GLITR Monday, August 17, 2009

Your report for Monday, August 17, 2009

Summit Sports launches new Web sites
Bloomfield Hills-based Summit Sports Inc. last week launched three new Web sites -- www.rollerskates.net, www.hockeyskatesandsticks.net and http://water-trampoline.com -- to boost niche sporting goods markets. The e-commerce sites offer visitors an experience specific to their sport. They join the family of Summit Sports' Web sites including www.skis.com, http://inlineskates.net, http://WaterOutfitters.com, http://SkateAggressive.com, http://SnowBoardFusion.com, http://OnlineSkatehouse.com, http://DonThomasSporthaus.com and http://www.SummitOnline.com. More.

UM researchers get $61.1 million in federal stimulus
University of Michigan scientists and engineers have been awarded 159 federal stimulus-package research grants to date, totaling $61.1 million. The funding includes 113 National Institutes of Health stimulus awards, more than any other university or college in the United States. Stimulus funds from the NIH, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy will support a variety of U-M basic science, biomedical and engineering projects, from novel cancer and vaccine studies to research on ultra-energy-efficient computers and the next generation of rechargeable batteries. In addition, stimulus-package funding from the Energy Department will pay for a $19.5 million UM research center to explore new materials for solar cells. More.

Wayne State researchers get $16 million in stimulus funds
Wayne State University faculty have received nearly $18 million in research grants under the federal government’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act program. The 32 grants include 27 totaling more than $11.2 million from the National Institutes of Health -- the second largest number of NIH grants in the state for this program. The university also has received four grants totaling $1.7 million from the National Science Foundation and a $5 million grant from the Department of Energy for an electric vehicle engineering education and workforce training program. More.

White Pine Systems gets funding, partnership
Ann Arbor-based White Pine Systems LLC, a provider of online personal health records systems, announced that it has secured $450,000 in financing from angel investors including $225,000 from the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund, administered by Ann Arbor Spark. White Pine's online PHR system, the Secure Personal Information and Notification Network, called SPINNphr, allows people to create and manage their own online personal health information networks, to improve health-related communication and provide critical information at the time and place of need. More.

Azure Dynamics sees sales dip, but completes stock sale
The Oak Park hybrid and electric truck developer Azure Dynamics Corp. last week reported a decline in revenue for the second quarter ended June 30. Revenue for the quarter was $1.2 million, down from $3.4 million in the second quarter of 2008. For the six months ended June 30, revenue totaled $1.8 million compared to $3.8 million in the same period a year ago. Net loss for the second quarter of 2009 was $6.7 million, or 2 cents per share, compared to a loss of $8.1 million or 3 cents per share in the second quarter of 2008. Net loss for the six months ended June 30, 2009 was $14.1 million, or 4 cents per share, compared to a loss of $16 million or 6 cents per share in the first six months of 2008. Azure also announced that it has closed a private placement offering of 58,823,529 common shares at a price of 17 cents Canadian per share for gross proceeds of approximately $10 million Canadian. More.

The week ahead: Social networking, training and more

You'd never know it was a summer week by the good stuff on the Michigan IT Calendar, the state's most comprehensive tech event calendar, at http://www.wwj.com/pages/1665369.php.

The good stuff starts immediately today, with a Comcast entrepreneur event on using social networking sites for business marketing.

And it continues all week long, with Tuesday's sold-out FastTrac seminar to help displaced workers start their own businesses, Angelbeat's seminar at the Southfield Westin on virtualizing platforms and protecting data and the Michigan Usability Professionals Association's monthly meeting.

On Wednesday, it's another social media event from the International Association of Business Communicators, and an aimWest networking event in Grand Rapids. Thursday, the local chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysis meets, as does TiE Detroit. And Oakland County will also teach you how to write a killer business plan.

And don't forget the amazing free Selfridge Air Show and Open House this weekend, featuring the amazing U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds!

See you out there!

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

Selfridge Air Show goes social
Are you a Facebook friend of the Air Show? Feel a Tweet coming on from the Wild Blue Yonder? Organizers of the 2009 Selfridge Air Show & Open House are using social media tools to help spread the word about the Air Show and, by extension, to take the Air Force message out into the community. For the past couple of weeks, Air Show staff have been adding daily comments on the Air Show fan page on Facebook and have offered a few Tweets on Twitter. During the Air Show itself, a member of the Selfridge Public Affairs team will be Tweeting throughout the day. The Air Show & Open House is Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 22-23. More.

Oneupweb hitting the Michigan road this week
The bags are packed, the motor home loaded and an air of excitement is creeping over the state of Michigan. This morning, Monday, Aug. 17, Oneupweb will take all of it on the road for their One for the Road: Operation Michigan tour. The idea behind it is simple. Offer free online marketing consultations to any Michigan business that visits Oneupweb at one of four stops in Ann Arbor, Lansing, Grand Rapids and Traverse City. “Everywhere you look, you hear about the economy and the negative impact it’s having on companies. I want to help in the way we know best -- marketing. These budgets are getting cut,” said Oneupweb founder and CEO Lisa Wehr. “So we’re offering our consulting services for free to Michigan businesses as a way to help.” More.

Michigan Tech team models molecular transistor
Electronic gadgetry gets tinier and more powerful all the time, but at some point, the transistors and myriad other component parts will get so little they won't work. That's because when things get really small, the regular rules of Newtonian physics quit and the weird rules of quantum mechanics kick in. When that happens, as Michigan Technological University physics professor and chair Ravindra Pandey puts it, "everything goes haywire." Theorists in the field of molecular electronics hope to get around the problem by designing components out of a single molecule. Pandey's group has done just that -- theoretically -- by modeling a single-molecule field-effect transistor on a computer. More.

THE WORLD IN TECH

AT&T reaches deal with some electrical workers
AT&T Inc. said Sunday it reached tentative agreement with a union covering about 8,900 of its electrical workers on new contract terms. The deal with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on core wireline contracts will be submitted for a ratification vote in coming days. The agreement marks the third reached with a bargaining unit representing AT&T's core wireline workers. AT&T and the Communications Workers of America earlier ratified a new contract in the Midwest and West regions. A total of about 50,000 employees in core wireline contracts now have ratified or reached tentative agreements. More.

Chinese trade ruling helps U.S., but piracy still a problem
American companies counting on a favorable trade ruling against China to boost sales of CDs, DVDs, books and video games will need a crackdown on rampant piracy before they can reap big benefits. Chinese incomes are lower than in the United States, and the quality of pirated entertainment there is quite good, making legal goods a tougher sell. U.S. entertainment and media companies hope a World Trade Organization decision last week requiring Beijing to lower import barriers will make more legal products available in China, and perhaps diminish demand for pirated goods. But there's a long to way to go in a country where a pirated DVD is easily available for a third of the price of a movie ticket -- often before the movie opens in Asian cinemas. More.

E-mails from public overload House Web site
Amid a boisterous debate on health care reform, people flooded members of Congress on Thursday with so many e-mails that they overloaded the House's primary Web site. Technical support issued a warning to congressional staff that the site, http://www.house.gov , may be slow or unresponsive because of the large volume of e-mail being sent to members. Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the House's chief administrative officer, which maintains the Web site, said traffic data was not available and could not be released without the lawmakers' consent. "It is clearly health care reform," Ventura said. "There's no doubt about it." More.

Conservatives, liberals spar in blogosphere conferences
Over the weekend you could call Pittsburgh, Pa. blogger central. Two grassroots groups -- one left leaning, the other right leaning -- were holding their annual conferences here and teaching members how to wield clout online. On the left is Netroots Nation, which has been credited in part with helping usher President Barack Obama into office. On the right is RightOnline, a project of the conservative Americans for Prosperity Foundation. The Netroots Nation conference is much larger, at about 1,800 people, and lasts four days. RightOnline has about 700 people and lasts two days. Erik Telford, executive director of RightOnline, concedes the left has been better about using blogging and social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter. More. Also, here's a report on a speech Bill Clinton gave to the liberal group, and another report on what the liberal bloggers expect from President Obama.

Stocks: Shares slip after jobless claims report
Stocks fell sharply Friday, taking the major indexes down about 1 percent, after investors were disappointed by reports that the Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment fell significantly short of expectations for the first part of August. That's a sign consumers may well keep cutting back their spending as they worry about losing their jobs. Consumer spending is crucial for the economy to emerge from recession as it accounts for two-thirds of all U.S. economic activity. The discouraging reading came a day after the Commerce Department reported an unexpected decline in retail sales. Investors were able to shake that off, but Friday's consumer sentiment number had them bailing out of stocks, jeopardizing a summer rally that had lifted the Standard & Poor's 500 index more than 15 percent in about a month. Still, the indexes finished well off their lows of the day, a sign that the mood on Wall Street isn't all that grim, and light volume likely skewed price changes. Investors also sold off oil and other commodities and moved their money into the relative safety of the dollar and government bonds. Treasury prices jumped, sending their yields lower, while the dollar rose against other major currencies. More. The Nasdaq Composite Index (COMP) fell 23.82 points or 1.2 percent to 1,985.52. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU) fell 76.79 points or 0.8 percent, to 9,321.4. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index ($SOX) fell 7.71 points or 2.6 percent to 294.65. The Morgan Stanley High Tech 35 Index (MSH) fell 6.09 points or 1.2 percent to 496.82. The NYSE Arca Pharmaceutical Index (DRG) fell 1.18 points or 0.4 percent to 277.2. The NYSE Arca Biotech Index (BTK) fell 16.85 points or 1.9 percent to 858.56. Finally, the Standard & Poor's 500 (SPX) fell 8.64 points or 0.9 percent to 1,004.09.

All contents copyright 2009 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS Radio & Eye logo trademarked and copyright 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. Written and edited by Matt Roush, Technology Editor, WWJ Newsradio 950, Detroit. GLITR may contain material from the Associated Press, CNET, News.com, MarketWatch.com or Reuters, 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, or with general questions or concerns, contact Pete Kowalskii, WWJ's station manager, at prkowalski@cbs.com. To subscribe, e-mail Matt Roush or Georgeann Herbert at gherbert@cbs.com.

LEGAL NOTICE: This email may be considered an advertising or promotional message. If you no longer wish to receive commercial email from this station, please reply to this email by sending a reply email by clicking on the "reply" button at the top of this page or by sending an e-mail to Matt Roush or Georgeann Herbert. Or you can change your subscriber profile: «Reserved.Unsubscribe»

You must use this method to notify GLITR and WWJ of your opt-out request, as we cannot guarantee that other methods of notification will be effective. Please be aware that we may continue to contact you via email for administrative or informational purposes, including follow-up messages regarding contests you have entered or other transactions you have undertaken. By law, such messages are not considered to be commercial e-mail.

Note: The Great Lakes IT Report is sent in HTML format only. Please make sure you have given us permission to send you an HTML message. If you have any questions, drop an e-mail to Georgeann Herbert or Matt Roush.