Creative minds, creative spaces (Slideshow)

The Albany, New York region’s top communications firms employ some of the most creative minds of our creative economy.

Leaders of these firms will tell you that office space has a lot to do with thinking big.

Overit, for example, has a has a recording studio at its Albany offices. McMurry/TMG takes full advantage of its views of downtown Saratoga Springs. Design also plays a big role at the offices of Boogie in Albany and Smith & Jones/Burst Marketing in Troy.

Click the photo on this page to view…

New Toshiba subsidiary CEO says Charlotte should count on more jobs from his company

Sitting for an extended interview about the new Toshiba America Energy Systems headquarters here, Chief Executive Ali Azad went into considerable detail on the reasons for consolidating the company’s U.S. energy operations and his expectations for growth.

We presented an abbreviated version in the print edition this week, but his fuller remarks range over markets and opportunities Toshiba (OTC:TOSBF) sees in North America and gives a sense of the decisions he will make in the coming months about…

Evans Bancorp profits take large 4Q jump

The pay-off of two commercial loans and a year-over-year uptick in lending contributed to a nearly 40 percent surge in fourth-quarter net income at the parent company of Evans Bank N.A.

Evans Bancorp Inc. (NYSE: EVBN) announced net income of $2.3 million for the fourth quarter, up 38.3 percent from the same quarter in 2013 when the company reported net income of $1.7 million. Earnings per share totaled 54 cents, an improvement from 39 cents reported for the fourth quarter of 2013.

The latest quarterly…

Wangard plans to buy, renovate Miller Brands' Wauwatosa building for new tenants

Wangard Partners Inc. is seeking new tenants to refill the former Miller Brands building in Wauwatosa and will buy the property this year.

It is one of several projects on the docket for Wangard Partners, whose chairman Stewart Wangard sat down with us for an extensive interview on Milwaukee-area development in the Feb. 6 edition of the Milwaukee Business Journal.

The 196,000-square-foot Wauwatosa building formerly was used by a MillerCoors LLC beer distributor. It is now vacant save for space…

Anthem didn't encrypt hacked data; Google will search tweets; Radio Shack files Ch. 11 (Video)

Health insurer Anthem Inc. did not encrypt the 80 million Social Security numbers stolen by hackers last week, but that’s probably more common than you think. Despite calls to encrypt that data, some experts are still warning that encryption is no panacea.

A privacy lawyer quoted by The Wall Street Journal noted that the data must be unencrypted at some point to become useful, and so a dedicated hacker could eventually exploit that process.

Moreover, as Ars Technica argued, encryption might not…