Charlotte

For the most part, the callers were calm, patiently asking for the fastest path out of New Orleans or some other Gulf Coast city as Hurricane Gustav twisted its way to the northwest.

They started calling General Motors Corp.'s OnStar service by the thousands early Saturday, and by Sunday their numbers had grown to more than 3,000 an hour.

As more than 2 million people tried to outrun the deadly storm, OnStar beefed up its staff to around 500 and put emergency plans in place at three call centers in Pontiac, Mich.; Oshawa, Canada; and Charlotte, N.C.

With just 63 employees serving a customer base from its headquarters in Richmond, Va., and remote sites in Atlanta, Baltimore, Charlotte, Memphis and Tampa, InSource Software Solutions (ISS) staff must cover a lot of terrain in terms of sales, technical support, customer care and administration. According to Dunn Dillard, ISS's executive vice president and chief financial officer, managing staff and customers remotely was a cumbersome and expensive proposition that the company needed to address.

It's tough enough for David to take on Goliath.

Now imagine Goliath countering David's slingshot with a cannon.

That's roughly the challenge facing Alltel, the No.5 cell phone carrier, as it battles its two largest national competitors, AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

In a recent federal auction of wireless airwaves, AT&T and Verizon combined for $16 billion of the record $19.6 billion in winning bids as they stockpiled more spectrum to improve coverage and turbocharge their broadband services.

A search engine launching today aims to deliver a better experience for black audiences. But Black Web Enterprises president Johnny Taylor is quick to point out that RushmoreDrive.com -- named after the street on which its Charlotte offices are located -- goes beyond search. Each query also returns news, images, video and blogs.

Blacks want "everything we already get from Google plus highly relevant news," Taylor says. "RushmoreDrive will deliver a more relevant search with people who identify with being black."