| Fujifilm Launches $1.45 Billion Bid for Toyama Chemical
Digital camera and medical equipment maker Fujifilm Holdings said on Wednesday it will spend up to 155 billion yen ($1.45 billion) to take control of drug maker Toyama Chemical to grow in the pharmaceuticals market. Fujifilm, the world's second-largest maker of endoscopes behind Olympus, is offering 880 yen per Toyama Chemical share in a tender offer from Feb 19 to March 18 -- a 39 percent premium to its latest close. Fujifilm will aim to buy at least 73.19 million shares, but will purchase all shares tendered with the exception of the 43 million shares, or 22 percent stake, held by top Toyama shareholder Taisho Pharmaceutical. That means Fujifilm's total bill for the tender offer could reach 135 billion yen. In addition, Fujifilm will buy about 20 billion yen worth of new shares issued by Toyama Chemical in a private placement at the end of February.
Microsoft brings 360-degree videoconferencing to Ireland
A tabletop device, not much bigger than a traditional speakerphone at the base, it captures and provides a 360-degree panoramic view of everyone at the meeting. Microsoft RoundTable follows the conversation, identifying individual speakers and broadcasting their image in close-up as they talk; as people enter the conversation, the system cuts seamlessly between active speakers.
Traditional audio teleconferencing presents problems, with effective interaction falling away as the number of participants increases establishing who is speaking at any given time becomes more and more difficult.
Videoconferencing systems overcome this obstacle but are expensive and difficult to install, and can be complicated to operate. The results are a limited number of expensively adapted meeting rooms, which often need to be booked days in advance.
Rants + Raves
Write a tough story about Apple and the Macolytes will attack. We learned as much from our November issue, in which we dinged the ROKR handset from Apple, Motorola, and Cingular. "Apple doesn't call this the phone of the future," ranted one loyalist. "Blaming Apple for this crappy phone is just pedestrian Apple bashing at its worst." Hey, when Steve Jobs trots out something on a giant videoscreen, it's fair game. Other grumps took issue with a quote we attributed to Mark Twain: "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." Wrote one aspiring fact-checker, "This remark was actually made by his neighbor and good friend Charles Dudley Warner." Actually, Warner did say it, but it's believed he was merely quoting his pal Twain. Now, about that cold winter he spent one summer in San Francisco … .
Expo Notes: Wi-Fi memory card adds iPhoto support
Editor's Note: All this week, Macworld editors will report from the Macworld Expo show floor on meetings with Mac developers, new product announcements, and anything else that catches their eye. Tired of hunting down your camera cable or memory card reader every time you need to download photos from your digital camera? If you have a wireless network set up, the $100 Eye-Fi Card by Eye-Fi lets you download your photos without any strings attached. .
Dart tourney's hazy days are numbered
Casual observation tells Bruner that generally, more players smoke than don't smoke, but that number is probably on the decline as more people quit smoking. Still, the environment is not a surprise to participants."It's a bar sport. The players that don't smoke know what they're getting into when they walk in," he said.Players' opinion of the ban varies.Rodney Van Sambeek, Aaron Anderson and Cal Hanson, all nonsmokers from Corona, would prefer a smoke-free environment but were enjoying themselves Friday despite the haze in Rushmore Hall."We tolerate it," Van Sambeek said. "I tell my wife it's not the beer that gives me a hangover, it's the smoke."All three said they would probably be back in two years, either way.Amy Goodrich and Heather Wurts of Highmore said the civic center may see participants dwindle if the city doesn't reinstate a smoking exception for the tournament."Or Rapid City is going to have to hold it somewhere else," Goodrich, a smoker, said."I could probably handle not smoking during matches," she allowed.
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