Detroit
Edison to cut costs of solar installations for its customers
Detroit Edison has introduced a new
program that will make installing a solar energy system 50 percent more
affordable for homes and businesses. Called SolarCurrents, the pilot
program is intended to encourage Detroit Edison customers to purchase
and install a solar energy system, and at the same time help the utility
meet renewable energy targets contained in comprehensive energy legislation
approved last year. Under SolarCurrents, customers will receive a one-time
payment when their system is installed. They then will receive monthly
credits on their electric bill for the next 20 years for providing Detroit
Edison with renewable energy credits associated with the system. More.
Tech
companies headed for Israel with Automation Alley Automation Alley will take
a good number of tech companies along on its trade mission to Israel,
coming up Oct. 23-30. The mission will take the to Haifa, Tel Aviv,
and Jerusalem, the nation’s leading commercial and research and
development centers. The purpose of the mission is to further develop
mutually beneficial trade and investment opportunities between Michigan
and Israel. Why Israel? It is a high-tech powerhouse and global center
of innovation. It devotes the world’s largest percentage of its
GDP toward researching and developing innovative products, services
and technologies destined for international markets. Although a desert
nation of only seven million with limited natural resources, Israel’s
highly educated work force has enabled it to innovate around scarcity
and become an entrepreneurial hotbed in the defense, medical, IT, and
renewable energy industries. More.
Wayne
State to open business assistance centers In early September, Wayne
State University will open Business Assistance Centers in Wayne, Oakland
and Macomb counties to aid small businesses and nonprofit organizations
with such things as developing business strategy, marketing studies,
financial projections and info tech support. Created by Wayne State's
School of Business Administration, the three centers will be staffed
by MBA students under the direction of faculty and other experienced
professionals. The school is now actively seeking both clients and partners
interested in working with a talented and highly motivated group of
MBA students. More.
GeneGo kicks
off stem cell research project St. Joseph-based GeneGo
Inc., a developer of systems biology IT tools, said Tuesday that it
launched a collaborative development project on systems biology of stem
cells with global pharmaceutical companies and leading academic centers
as members. The 24-month project aims to create a comprehensive "knowledge
base" on development and biology of different types of stem cells.
The knowledge base will be supported by GeneGo's MetaDiscovery tools
and applied in experimental research on stem cells and human diseases.
More.
Stardock
launches game download platform for NVIDIA users
Plymouth-based Stardock Corp. and Nvidia Corp. Tuesday announced the
Impulse 'NVIDIA Edition' which features Stardock's digital download
platform, Impulse, specially branded for NVIDIA users. With the new
NVIDIA Edition, gamers will be able to buy the latest games, be informed
of updated NVIDIA drivers and get the latest gaming news all through
a single desktop application. The companies expect the NVIDIA Edition
of Impulse to become available this summer. More.
CIO hiring outlook still sour for Great Lakes region
Technology
executives expect to take a conservative approach to hiring in the final
months of the year, according to the fourth-quarter Robert Half Technology
IT Hiring Index and Skills Report.
Six percent of chief information officers plan to
expand their information technology teams and 6 percent anticipate staff
reductions. The majority of respondents, 86 percent, foresee no changes
in personnel levels.
The IT Hiring Index and Skills Report is based on
telephone interviews with more than 1,400 CIOs from companies across
the United States with 100 or more employees. It was conducted by an
independent research firm and developed by Robert Half Technology, a
leading provider of IT professionals on a project and full-time basis.
In the East North Central region, including
Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, 4 percent plan hiring
and 6 percent plan staff reductions. That's not the worst IT hiring
outlook in the country, though -- that distinction belongs to the West
North Central states, with minus 3 percent.
The strongest hiring plans, plus 4 percent,
are expected in the New England states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, and the South Atlantic states
of Delaware, the District of columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North
Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
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
Comcast
boosts HD channels to 100 in eight Oakland County towns Comcast Tuesday announced
that customers in the communities of Southfield, Lathrup Village, Oak
Park, West Bloomfield Township, Keego Harbor, Orchard Lake, Sylvan Lake
and Royal Oak Township now have access to more than 100 High Definition
channels after adding 42 new HD networks to the lineup as part of the
company’s recent digital network enhancement. This milestone of
massive HD expansion includes popular channels, such as Hallmark Movie
Channel HD, CNBC HD, BET HD, MTV HD and VH1 HD, among others. More.
TACOM places
$35.3 million order with iRobot
Bedford, Mass.-based iRobot
Corp. Monday announced that it received an order for $35.3 million from
the U.S. Army TACOM Contracting Center in Warren. This order falls under
the $286 million Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity xBot contract
and calls for the delivery of 486 iRobot PackBot 510 with FasTac Kit
robots prior to March 31, 2010. The total contract value to date under
this IDIQ is approximately $125 million. IRobot says it plans to establish
an engineering center in Michigan soon. More.
EBay,
GM extend California promotion General Motors Corp. and
eBay Motors Tuesday announced the extension of their promotion that
enables consumers to shop new cars, crossovers and trucks online from
participating California Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Pontiac dealers.
The promotion, originally launched on Aug. 11, has been extended through
Sept. 30. Customers can access the promotion at http://gm.ebay.com.
Target vehicles are limited to driver-driven, land-based vehicles. More.
THE WORLD
IN TECH
Are kids
losing the ability to communicate face-to-face? Looking at a smiley face
in an email isn't the same as seeing an actual smile on an actual face,
and text-addicted teens are simply failing to learn the intricacies
of bodily cues like eye movement and physical motion, not to mention
all the nuance that comes with verbal conversation, cues which are learned
only though a lifetime of practice in the read world. The result: Many
fear we are raising a generation of kids who simply can't carry on a
conversation -- or even look another person in the eye. More.
EBay
partially undoes Skype deal, selling majority Rather
than enduring the uncertainty of spinning off the Skype telecommunications
service through a public stock offering, eBay Inc. has found a different
way out: It is selling the majority of Skype for about $2 billion to
a group of private investors. The deal will help eBay undo its 2005
acquisition of Skype, a deal that puzzled analysts. Despite Skype's
strong, steady growth, it was hard to see how eBay, which specializes
in running online marketplaces and facilitating Internet payments, needed
to own a service that lets people make free or cheap calls on cell phones
and computers. EBay said Tuesday that it will trade a 65 percent stake
in the business to a group of private investment funds for $1.9 billion
in cash and $125 million to be paid later. EBay will own the other 35
percent. More.
Gmail
knocked offline for a 'majority' of users Google Inc.'s Gmail service
was knocked offline Tuesday in a severe outage that the company said
affected a "majority" of users. It wasn't immediately clear
what caused the disruption, which led Gmail users to get an "Unable
to reach Gmail" error message as their computers tried repeatedly
to reconnect to the service. Google representatives did not immediately
return messages left by The Associated Press. Mountain View-based Google
notified users in a posting on the company's Web site that problems
with Gmail surfaced Monday, wiping out e-mail to a "small subset"
of users. On Tuesday afternoon the company said an outage affecting
"a majority of users" had hit Gmail. Google didn't say whether
the outages were related. More.
(And here's the CNET News.com version
of the story.)
Study
finds Web no equalizer for civic engagement Unlike
some people have hoped, the Internet hasn't led to big changes in the
socio-economic makeup of Americans engaged in civic activities, a new
study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds. As in offline
politics, people who participate in online civic life -- by contacting
government officials, making political or charitable donations or signing
petitions, for example -- tend to be richer and better educated. According
to the study released Tuesday, 35 percent of U.S. adults making at least
$100,000 participated in two or more online political activities in
the previous 12 months, compared with just 8 percent of people making
less than $20,000. That's a gap of 27 percentage points -- the same
gap seen for offline political activities. More.
Stocks:
Worries about banks drag shares mostly lower A stock market ripe for
a big pullback succumbed Tuesday, plunging when rumors of a bank failure
revived investors' anxiety about the banking industry and the economy
as a whole. A batch of economic reports that just weren't good enough
added to the mix as the major indexes all fell about 2 percent and the
Dow Jones industrials slid 185 points. Treasury prices, usually the
beneficiary of a slide in stocks, ended only moderately higher. A break
in the market's six-month rally was widely expected after investors
showed a growing inclination to sell for some time. More.
The Nasdaq Composite Index (COMP)
fell 40.17 points or 2 percent to 1,968.89. The Dow Jones Industrial
Average ($INDU)
fell 185.68 points or 2 percent to 9,310.6. The Philadelphia Semiconductor
Index ($SOX)
fell 7.54 points or 2.5 percent to 298.64. The Morgan Stanley High Tech
35 Index (MSH)
fell 9.51 points or 1.9 percent to 493.55. The NYSE Arca Pharmaceutical
Index (DRG)
fell 3.55 points or 1.3 percent to 279.97. The NYSE Arca Biotech Index
(BTK)
fell 23.75 points or 2.6 percent to 901.77. Finally, the Standard &
Poor's 500 (SPX)
fell 22.58 points or 2.2 percent to 998.04.
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
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CIO hiring outlook still sour for Great Lakes region
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Rather
than enduring the uncertainty of spinning off the Skype telecommunications
service through a public stock offering, eBay Inc. has found a different
way out: It is selling the majority of Skype for about $2 billion to
a group of private investors. The deal will help eBay undo its 2005
acquisition of Skype, a deal that puzzled analysts. Despite Skype's
strong, steady growth, it was hard to see how eBay, which specializes
in running online marketplaces and facilitating Internet payments, needed
to own a service that lets people make free or cheap calls on cell phones
and computers. EBay said Tuesday that it will trade a 65 percent stake
in the business to a group of private investment funds for $1.9 billion
in cash and $125 million to be paid later. EBay will own the other 35
percent. 
