Internet

Killing the Ann Arbor News to save it

By Newsroom

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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.

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Tolle on the Totter: Newspapers

By Newsroom

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Economic Development

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August 5, 2009

An interesting conversation about what should have happened at The Ann Arbor News is held on a teeter totter.Excerpt:[Ed. note: The consultancy operated by BT, which is mentioned below, is The Tolle Group. Other entities mentioned below: The Ann Arbor Chronicle and The Workantile Exchange.] HD: Let's climb aboard. BT: [laugh] It takes me back to--who's going first? HD: Well, you know it's a collaborative endeavor. BT: I like this view. The street is so great. HD: It's not bad. [Photography ensues. HD encounters problems with the high-tech camera.] BT: Technology is not my strong suit. HD: Oh, that's not true, I know that for a fact. Well, I think I know that for a fact. So, welcome to the teeter totter! BT: Thanks, Dave. Read the rest of the story here.

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

By Newsroom

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Economic Development

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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.

Boomdash’s dreams go bust

By Newsroom

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In The News

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July 22, 2009

The great thing about being an entrepreneurial hub is that the entrepreneurs in it aren't afraid to fail, dust themselves off and try again.Excerpt:With all their experience and hard work, the team at Boomdash LLC never expected that events beyond their control would dash their dreams.But this spring, the Ann Arbor-based search engine marketing firm closed its doors, a victim of the credit crisis and the severe downturn in advertising.Though the start-up firm had more than 60 customers and was working with eight independent telephone directory publishers, it needed more money to build its business.Read the rest of the story here.

Stout Systems hires 10 people, hopes to add more

By Newsroom

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Economic Development

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July 22, 2009

Ann Arbor's Stout Systems takes the "fake phone call to get out of a painfully long meeting" to a new level with its first iPhone application – ISoBusy. "Most of them (the other programs) ring your phone and you pretend you’re having a conversation," says John W Stout, president and founder of Stout Systems.ISoBusy actually provides a fake conversation to go with the fake phone call. They range from everything from a trainer yelling at you to work out to a fishing scam artist trying to steal money from you. Stout Systems hopes to capitalize on this with more iPhone applications.Right now it's capitalizing on its talent pool. The firm has hired 10 people so far this year, however, its employee turnover has keep the company's overall headcount to 25 people (the same as when we last checked in with Stout Systems) and a handful of independent contractors. Stout Systems started 15 years ago with just Stout. The firm specializes in software development and helping firms with technical staffing such as computer programmers or project managers. It hopes to add 1-3 more people by the end of the year as it continues to expand its product line."We're certainly adding to our staff," Stout says.Source: John W Stout, president and founder of Stout SystemsWriter: Jon Zemke

Wireless Ypsi turns a profit, county program hopes for stimulus funding

By Newsroom

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Entrepreneurship

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July 15, 2009

The duo behind Wireless Ypsi continues to increase its reach across the region... and fatten their wallets.Excerpt:An Ypsilanti-based tech startup is offering a new twist on the paradigm for deployment of wireless Internet in populated areas even as Washtenaw County's own initiative hopes for federal stimulus money.The success of Wireless Ypsi - which offers free wireless Internet access to Ypsilanti's entire downtown area - has led to inquiries from other Michigan municipalities, real estate companies and groups outside the state, co-founder Steve Pierce said."The idea is to be able to create a cloud of Internet access where visitors can just open up their laptop and immediately" get online, Pierce said.Read the rest of the story here.

WhereToFindCare.com opens HQ in Ypsilanti’s SPARK East

By Newsroom

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Entrepreneurship

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July 1, 2009

The three women behind WhereToFindCare.com weren't exactly centralized when they started the firm last year. The trio were spread out all over Metro Detroit, in places like Westland, Trenton and Allen Park. This type of virtual company didn't exactly lend itself to meetings and the like."It was very inconvenient," says Barbara O'Connell, co-founder of WhereToFindCare.com. "We're so spread out."Not anymore. The fledgling business just signed on to claim space in Ann Arbor SPARK's East incubator in downtown Ypsilanti. The three women and an intern will help occupy the quickly filling space of entrepreneurs and established businesses."It seems like a good community for entrepreneurs," O'Connell says. "We want to be involved with that."WhereToFindCare.com helps people choose health-care providers. Its website uses quality and satisfaction data of a number of different types of health care facilities and presents them in a format so users can make an easy decision. The Ann Arbor SPARK East incubator opened earlier this spring in the newly renovated Mack & Mack building. It’s located in the ground floor of 215 Michigan Ave. next to Bombadill’s Cafe.Source: Barbara O’Connell, co-founder of WhereToFindCare.comWriter: Jon Zemke

Virtual Health, Real Success

By Leia Menlove

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Health

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June 10, 2009

Michigan could take a lesson from Healthmedia. From it's early struggles to find local investment to its recent purchase by Johnson & Johnson, the innovative software-as-service company has stayed committed to remaining in Ann Arbor.

Ann Arbor region poised to fill growing cybersecurity need

By Newsroom

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Economic Development

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June 3, 2009

Could cybersecurity be the next new economy, job-growing industry in Ann Arbor?Excerpt:As Web-based attacks become increasingly identified as a national security issue, Michigan companies that offer cybersecurity solutions are poised to reap influxes of revenue.The Ann Arbor region in particular has been steadily assembling a portfolio of companies dedicated to providing network security products and services. Such technology is drawing national attention as the federal government has incurred a series of high-profile network security breaches in recent months.Executives from several local information technology security companies suggested they are positioned to capitalize on a growing focus on network security issues.Sean Heiney, who leads Barracuda Networks' expanding Ann Arbor operation on Depot Street, said the firm's Web filtering and analysis technology is already deployed with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Centers for Disease Control and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for example.Critical to cybersecurity technologies is the ability to detect attacks after hackers have breached a network, Heiney said. "The historic emphasis has been placed on the perimeter of the network," he said. "But now it's commonly recognized that security is best done in defensive layers."Read the rest of the story here.

Merit Network upgrades with 10G Routers, hires 6

By Newsroom

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Education

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June 3, 2009

Ever wish your Internet connection would just fix itself? It's more capable of doing just that if you use Merit Network.The Ann Arbor-based non-profit manages high-bandwidth communication lines between the major universities in the Midwest in cities like Ann Arbor, Chicago and Detroit. It recently finished upgrading its system with 10 gigabit routers and with new ones going in Chicago, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. This helps the system fix its own problems before they snowball out of control and crash. "It's really important with that much traffic going over these lines to help keep resiliency and efficiency up," says Elwood Downing, vice president of member relation, marketing and communications for Merit Network.Merit Network has also been upgrading its staff this year. It has hired six people since January, including two more last week. Those hires have been in network operations and research and development. That bumps its staff up to 65 people and up to a dozen interns from the likes of the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University. Merit Network hopes to continue to hire throughout the year.Source: Elwood Downing, vice president of member relation, marketing and communications for Merit NetworkWriter: Jon Zemke