This week’s tech news was dominated by a certain new device from Apple, but we found quite a few other things to write about on the San Diego tech scene.
—Our in-house gadgetphile, Wade Roush, previewed the market introduction of Apple’s iPad with a survey of Xconomy readers, and followed it up with a story about his victorious experience in buying one on opening day. There are comments all over the map here on whether this new thing is revolutionary or evolutionary. I haven’t checked out the tool myself, but I will say that Jay Flatley, the CEO of San Diego-based genomics powerhouse Illumina (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ILMN]]), told me on Thursday that he was excited to get his iPad over the weekend. Flatley made a bold prediction that the iPad will be better for reading books than Amazon’s Kindle.
—San Diego-based Hookit, a maker of social networking tools for action-sports players, has been on a torrid growth curve, according to this feature story from freelancer Nathan Bomey. The growth is all the more impressive given how Hookit has been embroiled in a trademark dispute that could have caused serious trouble.
—Anybody looking for the next big thing in San Diego 20 years from now ought to take a look at computational neuroscience. That was one of the bits of advice we heard from legendary biotech entrepreneur Paul Schimmel of The Scripps Research Institute at Xconomy’s San Diego Life Sciences 2030 event last week.
—Regular readers know we love to dig up news you can’t find anywhere else about San Diego’s innovation community, and here’s a good example. We found four small financings of interesting local companies, with some help from our partner CB Insights.
—Denise offered up a timely profile of a San Diego company that is looking to seize on the trend toward more cost-effective healthcare. NextImage Medical is seeking to increase the efficiency of radiology exams, which is part of what drives up the costs of worker’s compensation insurance in California.
—We learned from scanning the SEC filings that IO Semiconductor, a San Diego fabless chip design startup, has raised $1 million in debt and equity-based funding, out of a $14 million planned offering.
