Automation Alley adds 33 new members in July
Automation Alley, Michigan’s largest technology business association, announced this week that 33 new member companies joined the organization in July. As usual, IT companies led the way in new members, with nine. Manufacturing was the field for five new members, and business services was third with four. More.
Taubman offers online wayback machine for back-to-school shoppers
Taubman Centers Inc. is offering teens a wacky wayback machine online as they get ready to head back to school. Taubman's Detroit-area centers -- Fairlane Town Center, Great Lakes Crossing, The Mall at Partridge Creek and Twelve Oaks Mall -- have launched an online and in-center experience that allows teens to see what they might have looked like when their parents were in school, while catching up on current back-to-school fashions. The campaign, created by Minneapolis-based ad agency Colle McVoy, features a new Web site, www.YearbookYourself.com, which allows visitors to upload their photos and morph their faces onto yearbook photos spanning five decades. More.
Pontiac hospital offers less invasive kidney tumor surgery
Pontiac's St. Joseph Mercy Oakland hospital announced Wednesday that its doctors have performed their first kidney tumor removal using radio frequency waves rather than traditional invasive surgery. The new method, called CT-guided percutaneous radio frequency ablation, is less traumatic for the patient than traditional kidney tumor removal and results in almost no blood loss. After surgery, the patient is hospitalized for only one day. More.
Priceline.com finalizes plans for West Michigan call center
Norwalk, Conn.-based Priceline.com Inc. Wednesday said it had signed a long-term lease and is moving forward with plans to establish a new customer contact center in the Grand Rapids suburb of Wyoming. The new Michigan call center will occupy 45,670 square feet of a former Siemens Dematic office building at 4147 Eastern Ave. SE. It will provide support for customers who make hotel reservations through Booking.com, Priceline’s international business unit. The center also will house credit control operations and writers, translators and editors responsible for generating content for Booking.com’s Web sites, which are available in 18 languages in 65 countries. More.
X-Rite sales rise slightly, but profits still elusive
Kentwood-based X-Rite Inc. reported a 1.7 percent rise in second quarter sales over the year-earlier period, as well as a net loss of $20.9 million. Company officials said they didn't provide a comparable second-quarter 2007 figure because the operations of Europe's Pantone, acquired last Oct. 27, were so different from those of a publicly held company that direct comparisons were impossible. Revenue in the second quarter was $73.5 million, up 1.7 percent from $72.3 million in the second quarter of 2007 on a pro forma combined basis. Pantone's sales contribution was $11.6 million in the second quarter. X-Rite sells hardware, software and services for the communication and verification of color data. Its markets range from coatings to graphic arts. More.
Can you enjoy a cool cruiser -- AND get great fuel economy?
Join WWJ Newsradio 950 and the Michigan Economic Development Corp. for "High Mileage Muscle -- Cruisin' Into the Future," a business breakfast moderated by WWJ Automotive Insight host John McElroy.
The event will begin with breakfast at 7:15 a.m. and the program at 8 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 15 at Forte Restaurant, 201 S. Old Woodward Ave., Birmingham.
A high energy panel discussion where you'll hear from the people who are responsible for some of the coolest vehicles on the road today -- like the incredibly fast Corvette ZR1, the all new Dodge Challenger and Mustangs that can blow your doors off. How do we keep making cars like this with high gasoline prices and new fuel economy rules on the horizon?
Panelists are Hermann Salenbauch - Director of Advanced Product Creation and Special Vehicle Team, Ford Motor Co.; Tom McCarthy, an engineer at Chrysler's SRT (Street And Racing Technology) Performance Division; and Tom Wallace, Vehicle Line Executive of Performance Cars and Compact Rear Wheel Drive Performance Cars, GM North America
Advanced registration is required. Tickets to the event are $25. To register for High Mileage Muscle - Cruisin' Into The Future, click here.
Note: For information on how you can sponsor content in the Blue Box, contact Dan Keelan at (248) 455-7380 or dkeelan@cbs.com.
InfuSystem Holdings revenue rises as losses shrink
Madison Heights-based InfuSystem Holdings Inc., a provider of ambulatory infusion pumps and associated clinical services, Wednesday announced financial results and provided a business update for the second quarter of 2008. InfuSystem was spun out of I-Flow Corp. last year. Revenue for the second quarter ended June 30 was $8.8 million, up from $7.8 million at the former InfuSystem Inc. subsidiary of I-Flow. The net loss for the second quarter was $1.8 million, or 10 cents a share, compared to net loss of $2.2 million or 12 cents a share for the same period in 2007. More.
General Dynamics gets $600 million tank tech project
The United States Army's TACOM Lifecycle Management Command awarded General Dynamics Land Systems $614 million to upgrade 235 M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks to the M1A2 Systems Enhancement Package Version Two configuration. The most technologically advanced digital tank, the M1A2 SEP V2 includes improved color displays, day and night thermal sights, auxiliary power and a tank-infantry phone. Some of the work will be done at General Dynamics' Sterling Heights center. More.
MSU hoops coach listens, learns at MVU online learning event
Freely admitting that he wasn't an online learning expert, Michigan State University head basketball coach Tom Izzo still motivated a roomful of Michigan Virtual School online teachers, sharing his own history and expertise as an educator, motivator and coach during an event at MSU's Henry Center on Wednesday. Izzo addressed nearly 100 MVS teachers, staff and administrators at Michigan Virtual University's fourth annual "Collaboration of the Minds." This two-day event brings together online educators from around the state, and a few from outside the state, to share information, learn new skills and prepare for another school year. MVS offers online courses to middle and high school students. More.
THE WORLD IN TECH
Study finds Net search becoming far more prevalent The search box is everywhere online these days. It's built into Web browsers. It's incorporated into Web sites of all sorts. And it's a major driver of traffic and revenue for Google Inc. and the like. So it should come as no surprise that nearly half of Internet users conduct a search on a typical day, up from about a third in 2002, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said Wednesday. Search is approaching e-mail as the most popular thing to do on the Internet; about 60 percent use e-mail on any given day. Firing off queries to search engines seems to be replacing a different kind of Internet starting point that people used to favor: making rounds of checks on previously visited, bookmarked sites. More.
Effort aims to bring banking to a billion poor via cell phone
It can scale mountains in a single bound and wend its way down the most wretched roads. It is the mighty cell phone signal - and the latest hope for bringing financial services to the world's masses who don't have access to banks. Grameen Solutions, an affiliate of Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus' Grameen Bank, this week teamed with Obopay Inc., a for-profit mobile payment company based in California, to bring banking to a billion poor people using cell phones. The joint venture plans to launch pilot programs in India and Bangladesh in October and aims to reach 1 billion people globally by 2018, in large part by keeping costs ultra low - possibly through the help of charitable foundations. More.
Dell says its operations are now carbon-neutral
Computers are far from being truly clean machines, but Dell Inc. and other PC makers are trying to make their own business operations greener. Dell said Wednesday its facilities worldwide are now carbon neutral, a goal the Round Rock, Texas-based company had set to achieve by the end of 2008. Dane Parker, its director for environment, health and safety, said Dell buys renewable energy - including wind, solar and methane gas - directly from utilities to fulfill one-fifth of its energy needs. There is not enough green energy available for all of Dell's requirements, so for the other 80 percent, Dell buys regular "brown" power, Parker said, plus enough renewable energy credits to offset that power's carbon emissions. More.
Scientists hope for new tricks in data analysis
It turns out even computers can have information overload. Powerful computers can make millions of calculations in a blink of the eye, but that leaves a nettlesome challenge: the task of analyzing the resulting mountains of data. In response, scientists are exploring new ways to sift through huge troves of information and transform them into tidbits that researchers, health officials and even police officers can act on. The idea received a boost Wednesday as Georgia Tech announced it received a $3 million grant aimed at establishing visual and data analytics as a distinct research field for the first time. More.
Stocks: Tech sector benefits from oil's fall, dollar's rise
The technology sector recovered from a sluggish start, getting a boost from the decline in crude-oil prices and a firmer dollar. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index (COMP) gained 28.54 points or 1.2 percent to 2,378.37. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU) rose 40.3 points or 0.3 percent to 11,656.07. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index ($SOX) jumped 10.63 points or 3.1 percent to 350.33 and the Morgan Stanley High Tech 35 Index (MSH) rose 4.79 points or 0.8 percent to 573.57. The Amex Pharmaceutical Index ($DRG) rose 0.57 points or 0.6 percent to 315.66, while the Amex Biotech Index (BTK) rose 12.63 points or less than 1.5 percent to 864.19. The S&P 500 ($SPX) rose 4.31 points, or 0.3 percent, to finish at 1,289.19. In energy trading, oil futures continued to fall, with crude for September delivery ending down 59 cents at $118.58, after news of an unexpected increase in last week's U.S. inventories. The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was at 74.258, up from 73.948 in late North American trading Tuesday.
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High Tech Muscle Cars On Tap At Biz Breakfast
