They sell computers rugged enough to operate in mine shafts. But there's nothing rough about the expanded headquarters of Logic Supply in South Burlington, which celebrated a sleek $4 million makeover Thursday that added 21,000 square feet to the building at 35 Thompson Street. 
Politicians, business leaders and friends of the company gathered to toast the business and tour the redesigned facility, where "blah" is definitely not part of the corporate ethic. Think purple rugs, turquoise chairs and orange walls. The company café and event space could pass for a hipster New York City restaurant dining room, and yes, that espresso machine in the corner is for employee use.

Big windows show the green fields next to the building off Hinesburg Road. With a general absence of clutter in the office spaces, the Logic building seems designed to invite clear thinking. 

"We're neat and tidy people," joked Lisa Groeneveld, chief operating officer, who founded the company with husband, Roland Groeneveld, and brought it to Vermont in 2004.

A motor vehicle bill passed both the House and Senate easily this session, yet it was still lingering Friday as legislators were scrambling to adjourn for the year. The catch: whether drivers should be able to pick up their smartphones and text or check their email while stopped in traffic.

The Senate said no. The House, yes. Friday afternoon, the Senate won.

A House-Senate conference committee reached agreement on a change in the law that says as of July 1, drivers may not use hand-held electronic devices even while stopped in traffic, a loophole that slipped through last year’s hand-held cellphone ban.

“If we’re going to ban texting, why not do the whole thing?” said Sen. Dick Mazza (D-Grand Isle), chair of the Senate Transportation Committee. “To me, it’s more dangerous at intersections to check your phone, because people are crossing the street.”

Mayor Miro Weinberger's pick for Burlington's first-ever chief innovation officer is a woman who went from working at enormous financial services firms in New York to directing operations at several Vermont nonprofits.

Pending city council approval, Beth Anderson will oversee the city's new Innovation & Technology Department.

Anderson and her staff will be charged with taking care of IT needs within city government and improving the collection and analysis of data.

What will that actually entail on a daily basis? 

During the question-and-answer period following Thursday's press conference, Joel Banner Baird of the Burlington Free Press noted, "The job description is maybe kind of geeky. I mean, no offense." 

Asked for specific examples of what the department might do with the data it collects, Weinberger brought up a project in Baltimore, where officials tracked how long it took to repair potholes and used the information to improve response times.

Unlike most Vermonters, Burlington residents have access to super-fast internet speeds. Burlington Telecom — the formerly financially beleaguered and now recovering city-owned company — built a fiber-to-the-home network throughout most of city that offers speeds as fast as one gigabit per second.

But what can you do with that kind of blazing fast internet connection? App developers, entrepreneurs and community development specialists are still trying to figure that out. 

The question was at the heart of GigHacks, a three-day multi-city hackathon that took place last weekend in five communities across the country. The event was sponsored in part by Burlington Telecom, and also by US Ignite, a federally and privately funded initiative that connects the country's gigabit-speed networks and helps cities leverage them for economic gain. GigHack participants in Burlington were linked up via video conferencing tools with participants in Charlotte, N.C; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Kansas City, Mo.; and San Francisco, Calif. They all aimed to envision apps that would take advantage of these cities' gigabit-speed networks. 

How did a self-described "computer geek" at Champlain College get involved in trying to combat the global scourge of human trafficking? As he puts it, he just couldn't ignore the problem of slavery in his own backyard anymore.

When Duane Dunston graduated from Pfeiffer University in 1997, he took some time off before attending graduate school to teach English in Thailand. It was in Bangkok that Dunston got his first exposure to human trafficking. Local newspapers ran stories almost weekly about impoverished men, women and children who were forced or coerced into slavery for sex work or other labor under threats of violence to themselves and family members.

“The whole issue really stuck with me over the years," Dunston recalls, "but I was never quite sure what I could do about it because I’m a computer geek.”

A medical mobile app designed to save the lives of children with potentially life-threatening medical conditions has begun its first phase of field testing, in Bangladesh, and is already showing very encouraging results.

As Seven Days reported in its March 4 story, "Pocket Pediatrics: A Vermont-Made App That Could Save Kids' Lives," pediatricians at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington worked with Vermont software designers to build an app. It enables frontline health care workers to determine the severity of a child's ailment and then provide immediate treatment recommendations. The app, called MEDSINC — short for Medical Evaluation and Diagnostic System for Infants, Newborns and Children — has the potential to save millions of lives each year in low- and middle-income countries that often lack medical staff with pediatric expertise.

Dr. Barry Finette is the Burlington pediatrician, pediatrics professor and director of UVM's Global Health and Humanitarian Opportunity Program who first conceived of the idea after years of working in developing countries where pediatricians are virtually nonexistent. Finette reported Tuesday that MEDSINC's rollout, at two field clinics in the Mirpur region of Dhaka, received enthusiastic responses from medical teams with the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research and their Bangadeshi health care partners, all of whom are eager to continue with future testing. 

"As anticipated, some community health workers experienced challenges in collecting accurate physical exam findings," Finette writes in a monthly newsletter for THINKmd, the Burlington-based benefit corporation formed to launch this and other humanitarian aid-oriented apps. "However, with a little training, they were able to capture accurate data."

According to Finette, health workers on the ground in Bangladesh identified areas in MEDSINC’s user interface that were somewhat difficult to understand, and also supplied his team with several helpful suggestions for improvements. Those suggestions are being incorporated into the product.

"Our near-term goal for MEDSINC is to continue with field testing at several different locations," Finette adds. "We are currently finalizing plans with key collaborators in Central and South America, where we hope to conduct MEDSINC field tests soon."

Finette had even more good news to report today: THINKmd has been selected as a finalist for the LaunchVT business pitch competition. The first prize for LaunchVT is $30,000 in cash and $45,000 of in-kind support.

"We are excited for the opportunity," Finette writes in an email, "and look forward to hearing feedback from the audience about our company and MEDSINC venture.” Winners of the LaunchVT business pitch competition will be announced on May 7.

Updated at 1:45 p.m. to include FairPoint statement.

Days after a statewide 911 outage, the Vermont Department of Public Service has asked the Vermont Public Service Board to investigate the "adequacy,' of FairPoint Communications' service, following through on a previously issued threat to the struggling company.

The DPS said it had long planned to pursue action if customer complaints about FairPoint's service, which have spiked in recent months, did not subside by the end of November. Last Friday's phone outage, during which 45 calls to 911 did not go through, only heightened the concern, the agency said.

"The number of complaints we have received regarding FairPoint service outages and length of time for repair has remained unacceptably high for too many months, and spiked precipitously in the last two months,” Public Service Commissioner Christopher Recchia said in a prepared statement. “Last Friday's network outage, which resulted in Vermonters’ inability to reach 911 for a period of 5-1/2 hours, endangered public safety and welfare."

The DPS said that, while it can seek financial penalties against FairPoint if the PSB finds wrongdoing, its "primary purpose" in filing the petition is to determine the root cause of outages and delays in repair, and to find a solution. The PSB, comprised of three members appointed by the governor, is a quasi-judicial body that presides over a range of issues related to utilities, telecommunications, cable television, electric, gas and water service.

FairPoint has pledged to cooperate with a PSB inquiry.

"We have received the Department's request for the board to open a service quality investigation. If the board opens an investigation, we will fully cooperate with them," the company said.

Roughly 1,700 FairPoint workers, including 370 in Vermont, went on strike on October 17 after negotiations broke down over issues including a pension freeze, eliminating health insurance for retirees and requiring workers to contribute to their health insurance premiums.

Burlington is free to sell Burlington Telecom to ferry magnate Trey Pecor, the Vermont Public Service Board decided Monday evening. The decision clears the way for the city to resolve a longstanding legal battle related to the telecom company.

Last March, Mayor Miro Weinberger announced that his administration had reached a settlement agreement with Citibank, which had sued Burlington for $33.5 million. Since then, Burlington has been waiting for the three-member board to either approve or reject the terms of the deal.

During the intervening months, a group of local activists has urged the city to retain ownership of the telecommunications and cable company. The group made their case before the Public Service Board. 

Under the agreement, Burlington will pay Citibank $9 million — two-thirds of which will come from selling Burlington Telecom to Blue Water, a limited liability corporation created by Pecor, owner of the Lake Champlain ferry system. Pecor will lease the BT infrastructure back to the city and the company will eventually be sold to another entity, with profits divided between Pecor and city. 

Uber is operating illegally in Burlington, according to city attorney Eileen Blackwood. In a letter sent to the smartphone-based car service, which launched here two weeks ago, Blackwood wrote that Uber cars qualify as "vehicles for hire," meaning they need city-issued licenses.

Uber relies on individuals who sign up to be drivers using their own cars, and it describes itself as a technology company, not a taxi company. According to Blackwood, neither Uber nor its drivers have sought licenses from the city, which means they are breaking the law. 

Uber responded to a request for comment with the following statement: "Since our launch in Burlington, riders and drivers have embraced the added choice and economic opportunity with open arms. We look forward to continuing productive conversations with local officials, working together on a temporary agreement and moving towards a permanent solution for ride-sharing in Burlington." Spokesperson Kaitlin Durkosh declined say whether they plan to continue to operate in the meantime. 

The mayor met with two Uber officials on the morning the company launched in Burlington. Afterward, both parties said they were looking forward to updating the city's taxi ordinance to better accommodate companies like Uber. At that time, the city attorney was still determining whether companies like Uber fell under the city's taxi ordinance.  Blackwood's letter leaves the door open for this discussion: "Mayor Weinberger is willing to explore with Uber whether changes to modernize the ordinance are warranted and can be crafted in such a way that the public is fully protected and that Uber can offer its service to Burlingtonians."

Aggressive questioning by state regulators on Tuesday revealed that Burlington officials did not try to determine the market value of the city-owned telecommunications network prior to agreeing to sell it to a local businessman for $6 million.

Burlington Chief Administrative Officer Bob Rusten acknowledged that the city had not consulted investment bankers, independent appraisers or bond underwriters in order to calculate how much Burlington Telecom might be worth. Rusten did not explain why such evaluations were not carried out.

The $6 million deal with Trey Pecor, owner of the Lake Champlain ferry system and a contributor to Mayor Miro Weinberger's political campaigns, is the linchpin in a pending settlement with Citibank intended to lighten the load of the BT albatross. Citibank agreed in February to accept $10.5 million to settle a $33.5 million suit it had brought against Burlington five years earlier. The bank had argued in federal court that the essentially insolvent telecom enterprise should be required either to return equipment it had leased from Citi or cover the claimed value of that property.

Although Pecor would become the de facto owner of BT, the utility's operations would be leased back to the city under the terms of the proposed deal. Burlington would in turn continue to cede day-to-day decision-making authority over BT to the Dorman and Fawcett financial advisory firm. The Citi settlement also calls for Burlington to seek another buyer for BT in the coming years, with Pecor, the city and the bank getting varying shares of the proceeds of an eventual purchase by another party.