Long Island Technology Briefs: January 30, 2004

Long Island Business News, Jan 30, 2004 by Ken Schachter

Collecting business cards is the province of every dedicated networker, but it took closely held CardBrowser to make that time- honored practice into a business.

The Northport company has signed up Apple Computer and added about 100 other customers in the last nine months, according to Steve Morgan, chief executive of PeopleComm Inc., the parent company of CardBrowser and salesrecruits.com, an Internet recruiting agency.

CardBrowser clients pay $2,495 to $10,000 for a one-year subscription to view an online collection of business cards.

The lure for recruiters is the business cards represent a pool of passive candidates who are not actively looking for a job.

How's the business doing?

We are privately held and don't report revenue figures, but I can tell you that we are a $1 million-plus Internet company and profitable, Morgan said in an e-mail.

Fleet comes in to hear Northrop's Phil Teel

When the mercury dropped to zero on Jan. 15, Capt. Roger Bing figured that attendance might be light at the change-of-command dinner held by the Long Island Council of the Navy League of the U.S.

But he didn't count on the drawing power of guest speaker Phil Teel, who heads Northrop Grumman's Long Island operations.

We had a full house, which shocked me, said Bing, a retired Coast Guard officer who took over as president of the council, which promotes the mission of the Navy, Marines, Merchant Marine and Coast Guard.

Almost 100 Navy League members dropped anchor at the event at which Teel received the Navy League Achievement Award.

Outsourcing Institute planning a new arm

The Outsourcing Institute, a Jericho-based professional organization that offers businesses information and advice about outsourcing, is creating a new arm.

The organization is creating a business-process outsourcing group to help companies that want to subcontract some of their non-core business tasks.

Leading the new unit will be Graham Kemp as managing director.

In a statement, Kemp said corporations have shrunk their IT spending in recent years, but have continued to alter their business processes.

Process change goes on and needs to be coordinated and synchronized with IT, he said in a statement.

Scully, Scott cooks up Rovenet patent application

Southampton-based Rovenet Inc., which makes software for handheld computers, has applied for a patent based on its flagship Portable Forms software. Portable forms lets users create custom forms, such as sales orders, inventories or patient records, from files of a word processor, such as Microsoft Word.

The application is being handled by Garden City-based Scully, Scott, Murphy & Presser.

We found that the great promise of mobile computing was being held back by complicated and time-consuming custom application development, Chuck Schwartz, president of Rovenet, said in a statement. Our technology addresses this issue with solutions that are easy to use, intuitive and affordable.

Allied Business Intelligence launches wireless e-zine

Allied Business Intelligence, based in Oyster Bay, has tapped technology writer Meg McGinty to launch WirelessIQ (www.wirelessiq.info), a portal that will provide news, analysis and interviews about wireless technologies.

We see an opportunity to combine our in-depth knowledge and 14 years in the wireless research business with the simplicity and timeliness of a web-based portal, said Tim Archdeacon, vice president of marketing and sales at ABI. Meg's experience and proven track record are the perfect fit.

McGinty was a senior editor for technology publications including The Net Economy, InteractiveWeek, and tele.com.

School districts to compete at LI robotics competition

Visionary high school students from 37 districts will be working in the coming weeks to design and build a robot to compete March 18- 20 at the Long Island Regional FIRST Robotics Competition at Suffolk County Community College's Brentwood campus.

FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, was created by Dean Kamen, the acclaimed inventor behind the Segway scooter.

More than 1,000 students will compete in the regional to advance to April's championship at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

The competing school districts in Nassau County are Carle Place, East Meadow, Glen Cove, Hicksville, Island Trees, Levittown, Locust Valley, Malverne, Plainedge and Plainview-Old Bethpage. In Suffolk, the school districts are Bay Shore, Deer Park, East Islip, Hauppauge, Lindenhurst, Longwood, Middle Country, Miller Place, Mount Sinai, Patchogue-Medford, Port Jefferson, Sachem, Sag Harbor, Smithtown, Southold, West Babylon, Westhampton Beach, West Islip and William Floyd.