Gary Anglebrandt Communications
CLAWSON — Patriot Services Corp. has begun cashing in on homeland security dollars in southeast Michigan and 2005 could bring more for the Clawson-based startup.
Started last March by two Army Rangers and an ex-Oakland County undersheriff, the company consults local governments for their homeland security programs.
COHOCTAH — When businesses want their managers to learn leadership skills, they typically send them to a rented hotel conference for a day of listening to a PowerPoint-armed consultant.
Dan “the Shark” Dooling thinks that’s boring. Dooling, an ex-Army Ranger, prefers to arm the office workers with paint ball guns and send them into some woods to face sniper fire.
Dooling and his partner, Corey “Comet” Clothier, an ex-Marine pilot, run Task Force-1 Inc., a leadership training business based in Cohoctah.
WARREN — Ten years ago, there weren’t many options for beer lovers in Michigan.
Or as Rex Halfpenny of Michigan Beer Guide put it, “It was a desert.”
Among the microbreweries and brewpubs quenching that thirst since then is Dragonmead in Warren, which makes more than 40 beers–all available on tap–in a brewery smaller than even most microbreweries. When the owners were building their brew house, they would get laughed at when trying to order three big tanks for making beer. Even the smallest brewers have ten tanks.
Mortgage Group Staffing helps with jump in loan demand
BINGHAM FARMS — Interest rates haven’t been this low since Eisenhower was in office. Banks don’t have enough people to keep up with the new loan demands. Unemployment in June in Michigan was 7.2 percent — its highest since 1993.
Two public relations professionals and a lawyer see a business opportunity in those facts and have formed Mortgage Group Staffing LLC.
“Our intention is to become known as the primary provider of labor to the mortgage industry,” said Paul Kesman, one of three owners of Mortgage Group Staffing LLC, formed early this year and operating since March.
Three generations have ties to store that dates to 1920s
DETROIT — Detroit Hardware Co. has struggled in recent years, but a store that has endured the Great Depression and every recession since has no fears about its future.
Emily Webster, 55, runs the store on Woodward in Detroit’s New Center. She said Detroit Hardware opened “as far as we know” in 1924 because that was the year the original owners joined the Michigan Retail Hardware Association.
Rochester Hills firm releases portable harness, rope device
ROCHESTER HILLS — As Pat O’Kane dug out bodies of firefighters from the rubble following the World Trade Center attacks, he thought there must be a way to help people escape from burning buildings.
He called his friend, Randy Goodman, in Lake Orion, with whom he had done some entrepreneurial work in the past. O’Kane, who also makes a living painting New York’s bridges, was familiar with rope and harness systems for dangling high in the air and thought maybe some of that equipment could be modified to create an escape product.
Within two weeks, he and Goodman were working on a prototype. Within two years, their product went through several designs and $1.5 million in research and development cash. After seeking the advice and approval of fire departments around the country, their company, American Escape Systems Inc. in Rochester Hills, is ready to launch LifeCender.
Powerful software helps track employee e-mails, browsing
SOUTHFIELD — As the Internet becomes an integral part of the workplace, more businesses have an interest in keeping track of what their workers are doing on their computers.
These days powerful monitoring software is making it easier for bosses to know all about their workers’ browsing on eBay or fishing sites and what they say in e-mail and instant messages.
Companies can snoop all they want, said Southfield technology attorney Michael Khoury, as long as they do not give their employees any “expectation of privacy.”
About 140,000 were out of work in Metro Detroit in April
SOUTHFIELD — Workers who lose their jobs need to do two things: Stay active and don’t panic.
(Contributing writer)
Unpredictable weather thins crowds, but Movement festival doesn’t miss a beat
Mother Nature proved to be a fickle electronic music fan, ultimately affecting crowd turnout during the three-day Movement 2003 festival.
By 4 p.m. Monday crowds were in excess of 550,000, according to Laura Rodwan, spokesperson for High Tech Soul.
(Contributing writer)
DETROIT — For Cliff Thomas, the throbbing bass filling Hart Plaza at Movement 2003: Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival sounds sweet, but the ringing cash registers at his Buy-Rite Records store on Seven Mile sound even sweeter.
Profiles of some of the main acts at this year’s Movement electronic music festival in Hart Plaza.
Foreshadowing the Movement 2003: Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival in Hart Plaza this weekend, electronic music artist Richie Hawtin plans to play tonight at Ann Arbor’s Necto nightclub.
The club can hold 400 people, which is far less than the number of people who want to see him.
“We are looking forward to opening the festival … at a club with a different atmosphere,” Hawtin says.
DETROIT — More Americans with Internet access used the Internet as their primary source of news during the war than in previous major events, including the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to a recent survey.
The study, conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington, D.C., surveyed 1,600 online adults during the war and showed that 17 percent used the Internet as their principal source for war news, compared with 3 percent after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Combination of cyber journal, scrapbook place microscope on the fad of the day.
ANN ARBOR There are now about 3.1 billion sites on the World Wide Web, according to Google.com, but one type of Web site is attracting more buzz because of the war in Iraq.
They are called blogs.