Ann Arbor

Killing the Ann Arbor News to save it

By Newsroom

●

August 12, 2009

The death of the Ann Arbor News continues to make its way up the media grapevine, this time making the pages of Time magazine.Excerpt:When Larry Kestenbaum, clerk of Washtenaw County, Michigan, was in Lansing for a meeting recently, he saw something unfamiliar on the faces of the other clerks: pity. Colleagues from hard-pressed towns like Flint, Jackson and Kalamazoo were offering sympathy because, despite everything, they still had a local newspaper, while Ann Arbor, his county seat, did not.At first blush, Ann Arbor is an unlikely place to earn the dubious distinction of being the first good-size municipality in the U.S. to give up on its only daily newspaper. A2, as the town is known, is more or less the beauty queen of Michigan: pretty, confident and seemingly immune to the problems of her peers. It still has a downtown with sidewalk cafés and quirky local stores. Its biggest employers are two universities and two hospitals, and it has weathered the recession better than most of the rest of the state. Nearly half its residents have graduate degrees. How could the paper die in a place like this?The answer is that it didn't die. It was killed by its owners in a high-stakes gamble to try to create a new and more profitable enterprise. (In the past nine years, the paper lost more than half its classified-ad pages.) The Ann Arbor News ceased to exist on July 23. On July 24, AnnArbor.com was launched. The new website has a paper version — also called, oddly, AnnArbor.com — that comes out on Thursdays and Sundays. The News's owner, Advance Publications, is betting it can rebrand the 175-year-old News as a Web publication, turn a profit and still satisfy its readers' craving for local news. A lot of U.S. newspapers, and their readers, have a stake in whether the experiment in Ann Arbor succeeds.Read the rest of the story here and how Jack Lessenberry skewers Ann Arbor.com in the Metro Times here.

CIMple gets in on smart grid tech through the back way

By Newsroom

●

Economic Development

●

August 12, 2009

Smart grid is one of those buzz phrases that has become closely tied to sustainability. So much so that companies are tripping over each other to help tackle the energy saving technology head on. CIMple is trying to do the same but do so by sneaking in the back way. The Ann Arbor-based start-up, founded just this summer, is working on IT systems that will help manage the backend of smart grid technology. That means while big utilities are making headlines by implementing it, CIMple plans to be creating the magic behind the curtain that makes the system work."A lot of large utilities are doing pilot programs with smart grid technology," says Marty Byle, business development manager for CIMple. "But what they haven’t done is invest in the back-end system."He adds that the $787 billion federal stimulus package is poised to start "shoveling money" toward the smart grid cause. That means there is a lot of room to grow for a small three-person firm like CIMple."We're looking at a huge market over the next decade," Byle says.The plan is to start as a consulting company for this process. Long-range plans include creating a software product to help manage the back end of the smart grid. Right now CIMple, which is working out of Ann Arbor’s Tech Brewery, is looking to form partnerships with large utilities and utility co-operativess.Source: Marty Byle, business development manager for CIMpleWriter: Jon Zemke

Metrix Information Systems develops innovative software for software

By Newsroom

●

Economic Development

●

August 12, 2009

Most companies see software as a place where there is lots of money to be made. Metrix Information Systems see it as a place where lots of money can be saved.The 2-year-old start-up has created software that statistically analyzes how often a company uses each piece of its software. That way the customer can make an informed decision on which programs it is best utilizing and use funds more judiciously. That's big bucks to Fortune 500 firms, which normally spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the software that drives their companies. Metrix Information System's software boasts that it can save its customers 20-30 percent on its software expenses."All we have to do is find a way to market it," says Dutt Bulisi, president and CEO Metrix Information Systems.Right now the two-person firm based out of Ann Arbor is working to raise capital to do just that. Source: Dutt Bulisi, Metrix Information SystemsWriter: Jon Zemke

News site Ann Arbor.com doesn’t resemble a news site

By Newsroom

●

Economic Development

●

August 5, 2009

AnnArbor.com takes a fluid approach to running the news.Excerpt:The first thing I noticed on AnnArbor.com is, well, the first thing I was supposed to notice. The bare home page doesn't even try to do the traditional newspaper editor's job of defining which stories are the most important or pressing. It's simply a time-sequenced river of news. Think of it as Times Wire, except without the choice to click back to The New York Times' spiffy home page. This is the home page.It might not be what readers expected when Tony Dearing, AnnArbor.com's chief content officer, promised a site "different from anything you've ever seen," but maybe it should have been. "Somehow, that has the connotation of this fantastic, super-futuristic, dancing-women, fireworks-going-off site," Dearing told me. "And really, I meant it in the opposite way. It's going to be very different, but in a simple, understated way that news sites traditionally have not gone."Indeed, AnnArbor.com — which launched the day after The Ann Arbor News shuttered — looks more like Digg and Twitter than it does the Detroit Free Press. At least right now, an investigative enterprise story is featured no more prominently than a 200-word blog post. Everything — design, content, even advertising — is different. Read the rest of the story here.

Ann Arbor restaurants buck recession

By Newsroom

●

Health

●

August 5, 2009

So there’s a recession going on? Don’t tell that to downtown Ann Arbor's restaurants.Excerpt:Ann Arbor continues to attract new restaurants despite the economic recession and complaints - even from some restaurateurs - that there are too many eateries in town.The concentration of restaurants on and near Main Street creates a destination for out-of-towners, and the University of Michigan provides a stable and loyal base of customers. But restaurant owners said with the number of existing eateries in town, it's crucial for new ones to find a niche and serve it well.For Ron Jeffries, owner and brewer at the Jolly Pumpkin brewery in Dexter who plans to open a café on South Main Street within two months, the niche is his award-winning beer and vegan and vegetarian food.He said he'd been looking for space in Ann Arbor for three years, but rents have only recently become affordable.Jeffries' café will be in roughly 4,200 square feet where the Pepperz restaurant used to be, in a neighborhood home to more than 20 restaurants. But he said a restaurant row is more beneficial in bringing foot traffic than the competition is harmful to a single eatery."There’s a lot to be said for having a restaurant in an area with a lot of other nice restaurants," he said. "If you’re not, you really need to be a destination or a draw."Read the rest of the story here.

U-M Biz School varies degree options with new Weekend MBA

By Newsroom

●

Education

●

August 5, 2009

Getting a MBA from the University of Michigan is getting a little bit easier these days now that the school is offering a Weekend MBA program.The new program is the second part-time program offered by the Ross School of Business, which already has an evening format. The Weekend Program, which will begin next May, is expected to allow MBA students to earn their degrees within two years compared to the three to four years for the evening class option.Students in the Weekend Format will take classes Friday afternoon and evening, and all day Saturday during six 14-week terms. The classes will be mostly held in Ann Arbor, with a few more in the Southfield satellite campus. For information on the part-time options, click here. Source: University of MichiganWriter: Jon Zemke

Innosynth plans to turn Ann Arbor base into 15 jobs

By Newsroom

●

Economic Development

●

August 5, 2009

Dante Bishop has some big plans for his start-up - Innosynth Technologies.The one-year-old firm employs three people now in Ann Arbor SPARK's downtown business incubator. But he expects employment to shoot up dramatically within the next year, as he plans to hire up to 15 people."I see our growth as being tremendous in terms of potential," Bishop says.Innosynth (a combo of the words innovative and synthesis) Tech specializes in creating social networking software as a service for internal communities. Think businesses, non-profits and other large organizations. It does everything from content management to running blogs and other forms of social media outlets.Bishop is confident in this idea because he used to work in a similar unit for his old employer. He sees a large market opening up for companies looking to find ways to more efficiently facilitate communication with their employees.Source: Dante Bishop, president of Innosynth TechnologiesWriter: Jon Zemke

Allinova’s software keeps partnering companies together

By Newsroom

●

Economic Development

●

August 5, 2009

A lot of businesses get their start when the founder(s) draw upon years of experience working for someone else as the base of their new venture. The story of Allinova is no different.Joost Allard has a decade of experience in partnership management and years more in the IT industry. So it made sense to combine the two as the foundation for his new start-up. Allinova specializes in ensuring the success of business partnerships through its software and consulting services."The failure rate of alliances is too high in my estimation," Allard says. "It's over 50 percent."The company is testing a pilot version of its software that is supposed to help these partnerships survive, thus leading to consulting work."We see it more as a blue ocean area," Allard says. "We think there is plenty of opportunity for us and other consultants going down this path."Right now Allinova is just Allard and a few independent contractors. The firm is occupying space in Ann Arbor SPARK's business incubator in downtown Ann Arbor. Allard hopes to establish the product within the next year, which means bringing on 10 companies to use it, including one of the big boys like IBM, Cisco or Eli Whitney. Source: Joost Allard, founder and CEO of AllinovaWriter: Jon Zemke

FROM SCRATCH: ThinkStretch

By Tanya Muzumdar

●

Education

●

August 5, 2009

Summer break is a plus for students' bodies but a minus for their minds, according to research from Johns Hopkins University. Enter Donna Lasinski, an Ann Arbor entrepreneur and the brains behind ThinkStretch, a summer learning program for public and private elementary school students.

Video Accuri Cytometers

By Keith Jefferies

●

Entrepreneurship

●

August 5, 2009

From co-founder Collin Rich's kitchen table to the offices of U-M's Tech Transfer office to shipping high tech cytometers to labs all over the world, Accuri Cytometers is the model for Ann Arbor startup know how.