Hackers bring the pain in Va.

Doctors in Virginia are thinking twice before prescribing painkillers such as morphine and Vicodin because of the recent hacker attack on the Prescription Monitoring Program, according to a state official who testified at a legislative hearing Monday. The attack, which took place two months ago, allegedly compromised more than 35 million patient records. The attack drew the attention of many concerned with the security of electronic records. In an undetermined number of cases, patients' Social Security numbers were compromised. Now there is concern that residents are unable to obtain needed medication from their doctors. From a story in the Washington Post: With the prescription database still offline two months after it was accessed because of FBI and state criminal investigations and work to upgrade the system, some doctors are reluctant to prescribe highly addictive painkillers such as Oxycodone, Vicodin, morphine and Valium, said Sandra ...

More trouble for Va. computer contractor

Northern Virginia-based technology contractor Northrop Grumman has recently come under fire for being six months behind on a $2.3 billion contract to administer the state’s computers. Legislators are now poised to scrutinize the costly 10-year contract. But that is the least of Northrop’s problems. A team of Canadian student journalists investigating the global electronic waste industry in Africa purchased seven hard drives at a market in Ghana for $40. One them once belonged to a  current Northrop employee and contained hundreds of documents related to government contracts. From the article in PC World: Northrop Grumman is not sure how the drive ended up in a Ghana market, but apparently the company had hired an outside vendor to dispose of the PC. "Based on the documents we were shown, we believe this hard drive may have been stolen after one of our asset-disposal vendors took possession ...

Tech Review: this is a Wave you gotta catch

Down under in southern Australia, Google engineers have developed a program that will revolutionize a key part of every business: trying to get information from one person to another without botching the meaning or context like a game of telephone.

Wave, which is still in beta testing, is hard to explain but mind-blowing to witness.

Let’s say you run a shipping company in Richmond and are working on opening an office in Fredericksburg. You need to meet with your launch team, but you don’t want to make the hour-long drive or pay for expensive web conferencing sites. Right now there is no easy way to have the online equivalent of the

A business is born where dogs meet hogs

How's this for a customer's testimonial of a Richmond-based manufacturer and retailer: One fan found the product after getting pulled by a state trooper while riding a motorcycle with her dog on the Jersey Turnpike. The officer wrote her a ticket for having a passenger without a helmet. Now she abides by New Jersey laws, with her dog wearing his own helmet made by West End-based Zoomer Gear. “I wanted my dog to ride with me because he loves it,” said Kay Tabor, co-founder and owner of Zoomer Gear.

NewsFeeds 6.30.09

Former Henrico construction firm employee pleads guilty to embezzlement (Times-Dispatch) But a simple request from a supervisor over a missing file turned up a long-running embezzlement scheme that saw Denis ring up at least $200,000 in purchases that she simply approved for payment. Norfolk comes to aid of downtown (Inside Business) Construction in downtown Norfolk for light rail, two hotels and sewer projects has upset many small businesses whose owners say their profits have been decimated by the activity. Realizing that businesses would be disrupted by all the construction, the staff of the city manager’s office, along with the Norfolk Department of Development, crafted a policy to address the impact on businesses. Supreme Court Finds Bias Against White Firefighters (NY Times) The new standards announced by the court will make it much harder for employers to discard the results of hiring and promotion tests once they are administered, even ...

Lawmakers target car title loans

Now that newly passed regulations have severely hampered the payday loan industry in Virginia, lawmakers are setting their sights on car title lenders. A legislative study committee held its first meeting today at the state capitol to discuss how to approach regulation of car title lenders during the 2010 General Assembly session. Car title lenders operate under the state’s open-end credit law, which allows them to impose whatever loans terms they want as long they do not charge anything during the first 25 days. Since Virginia passed laws against payday lending, the number of loans has dropped more than 80 percent from the previous year. From the Associated Press story via the Times-Dispatch: Last year, Virginia's payday lenders made nearly 3.4 million payday loans, or about 281,000 each month. Through the end of May, lenders had issued 226,807 loans, an average of 45,000 ...

Beware of Twitter squatters

Earlier this month we ran a series on how local businesses are using social media. In some cases, the tools are effective and cheap ways to reach targeted customers. But they can also allow any rouge individual to speak on behalf of the company. And in that sense, the battle for public opinion keeps getting trickier. The Wall Street Journal reported today that companies have had to be on the lookout for imposter-twitterers, people who claim to be a company, such as Exxon Mobil, but are just tweeting spam. From the article: Exxon Mobil Corp. has found at least two unauthorized Twitter accounts under variations of its name. Twitter -- a networking service where users create profiles and send out short messages, or "tweets" to their followers -- terminated one of the profiles last summer. An Exxon spokesman says the oil company is ...

More Manchester mojo

A hand-drawn map of Manchester is unfurled across Rick Gregory’s desk. It is adorned with neon-colored sticky notes that foretell his grand vision for the abandoned industrial buildings that inhabit Richmond’s urban landscape south of the James River. “This is our world,” Gregory said, his hand waving over the 15 city blocks owned by his and business partner Tom Papa’s development firm, Fountainhead. The area, once the industrial powerhouse of Richmond, is home to building shells as the companies that owned them have moved over the past 20 years.

NewsFeeds 6.29.09

Rocketts Landing gaining new tenants (Times-Dispatch) Zuppa will move from its current location on North 18th Street to a space in the 210 Rock Building at Rocketts Landing. The restaurant will be joined by construction company Felts and Kilpatrick, which will open an office in the same building within the next 30 days. Burger King's Struggling. Is Their Ad Agency to Blame? (Fast Company) BK continues to lose ground to McDonald's--and some are laying the blame on the creepy ads created by Crispin Porter+Bogusky. Hogwash. A Plan to Stem Foreclosures, Buried in a Paper Avalanche (NY Times) n the four months since the Treasury Department announced the program, millions of new homeowners have slipped into delinquency and foreclosure. For now, progress is constrained by the limited capacities of mortgage servicing companies, said Michael S. Barr, the assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions. He offered the first signs of the ...

Monday Q&A: Frustration floods Shockoe

Sometimes good things don’t come to those who wait. Shockoe Bottom merchants are frustrated that Richmond will not be getting a baseball stadium and more than $300 million in development to potentially help rocket the area into a thriving hub of commerce. That’s because the master developer, Highwoods Properties, has withdrawn its plan. The news release did not make clear exactly why, but several merchants have said it is likely because Highwoods did not get the necessary level of interest from city administrators. The master plan included condos, retail and a ballpark that would be home to a locally owned AA team. Detractors had said that the city might have ended up paying back the bonds if the stadium and team didn’t thrive as the developers expected and that the project was not worth that risk. David Napier, president of the Shockoe ...

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