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RETURN ON TECHNOLOGY: Programmers make lousy site designers

Many, perhaps most, Web sites are hard to use. That applies to commercial sites, personal sites, almost any kind of site. In the early days of the Web, nobody was surprised at this, because the Web was a dancing bear. The wonder wasn’t that it danced gracefully, but that it danced at all. Today, visitors are much more discerning. In fact, there is a cottage industry in lambasting poorly designed sites. One of my favorite places to go on the…

FUNNY BUSINESS: Land sakes! State Fair celebrates farms of all sizes

I take a back seat to no one in my love of the Indiana State Fair. I haven’t missed one in about 35 years-including those years when the fair seemed outmoded, doomed to go the way of the Model T and the icebox. I was there when it struggled through the Injun Andy mascot debacle, the concerts with attendance numbering in the dozens, and the shocking revelation that elephant ears did not come from actual elephants. And so I have…

Duty in Iraq inspires reservist’s invention: Mtek founder hoping face mask will save lives

Impressed with the design, which military personnel admitted was years ahead of what’s now in use, the Army’s Soldier Systems Center purchased 10 of the prototypes Aug. 1 for testing. Mahan, 23, of Martinsville, ultimately hopes to create manufacturing jobs in Indiana by mass-producing the face masks for the military and law-enforcement agencies. With the help of his father, cousin and close friend, he’s formed Mtek Weapon Systems to start the process. “It’s definitely a radical departure from anything that’s…

BULLS & BEARS: Fuss over our trade deficit is much ado about nothing

I’ll preface this column by telling you I am not an economist, just an observer. How many times have you heard a sobering news report on the trade deficit? The gist of these reports is that the deficit will weaken the dollar, cause all kinds of job losses, and be the ruin of our economy. The typical deficit TV news report begins with a picture of some old, rusty U.S. factory. It closes with video clips of construction cranes building…

SPORTS: A grim look at what the city’s future could hold

I was having a fitful time trying to sleep. For some reason, the word “priorities” kept running through my mind. Then, suddenly, I felt as if I were awake, standing in downtown Indianapolis. I caught site of a calendar in a storefront window. I blinked and shook my head. It read August 2026, but the city didn’t look 20 years more modern. If anything, it looked 20 years older. It was as if time had passed by the Indy I…

State’s Medicaid goal: better, cheaper care: FSSA says new approach will boost efficiency

Better care through better management. That’s the mantra behind the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration’s push to limit Medicaid’s cost growth to 5 percent annually. The state entity announced this month that it awarded $4.4 billion in contracts to three managed care organizations to provide coverage for pregnant women and children under its Hoosier Healthwise program. Next, Indiana wants to hire care managers to monitor the well-being of every Medicaid recipient in its aged, blind and disabled category. That…

Professor reinvents classroom: Improving interaction reason behind DyKnow

Dave Berque knew his first college teaching assignment couldn’t get any worse when a fire in the overhead lights barely got a reaction from his students. “I was in a room with more than 100 people and only seven noticed it,” said the chairman of DePauw University’s Computer Science Department. “They were spending all of their energy copying notes and couldn’t think about what was going on.” The experience as a graduate student in the mid-1980s at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute…

Investors calling for big changes at Emmis: Smulyan remains bullish on company’s prospects

In the last year, Emmis Communications Corp. Chairman Jeff Smulyan has led efforts to sell his company’s television stations, change radio formats, reduce debt and take the company private. He even proposed using company funds to buy a Major League Baseball franchise. Now, after his recently failed attempt to buy the Indianapolis company, many Wall Street analysts and investors are wondering what Smulyan might do next. Some industry experts believe the only way for Smulyan to do what’s best for…

Mother-daughter team up on medical tracking software: Qtrac takes guesswork out of patient paperwork at long-term-care facilities

In charge of quality assurance for a long-term-care facility, Jennifer Summers was responsible for ensuring that the company strictly followed policies and procedures, that it maintained infection-control standards, and that overall patient care standards were upheld. On top of internal controls, she had to make sure the facility met federal requirements for Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, including documentation of a patient’s range of motion, bed mobility, eating, hygiene and more. For the most part, handwritten and verbal documentation detailed how…

BEHIND THE NEWS: Leap of faith? IPO planned for new firm with no assets

Entrepreneur J. Smoke Wallin, bestknown as CEO of software maker eSkye Solutions, hopes to raise $60 million in an initial public offering for a new Indianapolis company that doesn’t yet own anything. Sound bizarre? Perhaps. But Wallin’s Taliera Corp. is just the latest in a long line of so-called “blank check” companies that raise money with the intention of going out and purchasing an operating business. In this case, Wallin has his sights on the alcoholic-beverage industry, though the company…

VanAusdall to auction off city block

Local office equipment distributor VanAusdall & Farrar Inc. is putting an entire city block on North Meridian Street up for auction, a move that could spur development in a corridor real estate experts say is ripe for activity. The three-acre property is between 12th and 13th streets.

INVESTING: Mexicans turn pro-market, Americans socialist

Hola! I feel like speaking Spanish today. I want to go down to Mexico and protest with my socialist brothers the outrages of the freeelection process. There’s a lot of wealth we Americans didn’t create but want to take, and that’s hard to do when a bunch of capitalists are running Mexico. It has been a long struggle for Mexico. Decades of anti-capitalist governments and first-rate corruption have created problems that will take generations to work out. But the election…

BRIAN WILLIAMS Commentary: The heat will hurt more next winter

Geopolitical instability and increasing worldwide demand for fossil fuels have caused high energy prices. Indiana tax policies in support of the creation of ethanol and biodiesel production facilities are part of an effort to help wean our transportation infrastructure from fossil fuels. While ethanol may be a poor alternative to fossil fuels, Hoosier entrepreneurs’ and policymakers’ efforts in this area reflect a broad awareness that we need a sensible, comprehensive energy policy. A corollary to $3-per-gallon gas is increasing home-heating…

Strengthened safety net eases strain on insurers: Companies see more manageable contributions under new format to pay ICHIA’s losses

Indiana’s health insurance safety net has pared enrollment and trimmed the industry support it needs by $18 million a year, thanks to reform efforts that started a few years ago. But M-Plan Inc. CEO Alex Slabosky sees an even greater benefit behind the transformation of the Indiana Comprehensive Health Insurance Association: It allowed his company to remain in business. In 2003, M-Plan had to pay $5.9 million to help support ICHIA, a big chunk of change for a company that…

THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW: (Log) rolling down the legislative river

I usually don’t confuse C-SPAN with ESPN2. But as I flipped channels last month, there was so much logrolling going on in Congress that I thought I’d stumbled upon the birling finals of the North American Lumberjack Games. Although, come to think of it, most lumberjacks don’t spout political inanities when they work. Guess that should have been my first clue. No, friends, the logrolling we’re talking about today is that time-honored legislative practice of taking two or more unrelated…

NOTIONS: Preventing the pain that triggers bombs and bullets

A few weeks ago, my 18-year-old son, Austin, said he was in the mood for a movie. His friend, Jon, had been to see “Miami Vice.” Jon said it was “cool.” I said that the old TV version-which began airing before Austin was born-had been “cool,” too. So based on that trans-generational cool factor, we grabbed dinner at Chili’s and went to see America’s most celebrated vice cops, Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs, do their undercover thing. On the big…

Once-shuttered startup NoInk trades hands once more: Global Health Exchange buys software firm

Call it a cautionary tale for entrepreneurs with a happy ending. After enduring a failed sale to a venture-capital-backed California firm, managers of NoInk LLC in January bought back the assets of their shuttered company and resurrected it. Now, just seven months later, they’ve sold NoInk again-this time to an acquirer who offers a better fit. “So many small companies are desperate for money, but don’t [just] take money at any cost,” said NoInk President David Kerr. “Be aware of…

Developers eye extension for opportunities: Four-mile link of 146th Street from S.R. 37 to I-69 in Noblesville will turn road into important thoroughfare

A commercial corridor brimming with office buildings, similar to the one along U.S. 31 in Carmel, is what Noblesville city planners envision for the 146th Street extension from State Road 37 to Interstate 69. Ground is expected to be broken this fall on the four-mile extension, which will make the street a major east-west thoroughfare through the south side of Noblesville if finished as planned in October 2007. The street is already a busy route across much of Hamilton County,…