But I believe that is exactly happened a few days ago when it was announced that Finnis Conner is the new CEO of Millenniata.

For those of you know may not know his background, Conner is a legend in the data storage and hard drive industries as he

• Co-founded Shugart Associates in 1973 (acquired by Xerox in 1977)
• Co-founded Seagate Technology in 1979, and
• Founded Conner Peripherals in 1986 (acquired in 1996 by Seagate).

Yeah, Conner is a BIG, BIG deal! Congrats to Millenniata for its coup.

And yet, Twitter’s Sign-up Page is broken, and it has been for at least the past 24 hours. How?

Well . . . unless the four different computers I’ve tried on three different Internet connections were each messed up . . . you’ll see what I mean if you click through the link above.

Specifically, what you should find on Twitter’s Sign-up page is that you cannot scroll down all the way. The end result is that you won’t be able to complete the process of creating a new Twitter account, and to be honest that’s all I’m trying to do for the Utah chapter of an international non-profit.

For the record, there’s nothing about this problem/glitch on the

• Twitter Status page,
• Twitter Blog,
• Twitter’s Troubleshooting page, or even
• Twitter’s Known Issues pages.

I also tweeted about the problem to Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams, as well as to the official Twitter account for Twitter. 

And as a 25-year-veteran of the high-tech public relations wars, I even went so far as to try to reach out to someone on Twitter’s PR team through it’s official “Submit Press Inquiry” page. But that appears to be broken too as every submitted request comes back with the following error message:

“Oops, you need to write your deadline in the format ‘dd/mm/yy.’”

Yeah, except that I did that over and over and over, trying to get the stupid form to work!

Anyway . . . hopefully this is all just 

1. User error on my part, or
2. A simple oversight by Twitter’s development and/or support teams

because I love Twitter. In fact, I’ve been using Twitter for close to two years now, and I want Twitter to continue to be wildly successful.

But for now, I’m just frustrated that my favorite Social Media platform (Twitter) is broken.

Among the Utah-based firms I’ve been able to identify as “official” exhibitors at this year’s CES are the following:

• Alpine Innovation,
• CardAccess,
• Clearplay,
• Control4,
• Empire Brands,
• EZGear,
• Goal0,
• Great Recovery,
• Heatshrink.com,
• iFrogz,
• Isis Dei,
• IsoMike,
• Jaybird Gear,
• Kimber Kable,
• NLU Products,
• RBH Sound,
• Reverse Logic Associates,
• Saygus,
• Skullcandy,
• Wattgate,
• WBT-USA,
• Wilson Electronics, and
• ZAGG.

Look for a follow-up report on CES 2010 later on this week.

The latest rankings of the fastest-growing firms in Utah is out, and once again technology firms dominate the annual listing.

Produced by the MountainWest Capital Network (MWCN), the Utah 100is designed to identify and recognize the fastest-growing companies in the state (based upon percentage revenue growth). Inaugurated 15 years ago by the MWCN (then known as the MountainWest Venture Group), the Utah 100 is arguably now the most prestigious business award program held in the state.

[Disclosure: I was a board member of the MWVG when the Utah 100 was first conceived and launched; additionally, Politis Communications is a past Utah 100 honoree.]

The 2009 Utah 100 honorees were selected from thousands of eligible companies throughout the state and were ranked/judged based upon their percentage growth between 2004 and 2008, with a minimum of $50,000 in revenue in 2004. [NOTE: The MWCN does NOT validate/confirm the figures submitted by companies.]

As in years past, companies in the high-tech and life sciences industries dominated the Utah 100 honoree listing, with 53 garnering a slot in this year’s list (assuming my math is correct). Enclosed below is a breakout of the companies I consider to be tech firms on the 2009 Utah 100 list.

These companies are listed as following: Ranking first, followed by company name, city where located, URL (if one exists), and if the company has been in the Utah 100 ranking more than one time, I include the number of years inside of parentheses following the company Web address. Hence, a multi-year winning company based in Hyrum, Utah would appear as follows: 25. CompanyName, Hyrum, www.companyname.com (3)

Here, then, is the list.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

2.   Skullcandy, Park City, www.skullcandy.com (3)

4.   VMI Nutrition, Salt Lake City (SLC), www.vminutrition.com

5.   Interbank FX, SLC, www.ibfx.com (4)

6.   Revinetix, SLC, www.revinetix.com

7.   SwarmBuilder, SLC, www.swarmbuilder.com

9.   Cymphonix, Sandy, www.cymphonix.com (2)

10. Wasatch Software, Taylorsville, www.wasatchsoftware.com

11. Property Solutions International, Provo, www.propertysolutions.com

12. Access Technology Solutions, Provo, www.accessts.com (2)

14. Matrix Communications, American Fork, www.utmatrix.com

15. CLEARLINK Technologies, SLC, www.clear-link.com (3)

16. ATMequipment.com, Kaysville, www.atmequipment.com

17. Omniture, Orem, www.omniture.com (8)

18. SkinCareRx, SLC, www.skincarerx.com (2)

19. Integratechs, American Fork, www.integratechs.com

22. Fishbowl, Orem, www.fishbowlinventory.com (3)

23. Spring2 Technologies, Sandy, www.spring2.com (4)

24. Mindshare Technologies, SLC, www.mshare.net (2)

25. Burstabit Media, Lehi, www.burstabit.com

26. SolutionStream, American Fork, www.solutionstream.com

28. AdvancedMD Software, Draper, www.advancedmd.com (5)

29. Doba, Orem, www.doba.com (5)

30. eGlobal, Kaysville, www.eglobal.com

32. ContentWatch, SLC, www.contentwatch.com (2)

34. Airgun Depot, Draper, www.airgundepot.com & www.tacticalair.com

37. KnowledgeBlue, SLC, www.knowledgeblue.com

39. CardioRisk Laboratories, Sandy, www.cardiorisk.us

40. Myriad Genetics, SLC, www.myriad.com (5)

45. Spring Mobile, SLC, www.gospring.com (8)

47. Diamond Wireless, SLC, www.diamond-wireless.com (2)

48. HealthCare Insight, South Jordan, www.hcinsight.com (3)

52. Power Innovations International, Lindon, www.power-innovations.com (4)

55. New Dawn Technologies, Logan, www.newdawntech.com (3)

57. Digital Gateway, Provo, www.digitalgateway.com (3)

58. MasterControl.com, SLC, www.mastercontrol.com (2)

59. Parvus, SLC, www.parvus.com (2)

62. inthinc Technology Solutions, West Valley City, www.inthinc.com (8)

63. BC Technical, West Jordan, www.bctechnical.com

64. ServerPlus, Orem, www.serverplus.com (4)

66. School Improvement Network, Midvale, www.schoolimprovement.com

68. Coates Electrical and Instrumentation, Ogden, www.coateselectrical.com

71. Executech, South Jordan, www.helpwithcomputers.com

72. Software Technology Group, SLC, www.stgutah.com

75. Intermountain Electronics, Price, www.intermountainelectronics.com

76. Career Step, Provo, www.careerstep.com (9)

77. ACULIS, Provo, www.aculis.com (2)

78. GoEngineer, Cottonwood Heights, www.goengineer.com (7)

80. ExactWave, Provo, www.exactwave.com (5)

84. ProPay, Lehi, www.propay.com (5)

85. EM-Assist, SLC, www.em-assist.com (3)

91. Digital Technology International, Springville, www.dtint.com

93. MedQuest Solutions, North Salt Lake, www.medquestsolutions.com

96. Companion Systems, North Salt Lake, www.companionsystems.com (3)

In addition to the 53 technology companies listed as the fastest growing companies in the state (percentage wise), 12 other companies were named the Emerging Elite firms within the state. These organizations are 2 or more years old, but fewer than 5 years of operating history.

Within the Emerging Elite category, nine of these firms fit my definition of high-tech firms, including (in alphabetical order)

• Allegiance
• Aribex
• Infuse Medical
• OrangeSoda
• SEO.com
• Simply Mac
• ZAGG
• ZenPrint

It was the inaugural launch of the Utah Genius Awards, an event designed to recognize and promote Utah’s top inventors and innovators — those in the state who are awarded the most patents or most registered trademarks in the previous year.

A relatively simple concept (but then again, most great ideas are simple), the Utah Genius Awards is the brainchild of the geniuses at Bateman IP Group — one of the top intellectual law firms in Utah.

The top 2009 “winners” in the respective categories are:

• David Hall, Novatek International, 52 patents awarded in 2008
• Provo Craft and Novelty, 29 registered trademarks awarded in2008
• Salt Lake City, 257 patents awarded to SLC residents and companies in 2008 (the most of any city)
• Park City, the most patents awarded per capita in 2008 (1 for every 211 residents)

A complete list of the 2009 Utah Genius Award honorees can be found here.

In addition, Dr. Dinesh Patel (founding managing director of vSpring Capital, and founder and/or officer of, and/or investor in, multiple biotech and technology companies), was also recognized with a Utah Genius Lifetime Achievement Award, an award well-deserved by Dr. Patel.

I found this new event to be a breath of fresh air in a year of repetitive and often inconsequential business conferences, luncheons and soirees.

I hope the Utah Genius Awards sticks around for many years to come. 

Slated for Friday, October 23, 2009, this will mark the 11th year the UTC has held a Hall of Fame dinner to honor native Utahns and those with significant ties to Utah who have made major contributions to the advancement of technology and technological ventures. [NOTE: For several year's earlier in his career, Schmidt was chairman and CEO of Novell, then headquartered in Provo, Utah.]

A black tie affair, the Hall of Fame dinner is now Utah’s largest annual gathering in the high-tech industry, and this year’s event will be held in the Grand Ballroom of the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City.

For sponsorship and ticket information, please visit www.utahtech.org or contact Mark Lehnhof at 801-568-3500 or mark@utahtechcouncil.org.

Workers at the IM Flash Technologies facilities in Lehi, Utah will apparently keep their jobs in spite of an announcement earlier today by its parent company, Micron Technology, to lay-off up to 2,000 employees.

Citing dropping demands for its 200 millimeter (mm) Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) products, Micron (NYSE: MU) today announced at 3:40 p.m. (MST) that it would lay-off 500 workers in Boise, Idaho in the near term and up to to 1,500 additional workers by the end of its calendar year in August 2009.

Today’s Reduction-In-Force announcement was in addition to a separate announcement made by the company in October 2008 that Micron would “discontinue the supply of NAND flash memory from Micron’s Boise facility.” The company also announced at the same time that it would “reduce its global workforce by approximately 15 percent during the next two years.”

These two RIF announcements notwithstanding, I could not find any information disclosing whether these planned layoffs would impact employees at the IM Flash facilities in Utah.

Members of Utah’s tech industry will recall that IM Flash is a consolidated Micron subsidiary owned by Micron (51 percent ownership) and Intel (49 percent ownership) that was formed in January 2006 and is focused exclusively on developing and manufacturing NAND memory, the type of solid-state memory found in USB thumb drives and memory cards.

According to various news reports and online sources, IM Flash currently employs approximately 1,500 people at its Lehi facilities; accordingly, today’s layoff plans could have had a significant negative impact on Utah’s tech economy and the IM Flash workforce in Lehi.

When reached late this evening, IM Flash spokesperson and GOP Chairman for Utah, Stan Lockhart, asked if he could get back to me tomorrow morning with an answer as to whether any IM Flash employees in Lehi would lose their jobs as a result of Micron’s announcement earlier today.

However, I was able to reach Micron’s Media Relations contact, Daniel Francisco, by text message shortly after speaking to Lockhart.

My text message to Francisco read -

“Question: Will there be any layoffs in Lehi, Utah at IM Flash Technologies in connection with Micron’s 500- to 2000-person Reduction-In-Force that was announced earlier today?”

In response, Francisco wrote -

“Hi, no changes to Utah. Thanks.”

Seems clear to me that Utah’s economy and the IM Flash workforce in Lehi will, at least for now, escape Micron’s economic woes. 

Provo, Utah-based Raser was named as the 50th company on the Fast Company list of notable firms worldwide, a list that includes such corporate heavyweights as

• Google (#2),
• Apple (4),
• Cisco Systems (5),
• Intel (6) and
• Amazon (9),

just to name a few. (And those are just the biggies in the Top Ten.)

According to the opening paragraph of this cover article,

“. . . each company on (this list) illustrates the power and potential of innovative ideas and creative execution. These are the kinds of enterprises that will redefine our future and point the way to a better tomorrow.”

Fast Company, March 2009, p. 55

On a four-quadrant grid created by Fast Companyto visually display where each company on its list lies in relationship to the other firms, Raser is shown as being one of the two most “Promising” and “Enlightening” companies in its ranking. (The other two planes are defined as “Entertaining” and “Powerful.”)

Here’s the verbatim copy from p. 97 of Fast Companythat highlights Raser Technologies:

“Last year brought two important firsts in the evolution of renewable power. . . . Then, in November, Raser Technologies flipped on a first-of-its-kind geothermal plant in Beaver County, Utah. It’s been possible to turn hot underground water into zero-emissions electricity for decades, of course, but Raser can do it using water that’s scarcely hotter than a cup of coffee, opening up previously unusable (and far more common) low- to medium-temperature geothermal resources. What’s more, Raser developed and built its plant in under a year by stringing small modular generators together, reducing construction time from the typical five to seven years and slashing capital costs, which historically accounted for about half the expense of a large new power plant. The Utah facility is set to provide power to Disneyland and thousands of homes in Anaheim, California. Seven more sites are under development in the United States, including one in New Mexico that will send power to Phoenix this year. All told, Raser, which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange last December, plans to add 600-plus megawatts of capacity over the next five years.”

Congrats to the entire Raser Technologies team for this major recognition of its awesome work in renewable energy.

“If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message “This site may harm your computer” accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.”

The Official Google Blog, 1/31/2009, 09:02:00 AM (PST)

In other words, if you used Google to search for a word or topic this morning during that 55-minute window and then clicked on one or more of the search results, you got the following message:

“Warning! This site may harm your computer.”

And you probably saw something that looked like this on the search results page. [Note the red arrows. They point to warnings that read "This site may harm your computer."]

In reality, there was nothing wrong with the Websites. In fact, the whole thing was a mistake, a “human error” – at least according to Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search & User Experience.

StopBadWare.org is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based non-profit organization dedicated to protecting Internet and computer users from bad software.

Supported by volunteers, academic institutions and corporate partners (including Google), StopBadWare.org has an interesting statement on today’s incident (”Google glitch causes confusion“), a statement bolstered by four separate updates from StopBadWare.org. The result is a rolling timeline of what happened today and when, a description even more interesting when flavored with the more than 70 comments to the post.

= = = = = = = = = =

Okay, so Google’s search engine had a hiccup today, a brief problem. Who cares? It’s no big deal, right? Wrong!

Although today’s supposedly human-caused incident lasted less than an hour, it rippled around the world in minutes.

TechCrunch was apparently the first to report on the problem (see “Google Flags Whole Internet As Malware)” as a post that ran shortly after the incident began.

Now, some eight hours later, nearly 300 media outlets have already run stories on the search engine failure, and by tomorrow, this story will have run on virtually every television newscast today (at least once) and will be detailed in virtually every Sunday newspaper throughout the United States.

The fact of the matter is that search has become a critical part of the lifeblood of what most Americans do every day. If you use the Internet every day, chances are you use Google every day as well.

The capability of search engine algorithms to decipher what we’re looking for through the Internet when we type phrases such as “kids dentist Sandy Utah” and then deliver more than 22,000 results in less than a second to our view is absolutely amazing. (No, there aren’t 22,000 dentists in Sandy; statewide statistics suggest there’s probably slightly more than 100. However, if you put that same phrase in quotes, the number drops to zero - sounds like an opportunity to me. But I digress.)

The point is this. When something, anything, becomes as pervasive as Google has become in our daily lives, and it is used every single day by each of us, then we need to be VERY, VERY concerned about the possibility of a simple incident turning into a disaster.

Overstated? Perhaps. But what if this incident had happened during the middle of a business day? Would your perception be different?

Okay, now what if the incident lasted all day? Or for an entire week? Or longer?

Yeah, now you’re probably thinking it’s time to call out the National Guard, right? Heck, Google and America are probably under some type of terrorist attack.

Sound crazy? Okay, maybe a bit.

And to be sure, Google is not the only search provider on the planet. (Heck, I suspect Yahoo’s new CEO, Carol Bartz, would be doing handsprings if Google’s search capabilities went haywire for several hours to several days.)

My point is this:

• Most people, companies and organizations rely on Google today, and
• We were very lucky that this incident was only 55 minutes long, and
• We’re extremely fortunate that Google’s “human error” happened early on a Saturday morning and not in the middle of the week. 

Because next time, we may NOT be so lucky.

Now that I’m back in the friendly confines and familiar surroundings of home and office along the Wasatch Front, it’s time to analyze where this CES09 fits in the overall scheme of things.

Going into CES09, show organizers predicted a nine percent drop in attendance to 130,000 from the 2008 show where more than 141,000 individuals were in attendance. Such a prediction was not surprising given the overall malaise afflicting the economy here in the United States and abroad.

After Day One of CES (rosy predictions from the Consumer Electronics Association notwithstanding), it was clear to this veteran of the tech trade show circuit that CES09 attendance was going to come nowhere near the predicted 130,000.

As I walked through both the Las Vegas and Sands Convention Centers, I found open islands of space where booths would have been housed at past shows, and the crowds (though dense at times) were never overwhelming or super-dense. Cab lines outside the convention halls were often non-existent. The same could also be said of both the restrooms and the food stands at both halls.

In other words, by Sunday, January 11, it was clear that predicted attendance figures were going to clearly miss the mark.

And in fact, when the CEA did release its preliminary estimates for CES09 attendance a week-ago Sunday, they pegged this year’s numbers at closer to 110,000 attendees. If borne out following the annual audit, this would mean a more than 22 percent drop in attendance on a year-over-year basis.

Surprising? Not really, given what I saw on the show floor.

Interestingly, some news reports suggest that CES may look to limit the maximum number of people at future shows to somewhere near the 100,000-person mark – the thinking being that this figure may be closer to the optimal amount of attendees for a major trade show, particularly if those in attendance are the right people. (Not that this suggestion doesn’t open a whole ‘nother can of worms of selecting the “right people,” but that’s an issue to consider for a different day and another column.)Regardless, I’m not convinced that the CES attendance drop off foretells gloom and doom, as what may be true for the economy as a whole may not be true for portions of the economy, whether such segments be geographic or industry-specific in nature.

Which begs the questions: How did Utah companies do at CES09? And how does 2009 look for Utah-based companies focused on the consumer electronics marketplace?

As I reported on UtahTechWatch.com on 1/1/09, 31 Utah-based companies were listed by CEA as formal exhibitors this January 8-11 at CES09, roughly the same number of companies from the state that exhibited at CES08.

Of these firms, perhaps no other company in Utah has created the recent impact in the consumer electronics (CE) space as generated by Draper-based Control4.

As it has for the past several years, Control4’s two-story booth held forth in its prominent position near the front of the South Hall in the LVCC at CES09, and even on the last day of the show, Control4 was still quite full of interested attendees.

According to Glen Mella, company president and COO, this nearly 200-person company has become the preeminent firm in the world in the residential controls marketplace, with more than 80,000 of its entertainment, lighting and temperature controllers now in homes worldwide.

Make no mistake about it: Control4 is definitely an international organization, with resellers in 24 countries (including the U.S. and Canada) and more than 1,400 dealers in North America alone.

In addition, Control4 also doubled the size of its partner pavilion across the aisle in the LVCC South Hall to 3,000-square feet and 24 total partners, including companies such as Black & Decker, LG and Panasonic.

And Control4 plans to boost its presence at CES 2010.

So how did Control4 do in 2008 in the midst of this global economic turmoil? Quite well, thank you, with total revenue up 40 percent in 2008 to more than $55 million.

Another company attracting a crowd at this year’s CES – as it always has at industry events – was Park City-based Skull Candy.

This year Skull Candy opted for a fun race track ambiance to its 2,500-square foot, lime green and black highlighted booth, with a six-car slot-car track set up at the front of the booth for ad hoc races between CES09 attendees.

With urban and rock music pumping in the background, Skull Candy created a fun vibe for show visitors as jump-suited booth babes easily invited wave after wave of would-be drivers to try their luck on the slot-car track.

Skull Candy used CES09 and its stock car motif to launch its new 2XL brand of headphones and ear buds, a product line targeted squarely at middle America instead of its Core line which targets the edgy, hip urban crowd.

Priced at $9.99 to $39.99, the 2XL products will be available later this year in mass market retailers such as Best Buy and Target.

According to company spokeswoman Jessica Gross, Skull Candy’s booth was not only the largest it’s ever had at CES, but CES09 was also a great show for the company.

“We had very good meetings (at CES09) with both buyers and potential buyers,” Gross said. “And 2XL was very well received, both by the media and attendees.”

CES09 marked only the second time Orem-based Isis Dei had exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show.

But the maker of urban-styled protective carrying cases and messenger bags for notebook and netbook computers was so successful at CES08 that it returned in an even bigger way in 2009.

This year, Isis Dei recruited dancer Robert (“Mr. Fantastic”) Muraine of So You Think You Can Dance TV show fame to attract attendees to the booth by performing his world-famous “popper” dance routines at the show. And every time the music started banging and Robert started popping, a starstruck gathering formed quickly, clogging the aisles and overflowing into nearby booths.

“We’re now in virtually all college bookstores,” said Taylor Shupe, Isis Dei CEO and founder, “And it’s all because of coming to CES last year. And this year the attention’s been even higher for us.”

This January, Logan-based iFrogz doubled its space to a 20- X 20-foot booth at CES09 versus the previous year and moved from the Sands over to the LVCC.

Although known primarily for its cases and silicone-based protective wraps for iPods, iPhones and other multimedia players, iFrogz showcased its new EarPollution line of headphones and ear buds at CES09 – a product line focused on mass market retailers.

According to iFrogz’ President Scott Huskinson, the company’s expanded presence and EarPollution product line were well received at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, and the company is excited about its products for 2009 and beyond.

Interestingly, of all the Utah-based companies I spoke with and/or visited at CES09, only one expressed any reservations about its success at CES this year. But even this firm said it would be back for CES10, only next year it plans to participate in CES as a partner within a distributor’s booth rather than have its own standalone booth.

Am I suggesting that each Utah-based consumer electronics company will have a banner year in 2009? Of course not.

But my personal experience at CES09 also suggests that 2009 may not be the economic wasteland some experts are predicting either.

= = = = = = = = = =

DISCLOSURES: iFrogz is a previous client of Politis Communications. This blog post was originally published by The Enterprise (in Salt Lake City) on January 19, 2009.