When I tell people I don’t own a television set or have cable, they often assume that I don’t watch TV. They’re wrong. My laptop is my boob tube, thanks to an embedded DVD player and the Web.... Read more

Every morning, Tim Twinam fires up the computers in the corner of his log cabin in Williston and searches for lost souls.

From a desktop in his Vermont country home, the bushy-haired Englishman scans his website for messages from religious captives — members of a reclusive and vindictive sect who are desperate to escape, and ex-members scarred from their experiences inside.... Read more

10/26/09: Over 65 exhibitors and hundreds of attendees packed the third Vermont 3.0 event at the Sheraton Burlington Hotel & Conference Center on Monday.  There were plenty of green, high tech, innovative companies on hand to offer a glimpse into Vermont's future.

Seven Days sponsored and helped organize this event, along with the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Vermont Software Developers' Alliance, the Vermont Department of Labor, the Vermont Department of Economic Development and Comcast Business Class.... Read more

Huge corporations like S.C. Johnson and Clorox have been hopping on the “green” wagon for several years now. That has presented a growing challenge to smaller, authentically earth-friendly companies such as Burlington-based Seventh Generation. Without improving product recognition, and consumer loyalty, companies that have been manufacturing green products for years run the risk of being swallowed up by these multinational giants.... Read more

How much would you pay to outsource the most tedious, physically demanding aspects of your job?

That question arose for Pete and Madonne Rainville in April 2008, when their dairy barn burned down and they considered how to rebuild it. They could go back to the old-fashioned, tie-stall milking barn, in which Pete, now 40, would have to attach the milk pumps on his cows manually. But all that bending down, getting up and lifting was wearing out his joints so much that he was already on a regular regimen of physical therapy.... Read more

10/17/09: Champlain College's Emergent Media Center in Winooski is preparing students for the "real world" and helping to solve world problems at the same time.

Vermont 3.0 is Monday, Oct 26 at the Sheraton in South Burlington, see you there!!!

Music: Chuch, Juarez, "Hold Me Down"

Location: Champlain Mill, Winooski, VT... Read more

Vermont entrepreneurs looking for money to start a business have a new source of cash thanks to a state investment fund, but competition is going to be fierce.

The Vermont Entrepreneur’s Seed Capital Fund — a revolving investment fund created by the legislature to help new, high-tech companies get off the ground — is the state’s latest economic development gambit.... Read more

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) has sported virtually the same logo since the union’s inception back in 1891: a clenched fist grasping radiating bolts of electricity. But that symbol could use a 21st-century update, showing an outstretched hand capturing rays of sunlight.... Read more

If Omni Measurement Systems of Milton ran an ad for its best-selling product, the Advanced Mission Extender Device, it might look something like this:

One F-16 Falcon fighter jet: $14.6 million

Cost of training a fighter pilot for one year: $2.6 million

Cost, per flight, of using the Advanced Mission Extender Device: $50

Freedom to empty your bladder at 35,000 feet during a Mach 3 dogfight: priceless... Read more

Lisa Groeneveld will make you question everything you ever thought about people in the high-tech sector. An iPhone-toting geek she is not. Unabashedly, she admits that her phone is the “free one” that came with her mobile plan. She might be the only person in the IT industry who still uses a PDA — the BlackBerry’s redheaded step-cousin.... Read more