Tennessee Titans quarterback Matt Hasselbeck is one of eight people recruited to advise a Massachusetts manufacturer of "the next generation of athletic monitoring devices." The products developed by MC10 are based on stretchable and formable integrated circuits.

“Athletes that want to improve performance need better information than current wearable devices provide, and they need to be unobtrusive and comfortable enough to wear through vigorous training and during games. I’m excited to work with MC10 and my fellow SAB members to bring this innovative performance monitoring technology to the mass market.”

Jackson National Life Insurance says it will set up a new IT center at its regional headquarters in Cool Springs, a move that has it looking for 20 systems and programming employees. The insurer, a subsidiary of Britain's Prudential plc, says the expansion will lift its Franklin headcount to almost 300.

“The expansion will allow us to recruit from the Middle Tennessee area and the southeast region to find the skilled professionals necessary to build and maintain the complex technologies that provide Jackson with a competitive advantage. Our senior management team recognizes the importance of fostering technical innovation to continue to serve the needs of our customers and distribution partners in a proactive and efficient fashion.”

Dobie Media's eviesays event calendar platform has landed Cablevision's News 12 Networks as a client.

The agreement means that the News 12 Network stations, clustered in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, will adopt the eviesays calendar technology at their websites. The calendars, which will be privately branded to have the look and feel of the News 12 Network stations, will enable visitors to find, browse, and interact with the hundreds of thousands of event listings nationwide residing at the eviesays.com website.

The talent shortage locally in a number of technology sectors continues to bedevil many growing organizations, but Vanderbilt University School of Engineering professor Douglas Schmidt says employers can help themselves by getting more involved with the region's colleges and universities.

Brian Haile, the man leading the work on Tennessee's health insurance exchange, tells Daniel Potter that states that don't get moving quickly could run into a roadblock when it comes to finding the people needed to build the IT guts of their systems.

“My colleague in another state said if he were as popular in high school as he is with IT vendors and headhunters today, his life would be entirely different."

Event listing company eviesays announced yesterday that it has landed a new contract in Virginia, where The Free Lance-Star Publishing Co. will use the local venture's search engine for event and entertainment listings and online event and entertainment calendars.

The eviesays platform will allow users to export their favorite listings to their personal calendar software, e-mail listings to friends, and get directions from Google Maps to events. Visitors to the site will also be able to submit their own listings via an on-line submissions form to the website.

“The executives at Free Lance-Star Publishing appreciate how important this calendar technology is to local audiences,” said Bruce Dobie, President and CEO of Dobie Media Inc., parent company of eviesays. “Everyone wants to know what’s going on around them. The eviesays calendar provides users with the who, what, when, and where of local events.”

The calendar also allows both the newspaper and website to sell premier sponsorship opportunities to local advertisers that will appear immediately beneath the calendar and on numerous search result pages.