I realize it’s a bit belated, but I’d like to finally offer some explanation for my sudden vanishing act.

No, it wasn’t a case of Fat Tire overdose (see my last post, below).

In May, I accepted a job as senior writer for the Loomis Group, a San Francisco technology PR firm. Since then, I simply haven’t had the time to make further posts to this blog. And considering some other duties I’ve taken on since then, that doesn’t appear likely to change anytime soon.

Oddly enough, the blog continues to draw readers – as many as 50 a day. So even though I’m no longer posting additional material to this forum, I’ve decided to leave the site and its postings online as a reference for those seeking information about Colorado’s technology industry.

It was fun. I’d love to do it again sometime when time permits. But for now, you’ll have to look elsewhere for news on Colorado’s burgeoning tech sector. For starters, I’d suggest checking out some of the links along the right side of this page.

Best,

– Russ –

To that I can only say: Bah humbug!

My college roomate and I tried brewing our own back in the late 1970s — cooking the ingredients on the kitchen stove, bottling it in previously used Hamm’s bottles and aging it in a closet. The disastrous results convinced me that brewing is truly a complex, highly technical process.

And besides, how many software programs, semiconductor designs and computer systems do you think would ever have been completed without frequent sessions of “beer therapy?”

In any event, Coloradans have reason to be proud of our homegrown craft brewing industry.

The Boulder-based Brewers Association (see http://www.beertown.org/) this week released a list of the country’s top 50 “craft brewers,” a term that refers to the smaller, independent and traditional breweries that have become the fastest growing segment of the U.S. brewing industry. The association reports that sales of craft beer in U.S. supermarkets grew 17.8% in 2006, compared with just 10% for wine and a mere 2% growth for “ordinary” domestic beer from the industry’s big four producers (Anheuser-Busch, Miller, Coors and Pabst).

Colorado, it turns out, is home to five of the 50 largest U.S. craft brewers. Only California, with seven top-50 brewers, has more. (If all the smaller brewers are counted, Colorado actually has closer to 100 commerical micro-breweries)

Fort Collins’ New Belgium Brewing Company Inc., maker of the extremely popular Fat Tire beer, ranks as the third-largest U.S. craft brewer in terms of 2006 sales. Actual sales figures were not disclosed as part of the rankings, but a Denver Post article last July reported that New Belgium brewed about 370,000 barrels of beer in 2005, while Inc. magazine reported last year that the progressively managed, eco-friendly company had 2005 sales of about $70 million.

Following is a list of Colorado’s Top-50 craft brewers, and their rankings:

      Company…………………City……….Rank

_______________________________

• New Belgium…………………Fort Collins……3
• Rock Bottom Brewery…..Louisville……..24
• Flying Dog…………………….Denver…………29
• Odell Brewing……………….Fort Colllins….31
• Breckenridge Brewery…..Denver………….36
• Boulder Beer…………………Boulder…………41

Source: Brewers Association

_______________________________

“Beer made by small, independent and traditional breweries is definitely an American success story,” says Paul Gatza, Director of the Brewers Association.

With just under 1400 small breweries the segment eclipsed 6.7 million barrels in 2006. The fastest growing craft beer sector in 2006, with a 16% sales increase, was microbreweries (those under 15,000 barrels a year). Total craft beer industry sales have grown 31.5% over the past 3 years.

The Denver Post reported that brewers contribute $3.7 billion a year to this state’s economy, although the bulk of that no doubt comes from the Coors and Anheuser-Busch operations here.

Nonetheless, my hat’s off to all the dedicated beer makers whose bubbly brews make our lives — and the technology industry — so much better (when consumed in moderation). I plan to open an ice-cold Fat Tire a few hours from now in celebration.

The non-volatile memory chip company announced this week that it expects Q1 2006 product revenue to be about $8 million, 12% less than the record $9.1 million mark reached during last year’s fourth quarter.

Despite the decline, the company’s projected Q1 sales would be 70% more than last year’s first quarter. Simtek — which reported its first quarterly profit in nearly six years during last year’s fourth quarter — nearly tripled its annual revenue during 2006 to $30.6 million, compared with $10.4 million in 2005.

The past year has been eventful for Simtek, which was founded in 1987 and struggled for years to develop a niche market for its unique nvSRAM technology, which allows memory chips to retain stored data when their power is shut off, while also operating at extremely fast speeds.

Last October the company completed a 1-for-10 reverse stock split, paving the way for a Nasdaq stock listing this January 10.

In December Simtek acquired the nvSRAM business of Germany’s Zentrum Mikroelektronik Dresden (ZMD) (which originally licensed the technology from Simtek) for $10 million in cash and stock, and began shifting ZMD’s chip customers to its own nvSRAM chips. In January it raised $11 million in a private share placement, with most of the proceeds used to pay for the ZMD deal.

The company also filed for 10 patents in January, and announced plans to open a design and business-development center in San Diego.

Simtek employs about 45 people in Colorado Springs. Its chips are used in computer servers, GPS navigation systems, robotics, copiers, avionics, radar, “smart” weapons and other products.

Among its competitors is Colorado Springs-based Ramtron Corp. (Nasdaq: RMTR), which uses a different technology, ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM), to produce non-volatile chips.

Written by investment advisor Tom Konrad, who also serves as treasurer for both the Colorado Renewable Energy Society and Ratepayers United Colorado, the article identifies several companies (though none in this state) that could benefit from increased demand for transmission facilities. That’s assuming, of course, that the current boom in wind power and other alternative energy sources continues.

The article mentions Colorado’s recently passed Senate Bill 100, which requires regulated electric utilities to identify — and develop plans to remedy — areas of high wind-energy potential where a lack of transmission capacity could hinder development. Gov. Bill Ritter signed the bill into law two weeks ago, along with House Bill 1281, which requires state utilities to obtain at least 20% of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020.

The AltEnergyStocks blog also ran an article last week on stocks that could benefit from wind turbine supply constraints. Investor’s Business Daily mentions some of the same stocks in a similar article today.

Turbine makers such as GE Energy are reportedly booked solid with orders well into next year, despite the industry’s aggressive plans to expand production. Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems, for instance, announced plans last month to build its first U.S. wind turbine blade factory in Windsor, Colo., near Fort Collins.

Surging demand for wind energy may pose a challenge for utilities and potential wind farm investors, but for transmission equipment suppliers, as well as Vestas, GE and other turbine suppliers, the good times appear to be just beginning to roll.

Energy use is a growing concern for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other big computer users, which are building huge data centers around the globe to handle soaring demand for broadband Internet services. Google engineer Luiz André Barroso has predicted, in fact, that energy costs may soon surpass the cost of computing equipment for large users.

The April 18-19 Green Grid event is expected to bring together leading technical experts from founding companies AMD, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems. Longmont-based Copan Systems, Inc., a privately held maker of energy-efficient disk storage sysytems, was one of nearly 30 additional new members announced this week, including Brocade Communications, Cisco, Juniper Networks, Novell, QLogic, Texas Instruments and others.

This will be the first event for the organization since its launch this February. The two-day summit’s three main goals are: how to define and measure data-center efficiency, how to build more efficient data centers and how to improve the efficiency of daily operations.

EE Times reports that one possible solution the group may debate is shifting data centers from AC to DC power. While Intel has been touting that idea recently, Google has been pushing another approach calling for the computer industry to replace a wide variety of multi-voltage power supplies with standard, more efficient 12-volt power supplies.

For more information, see the Green Grid website: http://www.thegreengrid.org/.

Kazmerski — who spoke Thursday at the University of Delaware after receiving the Karl Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit and a $40,000 prize — says the energy department’s recently unveiled Solar America Initiative was a major turning point for solar energy in this country. Last month the DOE announced it would provide up to $168 million for 13 industry-led solar energy research projects.

“It’s kind of like Nixon going to China,” he said in an article reported by the university’s daily newspaper. “A lot of people would not associate President Bush with renewable energy and anything like this, but he did make this initiative, part of which is in solar.”

Kazmerski said the new initiative positions the United States to be “a major player” in developing affordable solar energy technology, but notes that federal funding for solar technology development is just starting to recover from years of cutbacks. Last year’s $139 million merely brought the level of federal solar research funding even with what it was in 1982.

“Photovoltaics is at a tipping point, and right now it’s at a very critical stage [in] what happens and how fast this technology disseminates,” he said.

Kazmerski joined NREL’s predecessor, the Solar Energy Research Institute, in 1977 and has been director of its photovoltaics center since 1999. He also has been an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado, Colorado School of Mines and the University of Denver.

He said he plans to donate the money from the award to start a program for university students to conduct research at NREL.

Visa applications were accepted starting April 2, and within two days the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received about 150,000 applications — more than twice the maximum 65,000 new visas alotted for the entire upcoming year. An additional 20,000 applicants with a US-earned masters or higher degree are considered exempt from the cap, but the USCIS is not sure yet how many of the initial rush of applicants met that criteria.

Meanwhile, I’d estimate that close to one-fourth of the enrollment in my children’s Colorado schools these days are the children of illegal Mexican and Central American immigrants (that’s just the illegals — the total Latino school-age population is closer to 40%). These are not, for the most part, the children of H-1B applicants.

You can’t blame these families for wanting to come here, where the jobs are plentiful and the quality of life is far better than in their own poverty-stricken countries. Yet this influx of illegal immigrants is putting a real strain on our schools, health care and law enforcement systems.

You have to wonder what U.S. immigration policies (or the lack thereof) are trying to accomplish.

Clearly there are legitimate questions that need to be addressed about the efficacy and aims of the H-1B program, which if not properly regulated could depress wages and cost the jobs of U.S. scientists and engineers.

On the other hand, our universities simply aren’t turning out enough top-notch graduates in these fields, at least not graduates with U.S. citizenship, and the only way many of our companies are getting by is by recruiting foreign scientists and engineers.

Boulder venture capitalist Brad Feld, for one, says he’s constantly trying to find enough qualified software developers for companies he’s investing in. “There is just no reason why there should be a quota on this type of H-1B visa,” he writes in his Feld Thoughts blog.

What’s more beneficial to the U.S. economy — skilled scientists and engineers who boost the productivity and innovation of our knowledge-based economy, or the mostly uneducated throngs that pour across our southern border in search of menial labor?

Why are the best and brightest applicants limited to a relative trickle, while the doors are thrown virtually wide open for millions of the world’s poor, huddled masses?

Immigration is a complex, emotional issue that could emerge as a major factor in next fall’s presidential elections. And I don’t pretend to have all, or even most, of the answers.

But it’s time for us to begin dealing rationally with the nearly insatiable desire of foreign nationals to work here, and U.S. companies’ eagerness to employ them. Surely we can be smarter and more deliberate about harnessing that supply and demand, and directing this remarkable influx of human talent towards goals that further the best interests of the United States.

In a Wall Street Journal article yesterday, AirCell’s CEO Jack Blumenstein says that U.S. airlines should soon begin offering in-flight Internet service, instant messaging and wireless email. And while government approval of cellphone service is now stalled, “the likelihood of cellphone service on airplanes coming into play is still very high,” he says.

Privately held AirCell, founded in 1991, paid $31.3 million at an FCC auction last June for three megahertz of radio frequency spectrum to be used for in-flight Internet service. Both the FCC and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have approved the company’s Internet service, but not its propsed cellphone service.

The FAA reportedly is concerned that cell phones and other portable electronic devices could interfere with navigational and communications systems, while the FCC worries that airborne cellphone signals could overload networks on the ground. The Journal reports, however, that some 30 countries have now given telecom approval for in-flight calls, although air-safety reviews are still ongoing. Quantas, Emirates and Ryanair are reportedly hoping to begin offering in-flight cellular service before the end of this year.

Meanwhile, AirCell is constructing a network of 80 to 100 ground towers across the U.S. that could eventually provide both voice and data in-flight services. It is reportedly pitching the service to multiple airlines, although no customers have been announced. The company, which currently provides satellite phone service to private jets, holds a U.S. patent on technology to allow in-flight use of both GSM and CDMA cell phones.

AirCell’s North American air-to-ground broadband system is scheduled to debut in early 2008, allowing airline passengers to surf the Internet, use e-mail, and connect to corporate networks using WiFi-equipped laptops, handsets and other devices. It reportedly costs $100,000 to equip each airliner, although the process is relatively simple, and can be done by maintenance workers overnight.

Boeing spent $1 billion several years ago to launch its Connexion in-flight Internet service, but closed the business last year after users balked at paying steep charges of $10 per hour, or $27 per 24-hour period. AirCell’s Blumenstein says his company plans to charge no more than $10 a day to passengers, who also will be able to use their memberships in existing WiFi service programs like T-Mobile, iPass and Boingo.

And one of the voices speaking in favor of increased taxation is University of Colorado Law School Associate Professor Victor Fleischer.

An editorial in Monday’s New York Times cites a recent paper by Fleischer presenting several arguments against the current U.S. practice of taxing private equity “performance pay” as capital gains, rather than as ordinary income. The distinction is important because capital gains are taxed at a modest 15% rate, less than half the rate of most other corporate and personal income.

Reuters, Bloomberg and Wall Street’s Dealbreaker blog also have picked up on Fleischer’s blog comments regarding the Blackstone Group’s proposed public stock offering, which is controversially structured to allow it to keep its favorable tax rates.

Private equity certainly looms as a large and tempting target these days. But what bothers most critics is not so much the favorable tax rate on the returns from “at risk” money used to fund the buyout deals. What really draws their ire is the industry’s customary “two and twenty” — a hefty 20% of deal profits and 2% of funds under management — that private equity managers collect for their services. Those fees also are taxed at the favorable 15% capital gains tax rate, rather than as ordinary income.

“This quirk in the tax law allows some of the richest workers in the country to pay tax on their labor income at a low rate,” writes Fleischer.

Private equity investors such as KKR, Blackstone, the Carlyle Group and Texas Pacific Group, having raised hundreds of billions of dollars in cheap capital in recent years, are now pouring it into a flurry of acquisitions at a record-setting pace. There’s much debate about whether deal values are getting too high, and about the ultimate social impacts as hundreds of companies are privatized, broken up, downsized and re-sold, often for huge profits.

Those issues aside, however, one reason for the recent private equity boom is almost certainly the favorable tax treatment these deals, and their architects, receive.

The New York Times editorial calls for Congress to address the issue of private equity’s “preferential” tax rate. And Sen. Charles Grassley (Rep.-Iowa) is reportedly considering just that. British lawmakers also are considering tax changes to collect a bigger share of private equity profits.

Fleischer, writing this week in the Conglomerate business law blog, says he’s “agnostic” about whether the preferential capital gains rate on private equity investment capital is appropriate. “But I certainly agree that allowing that preferential rate for capital gains on returns to human capital (i.e. labor income) is excessive,” he says.

Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch blog reports that Photobucket has hired investment bank Lehman Brothers to explore a possible sale of the company, which he says could be worth $400 million or more. Pretty amazing for a company with less than $10 million in sales last year.

Arrington hasn’t disclosed the source of his revenue data and projections for the company, which leads some to suspect the bankers may have leaked the data to help prime the market for a sale. His data, which includes no profit/loss information, indicates that Photobucket’s sales climbed from $4.4 million in 2005 to $9.3 million in 2006, and should reach $32 million this year. About 74% of Q4 2006 sales reportedly came from advertising.

Commentators at ValleyWag, HipMojo and the Daily Deal’s blog doubt that Photobucket can sell for as much as $400 million. Blogger Simon Brocklehurst, on the other hand, sees potential for an even higher price. “If pushed into it by a bidding war, I’d say that someone might be prepared to pay north of $600M – maybe even up to a $1B,” he writes.

So exactly who and what is Photobucket?

The company — which has its technology, development and operations functions in Denver and a business and sales office in Palo Alto, Calif. — basically allows people to store a limited number of photos and videos online for free, or larger amounts for $25 yearly. The stored images can then be linked to from anywhere on the Internet, and are especially popular with users of social media websites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Photobucket’s website currently reports 39 million registered users (it’s reportedly aiming for 60 million by year-end), 17.6 million unique site visitors per month and 7 million images uploaded daily.

In an effusive article last week, Fortune senior editor David Kirkpatrick called Photobucket “the most important site on the Internet that hardly anybody understands.” Critics worry the company could be hurt if MySpace and Facebook were to stop accepting its links. But Kirkpatrick sees that as an improbable prospect, which would likely provoke a “user revolt.”

Co-founders Alex Welch and Darren Crystal were software engineers at Denver’s Level 3 Communications, Inc. before starting Photobucket in 2003. CEO Welch, 30, earned a business administration degree from Colorado State University. Chief technical officer Crystal studied electrical engineering at the University of Texas and was a network engineer for computer maker Dell Inc. before joining Level 3.

The two used savings, credit cards and money borrowed from Welch’s parents to start the company in Crystal’s basement. Welch writes in a recent article for the eventuring website of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation that they got early financing from a neighbor’s friend at Guaranty Bank in Longmont, after venture capitalists turned them down. Later venture funding eventually came from New York’s Insight Venture Partners and MenloPark, Calif.-based Trinity Ventures

Red Herring magazine reported recently that Welch has a previous connection with photography. He used to work for a Colorado rafting company, taking pictures as boats floated by. Today his company operates the world’s largest photo-sharing site, which as of February employed about 60 people, including 45 in downtown Denver.

Last week the company was featured in a Wall Street Journal article describing how the latest computer processor chips from Intel and AMD offer new ways to protect servers from computer viruses and other attacks. The article quotes Colorado State University computer-science professor Daniel Massey, who has been running the Secure64 software for more than a year, as saying: “nobody can get into this box.”

Another article this week in SEO/SEM Journal examines, but does not confirm, the company’s claim to offer the world’s only “genuinely secure” operating system. Other recent coverage of the company has appeared in Network World, c/net and The Register.

Secure64 claims that its $9,995 Secure64 DNS software — the initial version of which runs only on Itanium-based Hewlett-Packard Integrity rx2660 computers — can withstand denial-of-service attacks while still responding to more than 100,000 legitimate queries per second.

The software, which has several patents pending, protects domain name system (DNS) Internet directories while allowing users to manage email, web access and e-commerce services.

It’s no accident that Secure64’s first products target HP’s Itanium-based servers. The company’s chief technology officer, William Worley, was an HP Fellow and chief scientist and one of the key architects of Itanium technology, which was developed in Fort Collins.

The company, which started in 2002 and now has 23 employees, has raised $7.5 million in angel funding and reportedly plans to seek $5 million to $10 million in additional funds soon.

This week a new chapter of the Colorado Bioscience Association (CBSA) launched in Colorado Springs, with support from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) and the Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp. (EDC).

The group, which met for the first time Wednesday, aims to provide support to existing bioscience companies, help recruit new ones and work with UCCS to commercialize new technologies.

“With over 25 bioscience companies already here and more in the pipeline, we will continue to invest in this industry,” says EDC CEO Mike Kazmierski. “We see it as a vital part of our future.”

Colorado Springs bioscience companies include, among others: Aspire Biotech, HemoGenix, Nextgen Pharmatechnologies, Analytic Development Corp., and Pyxant Labs Inc.

For more CBSA information, contact Executive Director Denise Brown, Tel: 303-592-4073, or http://www.cobioscience.com.

The company claims that its shoes — named for Sir Isaac Newton and his laws of physics — return an average of 58% of a runner’s energy to their stride compared with typical running shoes’ 42% energy return. In development for a decade, they use a so-called “active membrane” that stretches on impact and then returns to its original shape, pushing “actuator lugs” in the soles outward and returning energy into forward propulsion.

Most runners, however, will have to adjust their technique from landing heels first, to landing on their forefoot, which the company contends is how we all naturally run when barefoot.

Newton’s running team of elite triathletes claims to be running faster and covering more ground since switching to the new shoes.

Four models are available initially, in limited sizes and quantites, through Newton’s website, www.newtonrunning.com, and at Abshire’s Active Imprints shop in Boulder. Prices range from $155 to $175 a pair.

In a report entitled “We are still losing the competitive advantage” (see full pdf copy here, or executive summary here), the Santa Clara, Calif-based organzation noted that although awareness of America’s lagging tech competitiveness appears to have increased, very little actual progress has been made.

Congress introduced numerous bills during the last session calling for visa reform, increased R&D investment and improved science, technology, engineering, and math education. But as the report notes: “Not one of these bills was passed or ever seriously debated.”

In a letter accompanying the report, AeA CEO William Archey and Chairman Timothy Guertin describe the United States as “the proverbial frog in the pot of water, oblivious to the slowly rising temperature of a world catching up to us. Today, the heat is still rising and we are still in the pot. There is hope that we are finally feeling the heat and are poised to do something about it. Hope, but not certainty.”

Numerous signs of declining U.S. competitiveness are evident right here in the Mile-High state.

Intel Corp., for instance, is trying to sell its Colorado Springs chip-fabrication plant, while simultaneously preparing to pour billions of dollars into a new Dalian, China, plant, which promises to be cheaper to operate. In Boulder, IBM Corp. is spinning off its printing services business to Japan’s Ricoh Co.

Foreign ownership doesn’t necessarily mean layoffs and closures. Indeed, Ricoh is pledging no immediate impact on the printing division’s 500 Colorado employees. But when a company’s ownership moves abroad, priorities invariably shift, and the careers and well-being of domestic staff nearly always take precedence over those in overseas facilities.

It’s only natural that developing countries such as China and India see technology as a pathway to economic development and want to play a bigger role in biotech, electronics, software development and other growth industries. But it’s not inevitable that their rise must be accompanied by a decline in U.S. industries.

A rising tide can indeed lift all boats, if we don’t allow our own vessel to capsize and spring leaks for lack of maintenance.

Greg Jenik, chief operating officer of Colorado Springs-based Taeus International Corp., which analyzes and tracks the value of U.S. patents, notes in the AeA report that 12 of the top 20 U.S. corporate patents issued during 2006 went to foreign-based entities. “Investment flows to where it is treated best,” he says, adding: “If we are to ensure sustained long-term competitiveness, our immediate directive must be to reinvest in education and R&D.

So what does the AeA propose to address the problems?

Scroll down to the following post for more on its recommendations. . . .

The first tier suggests immediate changes that already have been introduced in various bills and appear to have widespread bipartisan support. The second tier is more challenging, having generally not yet been introduced as legislation, or having the same degree of bipartisan support. Nonetheless, the group describes these longer-range measures as “equally critical” to long-term American competitiveness.

1st Tier Recommendations:

• Dramatic improvements in U.S. education
  • Improve K-12 math and science instruction
  • Sustain, strengthen, and reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act
  • Promote undergraduate and graduate science, technology, engineering, and math education
  • Create a Human Capital Investment Tax Credit to promote continuous education
• Support and increase research and development
  • Increase federal funding for physical science, engineering, math, and computer science basic research through the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense
  • Strengthen the R&D tax credit and make it permanent
• Enact High-skilled visa reform
  • Lower barriers for high-skilled individuals to get temporary work visas
  • Give green cards to all U.S.-educated master and doctoral students

2nd Tier Recommendations:

• Create a more business-friendly environment in the U.S.
  • Reduce the “onerous and disproportionate” tax that small- and medium-size companies incur by complying with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
  • Address rising health-care costs through initiatives such as electronic medical records
  • Fully fund the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to reduce lag time between patent filing and approval
• Engage proactively in the global trade system
  • Advance free and fair trade policies and agreements and conclude the Doha Round of global trade talks
  • Renew the President’s trade promotion authority
  • Promote stronger worldwide enforcement of intellectual property protection
• Promote broadband diffusion
  • Offer industry incentives to promote broadband diffusion
  • Ensure affordable broadband access for every American within five years

A parting thought from the report:

“When one of America’s strongest competitive advantages in the global marketplace is a knowledge-based economy, it does not bode well for the future when the United States neglects the infrastructure that supports its wealth creation.”

Obviously that’s still a long, long way from catching up with the blogosphere’s leading sites, some of which reportedly attract millions of readers. But the growth thus far has been steady and encouraging, with readership now approaching 100 viewers per day.

That’s not so bad, I suppose, for something launched scarcely a month ago with zero capital expense, zero advertising and publicized only by a bit of email networking and word of mouth. Granted, there’s also been no income thus far, and it’s yet to be seen whether, or for how long, I’ll be able to continue doing daily blog stories on top of my paid freelance magazine work.

For now, I’d have to say the jury’s still out on Colorado Tech Times. Virtually all of the feedback has been positive to date, and I’m still having fun writing about an interesting, vital subject in such a new, unfiltered medium.

On the other hand, I hope to eventually get some sponsorship and be able to, as they say, “monetize” the project. So there’s much I still need to learn about the subject of making money in the blogosphere.

Wish me luck, and stay tuned for further developments.

– Russ Arensman –

While some of you big-city folks out there may be worrying that the shift to digital will render your older analog TV tuners useless without a converter box, the article suggests that many of us living out in the sticks could lose broadcast TV signals entirely. That’s because the FCC currently exempts translator stations from the costly mandate of having to convert to digital transmissions.

Such a mandate could be a somewhat moot point anyway, since many translators are operated by local governments and non-profit community groups, which may not be able to afford the $5,000 to $25,000 conversion cost.

So what’s the impact likely to be in places like my own Glenwood Springs? Not much.

Nearly everyone here already relies on either Comcast cable or Dish and DirectTV satellite services. The nearest Grand Junction TV signals are too weak and fuzzy to be worth watching, and Denver TV signals are non-existent on this side of the Continental Divide.

Similarly, most other American viewers are likely to view the shift with a big yawn, since most now get their TV from either cable or satellite services. A Neilsen Co. study released this month reports that the average U.S. home now receives 104.2 TV channels — up from 18 in 1985 and 61 in 2000. And you can bet those channels aren’t being delivered via the good old rabbit-ears antenna.

My sympathy to those still watching free broadcast TV. But for the majority of us who long ago got used to paying $50-plus a month for TV service, the coming shift to digital TV should be pretty much a non-event.

The deal marks yet another expansion for WisperTel, which earlier this month bought Broomfield’s Path / Broadband Services, Inc., allowing it to expand into Denver’s northwest suburbs.

WisperTel uses pre-WiMAX and WiMAX broadband wireless technology to provide broadband services to suburban and rural communities that tend to be under-served by other Internet providers. The service uses low-power radio signals to send and receive Internet data at speeds of up to seven megabits per second from small antennas mounted at users’ homes or offices.

The company now provides service to nearly 4,000 subscribers over a 3,000 square-mile area.

Southborough, Mass.-based Protonex, which sells portable, low cost fuel cell systems to the U.S. military and commercial customers, expects the deal to enhance its technology portfolio, accelerate product development and open new markets.

Mesoscopic’s technical team will now focus mainly on its industry-leading solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology, which uses solid-state materials to generate electricity directly from chemical reactions. SOFC fuel cells operate at higher temperatures than conventional membrane-based fuel cells and can use widely available propane, gasoline and diesel as fuel.

The acquisition, scheduled to close this weekend, is contingent upon Protonex raising additional funds from institutional and strategic investors in a secondary stock offering. The company is seeking to raise $15 million to $25 million by selling new shares. Following that, Mesoscopic’s owners are to receive $3.2 million in cash and the balance in new Protonex shares.

Protonex (PXT.L) raised $16.2 million last July with an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market. The Mesoscopic purchase is its first strategic investment since going public.

Protonex lost $5.7 million on revenue of $2.3 million during 2006. Privately held Mesoscopic Devices reported a profit of $100,000 and revenue of $3.2 million during 2006.

Earlier this month Protonex was awarded awarded a $3.5 million contract to develop a 250-watt portable fuel cell power source for the U.S. Army. The contract was the company’s largest to date, and brought the value of its total government contracts to more than $11 million.

Dave’s question may be slightly premature for most of us, but not because the technology doesn’t exist.

For more than a decade Fort Collins-based XY Inc. has been assisting in the conception of a wide array of sex-selected cattle and horses. More recently the company’s patented sperm-sorting technology has been applied to cats and dogs, dolphins, elk and even water buffalo.

This month the company announced the birth of the world’s first dogs to have their sex selected prior to conception. The resulting litter of black Labrador puppies — three female and two male — was a partly successful effort to produce more females, which are preferred over males for service-dog work because of their intelligence and calm temperament.

The mixed litter shows the current limits to XY’s technology, which can significantly increase the odds of a specific gender being conceived, but does not offer a 100% success rate. Yet the company typically guarantees at least a 90% accuracy rate in cattle and horses, where the technology has been rigorously field-tested in breeding for many years.

XY — which began in 1996 as a joint venture between Cytomation Inc., and Colorado State University — describes itself as the global leader in sex-selection technology for “non-human mammals.” Other vendors, however, are plunging ahead into the tricky field of human sex-selection for profit.

As Harshanyi notes, numerous fertility clinics in Colorado and elsewhere already offer gender-selection services, which mainly rely on selecting embryos with the desired gender during in-vitro fertilization. Sperm-sorting technology, at least theoretically, does away with the need to destroy viable embryos, by assuring that only sperm with the desired gender traits are given a chance to procreate.

Human sex-selection opens a Pandora’s box of ethical and legal issues, which for reasons of time and space I won’t try to sort through now. For a a look at some of the ongoing debate, check out Jennifer Lahl’s recent post about the “Top Ten Objections to Sex Selection” at The Human Future blog, or the International Center for Technology Assessment’s assertion that “a new eugenics age” already has begun.

One thing’s for sure, though. Where there’s demand, a market is certain to follow. And many would-be parents appear eager to choose the gender of their offspring.

Companies such as The Fertility Clinics — with locations in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Mexico — advertise aggressively on the Internet and reportedly are attracting well-heeled customers from around the globe, who gladly pay $20,000 for in-vitro gender selection.

Sperm-sorting technology, still considered experimental by the FDA, reportedly costs $4,000 to $6,000, not including in vitro fertilization. The New York Times says that one Virginia clinic has produced more than 900 pregnancies, with a 91% success ratio for parents who wanted girls, and 76% for those who wanted boys.

So move over dogs, cats, horses and dolphins. Ready or not, the brave new world of human sex selection has now arrived. Can designer babies be far behind?