GLITR Friday, August 7, 2009

Your report for Friday, August 7, 2009

Compuware's Covisint goes to work for Jaguar Land Rover
Detroit-based Compuware Corp. announced Thursday that its Covisint subsidiary is now providing Jaguar Land Rover, a subsidiary of Tata Motors, with a solution for secure communication and collaboration between the company and its suppliers. With Covisint, JLR has launched the Jaguar Land Rover Supplier Portal to improve the sharing of information and streamline collaborative business processes with supplier partners globally. More.

TechTeam profit rises despite lower revenue
Southfield-based TechTeam Global Inc., a worldwide provider of IT and business process outsourcing services, Thursday reported net income of $1.3 million, or 12 cents per diluted share, for the quarter ended June 30, compared to a net loss of $1.8 million, or 17 cents per share, for the same quarter a year earlier. Last year's results were impacted by a one-time charge of $3.9 mullion for restructuring. The second quarter of 2009 results included $700,000 for restructuring charges, $700,000 for doubtful accounts due to the bankruptcies of two auto suppliers, and $400,000 for foreign currency translation losses. Revenue was $26.6 million, down 12.7 percent from $30.4 million in the same quarter a year earlier. More.

Rofin-Sinar swings to loss on 49 percent sales plunge
Rofin-Sinar Technologies Inc., the industrial laser maker with headquarters in Plymouth and Hamburg, Germany, reported a loss of $4.9 million or 17 cents per share in the third fiscal quarter ended June 30, compared to net income of $16.1 million or 54 cents a share in the same quarter a year earlier. Sales tumbled 49 percent to $76.6 million from $149.7 million a year earlier. More.

DTE to expand advanced meter program to Harsen's Island
Detroit-based DTE Energy Thursday announced it will expand its advanced metering program to provide electric customers on Harsen's Island with new meter technology that provides more accurate information about their energy usage and a system for recognizing power outages without customer input. The program incorporates technology that will allow the electric meters on the island to be read remotely and provide a wide range of benefits to customers, as well as operational savings through increased efficiencies to DTE Energy. More.

Advanced Photonix improves terahertz device
Ann Arbor-based Advanced Photonix LLC said Thursday that its Picometrix LLC subsidiary had introduced a new addition to its T-Ray 4000 product platform. The T-Ray 4000, introduced in 2007, is the first compact, high-power terahertz system. It is targeted at the application research, non-destructive testing and on-line process control markets. The recent addition to the product platform is a new high-speed control unit that collects 1000 waveforms per second -- 10 times faster than the previous model. Using the patented, optical fiber coupled terahertz sensors, images can be generated to detect thickness, density, moisture content, delamination and structural health. Picometrix terahertz systems have been used to perform non-destructive testing on ancient artwork, pipeline repairs, ground based and aircraft radomes, integrated circuits, and the Space Shuttle. Now all of these inspections can be performed more quickly and reliably. More.

A tale of two white papers from two Michigan tech companies

Two Detroit-area tech companies offered white papers this week talking about all the wonderful things they did for specific clients.

A new white paper found doctors, nurses and other clinicians at Genesys Regional Medical Center in Grand Blanc achieved 33 percent time savings on their computing tasks with technologies from Symantec and Coretek Services.

Instead of spending time logging onto the system and to various applications, Symantec Endpoint Virtualization Suite provides 10-second startups that open all the applications users need, and one-keystroke suspensions that allow a user to return to the exact same session on a different device.

Security and compliance are improved, and doctors find their daily rounds take a full two hours less. Read more.

Also out was Attendance On Demand, the Farmington Hills-based developer of employee time and attendance software, which said Thursday it had helped a rental equipment company reduce overtime by 70 percent.

RentalMax, the largest general equipment rental chain in Chicago, uses the time tracking Software as a Service to eliminate unnecessary overtime throughout multiple retail locations. Chicago-based Midwest Time Recorder implemented the solution.

Attendance on Demand tracks employee labor and wage data for nearly 100 hourly employees located in 10 stores securely over the Web, and streamlines what was once a manually intensive process. Read more.

Note: For information on how you can sponsor content in the Blue Box, contact Jeff Lasser at (248) 455-7319 or jeff.lasser@cbsradio.com

Star Trek sweethearts prepare to say 'I do'
For engaged couple Alissa Mellis and Justin Gruba of Troy, Star Trek symbolizes hope, knowledge and exploration, attributes they hope to infuse into their future life together. Where better then to say “I do” than on the bridge of the USS Enterprise aboard Star Trek: The Exhibition at the Detroit Science Center? And that's just what they'll do Aug. 22. More.

New Chevy MPV may get Volt's hybrid system
General Motors Co. is studying the possibility of offering an extended-range hybrid version of the upcoming Chevrolet Orlando MPV crossover vehicle, Vice Chairman Bob Lutz told the Web site GM-Volt.com according to AutoTech Daily. Jon Lauckner, GM’s vice president of global program management, also has hinted about such a scenario. The conventionally powered seven-seat Orlando is due next year. Converting it to run on the Volt’s Voltec architecture would be relatively straightforward, considering both vehicles ride on GM’s Delta II platform, which also is used by the new Cruze compact sedan. More.

Michigan Tech offers details on uses for hybrid, battery funding
Michigan Tech will use nearly $3 million in federal stimulus funds announced Wednesday to develop a curriculum to prepare undergraduates and graduate students to design and build the next generation of hybrid electric vehicles. The $2.98 million grant is part of $2.4 billion in awards under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, announced today by President Barack Obama. Vice President Joe Biden was in Detroit to announce more than $1 billion of the grants to companies and universities in Michigan, which received more than any other state. More.

THE WORLD IN TECH

Shooter's online rants were like trees in the forest
In hindsight, it seems so obvious. We look back at the creepy online ramblings of a tortured soul like George Sodini and realize we should have known all along of the horrors to come. That is, if anyone actually read Sodini's Web page before he sprayed bullets into a suburban Pittsburgh fitness class, killing three women and then himself. But in an age where publishing your thoughts online is as easy as scribbling them in a notebook -- where millions broadcast the details of their lives to anyone who will listen -- were Sodini's murderous rants the equivalent of a cybertree falling in a cyberforest? Certainly, anyone happening upon Sodini's tortured online thoughts before his rampage Tuesday would have had ample cause for alarm. More. (I read this putz's blog posts. Chilling. Makes you wonder how many more self-absorbed time bombs who never discovered you could get over childhood bullying are out there.)

Hackers attack Twitter; Facebook also slows down
A hacker attack Thursday shut down the fast-growing messaging service Twitter for hours, while Facebook experienced intermittent access problems. Twitter said it suffered a denial-of-service attack, in which hackers command scores of computers to a single site at the same time, preventing legitimate traffic from getting through. The fact that a relatively common attack could disable such a well-known Web site shows just how young and vulnerable Twitter still is, even as it quickly becomes a household name used by celebrities, large corporations, small businesses and even protesters in Iran. More. Oh, and here's how a denial-of-service attack works.

News Corp. plans fees for newspaper Web sites
Visitors to the Web sites of newspapers owned by News Corp. will have to start paying fees to read the news within the next year, Chairman Rupert Murdoch said. It's risky for the company because a pay barrier could drive away Web traffic -- and with it, advertising revenue. "You don't want to be the first guy to put up a big pay wall when all other roads to content are open," said Ken Doctor, a media analyst with Outsell Inc. Yet it is a move many news outlets will closely watch as they, too, consider charging users as the decline in print ad revenue far outpaces the growth of online ad dollars. More.

Comcast's second quarter profit soars 53 percent, tops estimates
Comcast Corp., the nation's biggest cable TV systems operator, posted a 53 percent increase in second-quarter profit on Thursday, helped by higher prices and increased customer spending on video and Internet services. But subscriber growth markedly slowed as the recession's grip remained tight. Comcast said it hasn't seen much sign of an economic rebound, although July fared better than the second quarter. Local advertising remains depressed. The quarter's subscriber growth was dampened by the housing slump, jobless rate and competition, as well as a seasonal slowdown due to college students and senior citizen 'snowbirds' disconnecting for the summer. More.

Stocks: Shares slip after jobless claims report
The Dow Jones industrial average lost 25 points and other major indexes suffered moderate slides Thursday as worries about the Labor Department's report dominated trading for a third day. A stream of disappointing July sales numbers from major retailers added to Wall Street's uneasy mood. A recovery in the job market is crucial to the economy's ability to pull itself from the longest recession since World War II. Unemployment often keeps rising after a recovery begins, but investors need to see the pace of job losses slowing before they'll continue the rally that began in March. More. The Nasdaq Composite Index (COMP) fell 19.89 points or 1 percent to 1,973.16. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU) fell 24.71 points or 0.3 percent, to 9,256.26. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index ($SOX) fell 4.02 points or 1.3 percent to 299.84. The Morgan Stanley High Tech 35 Index (MSH) fell 2.85 points or 0.6 percent to 494.31. The NYSE Arca Pharmaceutical Index (DRG) fell 2.9 points or 1 percent to 275.66. The NYSE Arca Biotech Index (BTK) fell 17.29 points or 2 percent to 863.8. Finally, the Standard & Poor's 500 (SPX) fell 5.64 points or 0.6 percent to 997.08.

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