Tech Digest: what’s moving in the Midwest

06 Oct Tech Digest: what’s moving in the Midwest

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UW-Extension gets $95,000 to help small businesses

The University of Wisconsin Extension’s Small Business Development Center has received $95,000 in federal grant money, according to Erica Kauten, director of the Wisconsin state SBDC.
The Small Business Administration handed out 21 of the grants to different states. Only six went to SBDCs, Kauten said. The UW-Extension SBDC office is one of 13 in Wisconsin.

TeraMedica scans new market opportunity: smaller hospitals

An Alabama health system has bought TeraMedica‘s digital image archive software, the Milwaukee-based company announced on Wednesday. At first, Eastern Health System will install the software at a 282-bed hospital in Birmingham, said Bill Terrell, the system’s CIO.
TeraMedica President Jim Prekop said his company’s TI2m software was ideal for a hospital of that size, which represents a new market opportunity. Previously, the company has sold to larger hospitals, he said.

Single gene could make deadly disease

A change in one gene may have led to the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed about 20 million people, according to research by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo.
Scientists have long speculated why the flu that year was so deadly. Kawaoka’s study supports the idea that increased potency, not just poor medical care or conditions, contributed to the effect. It also favors the theory that the 1918 flu crossed over from birds to humans, as avian flu is doing in Asia today.
The results are published in the October 7 issue of Nature.

Platypus plans office move next June

Platypus Technologies, a Madison nanotechnology company, will move into offices in the New Venture Center at the Fitchburg Technology Campus next year, the company has announced. It plans to occupy 8,000 square feet there starting in June 2005. The center still has space available, officials said.

Ink Source now property of Nor-Cote

Indiana-based firm Nor-Cote International announced on Thursday they have signed an agreement to purchase Ink Source, a Wisconsin-based ink company that specializes in manufacturing ultraviolet curable inks.
By combining with Nor-Cote, which has focused on the industrial applications of UV inks such as DVDs and membrane switch overlays, both firms hope to form a more complete ink company and cover all segments of the market.

UW students use more mobile computing

UW-Madison students have been using mobile technology at the highest recorded rate ever, according to the 2004 Student Computing Survey recently released by the UW-Madison Division of Information Technology.
Of 1,600 randomly chosen students, the report showed that 78 percent owned a cell phone, 48 percent owned a laptop and 16 percent owned a handheld computer. One-third of students reported using wireless technology, while desktop ownership has decreased from 74 percent in 2001 to 60 percent.
Brian Rust of DoIT Communications credited the rise in mobile technology to the increase in online services provided by the university, such as e-mail, an online calendar and education portal Learn@UW.

Schneider buys GPS to track trucks

Schneider National Inc., a freight company based in Green Bay, has purchased Qualcomm‘s trailer tracking product for its fleet of 48,000 trailers.
T2 Untethered TrailerTracs uses GPS and wireless communications to report where trailers are and how much they are carrying. Schneider tested the system first on several hundred trailers and is now hustling to convert its entire fleet, the companies reported jointly on Monday.

SunTrust to implement Fiserv’s ExchangeGuard

Fiserv announced on Thursday that SunTrust Bank of Georgia has chosen to implement its ExchangeGuard IRD (image replacement document) software.
SunTrust needs to print high volumes of the documents on several platforms through all of their operations centers. Fiserv’s implementation will blend well with the bank’s existing IT framework, officials said.