You Can Ring My Bell

For whatever reason, I wrote this thinking it might be somehow interesting, then regretted it immediately. But because there's no way I am wasting the time I put into it, I am posting this anyway, on the off chance one person might have some interest in a press release that tomorrow will wind up as a short blurb in The Dallas Morning News' riveting business section. If you're all about the Nasdaq and stocks and technology companies, keep reading. If not, click here for video of a cat flushing a toilet.

Now... On January 12, the Greater Dallas Chamber and the Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc. launched a first-of-its-kind "regional technology and life sciences index" that, according to the chamber, will track the performance of "publicly held technology and life sciences companies" in the Dallas/Fort Worth region, which "commands one-third of all tech activity in Texas," as it says here. There are some 41 companies included in the index (among them Electronic Data Systems, Texas Instruments, Perot Systems, Sabre etc.) that are worth some $300 billion, give or take. Today, at long last, that index went live on the Nasdaq Web site, and you can keep track of how well those 41 companies are doing as a single group, which, says Nasdaq, will allow anyone to measure "the health and growth of a localized technology economy."

To celebrate the index's launch, a couple dozen reps from the Chamber will make the trek to Manhattan to ring the closing bell at the Nasdaq tomorrow; among those going are Affiliated Computer Services Inc.'s Larry Hale, Cingular Wireless President LeAnn Preibe, Perot Systems Corporation's Mike McClasky and George Consolver from Texas Instruments. If you want to watch it live--because it'll be thrilling--go here. On second thought, don't. --Robert Wilonsky