of engineering. The company is working on chip technologies for video processing and advanced image processing. Baker formerly worked at Legerity and SigmaTel in Austin. He started an Austin engineering office for Brooktree Corp. that has become an engineering center for Conexant Systems Inc.

for 1 mm By Lilly Rockwell AMHKICAVSTATISM STAFF I was the Friday before Labor Day, and Starr Long and his team were buckling down for a long weekend. here. I'm not going anywhere." Welcome to crunch time, the intense period when game developers scramble to finish the last elements and work out the last kinks before a game goes on sale and tens of thousands of players around the world begin playing it simultaneously. The stakes are high: No new game is bug-free, but if players find too many bugs, sales can flop. That's an expensive proposition, given the $15 million to $25 million cost of bringing a game to market.

And "Tabula Rasa" isn't just any game. It's the most anticipated game developed in Austin in the past 10 years. If it's a hit, it will generate millions in revenue for NCsoft and bolster the reputation of creator Richard Garriott, already a legend in the gaming world. And it could raise Austin's profile as See CRUNCH, D6 While most other, Austinites were heading to the lake or a backyard barbecue, employees at NCsoft Austin game design studios were shuffling in for a morning meeting to hash out the latest fixes needed in "Tabula Rasa," an online game that was just two months from release after six years of work. "Are y'all here this weekend?" one team member asked.

"Oh, yeah," replied a weary and unshaven worker. "We're here Monday. We're here this weekend. We were here last weekend. We're INSIDE Three principal players responsible for making the game a reality D6 NCsoft's sales numbers D6 A Tabula Rasa' timeline D7 COMPUTERS COMPUTERS CORPORATE STRATEGY H-P finds success with software Fueled by acquisitions, new focus boosts profit margins By Connie Guglielmo BLOOMBERG NEWS SAN FRANCISCO -r Hewlett-Packard Co.

chief executive Mark Hurd, who revived the company by outselling Dell Inc. in personal computers, is close to a payoff in a more lucrative product: software. Hurd sliced more than VENTURE CAPITAL CIA's In-Q-Tel not just spying on innovation Agency's VC arm helps fund, guide select tech companies ByKambizForoohar BLOOMBERG NEWS NEW YORK MotionDSP Inc. co-founder Sean Varah was in his office in San Mateo, in October 2006 when he got an e-mail from a potential investor. The sender had been cruising the technology blog TechCrunch and read a posting about MotionDSP's software, which enhances images from videos and mobile phones.

Two weeks later, four engineers flew in to test the program. In April, the startup landed an undisclosed sum. There's a twist to this tale: MotionDSP's investor isn't a neighboring venture capital firm or an acquisitive company such as Microsoft Corp. The money came from In-Q-Tel, the VC business of the Central Intelligence Agency. "In-Q-Tel allows the CIA a foothold in the Silicon Valley," says Gregory Treverton, a senior policy analyst at Rand a California-based public policy institute.

Since In-Q-Tel was founded in 1999, the firm has reviewed more than 6,300 business plans for everything from identity recognition software to nano-sized electronic circuits. In-Q-Tel I XPS 420 desktop Doll unveils high-end multimedia desktop computer for consumers Dell Inc. launched a high-end computer that speeds up digital video processing, integrates a small screen in the PC tower for quick access to stored content and' comes with Adobe's digital entertainment software. The XPS 420 desktop is Dell's newest computer in its high-end consumer line. The desktop includes a small screen on the top that gives users access to music and certain functions without the keyboard and mouse.

It can be used to play music, show photos and video or monitor the PC. The panel is similar to the small Windows SideShow screens on the outside of some new notebook PC models. The new model also will come with elements of some of Adobe's most popular software, including Photoshop. The package will allow users to manage photos, audio files and video, and comes with a shared organizer that all three applications can pull from. It's the first time Adobe has packaged elements of its photo, audio and video applications together.

The price starts at $1,499. $3 billion in costs to undercut Dell on personal computer prices even as he poured $6.5 billion into software acquisitions. Last month, he nabbed his sixth company in two years after winning a bidding war for Opsware the software maker started by Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen. The spending, and Hurd's Mark Hurd took over as H-P chief in April 2005. Katharine Lambert Bloomberg news Christopher Darby, chief executive officer of In-Q-Tel, says the venture capital arm of the CIA has a mission to foster technology that can help fight terrorism and increase national security.

has put about $200 million into more than 100 companies, beating traditional VC investors to such technologies as the mapping software that's become Google Earth. "One of the most important things about In-Q-Tel is that they're out there proactively looking for companies," Varah says. "They have a customer with a high technical standard." In-Q-Tel hasn't escaped controversy in its eight years as the CIA's venture arm. Until See VENTURE, D7 decision in 2005 to stop giving programs away to computer buyers, could help triple profit in software to $253 million this year. Software, a money-losing unit when Hurd took over in April 2005, delivered a higher profit margin than the printing unit for the first time last quarter.

"We've just seen the tip of the iceberg here See SOFTWARE, D7.