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WASHINGTON -- Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have scrapped their Internet advertising partnership, abandoning attempts to overcome the objections of antitrust regulators and customers who believed the alliance would give Google too much power over online commerce.
The retreat announced today represented another setback for Yahoo, which had been counting on the Google deal to boost its annual revenue by $800 million and placate shareholders still incensed by management's decision to reject a $47.5 billion takeover bid from Microsoft Corp. nearly six months ago.
Without Google's help, Yahoo now may feel more pressure to renew talks with Microsoft and ultimately sell for a price well below the $33 per share that Microsoft offered in May. Yahoo shares traded this morning at just $13.67, up 2.4 percent on the day.
A company that a Kent State University professor spun off 15 years ago from his research made what he called "a great leap forward" this week, launching a unique manufacturing process for liquid crystal display products.
The process, said William Doane, the retired founder of Kent Displays Inc. and a former KSU physics professor, allows the company he and an investor started in 1993 to mass-produce thin plastic sheets that can display color, text, data and, in time, video images on almost any surface.
Liquid crystals are a chemical oddity that scientists at KSU and elsewhere have studied for decades and that now touch almost everyone's life. The encapsulated, crystalline material, when charged with electricity, displays images.
The latest development is KDI's ability to make display material using roll-to-roll manufacturing, a printing-like process. The displays, Doane said, are like those that show high-definition video on flat-panel TVs, computer displays and giant screens in sports facilities. The plastic spools through a gleaming stainless steel production line in a narrow clean room at KDI.
Family, friends and development pros believe him.
They have bet tens of thousands of dollars that the high-strung, high-energy entrepreneur and his innovation -- a motion-activated power source for devices big and small -- will draw the capital needed to move him from business wannabe to market winner.
The new-generation engine, aimed at powering narrow-body regional and business jets, could dramatically change the way these aircraft look and operate because their fans, which move air to propel the plane, would not operate under metal cowling, as most of today's turbines do.
Instead, the fan blades would extending as far out as 14 feet from the cowling. They could make the new systems look more like older propeller-driven engines than the aerodynamic pods commercial jets have used for decades.
Updated 5:57 p.m.
Bringing Agilysys Inc. back to Northeast Ohio from the Florida offices where it resided for two years, a move the company announced this week, was pretty straightforward for its new boss, Martin Ellis.
As part of a strategic downsizing and money-saving move, the software company's chief executive and the board fired the staff at the Boca Raton, Fla., office, began closing the facility and declared an existing operation in Solon to be the new headquarters.
The staff firings were announced Thursday. On Wednesday, the company said that Arthur Rhein, 62, retired immediately as president and chief executive and that Ellis had succeeded him. It was Rhein who moved Agilysys to Florida in 2006. Ellis, 43, had been executive vice president, treasurer and chief financial officer.
Updated 4:50 p.m.
Agilysys Inc., which moved its headquarters from Mayfield Heights to Boca Raton, Fla., two years ago, is coming back to suburban Cleveland. Company executives will work from an existing office in Solon.
The information technology services company also said today that Arthur Rhein, 62, has retired as president and chief executive. Rhein pushed for the move to Florida.
Succeeding him is Martin Ellis, 43, formerly executive vice president, treasurer and chief financial officer.
Most of that is coming to pass just about a year after AT&T began to offer its U-verse package of combined television-Internet-phone service in Ohio. And experts say competition will lead to additional innovative features, faster Internet service and more high-definition TV channels.
The battle over bundled media heated up in Ohio under a recent law that made it easier for new television providers to enter the market. AT&T became the first, planning to spend $500 million in the state and more than $7 billion nationwide to build a network of ultra-fast fiber-optic cable and conventional copper wires.
Before the Ohio law, AT&T would have had to cut separate franchise deals with each community it wanted to do business in, most of which already had exclusive contracts with cable companies.
Since July, thousands of third-party developers, including several from Northeast Ohio, have released iPhone software that turns the slick mobile device into a digital recorder, a video game console, an instant messenger -- even a diagnostic tool for radiologists.
The ease of creating iPhone applications allows individual developers -- not just major companies -- to give it a shot, said Dan Sokol, an analyst for Envisioneering, a technology market research firm in New York.
A major role for Bridgestone Firestone's planned $60 million Akron Technical Center will be to advance the tire maker's environmental focus, Mark Emkes, chairman and chief executive of Bridgestone Americas, told tire professionals at an international conference in Akron this morning.
"The deal is not yet 100 percent finalized," Emkes told an audience of mostly executives and engineers, noting that building what he called the Japanese-American company's "state-of-the-art technical facility" still must gain approval from boards of directors in Nashville, Tenn., and Tokyo, where the parent corporation has its headquarters.
Datatrak International Inc. has sued eight former shareholders of ClickFind Inc., claiming they failed to disclose important information when Datatrak was buying the Texas company for $18 million two years ago.
Both companies are in the business of making software products for clinical trials. Datatrak has struggled financially since the acquisition.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, seeks an adjustment in the purchase price as well as $5 million in punitive damages from Jim Bob Ward, who was principal shareholder and chief executive of ClickFind, and other shareholders.
WESTLAKE -- Business was slow this week for some AT&T corporate customers in Westlake.
A construction crew on Columbia Road inadvertently severed an AT&T cable Tuesday afternoon, causing several businesses to loose Internet and phone service for days, the company said Friday.
At noon Monday, Wilmington's five commercial broadcast stations are scheduled to become the nation's first to permanently switch to all-digital signals, serving as a test of the government-mandated transition that other stations across the country will make in February.
"It's like landing on the moon," said Constance Henley Knox, general manager of CBS affiliate WILM. "We're making history."
Consult these two story packages put together by Plain Dealer personal technology reporter Shaheen Samavati:
• Everything you need to know about digital TV
• Digital TV: We answer your questions
The free browser, called "Chrome," is being promoted as a sleeker, faster, safer and reliable alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has been the leading vehicle for surfing the Web for the past decade. Despite recent inroads by Mozilla Foundation's Firefox, Internet Explorer is still used by roughly three-fourths of the world's Web surfers.
We know what that means for humans. They can break or age and wear down. But whirling, pumping, lifting, cutting, boring and otherwise power-driven gadgets that manufacturers use to make things face similar challenges. They respond in familiar ways.
Now, though, a professor at Cleveland State University has introduced a fresh approach to meeting the myriad disturbances manufacturing devices confront second-to-second in their daily lives.
Technorati, an online search engine for blogs, said it has purchased Northeast Ohio-based Blogcritics.org, for which hundreds of bloggers write about music, arts, popular culture, books, commercial products and more.
San Francisco-based Technorati, which calls itself the world leader in blog search technology, said Blogcritics, also referred to as BC Magazine, is "an online community of bloggers and a full-service news and reviews source."
Cleveland venture development organization JumpStart Inc. has been awarded $1.5 million by the Economic Development Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
It's the second award that the EDA has given JumpStart since JumpStart was created in 2004 to help early-stage companies.
In announcing the competitive grant today, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown said the money is expected to create 650 jobs by supporting high-growth companies in Northeast Ohio.
Intuit Real Estate Solutions, a division of the software company that sells Quicken finace products, is in the midst of expanding its Highland Hills office.
Facilities manager Mike Tomaro said the company is buying 1,600 hundred more square feet of space in the office building it shares with Nationwide Insurance. In 2005, the company had about 500 employees in Highland Hills.
Tomaro said the company is adding more people quickly but did not have a current head count or an estimate of how many it would add.
Bite your tongue.
• R&D award-winning products that changed lives
• Multidimensional contact angle measurement device, from NASA Glenn Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute. The technology will find use in life-support systems being developed for future space missions but also could apply to the development of new adhesives and nonfluid devices as well as special sensors.
• Harmonic Focus Curved Shear with Harmonic Blue Hand Piece, from Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc., Cincinnati. Ethicon's Harmonic line includes surgical tools that work on principles of ultrasound, allowing more precise cutting, grasp, blood coagulation and versatility. The device also won an award from BusinessWeek Magazine in the category of best global design of 2008.
• 4x4 Multiple-in, Multiple-out (MIMO) RF Test System, from Keithley Instruments Inc., Cleveland. As electronic monitors and communications devices have become more complex and data-intensive, so has the process of testing how accurately they generate and receive signals. Keithley's MIMO test system shows how precisely the devices operate.
• Environmentally Benign and Reduced Corrosion Runway Deicing Fluid, from Battelle, Columbus; Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton; and other labs. This is a nontoxic and biodegradable fluid that can de-ice and remove snow from aircraft, runways and roads. It also keeps snow from sticking to the de-iced surfaces.
• Simultaneous Non-Contact Precision Imaging of Microstructural and Thickness Variation in Dielectric Materials, from NASA Glenn and other government research centers. The technology paves the way for nondestructive evaluation approaches for pharmaceutical, biomedical, security, material analysis and aerospace use, including damage assessment on spacecraft surfaces.
• Multi-Scale Materials: Integrated Processing Method, from Battelle in collaboration with other labs. Researchers outlined the most efficient conditions for using very tiny structures (nanowires, extremely thin films and micro-droplets) in manufacturing. Chemical qualities, temperature and pressure all play a role in the success of these operations, and this process maps their relationship.
• Velocys-FT: Fisher-Tropsch Fuels using Velocys Microchannel Technology, from Battelle and research partners. This is a technology that greatly reduces the size and cost of second-generation biofuel production facilities, those that make biofuels from nonfood plant material.
• SAT12 Patented Service Hardening Process, from Swagelok Co., Solon. The company developed a process for hardening stainless steel tools far beyond what had been possible with the corrosion-resistant material in the past.
• F-LLX: Flotation-Liquid Liquid Extraction, from Battelle. This is an approach to drain coal mines of their acidic, contaminated water that reduces stream and groundwater pollution and extract potentially valuable minerals from the concentrate.
• Bio-based Powder Coating Technology, from Battelle and various agricultural research partners. The soy-based coating material ships dry so it reduces transportation costs, generates no toxic fumes and cures at low temperatures, saving energy.
-- Frank Bentayou Research and development at enterprises in the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati areas produced 10 of this year's 100 most significant innovations, R&D Magazine says in its September issue.
With 10 of the current crop of award winners emanating from the Buckeye state, Ohio ranked behind only California, with 18.
Ohio jumped to 23rd place in a nationwide ranking by the Communications Workers of America, a labor union representing primarily the telecommunications industry.
The state surpassed the nation with a median download speed of 2.5 megabits per second. That's a significant improvement over last year, when Ohio took 40th place.
Debbie Goldman, a research economist for the CWA, said a new state law that took effect last fall could have contributed to the jump. It has made it easier for Internet and television service providers to build new networks throughout the state.
NORTH CANTON -- A former sales representative for Diebold Inc. has agreed to enter a guilty plea to an insider trading scheme that netted him more than $500,000 in illicit profits.
Robert Cole is expected to enter the plea Aug. 22 in U.S. District Court in Cleveland.
According to the U.S. attorney's office, Cole illegally capitalized on inside information in late 2005 that Diebold was about to announce weak earnings.
John Bukovnik hasn't quite hit his home run.
As president of Cleveland's Easy2 Technologies, Bukovnik has steered the company through three business model overhauls. The latest shift, to software service provider, has enabled the company to take on more than 60 new clients and double its size to 30 employees -- all within a year.
Now, after nearly a decade of reinventing Easy2 Technologies, he feels that home run coming on. "I don't feel we're there, but I feel the opportunity is greater than ever," Bukovnik said. "I never feel like we're there."
By late 2011, a school dedicated to the mechanics of motorcycles, snowmobiles and personal watercraft could bring more than 500 students a year into the tiny village of only 850 residents.
The PowerSport Institute, a branch campus of Ohio Technical College, moved last summer into the former JCPenney space off Miles Road, in the ailing Randall Park Mall. The hop -- from 35,000 square feet at the college's Cleveland campus to 210,000 square feet on 15 acres -- paved the way for the institute's aggressive expansion plans.
New York-based Cablevision Systems is considering options for its business that include a spinoff of at least one of the diversified cable operator's units.
Cablevision also might buy back stock and pay dividends.
Chief Executive James L. Dolan said in a statement the company is "actively looking" at options to close the gap between operating performance and the market value of its shares.
The Dolan family is the controlling shareholder of Cablevision and has tried to take the company private several times in recent years. James Dolan's father, Charles, is Cablevision's chairman. Charles Dolan is the brother of Larry Dolan, owner of the Cleveland Indians. Larry Dolan and his sons, Paul and Matthew, are major Cablevision shareholders.
The Cleveland Institute of Technology is expanding its partnership with a university in India to add certificate programs in advanced computer programming and multimedia.
The program, which CIT formed with the University of Delhi in 2006, aims to expand access to higher education for Indian students and provide them with credits that easily transfer to colleges in Northeast Ohio.
The Ohio Third Frontier Commission is awarding $4 million in grants to three Northeast Ohio entities investing in regional technology companies.
JumpStart Inc., a Cleveland-based nonprofit venture-financing organization that has invested in 31 companies since 2004, will receive $3 million in grants for fiscal year 2008.
Brulant founder Len Pagon broke the news to employees in dramatic fashion Wednesday evening, renting a theater inside the Cleveland Playhouse.
With some 300 local Brulant employees seated in the audience, Pagon stepped through an on-stage door and proceeded to introduce Rosetta founder Chris Kuenne, who was hiding behind his own door.
Pagon made it clear that no workers were going to lose their jobs and that the business would continue to grow, said Kate Clegg, a Brulant partner and senior vice president of marketing.
JumpStart Inc. is providing $350,000 in venture capital to MesoCoat Inc., a subsidiary of Powdermet Inc. of Euclid.
MesoCoat was started in 2007 to commercialize environmentally friendly nanocomposite coating materials and application technologies. Its coatings are designed to reduce wear and corrosion on such parts as hydraulic cylinders, storage tanks, rotating shaft seals, pipelines, rail cars, pump rotors, marine structures and valve seats.
JumpStart is a local organization dedicated to helping innovative early-stage businesses develop their ideas and grow.
Updated 6:15 p.m.
Datatrak International Inc. will likely be sold or merged as the Mayfield Heights-based software firm looks to increase its value, its chief executive said Monday.
The decision comes two years after the company, which produces clinical-trial software, acquired ClickFind Inc. in an $18 million deal that has since had the company looking to chop costs.
After staying up all night waiting to get his hands on the new and improved iPhone 3G, Ryan Harvey almost went home empty-handed.
The 20-year-old University of Toledo student from Lakewood was first in line among hundreds who flocked to the Apple store at Legacy Village for the 8 a.m. debut today of the latest version of the sleek mobile phone, minicomputer and digital music player. Lines also formed at the 17 Northeast Ohio stores owned by AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive U.S. carrier.
The new iPhone 3G -- so-called because it operates on AT&T's third-generation, or 3G, wireless network -- has been hotly anticipated since being announced last month. Compared with the original iPhone, it offers quicker Internet speeds on the go is equipped with GPS and it can run hundreds of third-party programs that Apple will deliver through its iTunes online store.
Inside his polymer factory, the balding, diminutive boss runs his fingers through mounds of hot, pelletized resins.
They dance endlessly from a line of German, American and Indian equipment.
Benarjie says he traveled from his native India for this -- to build a business and lift others with him.
In 2004, Benarjie employed 10 people. Now, 40 workers fill three shifts at Ovation Polymers.
America, despite its economic turmoil, is still a "country that offers tremendous opportunity," he says.
Benarjie exemplifies more of what Northeast Ohio needs -- foreign-born business talent to seed its struggling economy and fill job shortages, says an influential band of Clevelanders.
The group of civic leaders and pro-immigration stalwarts seek cash and support for its "Talent Blueprint Project," a multipronged strategy to attract more foreign students, workers and entrepreneurs.
Cuyahoga County has launched a modest $750,000 fund to help new technology companies lure more investment.
The county's Department of Development will dole out loans of $25,000 or more to six fledgling companies yearly, in hopes they will grow into substantial employers.
The North Coast Opportunities Technology Fund is geared "to move small, tech-based companies to the point where they attract more financing," said Greg Zucca, development analyst for the county.
A Chinese medical devices company is on the cusp of putting its North American headquarters in Greater Cleveland.
GammaStar Medical Systems Inc. has been working with local economic development groups since last fall. The company makes precision radio-surgery devices that use radiation to destroy cancerous tumors while minimizing damage to healthy tissue.
An official announcement on GammaStar's decision is not expected until at least Monday. The Ohio Tax Credit Authority must first approve tax incentives that the Ohio Department of Development is offering GammaStar. The authority meets on Monday.
