Information Services

While teaching English to Hispanic immigrants in Carroll County, Jenni Sharkey found herself inundated with parents' questions about vaccinations and other requirements for enrolling students in school. Similarly, Elena Hartley was approached by Hispanic immigrants who attend the Spanish-speaking Mass at St. John Roman Catholic Church in Westminster, inquiring about apartment rentals and other social service needs. Both women saw a need to serve the growing Hispanic population in Carroll County.

DEARBORN, Mich. - Ford Motor Co. and Qualcomm Inc. plan to form a joint venture to provide wireless Internet access and emergency call service in cars starting late next year. The venture, called Wingcast, will be led by former Microsoft Corp. Vice President Harel Kodesh, who will hold the titles of president and chief executive. Ford Vice Chairman Wayne Booker will be chairman of the venture. Ford, the world's second-largest automaker, is attempting to catch up to rival General Motors Corp.

KnowledgeLink Interactive Inc. of Linthicum is acquiring two of IBM Corp.'s information services. The deal, which will be announced Monday, figures to give year-old KnowledgeLink new prominence in a hot but uncertain field of the information-technology industry.KnowledgeLink is obtaining the assets and licenses of IBM's InfoMarket and Lotus Newsstand.InfoMarket is a research service that scans big commercial databases that are not generally available on the Internet. Newsstand is an online service that offers subscriptions to electronic publications.

Hopkins physics laboratory announces staff changesThe Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel has announced the appointments of two assistant directors and a new head of its Business and Information Services Department.Ed Portner, formerly assistant director for business operations, was named assistant director for laboratory operations.Ruth Nimmo has been named assistant director for business operations. She was head of the Business and Information Services Department.

Beltsville-based Biospherics, Inc. said yesterday that it has raised $3 million to launch a subsidiary that will provide health care information and guidance to health maintenance organizations, HMO members and self-insured employer groups.Jeffrey W. Church, Biospherics' vice president and chief financial officer, said the money was raised from a single institutional investment group in a private offering.The investor, which the company declined to identify, purchased 375,000 units, each comprising two shares of common stock and two warrants.

CTA Inc. of Rockville has sold its satellite-making component to Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., and will concentrate its efforts on information technology contracts.As CTA Information Technology Services Co., the firm will focus on computer-related services -- including a Year 2000 date conversion business that has quintupled in the past 12 months.CTA has $30 million worth of contracts with a dozen state governments and several federal agencies to fix software so that computers don't fritz out when internal dating mechanisms click over to the year 2000.

Biospherics Inc., a Beltsville information services andbiotechnology company, said yesterday its shareholders have approved splitting off its Information Services Division, which provides database management services for governmental and other clients, into a wholly owned subsidiary.The company said it has not decided who will head the subsidiary.Biospherics also reported net income of $414,476, or 4 cents a share, for the first quarter of 1997, compared with a loss of $71,030, or 1 cent a share, that was reported for the period last year.

The new welfare law is still a matter of confusion in statehouses and city streets. But to some companies, it already looks like the business opportunity of a lifetime.The players are as diverse as Electronic Data Systems, the $12.4 billion information-technology company that Ross Perot founded, and companies at least a thousand times smaller like Curtis & Associates, which supplements its successful welfare-to-work jobs clubs with accessories like "motivational fortune cookies" at $3.99 a dozen.

GE Information Services names president/CEOHarvey F. Seegers, 42, was named president and chief executive officer of Rockville-based GE Information Services yesterday.He replaces Hellene S. Runtagh, 48, who, the company said, left to pursue another business opportunity.GEIS, one of 12 divisions of General Electric, provides business-to-business electronic services -- such as data interchange and electronic funds transfer -- to more than 40,000 firms, which it calls "the world's largest electronic trading community."

A New Jersey jury handed Bell Atlantic Corp. a stinging rebuke yesterday as it awarded a former technology partner $25 million in punitive damages in a civil fraud suit.The punitive award comes on top of $375,000 in compensatory damages that a Superior Court jury in Essex County handed to P. M. Video Corp. Thursday.The jury had found earlier that Bell Atlantic's network services subsidiary intentionally deceived the New York company in 1990 in order to get its help when the telephone company was VTC planning to enter the information services business.