| OCR Text |
Show Ghe Salt LakeTribune BUSINESS @ CONSUMER C ORNER, D-11 MARKET Indicators a Dow Jones MARCH2, 2002 BUSINESS GLANCE, D-13 @ UTAH BRIEFS, D-11 \w Governor Sees Post-Oly Boom YESTERDAY'S {Li | Page D-10 Saysstate will capitalize fruit of his “1,000 Days”initiative — a joint government-private business campaign to ensure February's 17 days of international “ It exceeded my stagnant economy. The jewel of the plan’s opening phase was Were deals closed and the Delta Centerfigure skating venue,the elegant Salt LakeCity landmark hosted 66 of Games. Official he on exposure from Games media attention also will boost the state's expectations. There CLOSE: 10,368.86 CLOSE: 1,802.74 NYSE BYBOB MIMS ‘THESALTLAKE TRIBUNE S&P 500 the Utah Business Club at the Devereaux Mansion.A short walk from the Medals Plaza Winter Gamesathletes took 78 gold medals out of Utah. Nowit is the state’s turn to mine Olympic exposure for someprecious metalof CLOSE: CLOSE: 588.63 1,131.78 Utah’s Top Performers [Lege | The Bloomberg i Sebssanes CLOSE: B its own, Gov. MikeLeavitt said. “The ‘Utah brand’ is now l-knownall over the world,” Leavitt said. “The world also knows the promiseof that brand is competence, natural beauty and great people. The Olympicexperience created tha The governorsees that, in pa the 96 st: ions luring the 1S that put po- will tential investors and tratie delegations from 7 fs come in their proper Leavitt noted that among the 8,000 Utah timeframes.” and out-of-state business executives who 21 nations together. crossed the Devereaux’s threshold were 650 venture capitalists, and those visits already MIKE LEAVITT See ‘1,000 DAYS’, Page D-17 , as the first Utah Index ” measures the stock emer of the publiclyheld Consumer READER, MEET NAPSTER companies. Spending ANALYSIS Encouraged by news that the manufacturing sector has begunits recovery and that consumers are spending solidly, investors sent stocks surgingFriday. Accelerates Otherindicators point to end of mild recession NBC’s WebSite Topped Olympics Traffic Survey BY JEANNINE AVERSA As expected, NBCOlympics.com was the clear leader in cyberspace visitors logged during the 2002 Win. ter Games in Salt Lake City, Jupiter Media Metrix reported Friday. ‘THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — Consumers are spending more freely, and for the first time in 18 months a key The broadcast network, which televised coverage throughout the 17: day event, had morethan 2 million visitors to its Olympic Website on Feb. 21, the peak Internet date for ‘Olympic cyber-traffic, accordingto Jupiter, which compiles data ontraf- fic to Websit ‘The NBCsitecontained a variety “of information about the Olympics, including event schedulesand re- PT = = “With this mounting evidence ‘The Olympics section of NNSLcom, oerb ©) of economic recovery, we are confidentthe recession has ended and expansion is under way,” said Ri- hard Yamarone, economist with tion about Utah, Olympicstickets, lodging, athletes, events and offi<iallylicensed Olympics-related mer- _ thandise. =Nutraceutical Purchase ernational Corp. of Park City ae its ly owned subsidiary Fresh Creanics Inc. has acquired theassets of three San JohnKlicker/The Associated Press Rich Ring scans a book Mondayat the Oregon Commissionforthe Blind in Portland. Ring has scanned and uploaded manybooks to Bookshare.org, a new Intemetservice thatimitates Napster’s business model. Dot-Com Aids Blind Book Fans Bookshareleverages copyright exemption Franciscoarea neighborhood natu: ral food markets owned by Real Food Company, inc. The 3,500-square-foot neighbor. hood markets, purchased for $2.7 million, carry organic produce, health foods and nutritional supplements. Nutraceutical makes and markets ‘nutritional supplementssold to +» bealth and naturalfood stores under the namesSolaray, NaturalMax, VegLife and Natural Sport, among others. The companyalso publishes mine He bs Ww a lineof books and booklets under the name Woodland Publishing that are sold in bookstores andhealth and natural food stores, The companysaid the newly ac- quired storeswill provide valuable marketresearch aboutits products. “The day-to-day operation of these natural food markets will providedi rect consumer feedback on emerging interests and trends will help us j=-better serve our core customers, saidBill Gay, chairmanand chief ex —eautive officer. BY MICHAELLIEDTKE from Napster, but hoping for a hap- puter users share copyrighted mate- rial in this case, books over the Internet. Empowered with a special exemption from copyright law, Bookshare hopes to avoid thebitter legal fight that bogged down Napster and prove Napster’s subversive technology can be applied for social good. Bookshare,basedin Palo Alto, Calif., is building an online library of books scanned into audio andBraille formats for the exclusive useof the blind and people with reading problems such as dyslexia, ‘Thetarget audience, about5 million people nationwide, qualifies Booksharefor a copyright exemption created in 1996 to encouragegreater distribution ofliterature to the blind Bonneville International Corp. Shas merged its Video West Producgd unit with its NBCaffiliate KSL- and reading-impaired. SaaENORA RAAARRRRRRREE —S aes seenoe =Fideo West, KSL Merger TYideo West and KSL arebased in Salt LakeCity. Video West produces programming for networktelevision, cable and home video,as well as corporate and industrial videos and infomercials. Bonneville said in a statement that 18 employees of the two compa: nies will “be phased out” over the next month as a result of the merger, butit did not sayif those employees would receive severanceor outplacementassistance. The company did not immediately return calls seeking comment. As part of the merger, the Video West Duplication Center will begin doing business as Bonneville Duplication, the companysaid Bonneville owns and operates 20 radio stations in Chicago, San Fran. cisco, Washington, D.C., and St. Lou: is. In Salt Lake City, Bonneville ownsand operates KSL-TV, KSL ra: dio and Bonneville Communications, an advertising agency. With just 5 percent of all books available on audio, many people feed make a lot of money usually never gets done.” cial scanner to create audiofiles.It’s tedious work requiring about three JAMES FRUCHTERMAN Chief executive, Benetech With a $1.3 million investment from a nonprofit technology computers of its users. paperbacks page by page into a spe- hours perbook. “Tf you are going to do it, why not share the work with everyone?” said Rich Ring,a Portland, Ore., computer instructor whois blind. Despite pier ending. Much like the ill-fated music. sharing service, Bookshare lets com- Thereports are consistent with the cautiously upbeat economic assessment Federal organization, Benetech, hopes to break even by next year. To doso,it will need at least 10,000 subscriberswilling to pay a $25 setup fee and a $50 annual subscription to download as many books as they want. “Great technology that helps peo- ple but doesn’t make a lot of money usually never gets done,” said James Fruchterman, Benetech’s chief executive. If not for Napster, Bookshare probably never would have been cre- ated. Fruchterman got the idea in 2000, shortly after his son joined mil- lions of teen-agers hooked on the music-sharingservice. kshare, launched Feb. 21, is starting out with 8,000 titles from an eclectic mix of authors ranging from Shakespeare to William Shatner. Fruchterman saysthelibrary eas- ily can expand to 40,000 digital books within the next two years by tapping its special exemption, Bookshare faced some resistance from book worried about an invasion from readers whoaren't blind ordisabled. The company eased industry concerns by keeping all its files on a central, secure serverrather than letting users search otherusers’ hard drives as Napster did. To download copyrighted books, subscribers must prove they are blind or have a reading disability. Despite the controls, publishers say they will be watching closely. Bookshare’s format seems unlikely to appeal to people accustomed to listening to taped books read by professional narrators. Using special computerequipment, books will come through in an automated electronic voice. Only about 10 percent aeBookshare’s users are use braille, said Fruchterman. Bookshare — up 60 subscribers in its first week. Reserve Chairman Greenspan provided to Congress on Wednesday. His m : The country is on the roadto recovery, but there still are somepossible potholes. After being flat in December, consumer spending, into the collections stored on the “Great technology that helps people but doesn’t THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SAN FRANCISCO Bookshare.org is borrowing a page Argus Research Corp. which ac- counts for two-thirds of all U.S. economicactivity, rose 0.4 percent in January, the Commerce Departmentsaid. At the same time, Americans’ income,including wages, interest and government benefits, also increased by0.4 percent, the largest advance in six months, providing the fuel for spending in the future, economists said. Income growth in January, whichfollowed a 0.3 percentrise in December, in part reflected costof-living adjustments to retirees’ Social Security checks as well as some other benefits payments from the federal government. “The consumer is showing no signs ofletting up and with income rising as well we should expect that to continue,” said Joel Naroff ofNaroff Economic Advisors. In more good news,the Institute for Supply Management, formerly knownas the National Association activity for the first time in 18 months moved upinto a zone that signifies growth. The group’s index jumped to 54.7 in February from 49.9 in January, suggesting the battered manufacturing sector, hardest hit by the recession, is pulling out ofa See CONSUMER,Page D-17 Utah Consumers Lining Up to Buy Official Olympic Vehicles BY BOB MIMS ‘THESALT LAKETRIBUNE You maynever knowif it transported a gold medal-winning athlete or an anonymousfunctionary of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, but you, too, could slip behind the wheel of a slightly used Winter Games SUV. Better act quickly, though, to cash in on savings from $750 to $3,000 on Chevrolet Tahoes, Suburbans and Trailblazers, GMC Envoys and Dena: lis or Cadillac Escalades. Only a couloaned to the recently completed Games will be sold in Utah. Even then, they won't be easy to recognize as Olympic transports. Under SLOC's policy of zealously protecting the Games’ brand and trademark, identifying decals are be- vehicle sales incentives, plus dis- emblems, but the others had been Olympic “Even if|the vehicle was drivenjust around the block, you could save at Jeast $1,000,” Seiner said. At Larry H. Miller Chevrolet in Murray, sales manager Terry Ivy recalvedthe first atx ofan expected 90-95 Olympic vehicles on Friday morning. Before sale, each of the SUVs will be detail cleaned, have their oil changed and have their undercarriages lubricated. And, under GM's agreement with SLOC,any remaining Olympic decals will be removed if they haven't already been. Oneof the vehicles Ivy received Friday still bore Games’ Even before the first batch of the SUVsarrived,Ivy's switchboard was ing removed before anysales, That has not stopped area GM dealerships from being swamped by calls about the sale. “The interest in them is greater than anything I've seen in this business in 21 years,” said Jerry Seiner, who owns three of the Salt Lake Valley's nine GM dealerships. “We don't know for sure how many the Salt Lake market will get, but we're expecting it will be just a couple hundred or so.” The 5,000 vehicles, most of them SUVsin the $27,000 to $45,000 price states, They will qualify for new Rump. “We would like to get the word out that wé have nothing to do with the ee waren eae ial tocontact ‘local Chevrolet and GM dealerships.” bmims@sitrib.com POOR |
