Archive for November, 2009
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
COLUMBIA, MD – Merkle (www.merkleinc.com), one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing customer relationship marketing agencies, has named Patrick Hennessy and Tim Berry, 12-year veterans of the company, co-presidents.
The change comes as Merkle consolidates its core operating units, including technology, data, analytics, strategy, creative and production management, as well as all business development and client management resources – all of which will report to Hennessy and Berry.
Hennessy and Berry both joined Merkle in 1997, playing key roles in building the organization from 80 employees and $19 million in annual revenue to more than 1,000 employees and estimated 2009 revenue of $240 million.
Online: www.merkleinc.com
Posted in Internet/New Media, Marketing, Maryland, People | Comments Off
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
FORT MYERS, FL – Lexos Media, an online media marketing firm, has secured $1.4 million of a targeted $2.5 million offering, according to a regulatory filing.
The company was founded by Craig Pisaris-Henderson, also founder and managing member of the Nexus Group-Nexus Capital, which owns Lexos Media.
Pisaris-Henderson founded dot com era company MIVA Inc. (Nasdaq:MIVA) in 1996 and served as its CEO and chair until April 2006. The company developed and sold performance-based marketing and commerce enabling services online.
Pisaris-Henderson also was named 2003 Ernst&Young Flordia Entrepreneur of the Year and has been a featured speaker at industry events.
Online:www.lexosmedia.com (the Web site was experiencing loading problems at the time this article was posted.
Posted in Florida, Internet/New Media, Marketing, Money | Comments Off
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
WILMINGTON, NC – Contract Research Organization PPD Inc. (Nasdaq:PPDI) has agreed to acquire BioDuro, a drug discovery outsourcing company that provides a broad range of integrated services to biopharmaceutical companies. The acquisition will expand PPD’s drug development capabilities in China.
Financial details were not disclosed.
Founded in 2005, BioDuro operates a state-of-the-art, 110,000-square-foot laboratory in Beijing. Most of its approximately 660 employees are based in China, where it provides deep scientific expertise in medicinal chemistry, biology, pharmacology, drug metabolism, pharmacokinetic and safety services.
Online: www.ppdi.com
Posted in Acquisitions, North Carolina | Comments Off
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC – Peter Morris and Scott Sandell of New Enterprise Associates, Thomas Smith of Mid-Atlantic Ventures and Gene Riecheres of Valhalla Partners are among the handful of regional VCS who made the first AlwaysOn VC 100 list.
Nearly a quarter of the VCs on the AlwaysOn list are from Boston.
Many others are from Silicon Valley. Tim Draper, of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, who did his VC song and dance at TechJournal South’s Southeast Venture Conference in 2008 (www.sevc.org) made the list as well.
They were chosen based on the number and value of successful mergers and acquistiions and IPOs from their portfolio companies.
Sonnenschein Venture Technology Group assisted the AlwaysOn editorial staff in making the selections with research help from Morgan Stanley, VentureDeal and the 451 Group on more than 700 active VCs, 1,400 VC investments and 1,000 liquidity events.
For the full list see:
http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/34032
Posted in Events, Maryland, People, Virginia, Washington, DC | Comments Off
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
By Daniel Burrus
The new frontier of Web 2.0 is not just about informing your customers; it’s about communicating with them. Today’s Web 2.0 tools, such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the many other social media options, are all about customer engagement.
When you send your prospects or clients an email, a mailer, or a newsletter, or when you place a TV, radio, or print ad, you’re informing your readers about something. Those are information age tools that still have a purpose.
However, social media is about the communication age. You’re attempting to creating a dialogue, trying to get engagement, and hoping to elicit a response.
So it’s not just about talking; it’s about listening. Ultimately, social media is not about the media. It’s about the social – about trying to get people talking about something important to them and to your business.
What’s Your Focus?
In order to make the best business use of social media, your organization needs to pinpoint the specific message you want to put out so that all employees have a guide to follow – so they know what direction their messages should take and how they should focus their posts. In other words, is your company’s focus to increase customer service?
To enhance awareness of your products or services? To boost your brand recognition? Each of these things would have a different consistent message for your employees to focus on.
For example, one insurance company uses Twitter and Facebook to let people know all the philanthropic things they are doing for the community.
All the posts are about events they’re sponsoring and contributions they’re making. Employees know that they should post information about personal things they’re doing for the community, such as volunteering at the local animal shelter or helping out with Habitat for Humanity.
With a clear guideline that the social media effort is to increase philanthropic awareness, it’s easy for employees to know the kinds of things they should be doing on social media sites. They have a clear focus and a unified purpose.
Another company in the retail industry uses social media to improve customer service.
All their posts highlight things they’re doing internally to improve the customer experience, what they’re doing online to make shopping easier, and how they’re handling phone inquiries to deliver a memorable shopping experience.
They also regularly ask customers how they’d like the company to improve customer service. With that as the key message, all the company’s employees are focused on problem solving and on making the customers happy.
Therefore, a good social media strategy and employee guidelines are far more than a list of good and bad words or topics.
Instead, they need to focus on the core message your company wants to portray and then determine the best ways to spread that core message. That’s why upper management needs to take the time to determine the core message and share it with all employees.
Tomorrow: Creating the Guidelines
Dan Burrus is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and strategists. He is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends.
Dan has developed the first cell phone business application that allows the user to generate a business plan; the “Competitive Advantage Business Strategy Builder.” For more information, visit: www.burrus.com
Posted in Business advice, Columns, Internet/New Media, Viewpoint | Comments Off
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
ATLANTA – The pedal-to-the-metal signals driving the growth of several types of cancer cells lead to a common switch governing the use of glucose, or blood sugar, researchers at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University have discovered. Biotech companies are already searching for ways to exploit the findings.
Scientists who study cancer have known for decades that cancer cells tend to consume more glucose than healthy cells.
This tendency is known as the “Warburg effect,” honoring discoverer Otto Warburg, a German biochemist who won the 1931 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Now a Winship-led team has identified a way to possibly exploit cancer cells’ taste for glucose.
The results were published this week in the journal Science Signaling.
Normally cells have two modes of burning glucose, comparable to sprinting and long-distance running: glycolysis, which doesn’t require oxygen and doesn’t consume all of the glucose molecule, and oxidative phosphorylation, which requires oxygen and is more thorough.
Cancer cells often outgrow their blood supply, leading to a lack of oxygen in a tumor, says Jing Chen, PhD, assistant professor of hematology and medical oncology at Emory University School of Medicine and Winship Cancer Institute.
They also benefit from glycolysis because leftovers from the inefficient consumption of glucose can be used as building blocks for growing cells.
“Even if they have oxygen, cancer cells still prefer glycolysis,” Chen says. “They depend on it to grow quickly.”
Working with Chen, postdoctoral researcher Taro Hitosugi focused on the enzyme PKM2 (pyruvate kinase M2), which governs the use of glucose and controls whether cells make the switch between glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation. PKM2 is found predominantly in fetal cells and in tumor cells.
In many types of cancer, mutations lead to over-activation of proteins called tyrosine kinases. Chen’s team showed that tyrosine kinases turn off PKM2 in lung, breast, prostate and blood cancers.
Introducing a form of PKM2 that is not sensitive to tyrosine kinases into cancer cells forces them to grow slower and be more dependent on oxygen, they found.
Because the active form of PKM2 consists of four protein molecules stuck together, having a tyrosine kinase flip the “off” switch on one molecule can dampen the activity for the others.
“People knew that tyrosine kinases might modify PKM2 for decades but they didn’t think it mattered,” Chen says. “We showed that such a modification is important and you even don’t need that much modification of PKM2 to make a difference in the cells’ metabolism.”
PKM2 could be a good drug target, because both inhibiting it or activating it can slow down cancer cell growth. Biotechnology companies are already searching for ways to do so, Chen says.
Scientists from Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Yale University, Cell Signaling Technology Inc. and Novartis contributed to the paper.
The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society and the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.
Posted in Georgia, University Tech | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
Nashville, TN – Nashville IT and Internet entrepreneur David Repas, founder of “Finagle,” an Internet advertising play, is the focus of a profile by Venture Nashville this week.
Repas, who plans to launch his venture this spring, was one of more than 1,200 people who attended the November Internet Summit at the Raleigh Convention Center.
He was one of the handful of innovative companies chosen to demonstrate his coming SaaS service at the event.
Repas tells Venture Nashville that Finagle “allows users to discover products, places and services by viewing advertising” that is presented via the ads-only media-rich Finagle website.” The Web site is not yet public.
Repas described the Internet Summit, which is sponsored by TechJournal South and Southern Capitol Ventures as “high energy and definitely worthwhile.”
For the full story see: http://bit.ly/LfJ7M
Online: www.Internetsummit.com;
Posted in Events, Internet/New Media, Tennessee | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
ATLANTA – Damballa, a company that stops Internet-based criminal use of enterprise networks, has named Val Rahmani CEO and confirmed closing its third round of funding. Although the company did not disclose the amount of the funding, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission notes that it was targeted at $9 million.
Damballa’s new round of investment was led by Palomar Ventures. Current investors InterWest Partners, Noro-Mosely Ventures and Sigma Partners all participated in this round.
Jim Gauer and F. A. (Fran) Dramis have joined the Damballa board.
According to a filing with the SEC, the round was targeted at $9 million and the company closed on $8.2 million of it in October (see TechJournal South’s report here:
(Damballa locks up about $8.2M of $9M round for botnet security tech: http://techjournalsouth.com/news/article.html?item_id=8339 ).
Rahmani brings over 25 years of customer-driven business and technical leadership to Damballa. Most recently, she served as General Manager of IBM’s Internet Security Systems (ISS) division. Prior to ISS, Rahmani directed several multi-billion dollar hardware, software and services businesses.
As CEO, Rahmani plans to significantly grow Damballa’s customer base, extend the company’s reach into new markets, and accelerate research and product development. The company is already moving aggressively to hire top-tier talent to complement its current staff.
Damballa’s approach to network security finds previously unidentified threats then closes the hidden two-way communications channels that cybercriminals use to manipulate compromised corporate systems.
The company points out that these attacks are silent, stealthy and the weapon of choice for online attacks, fraud and abuse.
“These threats infiltrate even the best protected enterprise networks and turn corporate assets into contributors for criminal activity. That’s why senior executives increasingly see a proactive defense as a critical part of their fiduciary responsibility,” says Rahmani.
Fran Dramis, industry veteran and new Damballa board member, comments that, “Damballa has a unique – and uniquely effective – product that keeps corporate assets from being used for criminal activity.
“It’s this ability to both protect and integrate seamlessly with other solutions that’s so interesting, and why Damballa presents a great growth opportunity to build a next-generation computer security company.”
Online: www.damballa.com
Posted in Georgia, Internet/New Media, IT, Money, Security | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
ST. PETERSBURG, FL – American Express Company (NYSE: AXP) has agreed to acquire Revolution Money, a Revolution company. The purchase price is expected to be approximately $300 million.
Revolution Money, launched by AOL Co-founder Steve Case’s Revolution in 2007, provides secure payments through an internet based platform.
“New payments products and platforms are evolving rapidly and it’s important for us to keep identifying cutting edge technologies that can extend our leadership beyond the traditional payments arena,” said Kenneth I. Chenault, chairman and chief executive officer of American Express.
Jason Hogg, founder and chief executive officer of Revolution Money, will continue as president and chief executive officer.
Ted Leonsis, a Revolution Money angel investor, major shareholder and chairman, will become a special advisor to American Express.
Revolution Money was one of TechJournal South’s 50 Tech companies to watch firms.
Online: www.americanexpress.com; www.revolutionmoney.com
Posted in Acquisitions, Florida, Internet/New Media | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
ATLANTA – Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN) , a which sells electronic transaction processing solutions has signed an agreement to sell its DolEx- and Europhil-branded money transfer businesses to an affiliate of Palladium Equity Partners.
Under the terms of the agreement, Global Payments will receive proceeds in the range of $85 million to $110 million based on the operating performance of the business determined at the time of closing, which is subject to customary regulatory approvals including the consent to the transaction by the issuers of money transfer licenses in many of the states and countries where DolEx or Europhil currently operates.
Global Payments’ Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Paul R. Garcia, said, “This transaction will allow us to focus exclusively on our ongoing strategy of expanding our merchant acquiring presence around the world, and as such, we intend to reinvest the sale proceeds in future merchant acquiring growth opportunities.”
Online: www.globalpaymentsinc.com
Posted in Acquisitions, Georgia, Internet/New Media, IT | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
WEST POINT, GA – Knology Inc. (Nasdaq:KNOL) has acquried the assets of Private Cable Co. for $7.5 million in cash.
PCL Cable, sells video, voice and data services to residential and business customers in Athens and Decatur, Alabama.
Knology sells interactive communications and entertainment services in the Southeast and in the South Dakota region.
Online: www.knology.com
Posted in Acquisitions, Alabama, Georgia, Telecommunications | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
BOWIE, MD – Verizon says it will offer an early separation package to surplus employees in the DC, Maryland and Virginia region.
“When employees leave the company under a voluntary separation package, the company provides generous payments that are respectful of the employees contributions to the company. This only affects the shrinking part of the business,” said Alberto Canal, spokesman for Verizon.
The company, which made $6.4 billion in profits in 2008 and is one most profitable companies in the U.S.
“At a very stressful time for our economy and working families, Verizon is abandoning the very employees who provide the quality service that makes Verizon so profitable,” says Communications Workers of America VP Ron Collins.
CWA points out that Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg is one of the country’s highest paid executives, grossing $18 million in 2008.
“Layoffs are always a last resort for us. We’ve been very committed to finding efficiencies throughout the business,” says Canal.
Posted in Internet/New Media, Maryland, TechJobs, Viewpoint, Virginia, Washington, DC | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
ATLANTA – Georgia State University says it will hire 100 new faculty members over the next five years to build its research programs.
The first group of new faculty members are slated to join the university in 2011.
The hiring is part of the university’s “Second Century Initiative,” aimed at helping build the schools reputation.
Posted in Georgia, University Tech | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
MORGANTOWN, W. VA – Protea Biosciences, a company developing technology to identify disease specific proteins, has closed on a $1.7 million equity and debt financing from the West Virginia Jobs Investment Trust.
The company, which doubled its staff to 30 this year expects to employ 200 by 2013.
The company says its products and services help life science researchers improve the speed, quality and reproducibility of protein mass spectrometry data obtained from biological samples.
It operates a 7,500 square-foot protein research laboratory in Morgantown, about three hours from Washington.
The company plans to bring its technology to market next year.
Online: www.proteabio.com
Posted in Money, West Virginia | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO – Twitter, the mini-blogging site, plans to dump its list of suggested users to follow, said Twitter co-founder Bill Stone, according to reports.
Stone said the company will seek a more systematic way to suggest prominent members to follow.
The Twitter hand-picked list of suggested users has drawn criticism for the seemingly system-less method of selecting those to list.
“That list will be going away,” Stone said at a conference for entrepreneurs in Malaysia.
Stone said also Twitter plans to add new features such as easier ways to forward messages and will be translated into more languages.
Posted in Internet/New Media | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
By The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) – E-mail has taken a full circle.
Over the years, Web-based e-mail services have gotten much better, sporting many features once available only with the e-mail programs that reside on the computer desktop.
Now, those desktop programs are borrowing from their Web-based counterparts, such as Google Inc.’s Gmail.
The new version of Mozilla’s Thunderbird, due out in the next few weeks, lets you keep your inbox clutter-free with a Gmail-like “archive” button for permanently storing older messages, while removing them from day-to-day sight.
Thunderbird 3 also introduces tabbed e-mail _ akin to tabbed browsing available on most Web browsers, including Mozilla’s own Firefox. You can quickly jump back and forth between e-mail messages by opening them in separate tabs.
David Ascher, CEO of Mozilla Messaging, said that when Thunderbird was first created, the only decent programs around were desktop-based ones such as Microsoft Corp.’s Outlook. For the latest version, Ascher said, Mozilla looked for ideas everywhere, including other e-mail programs that happened to be Web-based.
That might suggest the time has come to ditch desktop programs completely, now that they are playing catch-up rather than the other way around.
But Ascher said desktop systems still provide advantages for many users – particularly those with multiple e-mail accounts over multiple services.
The new Thunderbird software offers improvements for merging messages from those accounts into a single mailbox.
Before, you could do that only for e-mail systems supporting the POP3 protocol; that’s been expanded to include IMAP, used by Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and many workplace systems.
Search has also improved to be more like the Web. Think of e-shopping sites that let you narrow your choices by clicking on a specific brand name or price range to the left.
Thunderbird will now let you do that with e-mail, narrowing the search results using such criteria as whether there’s an attachment and who the sender is.
- Anick Jesdanun, AP Technology Writer
___
Posted in Internet/New Media | Comments Off
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
CHARLOTTE, NC – Goodrich Corporation (NYSE:GR) has signed an agreement with an investment affiliate of J.F. Lehman & Company to acquire AIS Global Holdings LLC (AIS).
AIS, known as Atlantic Inertial Systems, is a leading provider of mission-critical guidance, stabilization and navigation products and systems for the military and defense market.
The purchase price is approximately $375 million.
Posted in Acquisitions, Government/Defense, North Carolina | Comments Off
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
RESTON, VA – The number of Twitter users dropped 7.9 percent in October from September, according to comScore, a digital measurement firm.
Twitter had 19.2 million users in October, comScore said. It grew only 1 percent in September and declined in August according to comScore.
Teh number 3 social networking site in the U.S. saw Web use slow, but mobile phone and overseas users grew.
Facebook, the most popular social network, rose to 97.4 million U.S. users last month, more than double the number it posted in the same period last year.
Online: www.comscore.com
Posted in Internet/New Media, Studies, surveys, reports, Virginia | Comments Off
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
ANNAPOLIS, MD – TeleCommunication Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: TSYS), a provider of mission-critical wireless communications, has acquired substantially all the assets of Sidereal Solutions Inc. for an undisclosed amount of cash aand 244,000 shares of TCS stock.
The deal includes contingent consideration based on the business’ gross profit in 2010 and 2011.
Atlanta-based Sidereal has been a business partner of TCS’ government solutions group since 2007, providing field service support for satellite communications and network engineering, technical writing and training, and other information technology services in support of TCS’ Swiftlink line of deployable systems.
Online:www.telecomsys.com
Posted in Acquisitions, Georgia, Government/Defense, IT, Maryland | Comments Off
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
By Allan Maurer
NASHVILLE, TN – Pace Payment Systems, founded in October, has raised $18,885,000 in a mixed equity and debt round led by Brantley Partners V to support its merger with Century Bankcard Services. Prudential Capital Partners III, and Valley Forge Fund VII, also participated in the funding.
Prudential Capital Group and Prudential Capital Partners provided debt capital in conjunction with the equity investment.
The company disclosed the amount of the raise, which was not cited in its news release, in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company will operate Century Bankcard’s electronic processing of debit and credit card business.
This debt and equity capital facilitated the merger of Pace and CBS and enabled the combined entity to recapitalize its balance sheet in order to provide the company the resources it required to continue to support its current agents and customers and to expand its successful operating model.
CBS is led by Rick Ferrante, Steve Clark and Scott Scherr, each of whom have significant experience in the payment processing industry.
Pace is led by Paul Christians, who has successfully grown several business service organizations by accelerating internal growth and completing strategic acquisitions.
Prior to the formation of Pace, Christians was the CEO of Prime office Products Inc., a Brantley IV portfolio company that was successfully sold to Staples Inc.
“CBS is an exceptional platform that will support our growth initiatives while continuing to provide industry leading levels of service to our merchant agents and other industry stakeholders,” said Christians.
“This merger is a great opportunity to build on the success CBS has enjoyed since our inception in 1999 and we strongly believe in the benefits it will create for our agent partners and merchant customers.” said Rick Ferrante, senior vice president of CBS.
CBS SVP Steve Clark added, “Partnering with Pace will allow us access to capital to fund marketing initiatives and to pursue strategic acquisitions for the continued expansion of our portfolio. Pace’s management team has demonstrated a proven record of success which will complement the future goals for CBS.”
Pace CFO Jerry Christenson tells TechJournal South that some previous reports saying CBS call center employees would relocate to Nashville were not correct. “We have no plans to relocatte anyone,” he said.
Christenson declined to disclose the number of employees at Pace.
Posted in IT, Money, Tennessee | Comments Off
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