Business Briefing, June 10

Rocky staff and wire reports

Published June 9, 2008 at 8 p.m.

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NATIONAL

Web site outages plague Amazon.com for a second time

Amazon.com Inc.'s Web site suffered sporadic outages Monday, just days after unspecified issues knocked the retailer offline for more than two hours.

Keynote Systems Inc., a California-based company that monitors Web site performance, said the latest troubles started shortly after 11 a.m. MDT and lasted at least an hour. Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith described Monday's troubles as "intermittent."

DISCRIMINATION RULING The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday made it more difficult for individual public employees to sue for workplace discrimination. In a 6-3 decision, the justices ruled against a woman who said her job at the Oregon Department of Agriculture was eliminated because she complained about a colleague who harassed her.

Individual victims of discrimination in many instances can assert claims, but "we have often recognized that government has significantly greater leeway in its dealings with citizen employees," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a majority opinion.

LOCAL

Boulder-based Symplified raises $6 million in capital

Symplified has raised $6 million in capital financing, the company said Monday. Financing was led by Silicon Valley venture capital firms Granite Ventures and Allegis Capital.

Boulder-based Symplified, which specializes in Web access management, will use the funds for sales, marketing and operations. The company is led by the same management team that founded Securant.

TECH MAGAZINE DEBUTS A group of technology professionals Monday launched a magazine and Web site focusing on the information technology industry in Colorado. The monthly publication, called Rocky Mountain TechLine, will debut in August with a subscriber base of more than 10,000 people.

The publication is headed by Eric Wolferman, a former vice president of information technology for the Denver Newspaper Agency.

COORSTEK ACQUISITION Golden-based CoorsTek has acquired DEW Engineering and Development limited, a Canadian defense company. Terms weren't disclosed.

Based in Ottawa, DEW Engineering manufactures vehicle armor systems. CoorsTek is a provider of technical ceramics and high-tech components.

Rocky staff and wire reports

ECONOMY

Pending home sales see increase in April

Pending home sales increased in April to the highest reading since October, an industry group said Monday, but they remain more than 13 percent below a year ago.

The National Association of Realtors' seasonally adjusted index of pending sales for existing homes rose to 88.2 from a March reading of 83.0, the lowest since the index was started in 2001. The index stood at 101.5 in April 2007.

Wall Street economists polled by Thomson/IFR had predicted the index would remain steady at 83. A reading of 100 is equal to the average level of sales activity in 2001.

The April index in the West climbed 8.3 percent from March and is 4 percent higher than a year ago. In the Midwest, the index jumped 13 percent, but is still lower than in 2007.

The South posted a 4.6 percent gain; the Northeast index declined 1.9 percent.

THIS JUST IN...

* ADA Technologies' PhysioNetics division received two grants totaling $995,000 from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for research and development of low-cost prosthetic devices.

* Vail Capital Partners Inc. named Craig Meis vice president and chief financial officer.

* Mental Health Center of Denver added Curtis V. Smith, Rina Delmonico, Lisa R. Roy and Rick Simms to its board.

* The Society for Marketing Professional Services Colorado announced the winners of its annual Marketing Excellence Awards: Advertising, Kieding Office Architects; Book/Monograph, Design Workshop; Brochure, The Gallegos Corp.; Corporate Identity, Ivins Design; Direct Mail, The Gallegos Corp.; Holiday Piece, Mortensen Construction Co.; Internal Communication Program, The RMH Group Inc.; Newsletter/Internal, Haselden Construction LLC; Proposals, CH2M Hill; Special Events, studioINSIGHT; Target Marketing, Monroe & Newell Engineers Inc.; Website/Over $20K Budget, GEI Consultants; and Website/Under $20K Budget, Fritzlen Pierce Architects.

* The Credit Union Associations of Colorado and Wyoming moved to a new headquarters building at 1009 Grant St. in Denver.

* Aegis Analytical Corp. hired Julian Gallow to work on its business-development efforts.

* Massage Envy Limited LLC announced it will open 20 clinics across the Front Range.

* Bank of Choice appointed Chris Richmond to its board.

* Lynn Karowsky, the first director of the Monfort Executive Professor Program at the University of Northern Colorado's Monfort College of Business, returned to the college to direct the program again.

* GHP Investment Advisors Inc. added Greg Nikolayevsky as an investment operations analyst, Mike Sullivan as a financial planning assistant, and Chris Saliba and Jan Bryant as a client liaisons.

* Sanity Solutions of Denver partnered with Hitachi Data Systems.

* Brendan E. Cowles joined the Denver office of Townsend and Townsend and Crew LLP.

* Extra Space Storage opened its fourth Denver location at 2995 N. Ulster St.

* The 33rd annual Business Marketing Association Pro-Comm Awards presented Denver-based Philosophy Communication Inc. an award for the PR Single Effort category.

* Lakewood-based Video Professor promoted Marc Stith to director of e-commerce.

* The Colorado Nurses Foundation presented Debra Malone of Rose Medical Center its Nightingale Award for Excellence in Human Caring.

* The Colorado Chapter of the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters Society named Kay Ward as chapter president and Janet Cammac as president-elect.

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