In December, Dayco solved the problem with the help of an unlikely partner: Tim Thurston, a mechanical engineer at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and owner of the Thurston Company. Thurston, who used to work at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, recommended NASA's practice of using an epoxy coating to provide a barrier from the corrosive elements. There was no charge for the consultation. "The solution ended up costing our company around $5,500 compared to a new autoclave, which costs $30,000," says Erik McElroy, Dayco production manager.
Dayco found its answer by submitting a request to the Space Alliance Technology Outreach Program, one of many programs run by the Technological Research and Development Authority (TRDA) in Titusville. TRDA's primary mission is to transfer cutting-edge technologies developed by the space industry to small, private-sector businesses.
TRDA says that in 1999 the Outreach Program's direct impact was the creation of 497 new jobs at 19 companies and 461 jobs saved at 26 companies. "The lion's share are manufacturers," says TRDA Executive Director Frank Kinney.
Here's how it works: A business owner submits a "request for technical assistance." This can be done on TRDA's website (www.trda.org) or by calling 321/269-6330. TRDA distributes the request to its 23 government and corporate alliance partners, which include NASA's Kennedy Space Center and the Johnson Space Center, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and others. The TRDA partner will spend up to 40 hours working on the problem and, typically, will respond within a matter of weeks. In Dayco's case, the response came in about 15 days.
TRDA got its start in 1987 with funding from the Challenger license tag. Its projects include the Outreach Program, started in 1995, a string of business incubators affiliated with six Florida community colleges and the University of Central Florida, grants to energy-related businesses, and a host of educational programs for teachers and students at both the K-12 and college levels.
Since its founding, TRDA has supported its programs with funding from NASA, a variety of Florida state agencies and some private corporations. But funding from the state of Florida and NASA is getting harder to come by.
Last year, NASA contributed $500,000 in in-kind technical assistance, but only $75,000 in cash to the TRDA Outreach Program, down from $300,000 in the past. TRDA received $1.2 million from the Governor's Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development by way of Enterprise Florida -- $300,000 of which went to the Outreach Program.This year, however, Gov. Bush hasn't included the $1.2 million, or any amount for that matter, in his fiscal 2001 budget request, according to TRDA director Kinney. This year, Kinney says he'll go directly to the Florida Legislature seeking the funds.
"We want to apply the space industry to practical life," says Kinney. For TRDA, practical life in 2000 is likely to mean a scramble for dollars to keep its programs from being grounded.
Irradiation: Ready, Set, Zap It!
For 15 years, Mulberry's Food Technology Service Inc. has been waging a public relations campaign to convince consumers that it's safe to eat irradiated food. Zapping food with radiation, the company says, kills harmful bacteria, such as E. coli, and prolongs shelf life of fruits and vegetables. Opponents over the years have questioned irradiation's safety.
Now, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which already allows irradiation of fruits, vegetables and poultry, has sided with irradiation proponents. In February, USDA began allowing beef irradiation.
Are the good times finally here for Food Technology Service? Maybe. The 15-year-old company, formerly known as Vindicator Inc., signed a deal with Auburndale-based Colorado Boxed Beef to produce and sell a new label of irradiated beef. Colorado Boxed Beef supplies the meat to Food Technology Service, for what it calls ion pasteurization. The meat is loaded into aluminum containers, moved to a room with six-foot walls and zapped with gamma radiation produced by Cobalt 60.
But another type of irradiation process offered by San Diego, Calif.-based Titan Corp. is garnering increasing support from the food industry. Titan's process, called electronic pasteurization, uses an electron beam rather than radioactive rays. The company recently signed a deal with Kraft Foods.
Perhaps the bigger question is whether food retailers and their customers will accept the irradiated products. So far, Florida's major food chains are taking a wait-and-see attitude.
Technology Briefs: DSL Expansion
Network Telephone, a Pensacola-based competitive local exchange carrier (Florida Trend, Jan. 2000) inked a deal in February to raise $77 million in equity and debt. The carrier is expanding the availability of its high-speed Internet access through digital subscriber line (DSL) service and plans service in more than 60 markets in the next year. Spectrum Equity and Onset Ventures, both Palo Alto, Calif., venture capital firms, and Network Telephone management contributed $24.5 million in equity. GE Capital provided a $52.5-million credit line.
South Florida Tech Incubator
Enterprise Development Corporation of South Florida (EDC) and Florida Atlantic University (FAU) have teamed up to launch FAU's Technology Business Incubator. The incubator will provide 8,000 square feet of space for up to 28 emerging technology companies. Initial tenants include Internet startups, application service providers (ASPs), computer telephony and voice recognition technology. EDC (www.edc-tech.org), a not-for-profit public/private partnership that offers business assistance to emerging technology companies in south Florida, is one of six Enterprise Florida Innovation and Commercialization Centers.
Bookmarks
From time to time, Florida Trend will ask Florida executives how they use the Internet.
Robert M. Beall II, Chairman and CEO
Beall's Inc., Bradenton
"A great site for investors is www.freeedgar.com. You can set up your own 'watchlist' of companies and receive automatic e-mails each time any of them files a document with the SEC. For some of your wild and wooly speculations, these filings can get pretty interesting."
"The many medical sites, such as www.webmd.com, are essential if you are into self-diagnosis, and it's hard to beat www.winespectator.com for stores on wine, food and travel if you are more hedonistically inclined."
"It is sometimes very helpful to use the free tracking service on www.thetrip.com to track commercial airline flights. For a fee you can also use this website, or www.avweb.com, to track the comings and goings of private aircraft. It's always a nice feeling to see that your competitor's private jet is spending time in the Bahamas!"
"Finally, www.register.com is a handy place to register your name as a domain (for a modest annual fee). Who knows when you'll want to set up your own web page, and you sure don't want someone else appropriating your name in the meantime."
Tech Word of the Month: SERVER
Is a server a piece of hardware or software? If you said hardware, think again. Although the computer that runs a server program is commonly called "the server," that's a misnomer. In client/server computing, the server is the software that fulfills requests from the client software.
For example, a file server program is used to manage documents, e-mail and other files utilized by a number of workstations, or clients, on a network.
On the web, the server is the program that sends a requested HTML page to the web client, who made the request using a browser such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.