SymbolPriceChangeBRC33.57-0.21{“s” : “brc”,”k” : “a00,a50,b00,b60,c10,g00,h00,l10,p20,t10,v00″,”o” : “”,”j” : “”}

MILWAUKEE AUCH, France–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
Brady Corporation (NYSE:BRC – News), a world leader in identification
solutions, announced today that it has sold its Teklynx software
business. Teklynx, a barcode labeling software company with annual
revenues of approximately $10 million, is headquartered in Auch, France.
Its primary products include Codesoft, Sentinel, Labelview and
Labelmatrix software. Details of the transaction were not disclosed.

“The divestiture of Teklynx is in keeping with our long-term growth
strategy to focus our energies and resources on growing our core
business,” said Brady President and Chief Executive Officer, Frank M.
Jaehnert. “We will continue to offer the Teklynx range of barcode
software products to our customers.”

Brady Corporation is an international manufacturer and marketer of
complete solutions that identify and protect premises, products and
people. Its products help customers increase safety, security,
productivity and performance and include high-performance labels and
signs, safety devices, printing systems and software, and precision
die-cut materials. Founded in 1914, the company has more than one
million customers in electronics, telecommunications, manufacturing,
electrical, construction, education, medical and a variety of other
industries. Brady is headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and employs
approximately 6,600 people at operations in the Americas, Europe and
Asia-Pacific. Brady’s fiscal 2010 sales were approximately $1.26
billion. Brady stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the
symbol BRC. More information is available on the Internet at www.bradycorp.com.

Article source: Source

LAKE FOREST PARK, Wash. — Each time the Seattle area gets a big
rain storm Ron Ricker grabs his camera and heads down to his
automotive shop in Lake Forest Park. He knows that with each
downpour he loses another little piece of his property to the
beast he has been making a living over for the last decade.

“It’s safe,” Ricker assured me as he leads down into the sinkhole
that swallowed his gas station back 1997.

The 50 foot by 20 foot sinkhole is more of a trench than a hole.
It’s about eight feet right now, but with every rain storm it
gets deeper. At one end of the sinkhole a deep pond has formed.

“This is the deepest part,” Ricker said as he watched an eight
foot measuring stick sink six feet into the water.

The sink hole runs directly above Lyon Creek, a small stream that
runs under roads and parking lots, and through back yards in the
community. Back in 1997 a so-called 100 year storm overpowered
the culvert under Ricker’s parking lot and dropped his gas pumps
some five feet into the earth.

Since then he has given up on being a gasoline station and now
operates an automotive shop at the site. But with the sinkhole
expanding during every storm, the hole keeps edging closer to
busy Ballinger Road on one side and Ricker’s shop on the other.
It’s within three feet of his front door now.

“There’s nothing I can do about it,” said Ricker. Fish protection
laws prevent him from some actions and he is worried if he fills
it in, he might just make the problem worse.

For now, he will just keep taking pictures and hoping the monster
at his door step isn’t fed by another heavy storm any time soon.

Article source: Source

Manufacturing employment in Illinois rose last year for the first time in more than a decade, according to a report released Tuesday.

Illinois companies added 3,496 industrial jobs in the 12 months ended November 2011, rising a half percent, to 817,063, said the report from Manufacturers’ News Inc. Illinois is home to 19,111 manufacturers, the report said.

“It’s unlikely that manufacturing employment will ever return to the levels of ten years ago, but it’s nice to see the uptick,” said Tom Dubin, president of the Evanston-based publishing company, which has been surveying the manufacturing industry for 100 years.

Bright spots included Chrysler’s recent announcement that it planned to hire 1,800 workers for its Belvidere assembly facility and the opening of a new Boeing plant in Mascoutah. Likewise, more jobs are on tap as part of the plant expansions planned at Caterpillar and Ford.

“Despite a high corporate tax rate, Illinois still boasts an educated workforce, easy access to capital, and a central location within the Midwest to do business,” said Dubin.

Regions experiencing growth included the Southern and East Central parts of the state along with DuPage, Lake and Kane Counties, the report said.

Chicago, home to the largest concentration of manufacturing jobs, lost 932 in the 12-month period, a drop of less than 1 percent, to 106,980 workers, the report said. Elk Grove Village, which accounts for the second-biggest number of industrial jobs, saw industry employment fall 1.8 percent, to 20,333. Rockford and Decatur, ranked third and fourth, saw no significant change. Fifth-ranked Elgin saw its industrial employment rise 5.4 percent

Industrial sectors that gained jobs included transportation equipment, up 5.2 percent; instruments and related products, up 2.4 percent; rubber and plastics, up 1 percent; and electronics, up a half percent.

Among the sectors losing jobs were lumber and wood, down 4.8 percent; printing and publishing, down 4.6 percent; furniture and fixtures, down 4.5 percent; and paper products, down 4 percent.

Article source: Source

By Mikey Campbell

Published: 04:38 PM EST (01:38 PM PST)

When Apple launched the App Store alongside the iPhone 3G in July, 2008, it offered both a platform and distribution hub for developers to easily write and monetize software, and effectively created a new economy that a study estimates has generated about 466,000 jobs.

A report released on Tuesday by TechNet (.pdf link) claims that the so-called “App Economy,” a term coined in 2009 and brought into mainstream use by a November 2009 Business Week cover story, has grown beyond Apple’s App Store to become an entity of its own that has seen steady growth over the past four years.

TechNet, a bipartisan political network of tech CEOs and Senior Executives, tapped consulting firm South Mountain Economics LLC to quantify the size and impact of the App Economy by researching keywords in help-wanted ads, want-ad to employment ratio, tech employment to total employment ratio and job multipliers. The study was meant to illustrate the effect innovation has on job creation, and is not limited to developers alone but also counts management, creative and other staff associated with app production.

What the company came up with was a detailed and surprising analysis of a fast-growing industry that is responsible for roughly 466,000 jobs in the U.S., and includes employment stats from “pure” app companies like Zynga as well as app-related positions from major software developers like Electronic Arts and ATT.

Included in the study were statistics from the major mobile operating systems including Android, iOS, Blackberry, Facebook and the various iterations of what is now Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform.

The App Economy, along with the broad communications sector, has been a leading source of hiring strength in an otherwise sluggish labor market, said the reports author Dr. Michael Mandel, President of South Mountain Economics and former Chief Economist for BusinessWeek.

App Economy by the numbers. | Source: TechNet

California tops the list of states with the highest percentage of App Economy jobs recording nearly one in every four sector positions going to the new industry, and is followed by New York and Washington with 6.9 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively.

Growth for App business employment saw a relative slowdown in growth during 2011, though the average number of tech want ads containing the word “app” was 45 percent higher than the year before.

Source: TechNet

Apple recently announced that it had paid developers over $4 billion since the launch of the App Store, and the company’s over 315 million iOS devices sold has helped software engineers make $700,000 during the last quarter alone.

Article source: Source

BOERNE — One ordinary evening, Jerry McKenna came home from his job as an Air Force officer specializing in communications intelligence and announced to his wife what he wanted to be when he retired from the military.

A sculptor.

His wife, Gail, responded with raised brows.

So McKenna, then 42 years old, explained what had happened that day — how colleagues working on a project he was supervising were struggling to create a likeness in clay of a beloved, late chief of staff; how McKenna jumped in and began pinching and massaging the clay; how he elicited a likeness from what had started as a big blob.

So excited was he at the discovery of what he now calls his hidden talent, he rushed out the next day during his lunch hour to buy clay and, using a corn-cob holder, carved a sculpture of his boss.

That was 30 years ago. Today, McKenna’s bronze sculptures stand outside the football stadium at Notre Dame, on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, in Catholic churches, on multiple Air Force bases — including Lackland — and in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He has created more than 200 sculptures in all, with 12 currently in the works.

One of McKenna’s few living subjects, former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz, says he was touched by the sculptor’s tribute to him.

“He does an excellent job,” Holtz says. “To have a statue is one thing. To have one at Notre Dame is a really humbling experience. It’s very gratifying.”

Now, at 72, McKenna has no plans to slow down. In fact, the retired lieutenant colonel, who lives in the hills just outside Boerne, feels like he’s at the top of his game.

In his newly released, self-published book “A Third Life: Sculptures for God, Country Notre Dame,” McKenna describes how he evolved from high school football player and Notre Dame student preparing for priesthood to frustrated young painter-turned military officer and father of five.

Those children are now grown, and it is for them, and his 11 grandchildren, that McKenna says he decided to write his book — as a keepsake of family history. He also hopes the book will serve as a portfolio of his work and be instructive and inspirational to struggling artists.

“Artists can learn by many of my mistakes,” he says.

McKenna titled the book “A Third Life,” because that is how he views his career as sculptor.

His “first life” involved moving around the country as the son of first-generation Irish Americans — his father was a civil engineer — and playing football at a Catholic high school in Ohio.

At the University of Notre Dame, he majored in fine arts, concentrating on painting, and then sought work as a commercial artist. The best he could find was a job painting billboards in Pittsburgh.

One day, in the bitter January of 1963, as the wind whipped him on his scaffold, he descended in search of a cup of coffee. He crossed the street and entered the Air Force recruiting office.

That moment marked the beginning of his “second life,” which involved a 27-year military career and moves to Japan; San Antonio; England; Washington, D.C.; and Omaha, Neb., as well as a full tour plus additional deployments to Vietnam.

During this time, he still felt the urge to create art; he painted a chapel altar in Misawa, Japan, and “nose art” on the engine cowlings of combat aircraft.

McKenna was 17 years into his Air Force career when he stumbled upon his passion for sculpting.

It didn’t take long to get his first commission: A man spotted McKenna’s sculpture of his boss at a local foundry, where it was being cast in bronze, and called to see if he would make one of Byron Miller, a young San Antonio high school football player who had died during a scrimmage. (The sculpture of Miller, who died in 1981, is still on view at Madison High School.)

Thus began McKenna’s “third life,” his life as a professional sculptor.

McKenna opened his new full-time business in 1990 at the age of 52.

To improve his skills, he studied anatomy and sculpture books. For the sake of authenticity, he bought period garb such as hats. But in his book, McKenna describes the challenge of getting clients.

“When I started out, commissions were hard to come by and there were times when I thought that I might just hang it up and pursue another line of work,” he writes. “For the first five years, the studio operated in the red.”

His wife, who ministers to women in jail, encouraged him to continue.

“He’s so comfortable in what he does — I never doubted,” she says. “When Jerry goes for something, he goes for it all the way. He wasn’t just going to do it on the side.”

With time, his name began to spread by word of mouth. In 1994, he got what he considers to be his first big break: He was commissioned by the Pro Football Hall of Fame to do a bronze bust of former Dallas Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett. (It would be his first of 17 Pro Football Hall of Fame busts.)

Around the same time, McKenna made a sculpture of Roy Maas, the founder of what became Roy Maas’ Youth Alternatives, a San Antonio nonprofit dedicated to helping children in crisis. Maas was battling cancer, and the group wanted to thank him for all he had done for children.

The sculpture was placed in a shady spot with benches — perfect for quiet contemplation — at the Youth Alternatives campus in Boerne.

“It’s really peaceful,” CEO Gloria Berumen Kelly says. “The kids do therapy there. It’s like Roy is still overseeing what we’re doing because he’s right there with us.”

The sculpture, which Maas was aware of before he died at age 46, “gives us a constant reminder of our history and of Roy, who was so instrumental in that history,” Kelly says. “Sometimes in life we start taking things for granted, that everyone has known what happened. The kids will ask, ‘Who is that?’ ‘Why is it here?’”

The same could be said for the influence of McKenna’s works on military bases such as Lackland AFB — home to his sculptures of Bob Hope, Maj. Gen. Carl Stapleton and Brig. Gen. Ben Ardisana — and at sports venues such as U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, where his statue of Charles Comiskey stands on the concourse above center field.

For the family of Knute Rockne — the famed Notre Dame coach who died in a plane crash in 1931 — McKenna’s sculptures in the Notre Dame locker room, outside Notre Dame stadium, in front of the College Football Hall of Fame, in Rockne’s birthplace of Voss, Norway, and nearby in Rockne, southwest of Bastrop, help keep his legacy in place and his memory alive.

Two of the Rocknes are full-size statues.

Knute Rockne III, who teaches honors world history at a suburban Salt Lake City high school, never got to meet his grandfather, but he is impressed by McKenna’s skill.

“I think it’s an almost exact duplicate — looking at the pictures of Grandpa and looking at the sculpture,” Rockne says. “He did a great job in both of the sculptures, capturing Grandpa’s essence and his true demeanor.”

McKenna’s portrayals of sports figures — NFL players in particular — spurred San Antonio attorney Kyle Neill to commission him to create a sculpture of a moment that was meaningful to him personally.

Neill, a big fan of the University of Michigan Wolverines, wanted a small sculpture depicting Heisman winner Charles Woodson making a critical interception in the 1998 Rose Bowl, which led Michigan to victory.

“People are just awe-struck by it, by the details,” says Neill, who has the only copy of the 2-foot sculpture in his private collection.

McKenna is his own harshest critic. While he has pieces he is proud of, in particular the life-size Lincoln-Douglas debate scene that stands in Alton, Ill., and the life-size torso of U.S. Air Force Gen. Carl Spaatz, which he deems his best likeness, he shrugs — practically grimaces — at the thought of some others.

“I don’t like much of my earlier work,” he says. “I think most artists feel that way.”

And so, while he may be turning 73 at the end of December, McKenna still considers himself to be a work in progress.

“Everything I’ve done,” he says, “is not as good as what I can do now or in the future.”

Article source: Source