Kia Sorento rebuild kicks it

Well, the Koreans just keep doing the unexpected and consumers are benefiting from it.

The 2014 Kia Sorento SX AWD SUV has had a mid-cycle rebuild and I think this may now be a better car than its popular brand mate the Hyundai Santa Fe for about the same money.

The Sorento had been taking a bit of a beating from consumers and critics for its poor handling and modest adornments. Hyundai/Kia listened and responded loudly. With a new engine, rebuilt suspension and more refinement in style and substance, you've got a contender for the your crossover dollar.

In the past few years, Hyundai/Kia's hallmark has been bang for your buck and the '14 Sorento fills the SUV side of the equation nicely. Starting at base MSRP of $24,900, the Sorento offers a high-quality and stylish interior with the easy-to-use and intuitive UVO infotainment system. It has sleek textured interior panels with some soft touches and wood accents along with comfortable and high-quality leather-trimmed seats. Our AWD SX is not quite top of the line, but is jam-packed with goodies.

The $36,700 SX package includes the panoramic sunroof, blind-spot monitoring, backup camera and sonar warning, power folding side-view mirrors, three driving modes, along with features you'd expect such as cruise control and power lift gate.

Under the sheet metal is where Kia has made significant changes.

Earlier Hyundai/Kia cars we've tested have had vague, underwhelming steering and suspensions.

This extensive re-engineering of the 2014 chassis includes stiffening of the front suspension, adding larger rear suspension components and constructing a more rigid frame. Add in the new electric steering and all lead to better handling than earlier models.

Combine the 3.3 liter, 290-horsepower, V-6 engine and six-speed automatic transmission and you've got a really powerful crossover on your hands. The V-6 and AWD can be a bit thirsty, but only give up a couple of miles per gallon fewer than the base model, testing to about 18 in the city and 24 on the highway. I averaged 21 mpg, right in the middle of the range.

The V-6 provides plenty of power, brisk acceleration and a quiet ride. Whether it's a supermarket or dump run or a cruise along the highway, the new handling characteristics make this a comfortable car to drive. Pick your favorite from one of the three Flexsteer modes — comfort, sport or normal — and feel the responsive, taut command of the car missing in other models.

The SUV includes third row seating — the Mitsubishi Outlander is the only other in class to do so — but it robs from the cargo area. Although the Sorento is larger in all dimensions than its class rivals, the Honda CRV and Ford Escape, the third-row seats are still a snug fit. I preferred to keep them stowed and make use of the full deck space.

The simple-to-use and high-tech UVO infotainment center combines all your wireless connectivity and audio needs without endless drill-down menus. It works smartly with voice command and the sound system is excellent. The 8-inch navigation screen was easy on the eyes and a snap to use, too. It's a marked improvement over earlier models.

If you're worn out with the legion of bullet-shaped competitors in this class, then this may be your vehicle. The body styling is more traditionally truck-like and Kia has some nice tweaks with wrap-around lights and body accents.

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Boston stations pull out the stops

A tension-filled day gave way to a night of celebration, relief and even revelry on the streets of Watertown as a suspected Boston Marathon bomber was apprehended and the local TV stations — WBZ, WCVB, WFXT, WHDH and NECN — tracked every moment.

As breaking news banners flashed updates on suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's location — a boat in a Franklin Street backyard — stations kept their cameras trained on the neighborhood as darkness fell. After it was confirmed that Tsarnaev was in custody and on the way to a local hospital, cheers and applause erupted from the crowd gathered near the site.

As the suspected terrorist remained on the loose for much of yesterday and with much of the Boston area under unprecedented lockdown, local TV stations responded with unparalleled wall-to-wall coverage.

Probably no one had a more harrowing day than WHDH's Adam Williams, who arrived with his cameraman in Watertown early yesterday morning and found himself pinned down as the two brothers, Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, exchanged about 200 rounds of gunfire with police.

"It was not a good position to be in," Williams stoically told viewers last night.

The most oft-repeated footage was supplied by a viewer: Against a backdrop of flashing blue lights, the Watertown shootout with rat-a-tat gunfire that left Tamerlan dead and an MBTA police officer critically injured seemed to last hours.

The stations scrambled to mute the raw audio, but the video was terrifying.

With long stretches of time to fill, the stations worked overtime to profile the alleged killers and convey a sense of the Boston area under what seemed like martial law.

"The entire city looked like a scene out of 'I Am Legend,' " commented David Gerzof Richard, professor of social media and marketing at Emerson College, referring to the 2007 post-apocalyptic film starring Will Smith. "Empty streets. It's the first time I can ever remember an entire city that was shut down."

T.J. Winick, former WBZ and ABC news reporter and now a media relations consultant in the Boston area, gave high marks to the stations' efforts.

"These are scenarios you can work 30 years in local news and never be put in," he said. "I think the reporters and the anchors did an incredible job keeping their composure and providing the very latest information" under trying circumstances.

Part of every local station's mission is public service, and that often gets overlooked, Winick said, but here the news desks kept the public updated on the search for a dangerous suspect in real time.

Because of their dogged efforts, "You'd have to be living in a cave not to know what's going on."

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UMass cites Harvard flaw

News that a UMass Amherst graduate student had uncovered significant flaws in an influential paper by two eminent Harvard University economists roiled the profession this week, raising questions about the policies it influences at home and abroad.

Thomas Herndon, a 28-year-old doctoral student in economics, discovered what he saw as glaring omissions in the spreadsheets used for Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff's 2010 study, which had asserted that economic growth slows sharply when government debt exceeds 90 percent of annual economic output.

The study was widely cited by policymakers worldwide, including former Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, to justify cutting spending. So when a working paper by Herndon and two of his professors, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin, pointing out the errors was posted on the UMass Political Economy Research Institute website this week, it quickly went viral.

"It really indicates the profession needs to question its own methods and standards," said Barbara Alexander, an economist and visiting lecturer at Babson College. "Published research needs to be audited and cross-checked, and the data needs to be freely available. ... It's really disturbing because the results in this case have been used to support policies that have been extremely painful for many people in this country and around the world."

In a joint statement, Reinhart and Rogoff said they were "grateful" to Herndon, Ash and Pollin for pointing out a "coding error," but they maintained there is a correlation between high government debt and slow economic growth.

"It is sobering that such an error slipped into one of our papers despite our best efforts to be consistently careful. We will redouble our efforts to avoid such errors in the future," they said. "We do not, however, believe this regrettable slip affects in any significant way the central message of the paper or that in our subsequent work."

Herndon and his professors disagree with that conclusion.

"People argue that spending cuts are a bitter medicine you have to take to get out of a recession," he said, "but we provide strong evidence that disputes that."

Ash, a professor of economics and public policy, said it is "quite likely" that high public debt is not a cause of poor economic performance, but an effect.

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The Ticker

Merrill Lynch fined $250G

Merrill Lynch has been fined $250,000 in connection with improperly selling more than $39 million in unregistered securities, including auction-rate securities to two Massachusetts cooperative banks in violation of federal law, Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin said.

According to Galvin's complaint, the securities were sold by a Boston branch of Merrill Lynch that did not follow procedures for determining if the banks were qualified and failed to train its personnel on its own policies and procedures

Winthrop Square garage to close

The Boston Redevelopment Authority will close the Winthrop Square Parking Garage indefinitely at midnight after identifying infrastructure issues with the 240 Devonshire St. facility. No vehicles will be allowed to enter the garage after 3 p.m.

THE SHUFFLE

L Acella Construction Corp. of Norwell has promoted Ryan Klebes, left, to the position of senior project manager. Klebes first joined the company in 2003 as a project manager, and was previously an assistant project manager at Lee Kennedy Construction in Boston.

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T-shirts strike chord as many raise funds for bomb victims

Nick Reynolds and Chris Dobens were about to leave Emerson College Monday and head to the finish line of the Boston Marathon to celebrate with friends when they began receiving calls, warning them not to go.

For the next several hours, the two students remained at Emerson, transfixed by the news of the bombings, as the casualty toll climbed higher.

"Late that night, we were fed up with feeling helpless," said Reynolds, a 20-year-old cinematography major.

Dobens suddenly had an idea.

"Hey, what about T-shirts?" the 18-year-old marketing freshman from Lowell said.

It was a simple idea — "Boston Strong" in bold, yellow letters on a blue background — but "something everyone could get behind to stand in solidarity with the victims of the attacks," Reynolds said.

The two partnered with Ink to the People, a Milwaukee custom T-shirt company that agreed to donate the first 1,500 shirts.

Within 40 hours, Reynolds and Dobens sold 2,245 — "which is crazy," Reynolds said in disbelief — for $20 each, with proceeds going to The One Fund Boston established by Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Gov. Deval Patrick to aid victims of the bombings.

The shirts can be purchased at inktothepeople.com or at facebook.com/StayStrongBostonStrong.

Others who are raising funds for victims include:

• Technology Underwriting Greater Good has raised more than $26,000 from local tech startups and investors for the cause.

• Boston Irish pub Mr. Dooley's will host a fundraiser for The One Fund Boston on Sunday, starting at 2 p.m., with more than 30 musicians playing throughout the day and night. Donations will be collected at the door and through raffles and auctions, and all bar sales will be donated.

• Beginning early next week, 2,000 Dunkin' Donuts restaurants in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maine will start collecting customer donations of $1 or more for The One Fund Boston. Canton parent company Dunkin' Brands will make a $100,000 donation. Dunkin' franchises and Stop & Shop both have been sending food to emergency workers and the FBI.

• MassChallenge will provide free coworking space through the end of May to anyone affected by the tragedy, or whose office is not accessible due to the ongoing investigation. For a list of other Boston and Cambridge coworking spaces doing the same, go to: spacewithasoul.org/2013/04/coworking-opens-doors/

• Six nonprofits involved with the Friends With Benefits Gala on April 25 — LONGWOOD Giving, The Boston Bruins Foundation, College BOUND Dorchester, The Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism, The Ellie Fund and The International RETT Syndrome Foundation — will donate 50 percent of event proceeds to The One Fund Boston.

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Mexican architect Pedro Ramirez Vazquez dies at 94

MEXICO CITY — Mexican architect Pedro Ramirez Vazquez has died at the age of 94.

Ramirez Vazquez designed some of Mexico's biggest landmark modernist structures, including the new Basilica of Guadalupe, the Anthropology Museum and the Azteca Stadium, all in Mexico City.

Mexico's National Arts Council said Ramirez Vazquez died late Tuesday of pneumonia. He is survived by four children. No burial plans have been announced.

The sweeping, curvy lines of the basilica and the cantilevered central pavilion of the anthropology museum became hallmarks of Mexico's modernist architectural boom, led by figures like Luis Barragan from the 1940s to the 70s. He also designed a low-cost, pre-fab rural school.

While less well-known than Barragan, architects such as Ramirez Vazquez and Mario Pani designed the biggest projects of the era.

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Social media spurs character-building acts of kindness

In the chaotic aftermath of Monday's fatal marathon bombings, Jarrett Goetz was on his way to his South End home when a friend called and asked if Goetz would give him, his girlfriend and a stranded runner they had found a ride.

Goetz did, and was on his way home, again, when he saw two sisters — also marathoners — who looked cold and lost, and offered to give them a ride and spare jackets he kept in the trunk of his Land Rover.

By the time he finally arrived home some four hours after he left work, he had given rides to five runners, two marathon volunteers and one bystander, updating his Facebook status about it along the way.

By last night, 237 of his friends had "liked" it and many had offered to give people rides themselves or places to spend the night.

"It was a chain reaction of free taxi services," said Goetz, 37, who works for a technology startup. "But really, it's about grace under pressure. You've got to put yourself in other people's shoes and rise to the occasion. And if you do it, it makes you feel good and inspires others to do the same."

And so it went on social media Monday, as the news outlet of first resort for many morphed into a mirror of the soul.

Twitter saw 180-day peaks in use of the words "donate," "volunteer" and "help" as people heralded the heroic first responders at the scene of the two fatal bombings and searched for ways they could be of use themselves.

"What was really great was word spread very quickly, so that people were able to slow and stop marathoners from running into what was essentially a war zone," said David Gerzof Richard, professor of social media and marketing at Emerson College.

Afterward, Google set up a Boston Marathon Explosions page in Google Person Finder to help people look for and find loved ones who might be missing.

New England Patriots wide receiver Danny Amendola tweeted that he'll donate $100 for every reception and $200 for every drop in the 2013 season to a Boston Marathon relief fund.

And then there was the dark side of social media in the form of a Twitter account with the handle @_BostonMarathon, which claimed it would donate $1 to victims of the explosions for every retweet it received. The account racked up more than 65,000 retweets before Twitter suspended it.

"I don't know what their motives were," Gerzof Richard said, "but it takes a lot for Twitter to turn someone's account off. You have to do something atrocious."

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Asian stocks rebound as US recovery doubts ease

BANGKOK — Asian stock markets rose Wednesday, boosted by a strong U.S. housing report and better-than-expected corporate earnings that eased doubts about the strength of the recovery in the world's No. 1 economy.

U.S. builders started construction on 1 million homes last month, the highest level since June 2008, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. The government also said consumer prices declined last month as the cost of gas fell sharply while food prices were unchanged, the latest evidence that inflation is in check.

On the corporate side, robust quarterly earnings provided additional reason to wade back into stocks. Coca-Cola, the world's biggest beverage maker, reported first quarter earnings that beat Wall Street forecasts. As of Monday, 34 companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 had reported earnings and 20 had exceeded analysts' expectations.

Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 1 percent to 13,358.81. Hong Kong's Hang Seng swung between gains and losses to flatten out at 21,661.08.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 added 0.9 percent to 4,994.70. Benchmarks in Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines also rose. But South Korea's Kospi slipped 0.1 percent to 1,920.40 as tensions lingered on the Korean Peninsula.

Analysts at DBS Bank Ltd. in Singapore suggested the U.S. housing data was not all that spectacular, since it reflects a big jump not in single family homes but in apartment construction, which is typically volatile.

"Still, you'd have to say it was a good day for data, especially in light of what's been seen over the past three weeks," DBS said, referring to weak hiring, manufacturing and retail sales reports that had suggested the U.S. economy was cooling.

Investors chose to put aside the International Monetary Fund's dour assessment of global growth. The IMF on Tuesday said it was lowering its outlook for the world economy this year, predicting that government spending cuts will slow U.S. growth and keep the euro currency countries in recession. The international lending organization cut its forecast for global growth to 3.3 percent this year, down from its January forecast of 3.5 percent.

Lorraine Tan, director at Standard & Poor's equity research in Singapore, said investors mostly regarded the IMF's initial numbers as too optimistic. Thus the lowering of its global growth outlook didn't sting all that much.

"Global growth is continuing to move along. That should be a positive," Tan said.

Among individual stocks, Japan's Komatsu rose 2 percent after the heavy machinery maker said it will start selling automatic bulldozers in North America in June, Kyodo News reported. Mazda Motor Corp. jumped 4.9 percent.

Wall Street rebounded Tuesday after its worst day so far this year. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 1.1 percent to close at 14,756.78. The S&P 500 index rose 1.4 percent to 1,574.57. The Nasdaq composite rose 1.5 percent to 3,264.63.

European markets posted further declines Tuesday in the wake of a downbeat investor survey for Germany. The closely watched ZEW index fell from 48.5 points to 36.3 in April in a sign of growing investor fears over the strength of the German recovery amid widespread debt problems in Europe.

Oil prices flattened out after some wild swings. Benchmark oil for May delivery was down 2 cents to $88.70 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 1 cent to close at $88.72 on the Nymex on Tuesday.

In currencies, the euro fell to $1.3175 from $1.3188 late Tuesday in New York. The dollar rose to 98.23 yen from 97.44 yen.

___

Follow Pamela Sampson on twitter at http://twitter.com/pamelasampson

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Business leaders come together

It will take some time, but Hub business leaders were confident in the wake of yesterday's Boston Marathon blasts that the city will bounce back and that visitors will not be scared away by the cowardly attack.

"It's such a devastating event to the families whose family members lost their lives or were injured or maimed," Pat Moscaritolo, president of the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau, told the Herald. "It's just so horrible, but Americans are resilient, so I am confident that they'll rise up and they will travel and they will travel to Boston."

He added that area attractions such as the Freedom Trail could have new meaning for locals and tourists after yesterday's attack, which came on Patriots Day, a holiday marking the first salvos of the American Revolution.

Fifteen blocks of Boston's Back Bay neighborhood were closed off as a crime scene yesterday while investigators gathered evidence related to the bombings. The city's thriving shopping district along Boylston and Newbury streets will likely be on lockdown for days during the normally busy Massachusetts school vacation week.

"Obviously, businesses will be impacted. However, the priority is for the public safety and the health of the community," Meg Mainzer-Cohen, president of the Back Bay Association, told the Herald. "This will be similar to incidents in New York. We will absolutely recover from this as a community by pulling together and making sure it never happens again."

Two huge explosions rocked the Marathon finish line on Boylston Street near Copley Square just before 3 p.m. yesterday. In a White House press conference, President Obama said it remains unclear who was responsible for the bombings, but he praised the Hub for its toughness in times of disaster.

"Boston is a tough and resilient town. So are its people," said Obama. "I'm supremely confident that Bostonians will pull together, take care of each other, and move forward as one proud city. And as they do, the American people will be with them every single step of the way."

Local business leaders echoed the president's words yesterday, saying the Hub would ultimately rebound from the attack.

"It shakes people and certainly those businesses in that area are going to have a bit of a recovery. We saw it certainly with 9/11 here in Boston when we were so much on lockdown here for a while," said Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts. "It's normally a very big time for the economy leading into the Marathon and leading out of it and all through school vacation week, but how you gauge it (the impact) is impossible to say at this point."

George Regan of public relations firm Regan Communications said businesses obviously took a "huge hit" yesterday when instead of enjoying Marathon Monday by dining out or shopping, Hub visitors fled in terror.

"This will be impacting (businesses) for a while," said Regan, who represents several hotels and restaurants downtown. "It will come back, but it takes a while. You couldn't imagine this. It's very hard. This really is a hit for the city."

For some businesses, it was all hands on deck as they pitched in to help out yesterday.

The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency partnered with Clear Channel Outdoor to provide public safety messages on digital billboards visible on Interstate 93 in Medford and Stoneham. Updates included information regarding family meeting sites, areas to avoid, cancellations and postponements.

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The Ticker

Thermo Fisher buys Life Tech for $13.6B

Thermo Fisher Scientific will acquire Life Technologies Corp. for nearly $13.6 billion, or $76 in cash per fully diluted common share.

The Waltham-based health-care equipment company will also assume Life Technologies' debt, which was $2.2 billion as of the end of last year.

Life Technologies, which is based in Carlsbad, Calif., provides products and services to customers conducting scientific research and genetic analysis, as well as those in applied markets, such as forensics and food safety testing. The company, which has more than 10,000 employees, reported 2012 revenues of $3.8 billion.

The sale, expected to close early next year, marks Thermo Fisher's largest acquisition since the 
$12.8 billion merger in 2006 of Thermo Electron and Fisher Scientific International.

Dish Network bids for Sprint Nextel

Satellite TV distributor Dish Network has offered to buy Sprint Nextel Corp. for $25.5 billion, topping the 
$20 billion merger Japan's SoftBank has proposed.

Dish has 14.1 million TV subscribers, making it the No. 2 satellite-TV company after DirecTV. Comcast Corp. is larger than both and is the nation's largest subscription TV provider. Sprint, which is based in Overland Park, Kan., has 55.6 million wireless devices on its network.

Dish said its proposed transaction includes 
$17.3 billion in cash and $8.2 billion in stock. It put the total worth at $7 per share.

Mass. gas prices drop 9 cents

Bay State gas prices are down 9 cents this week with self-serve, regular unleaded gas currently averaging $3.47 a gallon, 5 cents less than the national average of $3.52. Local prices are down 18 cents over the past month.

A year ago at this time, the Massachusetts average price was 42 cents more at $3.89.

The range in prices in the latest AAA survey for unleaded regular is 44 cents, from a low of $3.29 to a high of $3.73.

TODAY

• The Labor Department releases the Consumer Price Index for March.
• The Federal Reserve releases industrial production for March.

TOMORROW

• The Federal Reserve releases the Beige Book.

• Aushon BioSystems of Billerica has hired former SeraCare Life Sciences president and chief executive officer, Susan Vogt as the company's new CEO. Company founder and former CEO Pete Honkanen will assume the role of chief operating officer and continue as a board director.

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No ‘home’ run for Facebook

There's nothing particularly wrong with the new Facebook Home, the social network's attempt to infiltrate the mobile market. It's just not a game-changer.

To back up a bit: Part of the reason people love Android is you can customize almost everything. One way to do that is to download an app launcher, a pre-assembled look and feel with widgets and home screens.

Facebook Home is the social network's version of an app launcher. It's not an operating system. And the HTC First, which comes pre-installed with Home, is not a "Facebook phone."

The HTC First, available for $99 with a two-year contract, is a delightful middle-tier offering. Its reasonable size, fitting in the palm of your hand, is a rare find among all of the "phablets" and behemoth screens that currently dominate the Android market.

Available in the Google Play store — but only for some of the newer Android phones — Facebook Home provides the equivalent of a social network screen saver.

Rather than having to scroll through a news feed, pictures and status updates from friends are now fed into this screen saver, which Facebook has dubbed the cover feed. You can flip through or sit back and watch the screen change. It can look strange or exquisite depending on the photo that pops up.

Home allows users to comment on or like a post directly from the cover feed.

There are a few new conveniences: Users can update a status or post photos to Facebook directly from the home screen. And important Facebook conversations in Home can be elevated to "chat heads," with the person's head literally popping up on the screen when a new message arrives. That, in a nutshell, is Facebook Home.

The interface is clear of the bloatware and widgets that often clutter Android phones. Yet Home's clean interface seems borrowed from a social network called Path, which also includes radial menus and round profile avatars.

I could see Home coaxing a segment of social media fence-sitters into becoming frequent users. If that's all Facebook sought to accomplish, then it succeeded.

Facebook promises monthly updates to Home, and I suspect it's going to take a lot of them to reverse the poor user reviews that began trickling into the Google Play store this weekend. Users expected something beefier. But it's clear that Facebook hasn't quite found its home in the mobile space just yet.

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The Ticker

$13B buy eyed for Thermo

Thermo Fisher Scientific is close to buying Life Technologies Corp, a genetic testing equipment maker, for nearly $13 billion, reported Reuters last night.

Reuters reported that the sale price per share would be close to $75, putting Life Technologies' value at just about $13 billion. The sale could wrap up as early as today, according to the report. The sale, if successful, would mark Waltham-based Thermo Fisher's largest acquisition since the $12.8 billion merger in 2006 of Thermo Electron and Fisher Scientific International.

TODAY

 Citigroup Inc. reports quarterly financial earnings.

 The National Association of Home Builders releases the housing market index for April.

TOMORROW

 BlackRock Inc., Intel Corp. and Yahoo! release quarterly financial results.

 The Labor Department releases the Consumer Price Index for March.

 The Federal Reserve releases industrial production for March.

 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has hired Pranav Mehta, left, to serve as senior vice president for product development. Mehta most recently served as vice president of marketing and president of Wellmark Health Plan of Iowa, a subsidiary of Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield.

 Rocket Software of Waltham has hired Paul Walsh as vice president and chief financial officer and Richard Morgan as vice president of human resources. Morgan most recently worked as vice president of human resources for Dassault Systemes Americas Corp., while Walsh most recently served as CFO at Silicon Laboratories.

 HopeHealth, a nonprofit health care organization based in Hyannis, has appointed Lawrence Capodilupo as chair of its board of directors. Patricia Cahill, who served as board chair from 2010 to 2012, remains on the board as immediate past chair.

 Clean Harbors Inc. has hired Jim Buckley as senior vice president of investor relations and corporate communications. Buckley previously served as executive vice president and partner at communications strategic advisory firm Sharon Merrill Associates.

 Winthrop Realty Trust of Boston has announced the resignation of Peter Braverman as executive vice president. He has taken the position of president of Winthrop Management, the entity that provides property management services for the company's properties as well as for specified third parties.

 Akamai Technologies Inc. of Cambridge has hired James "Jim" Gemmell as chief human resources officer. Gemmell has held several senior executive HR positions at Cisco Systems for the past 13 years, most recently holding the role of chief human resources officer.

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Going ape over new gadget for wallet

Some people have monkeys on their backs. Zootility Tools founder Nate Barr wants consumers to have monkeys in their wallets.

In fact, Barr has already sold 5,000 "PocketMonkeys" worldwide to date. The stainless steel tool, which is the same size and thickness as a credit card, serves 12 functions in one, including bottle and letter opener, ruler, screwdriver and banana nicker.

A successful Kickstarter campaign netted Barr's creation more than $27,500, at least six times what he initially asked for. Now, the 31-year-old Somerville resident is thinking mass production, having placed an order for another 5,000 PocketMonkeys with a California manufacturer to keep up with growing demand.

"I've never had an idea take off so well, so I've been surprised in that regard," Barr told the Herald. "We've been selling it faster than we can make it."

Barr, a former mechanical engineer and part-time user interface engineer at Jumptap, hit upon his concept after locking himself out of his apartment twice.

"It's always with you. You never have to think about it," Barr said. "The real catch is it's technically difficult to engineer something as thin as a credit card but strong enough to do the functions you want it to do."

PocketMonkey, which sells for $12, is also compliant with Transportation Safety Administration rules, Barr said.

"I wasn't trying to develop something to be used in a bar fight," he said. "I think by meeting TSA guidelines you develop a pretty innocuous product."

PocketMonkeys can be purchased online, but Barr said his goal is to market the tool to more retailers nationwide, including big-box stores that can "place orders for 100,000 of these at a time." PocketMonkeys are currently sold in stores as varied as Davis Squared in Somerville and San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art gift shop, Barr said.

"It'd be awesome to have it make enough money to sustain a lifestyle of trying new ideas, but even if it just lets us learn how to do this stuff, then the next idea can be even more powerful and happen even more quickly and be more efficient," he added.

Barr is also at work on another TSA-compliant tool called KnifeNinja, which will get its own Kickstarter campaign in the near future.

As Zootility tries to keep up with orders, Barr said he is seeking another manufacturer that can produce thousands of PocketMonkeys at a time.

"What's compelling is how many things are packed into such a small package," he said. "We differentiate ourselves on the personality of our tools, that people see it as a premium brand over perhaps some cheap knockoffs. Other people try to imitate the intention, but not the execution."

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Babson holding food boot camp

Budding food entrepreneurs hungry to cook up their own businesses can learn the key ingredients during a one-day culinary boot camp at Babson College on Wednesday.

Sponsored by the Wellesley-based school's Graduate Student Council, "Small Bytes and Apps" will tackle such topics as the emotional components of starting and owning a food business; permits needed to set up shop; the landscape of food and tech businesses; and marketing and branding.

Event speakers told the Herald the purpose of the event, which is free to veterans and Babson students, is to motivate participants to tinker with their ideas even if they risk failure, given that the food industry has become more influenced by youth and technology.

"We're trying to inspire people who might be currently sitting on the sidelines who have a great idea but are scared and do not know the first step to starting their own business," said local "popup entrepreneur" and chef Wheeler del Torro, 32, of Jamaica Plain. "When I started my first culinary business, I was 16 years old and I had no idea what I was doing."

Del Torro said the Babson boot camp stems from his startup Farmacie, which caters motivational lunches for tech startups and corporations and is comprised of not just entrepreneurs with MBAs, but MFAs as well.

"For us, the creative side is a lot more important than having a fail-proof business plan. The business stuff you can always learn," del Torro said. "Creativity is a very hard thing to pick up."

Despite a growing influx of food trucks and businesses throughout the city, the food industry can scare younger people thinking about opening a business because of Boston's high cost of living, del Torro added.

Yet Rayna Verbeck, owner of 3 Scoops Cafe in Brighton and a second-year Babson graduate student, said now is an opportune time to open a food business, despite the sluggish economic outlook.

"It's a great time for people to create their own jobs and innovate in as many ways as possible," she said. "With the growth of food trucks and cafes and Internet connections, you don't have to worry about reaching the whole country with food right away."

Verbeck, who will discuss paperwork, agencies and legal and insurance issues involved in starting a food business, said technology, particularly social media, can influence a brand's success in ways that seemed impossible years earlier.

"I bought 3 Scoops three years ago when I was 24. I did not have it all laid out in front of me. Any new entrepreneur, no matter what stage or experience coming in can use as much knowledge as possible and as many guiding steps as possible," she added. "These are tips I would have given me three years ago."

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