UM-Dearborn
study explores best practices of entrepreneurial cities Marquette, Midland, Rochester
Hills, Sterling Heights and Wixom were identified as communities that
are “2009 top performers at attracting and retaining entrepreneurial
firms” in a study by researchers at the University of Michigan-Dearborn
College of Business. Additionally, the village of Dundee and the cities
of Auburn Hills, Southfield and Troy -- communities who were also recognized
in the 2008 study -- will be honored for their continuing efforts at
supporting entrepreneurship. More.
Rave
rolls out two new computers at military show Sterling Heights-based Rave
Computer Association Inc. Monday unveiled two new aluminum fanless small
form factor computer systems, one "green" PC, designed specifically
for low power commercial applications and one military MIL-SPEC-810F
for rugged environments. The products were revealed during the MILCOM
2009 exhibition in Boston. More.
DTE,
UM launch second clean energy prize contest
Following the success of last year's inaugural
Clean Energy Prize competition -- conceived to help move clean energy
technologies from the laboratory to commercial production -- DTE Energy
and the University of Michigan have broadened the scope of the competition.
For Year Two, the rules have been changed to encourage participation
from more Michigan colleges and universities. This year, teams are not
required to include a UM student. Any team with student representation
from a Michigan college or university is eligible. The teams still are
being challenged to develop the best business plan for bringing a new
clean energy technology to market. And again, the teams with winning
ideas will share $100,000 in prize money, to be awarded in the spring
of 2010. More.
Teradata,
SilkRoute offer demand chain management SaaS Washington, D.C.-based Teradata
Corp., the world's largest company solely focused on data warehousing
and enterprise analytics, announced Monday that the Teradata Demand
Chain Management solution for product demand forecasting and replenishment
is now available as a software-as-a service offer through partner SilkRoute
Global of Troy. This is the first Teradata solution to be available
under a software-as-a service model. More.
|UM
may have found the master switch for regeneration Biologists long have marveled
at the ability of some animals to re-grow lost body parts. Newts, for
example, can lose a leg and grow a new one identical to the original.
Zebrafish can re-grow fins. These animals and others also can repair
damaged heart tissue and injured structures in the eye. In contrast,
humans have only rudimentary regenerative abilities, so scientists hoping
eventually to develop ways of repairing or replacing damaged body parts
are keenly interested in understanding in detail how the process of
regeneration works. Using zebrafish as a model, researchers at the University
of Michigan have found that some of the same genes underlie the process
in different types of tissues. Genes involved in fin regeneration and
heart repair are also required for rebuilding damaged light receptors
in the eye, they found, suggesting that a common molecular mechanism
guides the process, no matter what body part is damaged. More.
Nano-scale
power company wins first BlueWater pitch contest
A company that wants to produce power
out of the body's own chemistry won first prize in the first Pitch Night
sponsored by the BlueWater Angels last week at Saginaw Valley State
University. Winning first prize in the event was Bio-Nano Power LLC,
which is developing smaller and faster biosensors so that diabetes patients
can better monitor their glucose levels. Bio-Nano Power Cells are nano-scale
sized particles that are activated by enzymes to generate power; these
particles can be aggregated or polymerized to form larger systems to
generate high density power, yet are biocompatible in biological systems
without additional fabrication steps and can carry materials such as
pharmaceuticals for targeted sensed delivery. Tied for second spot in
the competition were In The Groove and Dixie Dave's Wild Game Soup.
More.
New software
for Sharepoint from Ann Arbor company BlueThread Technologies
Inc. Monday announced the availability of StoragePoint for SharePoint
2010. Attendees at the SharePoint conference, where the announcement
was made, can preview a demonstration of the 2010 version at the BlueThread
booth. StoragePoint enables organizations to realize at least a 95 percent
reduction in the size of their SharePoint content databases by relocating
content BLOBs (Binary Large Objects) out of the SQL database onto virtually
any Cloud-based or on-premise storage platform. It improves SharePoint
manageability, scalability, performance and security without any sacrifice
to functionality or user experience. More.
Dearborn
firm says food manufacturing certification in high demand The Dearborn-based Validation
& Compliance Institute L.L.C. said Monday it is filling a growing
demand with its auditing and certification of Current Good Manufacturing
Practices for the food industry. Food producers who pass VCI's rigorous
audits earn the right to display VCI's "GMP Verified" seal.
This is a confirmation to potential customers that the producer has
met the highest quality standards. It demonstrates independent third-party
verification of continuing conformance to GMPs. More.
Gary
Glick is founder and chief science officer of Lycera
Corp. in Plymouth. Glick founded Lycera in 2006 and raised the
seed round and $36 million series A financing for the company
in 2009. Lycera is developing novel, small-molecule pharmaceuticals
to treat autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and
inflammatory bowel disease. Glick has received a number of awards
for his scientific contributions, including an Arthritis Investigator
Award from the National Arthritis Foundation, Junior Faculty
Research Award from the American Cancer Society, Young Investigator
Award from the National Science Foundation, Camille Dreyfus
Teacher-Scholar Award, a research fellowship from the Alfred
P. Sloan Foundation, and two Research Excellence Awards from
the University of Michigan. A Fellow of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, Glick holds the Werner E. Bachmann
chair in chemistry at the University of Michigan. Read
more.
Do you know
a business, professional or community leader whom you think
deserves being honored as a Leader and Innovator?
Click here to nominate them.
By Mike Cebulski, Vice President of Business Services,
Comcast Michigan Region
There are not many days when the subjects of identity
theft, data breaches or other manifestations of the now-established
criminal discipline known as cyber crime are absent from the headlines.
Usually, the companies we read about are large enterprises
with well-known brands, but security experts say the victims are getting
smaller. More and more, small and medium-sized companies are being targeted
for network invasions, as larger corporations beef up their data security
measures and the bad guys look for softer and less visible targets.
Security experts warn that a wave of cyber crime is cresting for smaller
companies, but many, unfortunately, don’t see it coming and don’t
know how to protect themselves from this silent threat.
Hackers apparently have realized that smaller companies
can be easier to penetrate, in part because they have not taken even
basic steps to protect their data. These cyber-criminals also are banking
on the likelihood that strings of relatively small, seemingly unrelated
incursions may never be recognized for what they are -- components of
a single, coordinated crime spree. This of course is the same logic
behind ongoing attempts to crack the hard drives and online bank accounts
of individual users online. But a company, even a small one, represents
a virtual smorgasbord of valuable vendor, customer and employee data
compared to an individual Internet user, and the hackers have figured
this out.
In a study released last year, McAfee -- the cyber-security
firm Comcast partners with to help protect our customers from the risks
of the networked world -- reported that one in five small and medium-sized
businesses in North America have been hacked. And one in three had been
hacked more than four times in three years.
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.
THE WORLD IN TECH
IBM
puts executive on leave after charges IBM Corp. put a top executive
on leave Monday after he was charged in an insider trading scandal for
allegedly leaking secrets about IBM's earnings and financial dealings
with corporate partners. The company said Robert Moffat, a senior vice
president and cost-cutting maven who was considered a possible candidate
to succeed CEO Sam Palmisano, no longer serves as an officer of the
company. Moffat was one of six executives and hedge fund managers arrested
Friday in connection with a wide-ranging scam that authorities say generated
more than $25 million in illegal profits. More.
Video
game sales improve slightly in September After
six straight months of double-digit declines, U.S. video game sales
finally saw an improvement in September. But the rebound was much more
muted than analysts had hoped, a sign that the recession has cut deep
into consumer spending on interactive entertainment. Even recent console
price cuts weren't enough to push hardware dollar sales higher year-over-year.
Market researcher NPD Group on Monday reported a 1 percent increase
in September sales of video game hardware, software and accessories
compared with the same month last year. The total came to $1.28 billion.
Year-to-date sales were down 13 percent. Hardware sales dropped 6 percent
to $472.3 million. For the first time since its launch three years ago,
Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 sold more units than both the Nintendo Wii
and the Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360. More.
Verizon's
big ad push for Android takes on iPhone When two Visalia, Calif.,
police officers swung their cruisers behind a sport utility vehicle
that had been carjacked at gunpoint early Sunday, they prepared for
a dangerous high-speed chase. The 2009 Chevrolet Tahoe roared away with
officers in pursuit, but shortly after the suspect made a right turn,
operators at General Motors Co.'s OnStar service sent a command that
electronically disabled the gas pedal and the SUV gradually came to
a halt. The flustered thief got out and ran, but was quickly nabbed
after he climbed several fences and fell into a backyard swimming pool,
police said. It was the first time since OnStar began offering the service
in the 2009 model year that it was used to end a chase that could otherwise
have had dire consequences. More.
Verizon's
big ad push for Android takes on iPhone An
aggressive TV ad campaign from Verizon Wireless is adding to the support
building for a software package from Google Inc. that is shaping up
to be the most formidable challenge yet to Apple Inc.'s iPhone. The
commercials for the "Droid" phone, being made by Motorola
Inc., list features that the iPhone lacks, such as a physical keyboard
and the ability to run applications simultaneously. It ends with the
tag line "Everything iDon't. Droid does." It's not the first
ad from a wireless carrier to take aim at the iPhone's weaknesses. Notably,
Sprint Nextel Corp.'s ads for the Samsung Instinct and the Palm Pre
have compared these devices to the iPhone. But the Verizon ads come
at a sensitive time for the iPhone, as user frustration with the network
of the sole U.S. iPhone carrier, AT&T Inc., is growing. More.
Stocks:
Shares rise as earnings reports beat expectations
The market stepped to new highs for
the year Monday after a handful of earnings reports bolstered hopes
that the economy is coming back sooner than many analysts had thought.
That is helping some investors move past a bout of nerves about whether
expectations for the economy are stretched too far. Industrial equipment
maker Eaton Corp. said it was seeing improvement in key markets and
raised its full-year profit forecast. Newspaper publisher Gannett Co.
managed to post a profit despite a sharp fall in revenue. The day's
gains came ahead of quarterly earnings released after the closing bell
from Apple Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. Both wound up beating forecasts.
A drop in the dollar also helped push commodity prices higher, which
in turn helped stocks of materials and energy companies. More.
The Nasdaq Composite Index (COMP)
rose 19.72 points or 0.9 percent to 2,176.32. The Dow Jones Industrial
Average ($INDU)
rose 96.28 points or 1 percent to 10,092.19. The Philadelphia Semiconductor
Index ($SOX)
rose 4.78 points or 1.5 percent to 327.61. The Morgan Stanley High Tech
35 Index (MSH)
rose 7.1 points or 1.3 percent to 547.79. The NYSE Arca Pharmaceutical
Index (DRG)
rose 4.19 points or 1.4 percent to 299.47. The NYSE Arca Biotech Index
(BTK)
fell 0.31 points or 0.1 percent to 930.71. Finally, the Standard & Poor's
500 (SPX)
rose 10.23 points or 0.9 percent to 1,097.91.
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 Kowalski,
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E-Mail Story
Print Story
After
six straight months of double-digit declines, U.S. video game sales
finally saw an improvement in September. But the rebound was much more
muted than analysts had hoped, a sign that the recession has cut deep
into consumer spending on interactive entertainment. Even recent console
price cuts weren't enough to push hardware dollar sales higher year-over-year.
Market researcher NPD Group on Monday reported a 1 percent increase
in September sales of video game hardware, software and accessories
compared with the same month last year. The total came to $1.28 billion.
Year-to-date sales were down 13 percent. Hardware sales dropped 6 percent
to $472.3 million. For the first time since its launch three years ago,
Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 sold more units than both the Nintendo Wii
and the Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360. 
An
aggressive TV ad campaign from Verizon Wireless is adding to the support
building for a software package from Google Inc. that is shaping up
to be the most formidable challenge yet to Apple Inc.'s iPhone. The
commercials for the "Droid" phone, being made by Motorola
Inc., list features that the iPhone lacks, such as a physical keyboard
and the ability to run applications simultaneously. It ends with the
tag line "Everything iDon't. Droid does." It's not the first
ad from a wireless carrier to take aim at the iPhone's weaknesses. Notably,
Sprint Nextel Corp.'s ads for the Samsung Instinct and the Palm Pre
have compared these devices to the iPhone. But the Verizon ads come
at a sensitive time for the iPhone, as user frustration with the network
of the sole U.S. iPhone carrier, AT&T Inc., is growing. 
