| Cisco pumps $9.5M into SaaS Startup
Networking giant Cisco led a $9.5 funding round of two-year-old application hosting firm SoonR. The move announced on Tuesday is the latest in a series of investments Cisco has been making in small Web 2.0 software firms. Facing a changing marketplace where business and personal productivity applications increasingly exist on the web, network hardware giant Cisco has spent about $4 billion in the last year acquiring software firms such as WebEx and Reactivity.
In the last year Cisco has acquired about a half-dozen software and service firms, and earmarked another billion dollars to dole out venture funds on small firms mostly in Silicon Valley, but occasionally in China, India and Russia.
The company has invested heavily in software and services startups such as China Communications Services and Russian e-commerce firm Ozon, and has taken an equity positions in Albaba.com.
Business Briefs: Chamber organizes annual trade show
The Athens Area Chamber of Commerce will be hosting the annual Business Expo on March 27 at The Classic Center. Organizers for the 2008 Business Expo have adopted the theme "Let's Make a Deal" and will provide activities throughout the day. The day will start with a networking event, Business Before Hours, and end with award presentations at 4 p.m. The awards will include the annual Small Business Person of the Year. Trade show organizers are expecting more than 100 exhibitors, said Rich Cary, the chamber's vice president of member services. Exhibition booth costs are $475 for members and $575 for non-members. For more information, visit the chamber's Web site at www.athensga.com or call (706) 549-6800. Toccoa company plans $1M expansion Combat Training Solutions, a Stephens County company that manufactures simulated explosives for the military, announced that it plans to add more than 30 jobs and invest $1 million to expand a facility in Eastanollee.
Allton Starts Web Design Firm in Lake Saint Louis, MO
Michael Allton can still remember his first website. "It was 1997, and my mother had just formed a new non-profit organization in Norwalk, Ohio called Project Leadership. It was designed to promote leadership and community values and she wanted a website to help recruit members. I used FrontPage 97 and it was very basic, but it sparked my love for website design." Since then, Michael has come a long way. For several years, he designed websites for businesses and organizations in Ohio while with an IT Firm. Then, last year, after moving to Lake Saint Louis, he started his own design firm, Stadia Studio. "I wanted very much to get back into designing websites for small businesses," said Michael. "I've always enjoyed helping businesses grow, and having a great website is an integral part of that." Stadia Studio specializes in providing small businesses with complete web services including website design, hosting, search engine optimization and consulting.
Computerworld's Mac gift guide
With Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday now behind us, the holiday shopping season is in full swing. Last month, Computerworld offered our Holiday Gift Guide to help you sort through this year's gadgets and techie toys. But shopping for Mac users and Apple fans can sometimes be a challenge—especially if you want to get something other than the obvious choices, or if you're not as big an Apple fan as the person you're shopping for. With that in mind, here are 10 great gift ideas for the Mac user on your list. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard If you're shopping for a die-hard Mac fan, chances are good that he has already upgraded to Leopard, which has been out since Oct. 26. Many users, however, delay making a major upgrade like this for weeks or months—sometimes for cost-related reasons, sometimes to make sure those first-release bugs have been found and fixed.
Antidepressants Hardly Help
What makes this one so important the results were front-page news across the U.K. on Tuesday is that the researchers were able to track down comprehensive unpublished trial results from the drug makers themselves before the drugs were authorized for sale in the U.S., and include them in their review of the literature. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must receive records of all relevant pharmaceutical-company trials, both published and unpublished, before it will approve a drug. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the researchers writing in PLoS Medicine were recently able to obtain those FDA records of industry-sponsored clinical trials. They yield data, they believe, that lets them avoid a bias that often plagues reviews of previous research: the tendency for conclusive positive results to be published, sometimes more than once, and thus over-represented, while mediocre results can be ignored or even swept under the rug.
McCain seen as Republican choice
If anyone bothers to learn about the rise and fall of the political honeymoon of the just retired ex-President of South Korea, you will be astounded. President Roh was elected in 2002 by astonishing landslide. A relative new comer and novice administrator, Roh was supported mainly by enthusiastic young voters who were dying for "change" of all the old systems and old politics. Roh promised hope for change. They young supporters used all kinds of digital methods to urge each other to vote and spreading the message to all others to go out to vote. He won. The "conservatives" were shocked. He employed lots of so nicknamed "boy scouts" for his inner circle, all wide-eyed idealists who vowed to turn Korea upside down, inside out by trying to make changes. The result was miserable. Roh was even abandoned by his own ruling party which itself split into two different parties.
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Allegiant currently services airports in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, among 58 destinations in the United States.The announcement of discussions with Allegiant Air was made at the Waterloo Regional Airport board meeting Wednesday morning in the airport conference room. The board also reviewed a draft of the airport's fiscal year 2009 budget, which will be subject to a board approval next month before a final draft is sent on to the city of Waterloo for approvalAccording to the budget, total expenses for the airport are expected to rise by $58,696 from the FY2008 budget. The largest increases in expenses from 2008 to 2009 were in regular salaries ($16,535), time and a half ($14,442), health insurance ($12,338) and utilities ($11,000). Revenues were expected to rise $15,450 from 2008 to 2009, with the biggest gains coming from gas sales ($9,000) and miscellaneous revenues ($3,500).
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