Ann Arbor New Tech, brought to you by a2geeks, is a group of people from various industries and backgrounds (e.g., entrepreneurs, technologists, investors, lawyers, marketers, students, etc.) interested in fostering local technology startups by organizing events, sharing resources, and building a supportive community.

Ann Arbor New Tech’s signature event takes place on the third Tuesday of each month, at 6:30 p.m., at Blau Auditorium, UM Ross School of Business, 701 Tappan Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104.  The monthly event features three to five companies who are each given five minutes to demo and five minutes to answer questions.  Open announcements and networking follows.

This month’s meetup is on Tuesday, July 20th.  Hope to see you there.

–Matt

The Great Lakes Innovation and Technology Report (GLITR) is a daily read around these parts.  Matt Roush has covered the tech world from a Michigan perspective for almost ten years now.  That’s one of the reasons why we’re all very honored that our firm is featured in this GLITR article highlighting our commitment to working with technology startup companies.  From the article:

Added [Don] Baker: “We’ve made a commitment to working with startups, because we felt like in addition to the legal part, we had skill sets and network relationships that could be helpful to folks that were trying to get something started.”

[Randy] Safford said tech startups “have a lot of special needs — a high intensity need for legal services early in their lives. They have to plan their intellectual property strategy, go get patents, plan your fundraising, go get money, all o fwhich is extremely time consuming.”

The article also highlights our startup legal products.

–Matt

Clients Myine Electronics and Livio Radio are featured in this New York Times article on the new wave of Internet radios.  From the article:

A wide variety of stand-alone players are now available that allow consumers to listen to Internet radio without using a PC.

One compelling feature: many offer wireless connectivity — with a wireless router, you can place the player anywhere in the home within range of the signal, and use the player as you would with a normal radio.

Livio Radio’s wireless line includes its AARP, NPR and Pandora models. (Pandora’s music service allows listeners to “create” a radio station based on an artist or genre they like. Then, Pandora automatically plays other music that the service believes fits the same category.)

–Matt

If you are an employer, are you monitoring your employee’s personal emails sent from work?   Can you?   Until recently, courts have generally accepted the argument from employers that they can monitor anything over their corporate computer networks, including personal emails sent from work.   The Wall Street Journal recently reported, however, that courts are now more likely to side with the employee, unless the employer has put the employee on notice that personal emails may be monitored.  In the absence of such notice, courts have said that employees have a reasonable expectation that their personal e-mails will remain private and will not be accessed by the employer.

The whole article can be read here.

–Matt

Kauffman Foundation’s CEO,  Dr. Carl Schramm, believes the city can revive itself through entrepreneurship.

From the article:

The rise of Detroit in the 20th century was a result of entrepreneurs such as automotive icon Henry Ford taking risks, innovative thinking and start-up companies that provided jobs.

“This city can do it all over again,” he said.

One of the Kansas City, Mo.-based foundation’s missions is to foster and advance entrepreneurship, promote entrepreneurship-friendly policies and facilitate the commercialization of new technologies by entrepreneurs. The foundation last week released a study showing that young companies are the main drivers of job creation. Companies less than five years old created nearly two-thirds of net new jobs in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Detroit’s greatest assets are the plethora of “human capital” and a new mayor who is well-versed in the business world, Schramm said. Mayor Dave Bing, who founded The Bing Group, an automotive supply company, could be a real boost to the city’s economic growth.

“I have a hunch if there’s a blessing (for Detroit’s business climate), it’s Mayor Bing’s experience,” Schramm said.

Read the entire article here.

–Matt