State OKs $25 million for Great Lakes research lab at Michigan Tech Michigan Technological University has long been a leader in research related to the Great Lakes. Now that research is going to have a new home, on the campus waterfront. Monday, Lt. Gov. John Cherry, acting for Gov. Jennifer Granholm, signed a capital outlay bill authorizing Michigan Technological University to spend $25 million to build a Great Lakes research center along the Portage Canal on the University's campus. The project will include construction of a three-story research building and enhancement of Michigan Tech's waterfront. More.
UM tech transfer helps start 13 new businesses in fiscal year The University of Michigan licensed 13 new business startups in fiscal year 2008, tying a record set four years ago, while tech transfer revenue hit an all-time high of $25 million. Several of the fledgling companies offer novel treatments and diagnostics for diseases ranging from end-stage kidney disease to cancer, hearing loss, sepsis, diabetic ulcers and autoimmune disorders. Others provide new tools for the production of next-generation vehicle batteries, semiconductor chips, and packaging of micro-electro-mechanical systems. Over the last five years, the University has helped launch 49 startups. More than 70 percent of them are located in Michigan, mainly in the greater Ann Arbor area. More.
Lansing's NioWave gets $1 million contract from Fermilab
Lansing-based Niowave Inc. Monday announced a $1.04 million contract with the Fermi national laboratory in Batavia, Ill. The contract will cover the construction of six multi-cell superconducting accelerating cavities in a joint effort with C. F. Roark Welding and Engineering of Indianapolis. The nine-cell accelerating cavities will be a part of the International Linear Collider project. The multi-cell cavities will be fabricated out of the superconducting element niobium, and will create accelerating fields of 25 mega-volts per meter, which will be used to accelerate particle beams to nearly the speed of light. More.
Consumers dissatisfied with cable, prefer telecom bundles
Consumers would prefer to bundle communications services with telecommunication companies by a 2 to 1 margin to cable companies if given the choice, according to the second annual Telecom-Cable Industry Satisfaction Study from Ann Arbor-based CFI Group. However, cable companies still provide bundled communications to twice as many consumers surveyed as do telecom companies, according to the survey of more than 1,200 households. More.
Auburn Hills firm's high-tech siding hits the market
Auburn Hills-based Microposite Inc. said Monday that its next-generation new residential siding has gone on sale in select markets in the northeastern United States. The siding is distributed exclusively through BlueLinx Corp., one of the nation's leading building products distributors. Leveraging patented closed-cell technology, Microposite delivers an R-value 1.5 times higher than wood and 3.5 times higher than fiber cement, while also weighing in at half the weight of fiber cement siding -- and while looking like real wood. More.
More than just flowers at Oakwood's new online store Dearborn-based Oakwood Healthcare System plans to go live Monday with an online store. The Web site will combine online ordering of goods from the hospital's gift shop with pharmacy, medical equipment and home health products. The Web site was developed by Thomas M. Drummy, director of retail strategies at Oakwood, and David Stanis, its director of digital communications, with design assistance from Lansing-based Artemis Solutions. The initial site will be fairly basic, but future versions will add baby gear, a sleep shop and eventually the ability to send patients home with all the gear and medications they need to continue their recovery. More.
Economics Dept.: Market crisis starting to hurt Main Street
Our sister publication The Daily Dash finds that the crisis on Wall Street is having a real impact on the economy, including hiring plans, a survey of finance executives finds. Nearly 40 percent of executives polled by the Association for Financial Professionals said their companies experienced restrictions in their access to short-term credit over the previous two weeks. The survey, which was released Friday, found that the tightening credit market is having a material impact on how most companies operate. Without a rapid resolution to the crisis, the impact will be even more dramatic, the executives reported. More.
AT&T's U-verse arrives in Flint, Tri-Cities Residents in Flint, Midland and Saginaw and surrounding areas have a new choice for their television and communications services. AT&T Inc. Monday announced the launch of the company's integrated suite of AT&T U-verse services, including AT&T U-verse TV, AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet and AT&T U-verse Voice. Customers can currently order AT&T U-verse in parts of nearly 30 local communities. AT&T will make U-verse services available to more homes throughout the area on an ongoing basis. More.
Kelly Burris is an attorney at Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione's Ann Arbor office. Burris focuses her practice on the preparation and prosecution of United States and foreign patent applications in the mechanical, materials science, and electrical arts. She also is involved in due diligence with mergers and acquisitions, transactional matters, the management and administration of corporate intellectual property portfolios and policies, and strategic competitive intelligence. Before joining Brinks, Burris held positions with legal firms in St. Louis and Fort Wayne. She began her career as an aeronautical engineer with McDonnell Douglas and Boeing, where she worked on the first-ever completely digital aircraft design. She holds a United States patent in the area of fiber optics. Burris was among the first patent attorneys in the country to develop electronic files and secure client portals to access, communicate, and maintain legal files for clients. She is an active volunteer pilot for Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic and Angel Flight Central, members of the Air Charity Network. In June, she competed in her first Air Race Classic, an all-female national aviation race from Montana to Massachusetts. Read more.
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Finish projects on time, budget with Dewpoint project management
Lansing IT consultants Dewpoint are helping businesses finish projects on time and on budget with a growing project management practice.
The practice is led by Audra Cumberworth. Dewpoint’s staff now includes nine project managers.
Cumberworth said Dewpoint's PM practice doesn't rely on a specific type of software -- instead, it builds from standard methodologies created by the Project Management Institute (PMI).
Project management overall, she said, is "a system, a methodology, a framework" for how to administer a project. It's far more than just a list of tasks to do and making sure each gets done by the proper person at the proper time. It provides a framework to respond to contingencies and “real world” issues as they arise.
A good project management approach, Cumberworth said, includes strategies for an "escalation path" when conflicts or delays arise that pose a risk to the triple constraints of time, resources and scope. There are also reporting structures and management plans to be worked out.
Dewpoint has rescued several clients with project management practices, Cumberworth said.
Like a government client mired in an unsuccessful software project.
"They hired a vendor to develop it with no oversight, and had difficulty getting the project completed," Cumberworth said.
Eventually the client hired Dewpoint to apply project management principles to the effort. Cumberworth said Dewpoint was able to document project requirements, provide status reports, track scheduling and track issues -- and ultimately was able to identify where the vendor was not meeting the contract, so the client was able to break the contract, saving them $300,000. (The project is being rebid -- this time with project management practices baked in.)
Cumberworth said that in another engagement, a client in education was able to bring a complex identity management system project under control by using Dewpoint's project management tn services.
Cumberworth said six of Dewpoint's nine PM staffers have the Project Management Professional (PMI PMP) certification, and three have the ITIL Foundations Infrastructure Library's (ITIL) certification.
She also said the practice is growing quickly enough that Dewpoint project management staff has more than doubled in the last year and a half, and they will soon be in the market to add more project managers.
Note: Today's Blue Box was sponsored by Dewpoint. For information on how you can sponsor content in the Blue Box, contact Dan Keelan at (248) 455-7380 or dkeelan@cbs.com.
THE WORLD IN TECH
NPR boosts online offering, seeking larger audience National Public Radio, already strong online with free downloads from many of its shows, is boosting its digital ambitions with Monday's introduction of social-networking features akin to Facebook. NPR also plans to overhaul its Web site and expand the tools for sharing its programs elsewhere over the next few months. And it is working to increase the flexibility of its popular "podcasts," audio downloads that have tripled in usage over the past two years. These digital initiatives are aimed at capturing and retaining audiences - particularly younger people who aren't habitual radio listeners but who represent the future for fundraising at NPR's member stations. Yet NPR faces a challenge in finding common ground with the stations, which rely on traditional, local radio offerings to draw contributions. More.
NASA delays repair mission to Hubble space telescope
NASA said Monday it is delaying its mission to the Hubble Space Telescope until next year because of a serious breakdown of the observatory in orbit. Space shuttle Atlantis had been scheduled to blast off in just two weeks, but an unexpected problem with the Hubble appeared on Saturday night when the telescope stopped sending science data. That potentially means a new repair issue for the astronauts to confront - one that they haven't trained for and never anticipated. The abrupt, mysterious failure of the command and data-handling system for Hubble's science instruments means that the telescope is unable to capture and beam down the data needed to produce its stunning deep space images. Early Monday afternoon, NASA announced that the Oct. 14 launch had been postponed until at least early next year, possibly February. Each month's delay will cost the Hubble program about $10 million. More.
Microsoft urges House to rethink vote against bailout plan
Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, urged the House of Representatives to reconsider its vote against the $700 billion financial bailout plan Monday. Microsoft has claimed the faltering economy and the financial sector's collapse have not affected its business. Last week, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft confirmed its faith by announcing a new $40 million stock repurchase plan, a higher dividend and a willingness to take on debt for the first time. On Monday, the company issued what appears to be a first sign of concern. Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, asked the House to turn around and support a bailout for the good of the economy. More.
Sprint begins WiMax network in Baltimore
Sprint Nextel Corp. opened its new wireless network to customers in Baltimore on Monday, offering Internet service for laptops for $45 per month. It's the first commercial network in the U.S. to use so-called WiMax technology for mobile customers. Compared to more mainstream cellular broadband technology, WiMax provides fast downloads and is cheap to deploy. Sprint is betting on the technology, championed by Intel Corp., to give it a few years' head start before cellular broadband catches up. Sprint's network carries the "Xohm" brand (pronounced "zoam") and provides download speeds of 2 to 4 megabits per second, slightly more than twice as fast as the current cellular broadband networks of Sprint, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA and AT&T Inc. More.
Stocks: Market melts down as House rejects Wall Street bailout
Fears about declining spending on tech goods coupled with the defeat of a federal bailout package on Monday led to the biggest tech-sector losses in years and dragged the Nasdaq Composite Index down 9% to its lowest close since 2005. Apple shares slid almost 18 percent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index ($COMPQ) fell 199.61 points or 9.1 percent to 1,983.73 and closed below the 2,000-point mark for the first time since May 2005. The Morgan Stanley High Tech 35 Index (MSH) fell 46.02 points or 9.3 percent to 451.19, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index ($SOX) fell 28.31 points or 8.8 percent to 293.31. The Amex Pharmaceutical Index (DRG) fell 16.32 points or 5.5 percent to 282.94, while the Amex Biotechnology Index (BTK) fell 38.2 points or 4.8 percent to 765.95. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU) had its biggest one-day point decline ever, 777.68 points or 7 percent, to 10,365.45. The S&P 500 ($SPX) fell 106.95 points or 8.8 percent to 1,106.42. The market, which had been in the red all day, plunged again after the House of Representatives voted against the $700 billion financial-sector bailout plan. Before the bell, several analysts issued reports before the opening bell voicing concern about demand for high-tech products in the slowing economy. Doug Reid of Thomas Weisel cut back his estimates for names such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell, as well as other players, based on concerns that businesses large and small will begin to curtail their spending on tech equipment. Analysts for RBC Capital also cut down estimates for several technology firms, citing "further deterioration in the macro environment that challenges current management guidance and investor expectations."
Once again, tons of local extras, well past the GLITR 15-story limit, so watch this space tomorrow too: New software and a new partnership for the Ann Arbor-based health business of Thomson Reuters; new software from SupplyOn; a new credit line and loan for Ann Arbor's Advanced Photonix (and in this climate ain't that great!); women scientists and techs from the Middle East will connect with UM-Dearborn; Five Sparrows and another firm are building a new online expo for the South Lyon Chamber; ProQuest expands its offerings in the UK; and Detroit Edison boosts its rewards for copper theft info. Elsewhere in Techland: Steve Ballmer leads Microsoft for a mere $1.35 million; Apple stock hits a 52-week low after analyst downgrades; new software that turns a PC into a TiVO recorder; Apple faces an iTunes test case in Norway; Wal-mart thinks it can get away with a DRM stunt Microsoft and Yahoo couldn't; Google selects Code Jam finalists; Yahoo's Zimbra e-mail program exposes passwords; and T-Mobile mysteriously stops taking Android phone orders.
All contents copyright 2008 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS Radio & Eye logo trademarked and copyright 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. Written and edited by Matt Roush, Technology Editor, WWJ Newsradio 950, Detroit. GLITR contains material from the Associated Press, Reuters and MarketWatch.com, used by permission. For coverage comments or news tips, e-mail Matt Roush at mnroush@cbs.com or call (248) 455-7380. For marketing and advertising queries, contact Dan Keelan at dkeelan@cbs.com or (248) 455-7252. To subscribe, e-mail Nancy Ho at nancy.ho@cbsradio.com. For questions or concerns, please email Pete Kowalski, WWJ's Station Manager.
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Dearborn-based Oakwood Healthcare System plans to go live Monday with an online store. The Web site will combine online ordering of goods from the hospital's gift shop with pharmacy, medical equipment and home health products. The Web site was developed by Thomas M. Drummy, director of retail strategies at Oakwood, and David Stanis, its director of digital communications, with design assistance from Lansing-based Artemis Solutions. The initial site will be fairly basic, but future versions will add baby gear, a sleep shop and eventually the ability to send patients home with all the gear and medications they need to continue their recovery. 
