Daily News Briefs

Optics for Hire, an Arlington, Mass., provider of outsourced optics services, announced that Hitachi Via Mechanics USA Inc.'s Emerging Technology Group, in Londonderry, N.H., has selected it to provide optoelectronics prototyping and optical modeling. Hitachi Via Mechanics ETG makes manufacturing equipment, optical systems and assembly/fabrication processes for the microelectronics packaging, telecommunications and micro-systems market. The Optics for Hire R&D team is comprised of 18 physicists, optical engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, software engineers and CAD designers based in the Ukraine. . . . Trimble, a Sunnyvale, Calif., developer of global positioning system (GPS) technology, announced today it has supplied 156 of its GeoExplorer GPS handheld receivers to Poland's Agency for Restructuring and Modernization of Agriculture, a government agency responsible for the implementation of European Union-related agriculture subsidies. The agency will use the Trimble GeoXT receivers to collect and record GPS location data on the cultivated land and then periodically update the information at its headquarters in Warsaw and at 12 regional offices throughout Poland. Each GeoXT will be equipped with the Polish version of Trimble's TerraSync Professional field software. . . . Zoran Corp. announced it has integrated the capabilities of five separate components into its new SupraHD family of high-definition television processors including the video decoder, HDMI receiver, 1394, audio DAC and an advanced video processing engine to control and directly drive LCD and other high-definition television displays. The products were demonstrated at the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show, being held through Sunday in Las Vegas.