Dean Takahashi

Atlanta-based is a Web security company that serves business users. Now, though, the company is announcing a new consumer service that helps users screen through bad Web sites or check the identities of people they don’t know. Dubbed Purewire Trust, the service deals with three threats: potentially malicious people, unsafe places on the Web and unsafe things such as strange Java applications. With Purewire Trust, you simply type in someone’s e-mail address and you can collect a bunch of information about them. With the e-mail search, you can find out if an eBay user has a good reputation, or...

Two companies with strong connections to North Carolina are teaming up for a new venture that is designed to make mobile printing easier. is steadily expanding the reach of its inkless printing technology, striking a deal with Dell to license technology for use in the Dell Wasabi PZ310 Ink-free Mobile printer. Zink operates its major manufacturing plant in Whitsett, N.C., in Guilford County. Dell operates its largest manufacturing plant in Winston-Salem. Bedford, Mass-based Zink Imaging figured out how to print without inkjet cartridges by embedding dried ink in paper. It heats the ink in precise locations to form an...

Every few months I like to get a pulse on the venture capital market. It keeps changing so fast that you don’t really know what’s going on until you catch up with the people in the thick of it. I had a chance to do that this week while moderating a panel of three venture capitalists for the Telecommunications Industry Association. Before a small crowd at Cisco’s headquarters in San Jose, Calif., the VCs — Ajay Chopra of Trinity Ventures, Eric Zimits of Granite Ventures, and Michel Wendell of Nexit Ventures — painted a familiar picture of how tough...

The worldwide video game industry is experiencing healthy revenue growth. In the U.S., sales grew 19 percent to $22 billion in 2008, according to market researcher NPD. That has been a cause for much celebration as games outrun the recession. But market researcher DFC Intelligence in La Jolla, Calif., has a different take. In a report on Wednesday, the company asked whether revenue gains are coming at the expense of profits. And, while U.S. companies have collectively suffered losses in 2007 and 2008, Asian companies are more profitable because they have embraced new online business models that keep the...