Saline, MI (March 2, 2011) – BioMedware – an Ann Arbor-based company that conducts research and develops software for the environmental and health sciences – has launched its new website: www.biomedware.com.

The site was designed and developed by DesignHub, Inc. (www.design-hub.com) of Saline. DesignHub also created the new logo for BioMedware, starting from and refining the client’s preliminary ideas for the design.

Visitors to BioMedware’s new website learn how the company uses space-time analysis to help clients explore relationships between human health and the environment. The site describes the company’s current funded research in the areas of cancer cluster morphology, case-only cancer clustering for mobile populations, analysis of individual-level epidemiologic data, and space-time cancer data.

BioMedware’s completed research, research collaborations, and recent publications are also detailed in the site. The company’s research has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and other federal government agencies, and through contracts with state governments and academic institutions.

Elsewhere on the new site, visitors learn about BioMedware’s software for geographic boundary analysis (BoundarySeer), disease cluster detection (ClusterSeer), and space-time visualization, analysis, and modeling (SpaceStat). All are available for purchase and delivery through the site’s online store. BioMedware’s software is used by universities, government agencies, and private industries worldwide.

In the site’s “BioMeanings” blog, BioMedware’s principals offer their perspectives on the latest news and issues in geospatial research for the environmental and health sciences. An interactive calendar alerts site visitors to BioMedware’s participation in academic and industry conferences. Visitors can also order books on compartmental analysis and modeling from the site’s online store.

Since BioMedware’s founding in 1994, the company has garnered over $11 million in Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and researcher-Initiated grants to fund research and software development. In recognition of the company’s growth, BioMedware won “Fast Track” awards from the Washtenaw County Economic Development Council in 1999 and 2000.

More information on BioMedware is available from the company at 3526 W. Liberty Rd., Suite 1000, Ann Arbor, MI 48103-8872. Phone: (734) 913-1098 x200. Email: bsaid@greatlakeseducationalgroup.com.

About DesignHub

DesignHub, Inc. is a creative services and marketing firm that works with clients on website design and development, brand development, brochures, annual reports, newsletters, advertising, public relations, direct marketing, packaging designs, signage, and exhibits, as well as marketing strategies and plans.

DesignHub was founded in 1999. Its principals include: Karen Ragland, business manager and account executive; Ted Chesky, creative director and graphic designer; and Chris Kochmanski, marketing strategist, account executive, and copywriter. The firm has on-staff and freelance professionals for graphic design and website design and development.

NEW YORK, Feb. 17, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Borders Group, Inc. today announced that the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York has approved its previously-disclosed strategic Store Reduction Program to facilitate its reorganization and repositioning. Borders said that it has entered into agreements with experienced liquidators to conduct an orderly wind down of the 200 underperforming stores that are part of the program. Borders expects these stores to be closed by the end of April.

In addition, Borders announced that, as part of this Program, the affected stores could begin promotional sales as soon as this coming weekend.

Borders filed to reorganize its U.S. businesses under Chapter 11 on February 16, 2011 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The case number is 11-10614(MG). The company’s international franchised operations were not part of the filing.

Additional information about the recapitalization is available at http://www.bordersreorganization.com/ or by telephone at 877-906-7675.

About Borders Group, Inc.

Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Mich., Borders Group, Inc. is a leading specialty retailer of books as well as other educational and entertainment items. Online shopping is offered through borders.com. Find author interviews and vibrant discussions of the products we and our customers are passionate about online at facebook.com/borders, twitter.com/borders and youtube.com/bordersmedia. For more information about the company, visit borders.com/media.

ZNet Technologies announced that it has partnered with CloudLinux, OS provider for superior web hosting, to provide high performance hosting services.

Jaipur, India, February 11, 2011 –(PR.com)– ZNet Technologies (http://www.znetindia.com), India’s 5th largest web hosting company, today announced that it has partnered with CloudLinux, OS provider for superior web hosting, to provide high performance hosting services.

The company states that CloudLinux is the only commercially supported operating system optimized for hosting service providers to manage a significant level of shared hosting accounts and for datacenters who sell servers to enterprise and small business customers.

CloudLinux is binary compatible with the most popular RPM-based Linux distribution and is optimized to work with hosting control panels to deliver faster and fully tested updates. CloudLinux differentiates from other Linux distributions by creating Lightweight Virtual Environments (LVE).

ZNet Hosting customers will receive these benefits as a result of Cloudlinux partnership:
Better reliability and performance with a server that is running at peak operating capacity
Better control over CPU resources
Increased uptime since no one account can slow down or take down an entire shared server
Increased density
Compatibility with all major control panels for easy management

“We are very pleased to expand our relationship with CloudLinux”, says Munesh Jadoun, Founder & CEO, ZNet Technologies. “CloudLinux will help in delivering better hosting services to our growing clientele. ZNet is committed to providing high quality hosting to our customers and adding CloudLinux to our offerings will undoubtedly serves as a way ahead in this direction”.

"Having one of the largest hosting companies in India to select our technology is very important," states Igor Seletskiy, CEO of Cloud Linux Inc.’s Founder and CEO. "By working with companies like ZNET we can continue to improve our technology, and to help such companies to achieve better performance and reliability".

About ZNet
ZNet, India’s 5th largest web hosting company, offering online solutions like domain registration, web hosting, reseller hosting, dedicated hosting, VPS, business email, SSL certificates, online business applications, etc since 2002. ZNet has recently launched various new ventures to increase its reach – znet.in, znetlive.com, znet.uk.com, znetsupport.com.
For more information about ZNet, visit http://www.znetindia.com.

About CloudLinux
CloudLinux was founded and developed in 2009 to address the distinctive and specific needs of web hosting providers. The company headquarter is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan while its development team composed of people with appreciable proficiency in the hosting business is based in Donetsk, Ukraine. CloudLinux is a stable, privately-funded company geared towards providing the ideal OS to make even the most intricate and divergent hosting needs more straightforward and less-complicated.
For more information about CloudLinux, visit http://www.cloudlinux.com.

Acquisition of Palladian Partners Provides Altarum with Vital New Health Communications and Marketing Capabilities

ANN ARBOR, Mich. –Altarum Institute President and CEO Lincoln Smith announced today that Altarum has finalized its acquisition of Silver Spring, Maryland-based Palladian Partners, Inc., a health communications and services company. Palladian will become a for-profit, wholly owned subsidiary of Altarum and will continue to operate from its current headquarters in Silver Spring.

“In our client-funded and internally chartered work, we are meeting a growing requirement to help design and deliver insightful and targeted health communications, ranging from public service announcements, to research publications, to social media outreach,” said Smith in making the announcement. “Palladian Partners’ experience in providing health communications support to the government and private sector will add a vital new capacity to Altarum and will ensure we can offer our current and future clients a full range of services.”

Palladian Partners specializes in science, medical, and public health communications services for government agencies and the private sector. Services include strategic communications planning; writing and editing; publication development and graphic design; web content strategy; website design and development; digital media production; public outreach and media relations; research and evaluation; and conference management. Founded in 1996, Palladian Partners has approximately 60 employees and $10 million in annual revenues. The acquisition will grow Altarum’s total employee base to more than 430 and increase annual revenues to nearly $90 million.

“Joining the Altarum team is tremendously exciting for us,” said Palladian President Beth Maloney. “Having partnered with Altarum on several projects over the past three years, we know the breadth of consulting expertise they offer, and are pleased that our services officially will be a part of the organization. Palladian will continue providing top-notch support to our clients while leveraging the unique capabilities of Altarum.”

Aboiut Altarum
Altarum Institute (www.altarum.org) integrates objective research and client-centered consulting skills to deliver comprehensive, systems-based solutions that improve health and health care. A nonprofit serving clients in the public and private sectors, Altarum employs more than 400 individuals and is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan with additional offices in the Washington, DC area; Sacramento, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Portland, Maine; and San Antonio, Texas.

Company’s Social Media Technology Addressing $650 Billion Information Overload Problem

Ann Arbor, MI – Jan. 18, 2011 – Startup software company InfoReady Corp. has raised $250,000 in seed capital from Automation Alley, closing out $1.1 million in first-round funding.

InfoReady’s core technology helps knowledge workers find relevant information quickly with advanced search techniques, fosters communication with project peers via social-networking collaboration, and facilitates automated workflow management in one centralized project interface. The company’s flagship product, In4Grants™, helps grant seekers better manage the complex pre-award process.

Tom Anderson, Senior Director and Director of Entrepreneurism at Automation Alley, Michigan’s largest technology business association, said InfoReady’s leadership and interactive solutions were an attractive draw.

“InfoReady’s experienced management team has developed a sound product that improves how data-driven organizations conduct business,” Anderson said. “The company’s core technology transforms data into actionable knowledge and supports the ability for multiple people to work together in a single workspace. It all boils down to better collaboration.”

The round will immediately help fund the expansion of sales, marketing and new product deployment. The company recently rebranded In4Grants from InfoReady4Grants and launched a new website. Longer-term developments include new products to address the $2 billion—and growing—search, discovery and collaboration segment of the information-management market.  

InfoReady is led by veteran technology entrepreneurs Bhushan Kulkarni, founder of telecom InTouch as well as IT solutions and services company GDI InfoTech, and Jim Diggs, an original executive team member at the successful startup BlueGill Technologies. Kulkarni said grant seekers in particular are in need of new search and collaboration tools to contend with competitive pressures.

“Organizations realize grant funding is no longer a luxury,” said Kulkarni, CEO. “Grants are now mission critical, and administrators say they are spending too much time searching for opportunities and managing the pre-award process. In4Grants makes their jobs easier and gives them substantially more time to craft winning proposals.”

In4Grants is being used by more than 25 universities, economic-development organizations and local governments including Eastern Michigan University and Ann Arbor SPARK.

For organizations such as these, social-media functionality is an integral part of limiting information overload. Each year, emails and other distractions cost the U.S. economy $650 billion in lost productivity and waste 28 percent of workers’ time, according to a recent report from research firm Basex. InfoReady addresses this problem with information filtering and social-media collaboration—which drastically reduce confusing email threads and other distractions.
Skip Simms, President and CEO of Ann Arbor SPARK, an economic-development organization, said In4Grants is offered to member companies because the product helps startups win funding more efficiently.

“Many companies get their start with grant funding, and In4Grants is focused on this process,” Simms said. “Companies that have been seeded with grant funding are attractive to investors because risk is reduced. And anything that can positively impact the ratio of fund seekers to fund recipients is a boon for Michigan and the startup community as a whole.”

Founded in 2010, InfoReady has received investments from Michigan’s three major seed funds and is now over-subscribed. Investors include $250,000 from the Ann Arbor SPARK-administered Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund, $50,000 from First Step Fund, and advisory board members Ted Dacko and Terry Cross. The advisory board has deep experience in relevant areas of InfoReady’s strategy, including Dacko, who headed HealthMedia’s successful sale to Johnson & Johnson in 2008.

About InfoReady Corp.

InfoReady deals with information overload…so you don’t have to. An information-management innovator backed by decades of deep IT know-how, InfoReady’s core technology helps knowledge workers find relevant information quickly, fosters communication with project peers via social-media applications, and facilitates automated workflow management in one centralized project-based interface. The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based company’s flagship product, In4Grants™, helps grant seekers better manage the complex pre-award process.

To see how InfoReady and In4Grants are changing how the world manages data, go to www.in4grants.com.

New solutions acquired from LexisNexis — CIS and UPA – to offer unprecedented access to deep archives of U.S. congressional, legislative and historic cultural content.

ANN ARBOR, Mich., January 7, 2011 – Just weeks after acquiring the acclaimed Congressional Information Service and University Publications of America product lines, ProQuest announces its new and expanding line of Government Information Services with the launch of the new ProQuest® Legislative Insight, enhancements to ProQuest® Congressional (formerly LexisNexis Congressional), and the new ProQuest® History Vault.

"We’re delivering on our promise to add CIS and UPA to the ProQuest family without losing any of the product lines’ momentum," said Rod Gauvin, ProQuest Senior Vice President of Publishing. "This expansion is a testament to our commitment to serving existing and new customers with products that provide innovative access to unique and valuable content."

In March, ProQuest Legislative Insight will begin a two-year project to make available more than 18,000 professionally researched legislative histories covering laws from 1929 to the present, supported by fully searchable PDFs of all relevant publications generated in the course of U.S. congressional lawmaking. Nine thousand of these histories are new and 4,000 include new research.  Novice and sophisticated researchers will be able to easily access full-text content, including the Public Law itself, all versions of related bills, law-specific Congressional Record excerpts, committee hearings, reports and prints, Presidential signing statements, and CRS reports.

Legislative histories may be used to discover the intent behind a specific law and to aid in the teaching of legislative process to students. The histories also offer insight into laws of general interest to political science, government, and U.S. history students, as well as to students preparing for careers in public health, education, business, or any other discipline subject to Federal regulation.

There is also a new enhancement to two modules of ProQuest Congressional, a comprehensive resource for all congressional activities. In February, subscribers to the prospective modules of Congressional Hearings Digital Collection and Serial Set Digital Collection will be able to view GPO digitally signed PDFs of 2011 data, enabling users to verify that the PDF is the authentic version and has not been altered. This assurance is especially important to law schools because professors and students may be writing articles and papers that depend on every nuance in the text.

Another significant addition to the expanding line of Government Information Services is the new ProQuest History Vault, which will eventually house 23 million pages of digitized primary source material from the University Publications of America (UPA) Collection. ProQuest History Vault debuts with three modules of archival collections documenting two of the most important and widely studied topics in 20th-century American history: the Black Freedom Struggle and the Vietnam War. These modules are the first three in a five-year plan to build more than 25 modules of rich and varied content that create a full spectrum of archival materials to complement coursework in many areas, including African American studies, women’s studies, history and political science.

About ProQuest

A global leader in serving libraries of all types, ProQuest offers the expertise of such respected brands as UMI®, Chadwyck-Healey™, SIRS®, and eLibrary®. With Serials Solutions®, Ulrich’s™, RefWorks®, COS™, Dialog® and now Bowker® part of the ProQuest brand family, the company supports the breadth of the information community with innovative discovery solutions that power the business of books and the best in research experience.

More than a content provider or aggregator, ProQuest is an information partner, creating indispensable research solutions that connect people and information. Through innovative, user-centered discovery technology, ProQuest offers billions of pages of global content that includes historical newspapers, dissertations, and uniquely relevant resources for researchers of any level and sophistication — including content not likely to be digitized by others.

The company is launching an all-new platform that transforms delivery of several highly-regarded individual platforms into a consolidated research experience that will encompass all ProQuest family products over time. Inspired by its customers and their end users, ProQuest is working toward a future that blends information accessibility with community to further enhance learning and encourage lifelong enrichment.

For more information, please visit www.proquest.com.

Université Lumière Lyon II is first to migrate to highly-anticipated new search technology

ANN ARBOR, Mich., November 17, 2010 – France’s Université Lumière Lyon II has migrated to the all-new ProQuest platform, making it the first institution to enable students and faculty to search, discover, gather and share content using the highly-anticipated new technology. Users are able to access all the University’s ProQuest resources in a single, unified search — on campus or remotely — and work with the content using the platform’s sophisticated tools. Université Lumière Lyon II was among the first wave of ProQuest customers around the world to preview the platform. Each is setting its own schedule for migration to enable a smooth transition.

“It was important for the university to be able to move over to the new ProQuest platform at the first opportunity,” Kareen Louembe,Université Lumière Lyon II E-Resources Coordinator. “We wanted our students and staff to be able to start seeing the benefits of the new cross-searchability of our ProQuest subscriptions. We feel this will lead to much more productive study and research activity at our institution.”

The new ProQuest platform was created from the ground up. Its experience-based design has been informed through studies of student research habits, surveys of more than 6,000 end users, focus groups, and individual interviews, plus ongoing interactions with users, librarians, administrators and faculty worldwide. “Personas” – a dozen highly detailed user profiles – were created from the research enabling the agile development process to be guided by users throughout. Ultimately, the platform became a blend of new technologies and user-favorites from other legacy ProQuest and brand family platforms.

“This is an exciting day for ProQuest as we see our customers and their users reap the benefits of a very intense and rewarding development process,” said Bipin Patel, Chief Information Officer, ProQuest. “There’s much more to come… more content being released on the platform and more features unveiled. This is just the beginning.”

To follow the development of the All-New ProQuest platform visit www.proquest.com.

About ProQuest

ProQuest creates specialized information resources and technologies that provide the most successful ways for people to search, find, use, and share information.

A global leader in serving libraries of all types, ProQuest offers the expertise of such respected brands as UMI®, Chadwyck-Healey™, SIRS®, and eLibrary®. With Serials Solutions®, Ulrich’s™, RefWorks®, COS™, Dialog® and now Bowker® part of the ProQuest brand family, the company supports the breadth of the information community with innovative discovery solutions that power the business of books and the best in research experience.

More than a content provider or aggregator, ProQuest is an information partner, creating indispensable research solutions that connect people and information. Through innovative, user-centered discovery technology, ProQuest offers billions of pages of global content that includes historical newspapers, dissertations, and uniquely relevant resources for researchers of any level and sophistication—including content not likely to be digitized by others.

The company is nearing launch of an all-new platform that will transform delivery of several highly-regarded individual platforms into a consolidated research experience that will encompass all ProQuest family products over time. Inspired by its customers and their end users, ProQuest is working toward a future that blends information accessibility with community to further enhance learning and encourage lifelong enrichment. For more information, please visit www.proquest.com.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–A recently concluded study of 1,200 consumers shows that children play a significantly greater role in choosing McDonald’s than in choosing other quick service restaurants. The Restaurant Selection Study from CFI Group found that nearly one-third (32%) of families who ate at McDonald’s did so because of their kids’ influence. This compares to just 7% for all other quick service restaurants. The study also finds that toys are the primary driver of that choice only 8% of the time.

“From the food, and the familiar cast of friendly characters, to the playground, McDonald’s is a place kids like to go.”

“San Francisco’s proposed ban on Happy Meal toys is well intentioned, but misguided,” said Sheri Teodoru, CEO of CFI Group. “Saying that Buzz Lightyear or MegaMind causes childhood obesity is easy, but doesn’t address the problem. Our research shows that toys have limited influence over children’s preference for McDonald’s.”

“McDonald’s is more than the cheap plastic toy,” said Michael Drago, North American business development executive at CFI Group. “From the food, and the familiar cast of friendly characters, to the playground, McDonald’s is a place kids like to go.”

“Quick service restaurants – including those who serve kids’ meals with toys – are about convenience, taste and affordability. Taking toys away doesn’t address the issue of why families are there in the first place,” said Teodoru.

The full results of the Restaurant Selection Study from CFI Group will be released in the coming weeks.

About CFI Group (www.cfigroup.com)

CFI Group is a global leader in customer satisfaction measurement and management. Founded in 1988 by University of Michigan professor Claes Fornell, CFI Group brings the precision and accuracy of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) methodology to its clients, applying the science of satisfaction to drive loyalty, word of mouth, revenue, and shareholder value.

The next step in publishing is now on-line with the latest system from MediaSpan.

ANN ARBOR, MI (September 30, 2010) – MediaSpan announced today the upcoming release of its newest addition to its content management suite, SkyQue.

SkyQue is a browser based SaaS deployed solution that offers outstanding functionality and performance. Designed for today’s multichannel world, SkyQue gives users the flexibility to produce and manage all of their multi-media content in one easy to use system regardless of the final output channel.

Key features of SkyQue include:

• Semantic editor – gives content creators freedom to work at the semantic level. Don’t get bogged down worrying about what text should look like – just worry about what it is!  Channel endpoints apply style to the content’s structure. A perfect solution for creating content for a multi-channel world.
• Hosted as a service – we worry about scalability, redundancy and recovery so you can focus on what you do best.
• Web-based interface – no desktop client required.
• Extensible metadata – specific requirements define the data model. When every field is custom, the metadata will always match your needs.
• Redesigned search interface – browse assets interactively in a streamlined interface.
• Streamlined relationships –Easily view and define relationships from every screen.
• Free form tagging – unrestricted classifications for greater content exploration.
• Meaningful asset types – each asset type has its own workflow, elements and custom data model.  No more one-size-fits all. User groups are free to share data while working with a system tailored to their needs.
• Pagination channel plug-in – easy-to-use, streamlined palettes, and tightly integrated experience.
• Watched assets – easily track and organize important assets
• Asset commenting – contextualized messages for enhanced collaboration

SkyQue will be demonstrated to the publishing world for the first time at the upcoming GraphExpo show in Chicago October 3-6 and IFRA in Hamburg, Germany October 4-6.

About MediaSpan
MediaSpan Group, Inc. (www.mediaspangroup.com) powers digital content management, online marketing, advertising and business productivity solutions for the world’s leading media companies including Sun Media, Advance Publications, MediaNews, Gannett and Radio One.  With more than 4,000 local newspaper, radio, and television properties relying on its solutions, MediaSpan is the world’s largest network of local media companies and media consumers.
Headquartered in Ann Arbor, MI, MediaSpan has development, support and sales offices worldwide including Melbourne, FL, New York City, London, UK and Irvine, CA.

Ann Arbor, MI (September 21, 2010) – On-scene personnel accountability remains a critical problem for fire departments across the country. Basic hang-tag systems rely too heavily on manual steps to be effective in the chaotic environment of a fire, but automatic systems are often out of reach due to today’s shrinking budgets. ERT Systems is pleased to introduce a new solution designed specifically to solve these problems.

OnSite BASICTM is an economically-priced system that provides automatic personnel accountability and reporting in a compact, easy-to-use package. While OnSite BASIC doesn’t provide the continual, zone-based tracking offered by ERT Systems’ flagship OnSite ERT™, it does give the incident commander fully automatic, real-time accountability at a price point that fits within just about any department’s budget. And, since ERT and BASIC use the same wireless tags, the two systems are fully interoperable (providing direct support for mutual-aid communities), as well as an easy upgrade path from BASIC to the full OnSite ERT system when budgets allow.

Created by retired Fire Commander John Ellis and technology expert Dennis Carmichael, OnSite BASIC and OnSite ERT are portable, rapidly deployable systems designed specifically to meet the unique needs of firefighters and other emergency responders. OnSite ERT is already in use at over 60 departments across the US and Canada, with more on the horizon.

“It’s clear that firefighters want the accountability and tracking that OnSite ERT offers, but budgets remain tight and grant funds are being cut,” said Dennis Carmichael, President of ERT Systems. “We created OnSite BASIC to fill that middle ground, between manual systems that can be hard to use, and fully-automatic tracking, which is ideal but which can be an investment.” He added, “ERT BASIC makes our advanced technology available at an entry-level investment.”

“As a Chief Officer, I know how difficult it is to maintain accurate accountability on-scene,” Ellis said. “Our goal is to make simple, accurate personnel accountability available on every fire scene. It’s all about safety, and with OnSite, the Chief might be able to send someone home who wouldn’t have made it otherwise.”

About OnSite ERT
Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, ERT Systems, LLC offers OnSite ERT, a portable and rapidly-deployable system for tracking and locating personnel and equipment on scene at emergency events. In addition to single-department solutions, ERT Systems also offers ERT Central™, an on-line database for automatically sharing information between mutual-aid partners, regional response, and remote Emergency Operations Centers. OnSite ERT is on the DHS Authorized Equipment List and is approved for grant purchase. For more information, go to www.OnSiteERT.com or call (734) 327-9532.