Big surprise: Rell condemns Broadwater

As soon-to-be New York Gov. David Paterson said today that he expects to need more time to decide on Broadwater, Shell Oil and TransCanada’s liquified natural gas terminal in the Long Island Sound between Wading River and Connecticut, the Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell condemned the project. She said she would now start lobbying Paterson [...]

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Save the lobsters

According to Connecticut Lobstermen who work in the Long Island Sound, the most delicious of crustaceans could be in the midst of another die-off.
Lobsters, which lost 80 percent of their population in a 1999 die-off, have been found dead in pockets along Connecticut’s Thames River, sparking concerns from environmentalists.
From the Associated Press story:
The director of [...]

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Levy’s big Broadwater idea

Long Island and Connecticut, from opposite sides of the Long Island Sound, often oppose each other when it comes to Sound issues. For example, the Nutmeg state has fought hard to stop the Islander East pipeline, which would deliver natural gas to Long Island via a pipe running along the bottom of the Sound.
Connecticut is [...]

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Fighting Broadwater

Could Connecticut’s attorney general play a part in whether a liquefied natural gas terminal planned about nine miles off the coast of Wading River ever gets built?
Richard Blumenthal told the Connecticut Post he’s still hoping New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer comes out against the plan. But if Spitzer gives approval, the Nutmeg State’s chief attorney [...]

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E-ZPass will sell out cheaters

Freeway tolls-on-credit provider E-ZPass won’t turn a blind eye to adultery, rather, the service will turn you in the first chance it gets.
According to an Associated Press story, which I was directed to by our sister blog in Virginia, E-ZPass will provide toll information on a client if a court case requests it. That includes [...]

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Audiovox releases new XM receiver

Audiovox Corp. has had to release some new satellite radio receivers since the Federal Communications Commission’s crack-down on a few of its tuners.
The latest is its CommanderMT, an new unit that you can install in any vehicle that has a radio tuner. The CommanderMT looks like another car radio, but unlike the old receivers, which [...]

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Back for seconds

For a London-based facility, one upright magnetic resonance imaging machine is just not enough.
Melville-based upright MRI maker Fonar Corp. today trumpeted London Upright MRI’s second purchase of a Fonar machine.
That makes eight Fonar stand-up machines sold and shipped to Europe.
From the statement:

Mr. St. John Brown, Managing Director of the London Upright [...]

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LI iPhoners, sound off

Did anyone out there pick up Apple’s new iPhone over the weekend? If so, we’d love some early reviews, as it seems Apple forgot to mail the LI Biz Blog one for reviewing purposes.
Is the phone/ipod/PDS, as Apple suggests, indeed better than sliced bread?
Has anyone out there had trouble activating the phone through AT&T?
It seems [...]

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Visions of robo-cops

There’s something about high technology mixing with law enforcement that invokes images of 1984, Big Brother, movies like Minority Report and, of course, RoboCop. But the reality is, tech is changing how all of us work, including law enforcement.
On Long Island the Long Beach Police Department is making a major tech push. The officers began [...]

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Is it Mac or PC for LI’s bizpeople?

Readers of LI Biz Blog are most likely members of the business community, and most likely plugged into all sorts of technology. But what kinds?
Let’s inventory the tech we hold dear.
First, is it Mac or PC?
And Verizon, AT&T, Sprint or T-Mobile?
Vista or XP?
Blackberries?
iPod or Zune?
Firefox or Explorer?
Plasma, LCD or DLP?
Gateway or Dell?
Write a brief rundown [...]

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Got an old iPod?

Rather than throwing out those vintage non-color, non-photo, non-video iPods, a Selden retail company wants you to recycle the devices.
The Gadget Locker.com said it launched a “green” initiative that will pay anyone who sends their iPod to the company for recycling $20 in store credit.
The online retailer, which also runs a shop in Selden and [...]

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OSI exec heads to Connecticut board

Talk about lending your expertise to a similar business.
Robert L. Van Nostrand, senior vice president and chief compliance officer at OSI Pharmaceuticals in Melville, joined the board of directors of Achillion Pharmaceuticals, a New Haven, Conn.-based maker of drugs that combat infectious diseases like HIV and hepatitis.
Van Nostrand will serve on the board’s audit committee.
From [...]

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Remember Bill Nuti?

Do you remember Bill Nuti, the former chief executive of Holtsville-based Symbol Technologies? (I guess I should have asked if you remember Symbol, since the bar code giant is now owned and run as a division of Motorola.)
Nuti skipped town before Motorola sunk its teeth into Symbol to run another electronics giant, Dayton, Ohio-based NCR [...]

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Stop, it’s the police-on-wheels

Rent-a-cops may have made a real impression on the real cops.
The Long Beach Police department said it will put a few of its finest on Segways, the self balancing, two-wheeled scooters-of-the-future you’ve seen so many times in Long Island malls.
The department will use the devices on the boardwalk.
From the 1010 Wins story:

Long Beach police will [...]

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A la carte cable, good or bad

If you’re like me, there are maybe 50 out of the hundreds of channels offered by your cable provider that you watch regularly, maybe 30 you stumble on once a month and at least 100 you’ve never tuned to in your life.
So why not a la carte pricing?
According to a Reuters story, the chairman of [...]

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Comverse blocks a director shot

Oliver Press Partners, a shareholder in New York-based Comverse Technology, in mid-April filed a request with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a special meeting to elect Comverse directors.
Comverse has not held a shareholder meeting since June 16, 2005. That may be because ongoing fraud investigations and a stock market delisting made it tough to [...]

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The VAR Guy believes in CA

It’s no doubt been a bumpy road for CA Inc., the tech firm formerly known as Computer Associates, fraud capital of Islandia, but the company may have finally hit some pavement. At least, that’s the opinion of one tech blogger.
The VAR Guy, Joe Panettieri, says CA is transformed, and he gives a few reasons why.
From [...]

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Audiovox to release new batch for XM

Audiovox has had a topsy-turvy relationship with satellite radio provider XM. Last year, the Federal Communications Commission shelved a few of the company’s receivers because they failed to meet electronic emission standards.
But the Hauppauge-based electronics maker has returned with a new set of receivers.
According to a post on Engadget, which first found out about the [...]

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LIPA scores tech award

It’s easy to bellyache over electric rates, but in the eyes of a few energy industry experts, the Long Island Power Authority is ahead of the curve when it comes to technology.
The Houston-based Peak Load Management Alliance presented a 2006 Demand Response Award to our local power authority in the Innovative Application of Technology [...]

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CA World 2007, in case you missed it

Local tech and software firm CA Inc. held its big event, CA World 2007, this weekend at Las Vegas and the company’s current captain pointed to a sort-of IT yoga as the way of the future.
CA chief executive John Swainson in his keynote said corporate information technology systems need to tighten up governance and security, [...]

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This time, a good Domino falls on Verint

It’s nice when Verint Systems gets some good news — unlike other times when its ties to the Comverse debacle causes it to be audited, delisted, etc.
Today, the Melville-based software company signed a deal with Domino’s Pizza. The pizza chain will use Verint’s Nextiva Specialty Retail Solution security suite in its locations.
Nextiva manages closed circuit [...]

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Boom-box or iPod, 8-track or one track at a time

Where do you get your music?
Nationally, it looks like compact disc sales are falling. A report from the Recording Industry Association of America concluded CD sales fell 13 percent in 2006. However, it doesn’t look like digital downloads made up the lost ground.
From the Reuters story:

Though sales of music in digital formats such as downloads [...]

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Don’t like Vista? Too bad

Tried to buy a laptop lately? If you have, I’m sure you’ve found it very hard to find a package that includes Windows XP, the now old school operating system from Microsoft. It’s all about Vista now, even though fixes to the new operating system are still rolling out.
But though XP-installed computers still exist, time [...]

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One rises and one falls

I used to think the difference between Best Buy and Circuit City, ubiquitous on Long Island, was simply the color of its buildings. Red or blue, each was large, stuffed with electronics and heavily policed at the entrances. But recent news shows the two going through an identity split much like Eliot and ET did [...]

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Are they trying to be funny?

Yes they are.
CMP Media in Manhasset will launch The Friday ITch — IT capitalized for information technology (took me a few minutes) — a Web-based video show that pokes fun at technology.
The program airs as part of the company’s CMP TV service, which features various videos about business technology.
Here’s the preview.
From the release:

“The Friday ITch [...]

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BAE releases underwater bad boy

Southampton-based defense contractor BAE Systems unveiled one tough robot today.
The company’s device, the Talisman M, is essentially an automated submarine the size of a small family car that seeks out an enemy mine, detonates it and moves on to the next one.
The craft, which grabbed the attention of top blog Engadget today, was partly [...]

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They want classic movies and a signal, dammit

Cablevision has got a few angry subscribers on the other side of the Sound.
Residents of Connecticut’s greater Litchfield area met in Hartford on Feb. 22 to discuss the poor signal quality Cablevision subscribers in the area have been receiving.
But signal quality might be a means of twisting Cablevision’s arm, as what the residents really want [...]

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Neighbor state weighs trans fat ban

The State of Connecticut may ban the use of trans fats in its restaurants, making it the first state to outlaw the artery-clogging substance.
On Monday, the state held a hearing on the future of the “poison,” what Dr. David Katz called the fats. Other health experts said trans fats cause between 175 and 500 deaths [...]

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