NIU fans pumped for Orange Bowl

As trash-talkers grumbled Monday about Northern Illinois University being selected to play in the Orange Bowl, alumni and fans in the Chicago area had one thing to say:

Go Huskies.

"Everybody's entitled to their opinion," said Joseph Matty, executive director and CEO of the Northern Illinois University Alumni Association. "Our football team did what we needed to do. We played by the rules and we won games."

Less than 24 hours after the historic news that NIU would become the first team from the Mid-American Conference to earn a berth in one of college football's most prestigious bowl games, Huskie Pride was on full display.

By midday, a steady line had formed at NIU's Convocation Center, where students could sign up for free Orange Bowl tickets issued by the college.

The Northern Star, the campus newspaper, devoted its entire front page to the story with the exuberant headline: "How Do You Like Them Oranges?"

On Facebook, NIU graduates congratulated the team and each other. Several alumni association travel packages — from $769 to $2,049 — are being offered to Miami on New Year's Day, where the Huskies will face the Florida State Seminoles.

"It's really exciting my senior year seeing all this happen, to see this frenzy is awesome," said Jason Conklin, a senior marketing major from Round Lake Beach. "Hopefully this exposure will get more people to our games and get more national attention."

With 165,000 alumni in the Chicago area and another 60,000 living elsewhere in the country, NIU has demonstrated impressive school spirit at five smaller bowl games since 2005, and officials are expecting even bigger crowds Jan. 1, Matty said.

The alumni group expects to sell 1,000 tickets to a pregame reception in Miami and will dispatch staff to eight other cities across the U.S. for additional game "watch parties."

Matty added that the athletic success has been a boon for more than just sports fans at NIU. Five bowl appearances in the past seven years have led to an influx of support that allowed for the construction of two new facilities: the Yordon Center and the Chessick Practice Center.

"What it does is it reaffirms everybody's belief that they received a quality education," Matty said. "This is just an opportunity to show the excellence at NIU."

NIU's invitation to the Orange Bowl came as a surprise to some critics, who questioned how the BCS Bowl selection process allowed a lesser-known school to beat out more prestigious teams.

ESPN commentators blasted the selection minutes after it was announced Sunday evening, and sports radio continued the debate Monday.

The naysayers only made Glen Brin, of Long Grove, feel even prouder as he drove to work with an NIU flag hanging out his car window. Passing drivers honked their horns in support, he said.

Brin, who met his wife, Darlene, at NIU before graduating in 1979, follows NIU football religiously on TV, radio and, at least once a year, in person. He and his wife have a framed photograph of a historic building on campus hanging in the family room. They carry NIU credit cards in their wallets.

"There's no way I'm missing this," Brin said of the Orange Bowl. "To be in the stands in one of the five major bowls, with the first MAC team in the history of the conference, is just tremendous."

An official pep rally is scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Convocation Center.

Bruce Jones, a former NIU swimmer, remembered attending football games in the late 1980s, when the Huskies had losing records and the stadium was half-empty. Back then, he would cringe when the Huskies competed against bigger schools such as the University of Wisconsin or University of Iowa and suffered crushing defeats.

"It was just demoralizing. Administrators said it's part of the way of attracting more attention … and we were like, this is never going to work, we're just getting crushed," Jones said.

So although Jones was vacationing in Hawaii when NIU's Orange Bowl invitation was announced, it didn't stop him from sending gloating Facebook messages and making plans for another getaway in a few weeks, this time to Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens.

"It's kind of like vindication," Jones said.

Even NIU mascot Victor E. Huskie appeared proud as he accompanied Larry Gautier, a member of the Miami-based Orange Bowl Football Committee, around campus Monday.

"(NIU's appearance) is great, and at the end of the day Northern Illinois did what they had to do and they earned it," Gautier said.

Wearing an Orange Bowl blazer, Gautier was there to drum up interest in the game. But he didn't have to walk far before exchanging high-fives with Morgan Stockdale, a junior physical education major from Chicago who said she was Orange Bowl-bound.

Stockdale wore a hat and sweatshirt she acquired at Friday's Mid-American Conference championship game in Detroit.

"It's a big boost," she said. "It's going to get us (NIU) out there, and more people will want to come out for everything."

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LeBron James wins Sports Illustrated annual award

(Reuters) – LeBron James of the Miami Heat was named as Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year for 2012, the U.S. magazine announced on Monday.

In an outstanding year, the 27-year-old James won his first NBA championship, his third league Most Valuable Player (MVP) award, was named MVP of the NBA finals and a won gold medal with the United States at the London Olympics.

He became just the sixth basketballer to win the award, which began in 1954. The most recent was his team-mate Dwyane Wade in 2006.

Two years ago, James became a hate figure for many American sports fans after he announced his decision to sign for Miami live on television after his contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers had expired.

He was booed at courts across the NBA and received intense criticism for his performance as Miami lost the 2011 NBA finals to the Dallas Mavericks.

“Did I think an award like this was possible two years ago? ‘No, I did not,” James said in an interview with the magazine.

“I thought I would be helping a lot of kids and raise $ 3 million by going on TV and saying, ‘Hey, I want to play for the Miami Heat.’ But it affected far more people than I imagined.

“I know it wasn’t on the level of an injury or an addiction, but it was something I had to recover from. I had to become a better person, a better player, a better father, a better friend, a better mentor and a better leader. I’ve changed, and I think people have started to understand who I really am.”

Previous winners of the award include swimmer Michael Phelps (2008), cyclist Lance Armstrong (2002) and golfer Tiger Woods (2000) while the first award was given to British athlete Roger Bannister in 1954 after he became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes.

(Reporting By Simon Evans; Editing by Julian Linden)

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Global Update: GlaxoSmithKline Tops Access to Medicines Index

Sang Tan/Associated Press

GlaxoSmithKline hung on to its perennial top spot in the new Access to Medicines Index released last week, but its competitors are closing in.

Every two years, the index ranks the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies based on how readily they get medicines they hold patents on to the world’s poor, how much research they do on tropical diseases, how ethically they conduct clinical trials in poor countries, and similar issues.

Johnson & Johnson shot up to second place, while AstraZeneca fell to 16th from 7th. AstraZeneca has had major management shake-ups. It did not do less, but the industry is improving so rapidly that others outscored it, the report said.

The index was greeted with skepticism by some drugmakers when it was introduced in 2008. But now 19 of the 20 companies have a board member or subcommittee tracking how well they do at what the index measures, said David Sampson, the chief author.

The one exception was a Japanese company. As before, Japanese drugmakers ranked at or near the index’s bottom, and European companies clustered near the top. Generic companies — most of them Indian — that export to poor countries are ranked separately.

Johnson & Johnson moved up because it created an access team, disclosed more and bought Crucell, a vaccine company.

The foundation that creates the index now has enough money to continue for five more years, said its founder, Wim Leereveld, a former pharmaceutical executive.

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Heat is on Groupon's Andrew Mason

In June 2011, Groupon Inc. Chief Executive Andrew Mason took the stage at a conference hosted by influential technology blog AllThingsD.

When co-executive editor Kara Swisher asked him whether an initial public offering was coming soon, he shot her what she later dubbed his "death stare."

The audience laughed and broke into applause.

The tone was decidedly more subdued last week, when Mason found himself at another tech industry confab, fielding questions from Business Insider's Henry Blodget, this time about whether Groupon's directors were going to fire him at their meeting the next day. AllThingsD had reported a day earlier, citing anonymous sources, that Groupon's board of directors was considering replacing Mason with a more experienced CEO to lead the Chicago-based daily deal company's turnaround.

The contrast between those two appearances underscores the swift and dramatic tumble of Mason's standing in tech and business circles within a few years. The young founder and CEO graced the cover of Forbes in 2010 and was named Ernst & Young's National Entrepreneur of the Year in the "emerging" category a year later.

Those accolades are a far cry from the cloud hanging over Mason, 32, and the company he launched four years ago. The leak to AllThingsD appeared to be deliberately timed to embarrass the executive, forcing him to field questions about his own competence at a scheduled appearance. This public hint of internal strife has fueled speculation around Mason's fate even as other public tech companies, such as Facebook and social game-maker Zynga, have also seen their stock prices drop since their IPOs.

Groupon's board met Thursday and took no action on the CEO's job, with company spokesman Paul Taaffe saying the board and management were "working together with their heads down to achieve Groupon's objectives."

Markets, however, seemed unconvinced. Groupon's beleaguered stock closed slightly higher Thursday but dropped 8.7 percent to $4.14 Friday. Shares debuted at $20 in November 2011.

Investors "want experience in leadership," said Raman Chadha, a clinical professor at DePaul University and co-founder of the Junto Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership, a training program for startup founders. "And as a result, where Andrew's background was cool and sexy — and maybe even bordering on amusing — when Groupon was a pure startup, that's in the mindset of those of us who are observers and supporters … and fellow entrepreneurs. I think in the minds of the investor community and Wall Street, (it's different) because now the company has a lot more to lose. And if it's going to fall, it's going to fall really hard and really far."

For Chadha, Mason's unconventional pedigree as a music major-turned-startup-founder was part of the appealing, media-friendly story of Groupon's origin. The company was launched as recession-weary consumers were eager for deals, and it achieved rapid growth while earning a reputation for antics like decorating a conference room in the style of a fictional, possibly deranged tenant of Groupon's headquarters who had lived there before the startup moved into the offices.

The scrutiny of Groupon was tremendous given the "high-flying" nature of the company, said David Larcker, a corporate governance expert at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

"You have a founder as CEO," he said. "He's the public face of the company. He has set the culture. All of that stuff."

That culture, driven in large part by Mason, turned from a lovable quirk to a major liability as the company ran into controversy over its poorly received Super Bowl ads in February 2011 and a series of missteps in the run-up to its IPO. Then, within months of its public debut, it disclosed an accounting flaw that forced it to restate financial results.

The larger question surrounding Groupon is the long-term viability of its basic business model. The company has been expanding offerings beyond its core daily deals, which have seen growth rates tail off. It's also dealing with a recession in the key European market as well as continued competition in the U.S.

But the biggest challenge facing Mason now is probably his own performance, or rather the perception that he isn't up to the task of running the global, publicly traded business worth billions that he founded but that now needs a turnaround. The stock is down 80 percent from its IPO price.

"It's an oft-told, oft-expected story that the genius entrepreneur steps aside when he or she succeeds at building a company big enough to need an experienced CEO," said Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan.

The example Gordon and others cite is Google, which flourished after its co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin made way for a more seasoned executive in Eric Schmidt.

"The Google guys did it, and the results were spectacular," Gordon said.

Chadha said many startups tend to become more corporate in outlook, and less quirky, as they grow, because they bring in experienced executives from large companies that may have difficulty adapting to an entrepreneurial culture or reject it outright as not professional enough.

"I think that's where Google is very different," Chadha said. "(The company) sought out entrepreneurial, startup types — people that became part of their management team." That free-form element of Google's culture comes out in such things as the Google doodles — the offbeat tributes to notable anniversaries or famous people that pop up on the main search page.

Mason has acknowledged areas where Groupon needs to improve and has hired senior executives with experience at more mature tech companies. That hasn't always worked either. Margo Georgiadis, who came from Google as chief operating officer, returned to that company after five months.

Whether there's still room for Mason on the top management team remains to be seen. He was direct in his interview last week with Blodget, offering a minimum of jokes as he focused on discussing the job he and others at Groupon must accomplish.

"I care far more about the success of the business than I care about my role as CEO," he said.

A year ago, when he spoke to author Frank Sennett for his book "Groupon's Biggest Deal Ever," Mason was unapologetic about his management style.

"You only live once, and all I'm doing is being myself," he told Sennett. "I think a normal CEO is trying to appear in some way that's not actually them. That's probably not what they're like."

In the same book, former President and Chief Operating Officer Rob Solomon offered this blunt assessment of his ex-boss: "Andrew at thirty-five and forty is going to hate Andrew at twenty-nine and thirty; I guarantee it."

Melissa Harris and Bloomberg News contributed.

wawong@tribune.com

Twitter @VelocityWong

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Seahawks stun Bears 23-17 in OT

You can question the decision by Lovie Smith to go for it on fourth-and-1 in the second quarter and pass on a field goal, something the coach did himself.

But following the collapse Sunday afternoon at Soldier Field in a 23-17 overtime loss to the Seahawks, it's worth wondering if the aging defense is beginning to show signs it is unraveling as the schedule turns to the final quarter of the season.

The Bears couldn't stop a rookie quarterback, who came in with a 1-5 record on the road, when it mattered. Russell Wilson drove the Seahawks 97 yards for a go-ahead touchdown in the final minutes of regulation and then marched his offense 80 yards for a game-winning score on the opening possession of overtime.

It sent the Bears (8-4) to their third loss in four games and dropped them into a first-place tie in the NFC North with the Packers, who hold the tiebreaker and come to Soldier Field on Dec. 16 in the Bears' only remaining home game.

The Bears made sure Wilson, for a week anyway, will get the publicity fellow rookie quarterbacks Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III have been enjoying. He passed for 293 yards and two touchdowns, completing 23 of 37 passes, and rushed for 71 yards on nine carries with 67 coming after halftime, most on read options.

Forget Smith's early aggressive play call that relied on a patchwork offensive line. His defense got picked apart in losing at home to the Seahawks for the third straight season.

Wilson did the bulk of his damage on the edges. His scramble led to a 27-yard completion to Sidney Rice with 32 seconds remaining in regulation. He threw a 14-yard touchdown pass to Golden Tate on the next play.

"When you don't contain a quarterback, you get to see exactly how fast he can be," linebacker Lance Briggs said. "This game falls on the defense. Our offense gave us an opportunity to win the game. They bailed us out at the end of the game with that deep pass, gave us another chance. We didn't hold up our end of the bargain."

Trailing 17-14 after Tate's touchdown, the Bears had only 20 seconds when they started on their own 14-yard line. Jay Cutler managed to hit Brandon Marshall for a 56-yard gain when he was inexplicably open. That set up Robbie Gould's 46-yard field goal to force overtime.

But the Bears defense, which denied it was gassed, couldn't get off the field after Seattle won the coin toss to begin overtime. Wilson ran to move the chains on two third downs and called a read option on the game-winning play before changing it to a pass to Rice.

"As the game went on, I continued to tell the coaches and they saw it too," Wilson said. "Especially in the end of the game, the read option is wide open."

The Seahawks also got 87 yards rushing and one touchdown from Marshawn Lynch, but it was Wilson upstaging Cutler that was the story. It marked the first time in 26 career games with a passer rating above 100 (119.6) that Cutler had lost. He completed 17 of 23 passes for 233 yards with touchdown passes to Earl Bennett and Matt Forte. Bennett, who left with a concussion, dropped what would have been a 62-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter. The drive netted zero points.

The only sack came when Cutler fumbled on a dropback. Marshall made 10 receptions for 165 yards and Forte and Michael Bush combined for 105 yards rushing, but the offense never got a chance in overtime.

The Bears could have gone up 10-0 at the start of the second quarter, but Smith elected to have Bush run on fourth down rather than try a 33-yard field goal by Gould.

"I should have taken the field goal," said Smith, who later reversed course. "Every time a decision doesn't work out I look at it and think would I do it again? Probably so."

Now, he has to hope the performance by his defense against Seattle, which previously had beaten only the lowly Panthers on the road, is an aberration and not a sign of things to come. Middle linebacker Brian Urlacher left in overtime with a hamstring issue and cornerback Tim Jennings was knocked out with a shoulder injury.

With little in the way of challengers for the final playoff spots in the NFC, the postseason looks like a good bet. But combining defensive issues with offensive line issues would be crippling.

"Terrible job I did getting our football team ready," Smith said. "I thought we were ready to go. Some decisions I made really hurt us early on."

The defense's performance provided the most pain.

bmbiggs@tribune.com

Twitter @BradBiggs

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Nintendo president apologizes for bulky day-one Wii U firmware update

As we noted in our first impressions, Nintendo’s (NTDOY) Wii U is charting new ground with its wireless GamePad and touchscreen controls that engage gamers in the living room like never before. But before you can even set up the Wii U, a mandatory firmware update is required upon power up. Gamers everywhere were frustrated to learn that the firmware update, which is pegged anywhere between 1GB and 5GB, takes hours to download and could even ”brick” new consoles if the power was cut off. In an email conversation with IGN, Nintendo’s global president and CEO Satoru Iwata said was “very sorry” that Wii U owners were experiencing network issues and that other services such as Nintendo TVii weren’t available at launch. Iwata said he believes “users should be able to use all the functions of a console video game machine as soon as they open the box.” 

Gone are the days when electronics are sold as finished products with set features out of the box. It has become normal for today’s connected electronics to require frequent firmware updates and patches to fix compatibility with other gadgets and to add new features. At what point should consumers stop tolerating devices that don’t work immediately after unboxing? The way we see it, the answer might be “never,” as it’s hard to argue against the fact that new software updates breathe new life into aging consoles.

Iwata also explained that the Wii U’s “Miiverse” online service isn’t meant to replicate existing services such as Xbox LIVE.

“We have not thought that offering the same features that already exist within other online communities would be the best proposal for very experienced game players,” Iwata told IGN.

Nintendo fans can read more Nintendo nuggets over at IGN’s feature that includes mention of a new 3D Super Mario and Zelda game.

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Senators urge Obama to release more water into Mississippi River

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sixteen U.S. senators have appealed to President Barack Obama to divert more water to the Mississippi River to prevent barge traffic from shutting down due to low water on the country’s inland waterway, a crucial route for goods bound for export.

Low water is a looming disaster, said the senators in a letter to Obama that was released on Friday.

The senators, from states along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, asked for emergency action to release more water from Missouri River reservoirs to feed the drought-sapped Mississippi River.

Water levels are forecast to reach near-historic lows by mid-December, and shippers say low water will make it impossible to move cargo. Grain exporters have already slashed by up to 50 percent the weight of cargo shipped by barges on the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.

“Substantial curtailment of navigation will effectively sever the country’s inland waterway superhighway, imperil the shipment of critical cargo for domestic consumption and for export, threaten manufacturing industries and power generation, and risk thousands of related jobs in the Midwest,” wrote the senators.

Signing the letter were senators Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin of Iowa; Roy Blunt and Claire McCaskill of Missouri; Mark Pryor and John Boozman of Arkansas; Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; Mary Landrieu and David Vitter of Louisiana; Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker of Mississippi; Mark Kirk of Illinois; Lamar Alexander of Tennessee; Joe Manchin of West Virginia; and Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been battling extreme low-water conditions on the Mississippi for months following the country’s worst drought in half a century.

(Reporting By Charles Abbott; editing by Jim Marshall)

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Unboxed: Stand-Up Desks Gaining Favor in the Workplace

THE health studies that conclude that people should sit less, and get up and move around more, have always struck me as fitting into the “well, duh” category.

But a closer look at the accumulating research on sitting reveals something more intriguing, and disturbing: the health hazards of sitting for long stretches are significant even for people who are quite active when they’re not sitting down. That point was reiterated recently in two studies, published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine and in Diabetologia, a journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

Suppose you stick to a five-times-a-week gym regimen, as I do, and have put in a lifetime of hard cardio exercise, and have a resting heart rate that’s a significant fraction below the norm. That doesn’t inoculate you, apparently, from the perils of sitting.

The research comes more from observing the health results of people’s behavior than from discovering the biological and genetic triggers that may be associated with extended sitting. Still, scientists have determined that after an hour or more of sitting, the production of enzymes that burn fat in the body declines by as much as 90 percent. Extended sitting, they add, slows the body’s metabolism of glucose and lowers the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol in the blood. Those are risk factors toward developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

“The science is still evolving, but we believe that sitting is harmful in itself,” says Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor of health services at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Yet many of us still spend long hours each day sitting in front of a computer.

The good news is that when creative capitalism is working as it should, problems open the door to opportunity. New knowledge spreads, attitudes shift, consumer demand emerges and companies and entrepreneurs develop new products. That process is under way, addressing what might be called the sitting crisis. The results have been workstations that allow modern information workers to stand, even walk, while toiling at a keyboard.

Dr. Yancey goes further. She has a treadmill desk in the office and works on her recumbent bike at home.

If there is a movement toward ergonomic diversity and upright work in the information age, it will also be a return to the past. Today, the diligent worker tends to be defined as a person who puts in long hours crouched in front of a screen. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries, office workers, like clerks, accountants and managers, mostly stood. Sitting was slacking. And if you stand at work today, you join a distinguished lineage — Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Franklin, Winston Churchill, Vladimir Nabokov and, according to a recent profile in The New York Times, Philip Roth.

DR. JAMES A. LEVINE of the Mayo Clinic is a leading researcher in the field of inactivity studies. When he began his research 15 years ago, he says, it was seen as a novelty.

“But it’s totally mainstream now,” he says. “There’s been an explosion of research in this area, because the health care cost implications are so enormous.”

Steelcase, the big maker of office furniture, has seen a similar trend in the emerging marketplace for adjustable workstations, which allow workers to sit or stand during the day, and for workstations with a treadmill underneath for walking. (Its treadmill model was inspired by Dr. Levine, who built his own and shared his research with Steelcase.)

The company offered its first models of height-adjustable desks in 2004. In the last five years, sales of its lines of adjustable desks and the treadmill desk have surged fivefold, to more than $40 million. Its models for stand-up work range from about $1,600 to more than $4,000 for a desk that includes an actual treadmill. Corporate customers include Chevron, Intel, Allstate, Boeing, Apple and Google.

“It started out very small, but it’s not a niche market anymore,” says Allan Smith, vice president for product marketing at Steelcase.

The Steelcase offerings are the Mercedes-Benzes and Cadillacs of upright workstations, but there are plenty of Chevys as well, especially from small, entrepreneurial companies.

In 2009, Daniel Sharkey was laid off as a plant manager of a tool-and-die factory, after nearly 30 years with the company. A garage tinkerer, Mr. Sharkey had designed his own adjustable desk for standing. On a whim, he called it the kangaroo desk, because “it holds things, and goes up and down.” He says that when he lost his job, his wife, Kathy, told him, “People think that kangaroo thing is pretty neat.”

Today, Mr. Sharkey’s company, Ergo Desktop, employs 16 people at its 8,000-square-foot assembly factory in Celina, Ohio. Sales of its several models, priced from $260 to $600, have quadrupled in the last year, and it now ships tens of thousands of workstations a year.

Steve Bordley of Scottsdale, Ariz., also designed a solution for himself that became a full-time business. After a leg injury left him unable to run, he gained weight. So he fixed up a desktop that could be mounted on a treadmill he already owned. He walked slowly on the treadmill while making phone calls and working on a computer. In six weeks, Mr. Bordley says, he lost 25 pounds and his nagging back pain vanished.

He quit the commercial real estate business and founded TrekDesk in 2007. He began shipping his desk the next year. (The treadmill must be supplied by the user.) Sales have grown tenfold from 2008, with several thousand of the desks, priced at $479, now sold annually.

“It’s gone from being treated as a laughingstock to a product that many people find genuinely interesting,” Mr. Bordley says.

There is also a growing collection of do-it-yourself solutions for stand-up work. Many are posted on Web sites like howtogeek.com, and freely shared like recipes. For example, Colin Nederkoorn, chief executive of an e-mail marketing start-up, Customer.io, has posted one such design on his blog. Such setups can cost as little as $30 or even less, if cobbled together with available materials.

UPRIGHT workstations were hailed recently by no less a trend spotter of modern work habits and gadgetry than Wired magazine. In its October issue, it chose “Get a Standing Desk” as one of its “18 Data-Driven Ways to Be Happier, Healthier and Even a Little Smarter.”

The magazine has kept tabs on the evolving standing-desk research and marketplace, and several staff members have become converts themselves in the last few months.

“And we’re all universally happy about it,” Thomas Goetz, Wired’s executive editor, wrote in an e-mail — sent from his new standing desk.

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Designer made herself into a manufacturer

Shoemaker Annie Mohaupt nearly closed down a year ago after her move to make sandals in China proved a bust. In the year that followed, she started her own factory in Chicago, producing and selling her luxury wooden shoes. (Posted Dec. 1st, 2012)

Shoemaker Annie Mohaupt nearly closed down a year ago after her move to make sandals in China proved a bust. The sandals could easily be pulled apart.

She looked into what it would cost to make her sandals in another country but returned production to Chicago. The decision, she said, allows her to tap into growing demand for U.S.-made products and to utilize manufacturing technology that makes her company, Mohop Inc., a global competitor.

"I have a factory," Mohaupt said, her statement reflecting her evolution from thinking of herself solely as a designer. As a manufacturer she understands she has control over the quality of her products — a key to sales and growth. "I'm happy but it's also intimidating. There is a lot to manage and wrap my head around."

Mohaupt's tale is illustrative of what manufacturing experts and politicians have been saying for quite some time: American manufacturers can be successful and create jobs by using the latest technology in producing and developing products.

So far this year, Mohaupt has sold about 1,500 pairs of sandals for about $158,000, she said. Mohaupt credits Facebook fans and word-of-mouth recommendations for a 500 percent increase in sales this fall over a year ago, and she expects to sell about 5,000 pairs of sandals in 2013. When she reaches annual sales of 10,000 pairs, Mohaupt said she'll need to invest in more equipment, like a new wood-cutting machine.

"I want for her to be making her shoes in the U.S.," said Greg Kaleel, owner of American Male & Co. a family-owned retail shop in Oswego, adding that his customers will pay more for shoes made here. "That's how important the 'made in America' is."

On a recent evening, the sweet smell of burned walnut filled Mohaupt's basement shop in a three-story building in Chicago's River West neighborhood. The smell emanated from a computerized machine about the size of a pingpong table cutting walnut blocks into triangles with concave curves and arches. Those curves support the heel and arch of a woman's foot and create a sleek, sophisticated look.

An architect by training, Mohaupt, 37, feeds her three-dimensional designs into a program that converts it into letters and numbers and tells the machine where to cut. That was the easy part for her to learn. To operate the machine, Mohaupt relied on a tutorial from the machine-maker and learned the rest via the Internet.

The soft-spoken woman employs three people, including an office manager and a young designer. If sandals sell as planned, she would hire four to six temporary workers in the spring. That's when sales typically ramp up after the winter lull. Mohaupt wants to expand her product line to lessen her dependence on sandal sales. One idea is a moccasin she can sell in the cold months.

Mohaupt has come a long way since 2005, when she cut and glued layers of plywood by hand to make her sandals. Her early versions featured a cylindrical wooden heel and elastic loops on each side of the sole that acted as guides for ties or ribbons that customers could change at will — her signature design.

She sold her first sandals for $70 at a craft fair and appeared to be off and running. The bliss of her success crumbled the following morning when customers complained that the shoes easily came apart. The heels broke off and the loops snapped. In effect, the stumble marked the beginning of her apprenticeship as a manufacturer.

Mohaupt spent the next year quizzing seasoned shoemakers and shoe repairers about how she could improve the quality of her shoes. Ultimately, she decided that her sandals should be able to withstand 100 miles of use. To test her designs, she wore her sandals while taking her dog on five-mile treks.

"I lost some weight," she said. She also test-marketed the evolving sandals by mailing samples to her first customers. Some got up to five pairs as Mohaupt developed — and later patented — a system to keep the elastic loops in place. One problem licked, she then focused on the labor involved.

Cutting the plywood by hand was grueling work in its own right. And then she had to glue together the layers. "I would end up covered in glue," she said.

So Mohaupt began experimenting with wooden blocks, which she'd sculpt with a saw into wedges. That eliminated having to glue together layers of plywood but still was physically draining.

That's when she made a decision that would forever change her business. In 2009 she bought on credit a $70,000 computer-driven machine that could read her 3-D designs and cut heels in minutes, saving hours of labor. The machine also allowed Mohaupt to experiment with new designs. For example, she could for the first time produce curved heel bases and make shoes with added arch support.

Demand grew steadily, which should have been a good problem. But even with the machine she couldn't keep pace with orders. Mohaupt tried training people to make the sandals but found that she couldn't train them and make shoes at the same time.

That's when she first considered outsourcing production. She tested a Canadian shoemaker but severed the relationship after it sent her a shipment of poorly made shoes. Mohaupt also was unsuccessful in lining up production in Argentina.

Then, suddenly, a competitor emerged that jolted her into making a decision that ultimately would nearly bring down her company. The competitor was selling sandals almost identical to hers and nudging her sandals out of local shops she had supplied for years. Its prices also were lower because it was producing its sandals in China. She faced being driven out of business, she said.

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Alabama wins SEC title, will face Notre Dame next

ATLANTA -- Long after enough blue, white and yellow streamers and confetti fell from the roof to blanket the Georgia Dome floor, Alabama linebacker Nico Johnson sat in front of a locker room stall in the corner and endured the pop quizzes after surviving a torturous exam.

The Crimson Tide beat Georgia for the SEC championship, a 32-28 affair that was ear-splitting and catwalk-rattling from the time the teams stretched. It was on to the BCS title game. It was on to Notre Dame. And it was on to consulting media guides or Wikipedia or whatever might inform Johnson of what he was in for.

"That's like the third time somebody asked me about the history of Alabama-Notre Dame," Johnson said. "I just want to know what went on between these two teams because apparently it was something special."

Whatever he finds, whatever grainy, houndstoothed chronicles he encounters, it will be past that can't measure up as prologue.

This is a national championship match weighty enough to drop south Florida below sea level, Notre Dame seeking its return to the pinnacle against the defending national champions and the foreboding gloom cast by the swaggering, indomitable SEC, which has laid claim to the last six crystal ball trophies.

Notre Dame and Alabama have met six times before. That was then. This is wow.

"It's two teams with a lot of tradition," Alabama center Barrett Jones said. "That's not what it's going to come down to. It's not going to come down to who has a better tradition or history.

"It's going to come down to who plays the best game. But it's hard for me to even think of that right now. We're trying to savor this one. We might even have to extend the 24-hour rule to 48 or something."

Either cycling through mind games or simply compulsively focused, Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban said he didn't know the date of the Jan. 7 BCS title game and wouldn't start preparing for Notre Dame until practices began.

What he and Irish coach Brian Kelly will see: Two teams that are almost frighteningly analogous.

Two pulverizing tailbacks followed a stout offensive line to 350 yards rushing Saturday. An error-plagued quarterback was redeemed by a game-winning 45-yard touchdown pass. The defense surrendered 21 points -- Georgia notched a special teams score -- but just 113 yards rushing.

"I don't know a whole bunch about Notre Dame, but I look forward to this game," Alabama guard Anthony Steen said. "I was looking forward to this game against Georgia. Everybody was saying they had a good D-line, and I wanted to see how good they were. I'm looking forward to seeing how good Notre Dame's D-line and linebackers are."

Oh, everyone is looking forward to this, all right.

"I'm pretty sure it gets the old-heads excited, people that are in their 50s and 60s," Alabama linebacker C.J. Mosley said. "It's going to be a historic game."

A.J. McCarron, the goat-turned-hero quarterback for Alabama on Saturday, said he knew nothing about Notre Dame other than that his brother rooted for the Irish. Past is past. The title game is here, and how.

"It's definitely awesome," McCarron said. "But it's not worth it unless we go there and win it."

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