Inc.com

The Way We Were

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:00:37 -0800

Facebook allows users to post photos of themselves and others, and some people are embarrassed by what their friends choose to share without their permission. TechNewsWorld recently published an article that focused on users who post very old photos from high school, for example, in which their friends are sporting bad hair and bad outfits. Some people can have a good laugh over such photos, but others do not share the humor, especially considering that a photo can hang around the internet long after it has been deleted. Facebook is not the only venue for such embarrassment – another site mentioned in the article is AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com. However, the owner of the site recommends making sure all people involved consent before submitting any photos.

I have some examples of my own out there .... that I'm not going to show you.

Curt works for Journyx, which has solutions to help improve business execution.

How to Market on Facebook; Win a Franchise

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:57:02 -0800

No health care reform, say most entrepreneurs in Congress. The New York Times has the breakdown, showing that eight of 11 entrepreneurs in Congress voted against the recently-passed health care reform bill. Four of those who voted against the bill? Democrats, all of whom represent districts won by John McCain in last year's presidential race. Here are the stories of the most recent entrepreneurs to reach Capitol Hill, as well as the CEO of last year's No. 1 Inc. 500 company on how to fix health care.

How to market on Facebook. Building online communities of fans, and capitalizing on demographical information are just a few of the ways that more and more businesses are finding Facebook to be an indispensable marketing tool, The New York Times reports. Creating a web presence for your company with Facebook can be a piece of cake, by using features such as fan pages, which allow you to build a deeper relationship with current customers while targeting potential new ones.

CEOs miffed by lack of VC operating experience. A new survey conducted by VentureSource shows that while most start-up CEOs are happy with their VC board members, a common sentiment was that less experienced VCs, or the "investment banker types," are a burden to have on a board (hat tip to The Wall Street Journal). One anonymous respondent phrased it bluntly in response to an open-ended question at the conclusion of the survey. "Two things kill companies the fastest, bad management and bad boards. We have too many VC board members who have never run a company and have no idea how to help management." Want to avoid this kind of problem? Check out our resources for advice on building a great board.

Love yogurt, win a franchise. Well, it's a little more difficult than that. But the TCBY yogurt chain is indeed giving away a franchise to an aspiring entrepreneur, 21 years of age and older. Click on the link above, fill out the entry form, and create a two-minute video that makes the case for you being the chosen one. Twenty-five semifinalists will be notified by the first week of January.

Obama stepping up broadband stimulus funds. The good news for small business owners, especially those in the hinterlands, is that the government is speeding up plans to dole out broadband stimulus cash. Many small businesses are being stifled by the current broadband arrangement and to that end, $4 billion in funding will be dispersed, though seven times that amount has been requested by 2,200 grant applicants, according to Ars Technica. Here's one company that's trying to make it easier for customers to find a broadband service that works for them.

Nine states with money trouble, California-style. Entrepreneurs need to be attuned to the financial health of the states where they set up shop and a new study by the Pew Center on the States charts all 50 states according to their "fiscal peril." States were scored on six factors: "high foreclosure rates; increasing joblessness; loss of state revenues; the relative size of budget gaps; legal obstacles to balanced budgets," and bad money-management. After the Golden State, Arizona, Rhode Island, and Michigan were closest to the brink. As we wrote the other day, though, a floundering government can be a golden opportunity for entrepreneurship. Just look at some members of the Pew's endangered list that were Inc. 500 hotspots.

How to deal with your boss's negative feedback. While everyone reacts differently to criticism in the office, there are ways to respond calmly, without flying off the handle and becoming argumentative. The Associated Press offers several suggestions on how to take the criticism in stride, such as putting your emotions on hold, first and foremost. Then, you can approach the situation with more positivity, and work to improve the feedback for next time.

More from Inc. Magazine:

Get this delivered to your inbox.

Friend us on Facebook.

Microsoft Admits Mac Inspiration

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:00:00 -0800

The Apple faithful will never, never, never, never, never,

never,

let Microsoft live this one down.

One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use. What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics.

- Simon Aldous, Microsoft Group Manager

Thank you, Mr. Aldous, for saying out loud what we've known to be true for decades now.

Internet Addiction in Children

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:00:12 -0800

A recent research study done in Taiwan has raised questions about internet addiction and its negative impact on children. The study sampled over 2,000 boys and girls in 7th grade and found a connection between mental health problems such as depression, ADHD, social phobia and aggression and internet addiction. Yet some people are unconvinced by the results, arguing that they are based on self-reported symptoms which are not always accurate. At the very least, it is opening up a dialogue about the paradigm shift this new generation is experiencing thanks to technology, and how to responsibly manage it.

There are programs available to help people get rid of drug addiction, but who's got predictable methodologies in place to eliminate online addiction (because sometimes I think I might need to give them a call myself.)

Curt works for Journyx, which has solutions for project management and execution.

India's Entrepreneurs Unleashed; Google's New Language

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:58:26 -0800

From the annals of world domination: Google launches its own programming language. One of the pillars of Google's success has been efficiency, whether that's serving search results or processing data, says Mashable Ben Parr. On the heels of launching its mobile operating system, Android, which Motorola has already adopted for its Droid phones, and collaboration tool Google Wave, the search giant is now "looking to tackle the underpinning code that runs the web," reports Parr. Go, as the language is called, is an open source development code that the company hopes will reshape web development and software in its favor. Go is based on the C programming family, but it incorporates elements of Python (the development language of choice at Google) and the Pascal/Modula/Oberon family that Mashable says makes speedier and more dynamic programs. Get your programmers ready.

While the government dithers, India's entrepreneurs step in. Governments are notorious for getting mired in their own bureaucracy in the face of public needs, which is where entrepreneurs often step in. Harvard Business Review has a piece that profiles some up and coming social entrepreneurs who are stepping in to fill the government gap. One example is Harish Hande, who runs SELCO, a solar energy distribution company. Fifteen years ahead of any similar government initiatives, SELCO has sold over 100,000 highly customized lighting systems by accommodating urban and rural poor with a flexible "power-by-the-hour" business model. Picking up government slack could be an easy model for U.S. entrepreneurs to follow. Any takers to fix health care? For more news about the Indian entrepreneurial scene check out Inc. India.

Google's Gift to travelers. It's free Wi-Fi! From now until January 15th, the search giant is giving away free wireless internet access at 47 airports--including Las Vegas, Boston, and Miami--and on all Virgin America flights. The full list of airports is here and CrunchGear has the news.

How much is Twitter really worth. "Less than you think," writes Om Malik, citing a new research report. Of course, "less than you think" is still pretty darn high. NeXt Up estimates that Twitter is worth roughly $600 million, thanks to its substantial user base--some 70 million users--and high potential for revenues and profits. The firm estimates that Twitter will generate more than $100 million in revenue by 2013 and close to $150 by 2014. But the valuation is a lot less than the $1.1 billion figure Twitter received from its latest investors, Malik says. The reason? "We believe that most revenue generation options available to the company have the potential to alienate at least some of Twitter‚Äòs user base," according to the report. "Twitter may not have adequate time to revise its models before it loses its critical mass and reputation," it adds. That helps explain why the company has been so hesitant to try to make money.

Tech start-up acquisitions signaling better times? Some big-name companies embarked on early holiday spending sprees this week, such as Google, who bought mobile ad start-up AdMob for $750 million, and Logitech, who acquired LifeSize, a video-conferencing start-up, for $405 million. According to the New York Times, the high-profile purchases could indicate a renewed interest in M&A, which, in turn, might point to a recovering economy. Jeff Brody, a founding partner of Redpoint Ventures, which was one of the backers of the LifeSize deal, told the Times that although the number and value of acquisitions has been down, the improving economy has forced companies to increase their offers. "As the I.P.O. market has started to come back and as public company stocks have recovered, we have seen a surge in M&A interest and prices." Click here< for Inc.'s take on what an uptick of merger activity could spell for the business community.

Seven pioneers are helping to diversify the Motor City. After decades spent at the mercy of the auto industry, Detroit is branching out. Entrepreneurs looking to build more efficient batteries, develop artificially intelligent robots and make more eco-friendly clothing are bringing jobs in technology, medical research, and design to revive Detroit's workforce, reports CNN Money. Despite the fact that green has never been the Big Three's forte, Ann Marie Sastry, whose company Sakti3 is developing lithium-ion batteries, sees opportunity in locating her start-up close to potential collaborators and customers, "There is a wealth of knowledge and understanding of vehicles, and a wealth of people who store this knowledge." Other entrepreneurs, like eco-design start-up Guffly.com, came for the funding ($300,000 worth) and support. Says CEO Chanell Scott, "It's been great for us to have a community that's so receptive. People are excited to have new businesses here."

More from Inc. Magazine:

Get this delivered to your inbox.

Friend us on Facebook.

When Mars And Venus Call Tech Support

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:00:00 -0800

Gadget Helpline took some 75,000 tech support calls between September 25th and October 23rd of this year. Typical numbers for them, no doubt. What they did with them is unique, however.

They analyzed (or should I write "analysed" since they are British) every call along gender lines breaking down trends.

Here's what they found:

Male callers: 64% didn't bother to read the instruction manual before calling for help.

Female callers: 24% didn't bother to read the instruction manual before calling for help.

Male callers: 12% just needed to plug in their gear to "resolve their issue".

Female callers: 7% ditto!

Female callers stayed on the phone with tech support 32% longer than male callers.

66% of tech support operators said they preferred dealing with female clients, anyway.

There are so many punchlines I could throw into this posting right about now. But, I'm going to take the high road. You can fill in your own.

Biz Tips from the Boston Celtics; When to Dump a Client

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:39:21 -0800

Filing for customer divorce. Some small business owners are finding it difficult (and expensive) to maintain relationships with delinquent or discount-hungry customers, according to The Wall Street Journal. Shedding those clients, which was the option chosen by Kishau Rogers, owner of Richmond, Virginia-based Websmith Group, can often make it easier to endure harsh economic times and turnaround sagging profits. By dropping her late-paying customers, Rogers, whose firm develops websites, was able to reallocate 20 percent of her time to other clientele, and put the business's 2009 revenue on track to rise 10 percent. While dropping customers can be risky, "to continue to have a customer that's losing the company money with every transaction is not a good strategy either," said Valarie Zeithaml, a marketing professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For more tips on giving difficult customers the boot, click here -- and be gentle.

Customer Appreciation 101 from the Boston Celtics. With a record of 7-1, and perennially sold-out home games, the Boston Celtics have developed a fiercely-loyal fan base. To help keep that fan base energized, and to show their appreciation, the Celtics have become one of the most social-media savvy teams in all of professional sports. As the Boston Globe reports, the team posts exclusive locker room footage on YouTube, has an interactive stats game on their Facebook page, and regularly sends Twitter messages to their 21,000 followers. A smart move from a team who realizes that while a sold-out stadium is a good thing, it is important not to forget about those fans who couldn't get a seat. As the Celtics president, Rich Gotham, explains, "Now that we're at this sold-out state, it's more difficult to get into the game and fans can't get tickets. We want to make sure we don't forget about those fans. We want to keep them interested and keep them loyal."

The evolution of start-up ecosystems We've covered various start-up hotspots in the past, but Fred Wilson has an explanation of how a start-up ecosystem evolves over time. He says it's important to think of the infrastructure for start-ups, whether in Boston, the Valley, or the next nexus, as growing and developing over decades. The first decade is largely trial and error, decade two is when VCs and companies have firmer footing and a network of resources, and in the third decade, Wilson says the ecosystem is fully formed. Wilson then applies this trajectory to "new startup ecosystems developing in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. It can happen and it will happen. But it takes time. And you can't fast forward because we are talking about experience which can't be manufactured."

Mark Cuban has some advice for Rupert Murdoch. Screw Google! The Dallas Mavericks owner, HDNet founder, and prolific blogger weighs in today on the future of newspapers. He recommends that News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch should simply prevent Google's bots from indexing its papers and instead rely on Twitter and Facebook to get the news out. "TWITTER POSES NO THREAT to any destination news site," Cuban writes. "140 characters does not a story make. Find it on twitter, link to a story on say, FoxNews and everyone is happy...Having to search for and find news in search engines is so 2008." Meanwhile, Cuban seems to be interested in buying the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Things to know before starting a website. Web designer Erik Parkin takes a turn as guest blogger on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's business blog to talk about the four questions you should ask before building a website for your small business. As he explains, simply telling a designer to "make it look cool" doesn't give the designer nearly enough information about what your company does and how you plan on using your website. Parkin's four questions should help any business owner stay focused on the purpose of the website, which is to enhance the business, not detract from it.

A more professional tweet. The big-name partnerships just keep piling up for Twitter. First were the deals with Microsoft and Google to include tweets in search results. Now, as The New York Times Bits blog reports, Twitter has a struck a deal with professional networking site LinkedIn. LinkedIn users will now have the option of sending status updates to their Twitter feed, while also showing their most recent tweets in their LinkedIn profile. The payoff for Twitter? Increased exposure and added revenue, though, not surprisingly, the financial terms of the deal are undisclosed.

More from Inc. Magazine:

Get this delivered to your inbox.

Friend us on Facebook.

Ho Ho Ho Says Google

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Free WiFI! It's the new black, apparantly. Starting today, Google is offering free WiFI at 47 airports nationwide for the rest of the year.

Naturally there's a marketing angle to all of this.

The splash page when you sign on will come with two fever pitches:

1. A plea to give to three charities of Google's choosing (Engineers Without Borders, Climate Savers Computing Initiative and One Economy Corporation).

2. A "chance" to sign up for a plethora of Google services and to make Google your homepage.

While Google is schilling to air travelers without wings on the ground, EBay will be doing the same for Delta fliers (the splash page will take you to a special holiday shopping page on EBay - so much for the air mall magazine next to the barf bag in your seat pocket). As mentioned on this blog last month, Lexus just hosted a one week promotional for free WiFI on American Airlines.

Interesting! As traditional ad-based free content old media "dies" a little more each day, new media borrows a little more from their business model.

Are You to Blame for IT Failure?

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:00:58 -0800

An article in ComputerWorld recently explored the effects a major tech project failure has on IT. Unfortunately, IT usually takes all of the blame for such failures, even if it is not all their fault. CIOs who put their name on a major project that then fails can even expect demotion. Chris Curran of Diamond Management & Technology Consultants says that “CIOs who enter into $200 million Oracle ERP projects know the stakes. These large programs- the multi-hundred-million-dollar, multiyear projects-they just create such a peak to fall from.”

The funny thing is that many of these companies can have their needs met by less complicated solutions that pose significantly lower risk in money and resources. Too many decision-makers rush straight into the arms of large vendors like Oracle, only to be disappointed and potentially put their jobs on the line.

Curt works for Journyx, a time and project management solutions company.

Playfish Sells Out and A Plan to Save Detroit

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:50:06 -0800

Playfish sells to EA for $275 million. So it turns out that there's a lot of money in virtual goods. Playfish, a London company that makes Facebook's Restaurant City, just sold itself to video game giant Electronic Arts for $275 million in cash, with the prospect of an additional $100 million in earn-outs. Techcrunch says, "Social games are increasingly popular and Electronic Arts needed to buy one of the top players: Zynga, Playfish, or Playdom." Playfish has revenue of $75 million a year.

How to save Detroit. This month's issue of Inc. spotlights one good idea: An entrepreneurial ecosystem built around the electric car. Of course, if that doesn't work out, we can always turn the city into farmland. That's the nutty plan floated by a group of architects and reported in the New York Times. "[T]he sheer size of Detroit — a largely vacant urban prairie bigger than Manhattan, Boston and San Francisco combined — makes it a prime test case for the 'shrinking cities' movement. And so an American Institute of Architects study imagines Detroit reduced into a metro core surrounded by green belts, 'urban villages' and banked land," the Times says. It gets weirder: "Even raccoon- and pheasant-hunting is not unheard of within the protein-poor city’s limits. Yes, a retired truck driver reportedly shoots raccoons and sells them as food, at $12 per carcass to feed a family of four."

The Netflix model hits the runway. According to a story by the New York Times, it will soon be as easy to rent couture dresses as it is to rent Netflix DVDs. Fledgling start-up Rent the Runway, founded by Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Carter Fleiss, plans to allow customers to rent, via mail, thousand-dollar dresses for less than $200 each. Hyman came up with the idea after watching her sister shell out cash for a dress she'd only wear once to a wedding. After solidifying a business plan with Fleiss, the duo secured seed financing from Bain Capital Ventures to build its inventory of 160 styles. Although the article questions the long-term viability of the company -- "No one wants to rent last season's dress," quipped one fashion blogger -- Rent the Runway's current customers seem pleased with the service.

Small business owners play Scrooge with holiday bonuses. Small-business employees expecting a holiday bonus may end up feeling a bit like Bob Cratchit this season. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on a recent American Express survey that reveals a significant drop in the number of business owners who are planning on giving their workers gifts or cash. This year, only 31 percent of owners will dole out an end-of-year bonus. That's much worse than last year when 44 percent of owners planned on giving bonuses. Even worse, of the owners who still plan on giving bonuses or gifts, 42 percent said they'll give fewer or cheaper gifts to their employees. As an American Express adviser explained, "Business owners are still feeling pinched cash wise." In other words, "Bah humbug." For a look at how some businesses deal with having to cut employee bonuses, check out this story from the Inc. archives.

Fred Wilson on Valuations and Option Pools. Fred Wilson breaks down one of the trickiest negotiations in early stage financing: Whether to put aside stock to issue to employees at a later date. Although setting aside an option pool is about nominally about compensating employees, it's also a negotiation tactic, or, as Wilson concedes, a way for the venture capitalist to lower the price. Wilson advises VCs to be upfront about that and for entrepreneurs to research the market value of their business with and without an option pool. Spark Capital's Bijan Sabet follows-up on Wilson's post with recommendations on how to structure terms and rights associated with option pools, including vesting and change of control.

How to get more from your LinkedIn account. Although there are many professional social networks, LinkedIn is still one of the biggest and most useful. Mashable writer Sharlyn Lauby offers advice, about seven ways you can get more from your account. For instance, she recommends including a photo in your profile, asking for recommendations, and using groups to expand your reach.

Succession planning for your small business. One of the most difficult decisions any family business owner has to make is who to pass the baton to when it's time to move on. The Wall Street Journal provides some tips, starting with planning a retreat away from the office to discuss the idea with all family members. You can also get some advice straight from successful family business owners featured in Inc., here.

Can you patent an idea? Business method patents have been around for decades--Clarence Saunders was granted a patent for the idea of the "self-serving store" in 1917 for his chain of Piggly Wigglys--but in 1998 a Supreme court decision produced a flurry of new patents for business methods, especially new types of software. Now the court plans to reevaluate that decision, and companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Symantec are weighing in, reports the Wall Street Journal. "Certainly, some of the more extreme positions that are being urged before the court could eliminate patents with hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in value," says Andrew Pincus, a lawyer who filed a brief on behalf of a software trade group. Check out Inc.'s article on filing a patent or guarding against infringement on one you already have.

The New Red State, Blue State Battle

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:00:00 -0800

This is not about Republicans and Democrats (Thank Gawd!).

It's about Verizon and AT&T, actually.

Verizon has got AT&T mad as H-E-double toothpicks over its new "There's a map for that" ad campaign.

Just see for yourself below:

Take a good long look. This ad may have a short shelf life if AT&T has its way in court. Quicker than you can download an iPhone app, AT&T has already filed a lawsuit in an Atlanta, GA Federal District court complaining that its false advertising.

We'll see if a judge makes Verizon yank the ads.

In the meantime, here's an excerpt of a leaked memo from AT&T outlining talking points for employees.
How should I respond to customers who ask about the lawsuit?

While we cannot speculate on the complaint filed, it is a great opportunity to remind customers of AT&T’s many advantages that over 81 million customers enjoy, including:

Best Network The best coverage worldwide (More Bars in More PlacesTM). The nation’s fastest 3G network and the only national 3G carrier providing simultaneous voice and data usage. The most devices that work in the most places including Japan and South Korea (3G 2100 MHz device required). The nation’s largest wireless and wireline broadband provider. The nation’s largest company-owned and operated WiFi network with more than 20,000 hotspots, including Starbucks, McDonald’s and Barnes and Noble, as well as access to over 120,000 hotspots around the world. The leading provider of local and long distance voice services.
Greatest Value – The fairest value with Rollover® allowing customers to keep their unused minutes month to month.

Are we getting a little prickly, AT&T.

Memo to both Verizon and AT&T. Settle your differences about the truthiness (as Stephen Colbert would say) of the Verizon ads in court. But for the sake of a partisan weary public, please pick some other colors for your branding identification other than blue and red. Especially if you're going to use it to color code a U.S. map.

The Truth about Cyber Monday; Tour the Gawker Offices

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:02:51 -0800

Tour a Start-up's Office: The Gawker edition. Gawker Media, the parent company behind blogs like Valleywag and io9, has been experiencing a growth spurt of 40 percent year-over-year. Now Silicon Alley Insider takes us inside CEO Nick Denton's "steampunk" headquarters in downtown New York as part of its new tour a startup photo feature. What should you expect from inside the belly of the blogging beast?: A couch straight out of the Matrix, a roof deck for courting advertisers, the requisite glass-walled conference room, and a "comfortingly familiar" library-like atmosphere to soothe recent college grads.

The myth of Cyber Monday. Online advertising company Permuto offers up an interesting infographic on the history of Cyber Monday, the Monday following Thanksgiving which is the online equivalent of Black Friday. Also known as every e-retailers' favorite day. The term, which has now become part of our cultural lexicon, was reportedly first mentioned in a press release from Shop.org on November 21, 2005. Contrary to popular belief, Cyber Monday is not the biggest online shopping or spending day of the year. In fact, that day typically occurs sometime between December 5 and 15th. However, Permuto theorizes that the ever-growing hype over Cyber Monday may lead to a self-fulfilling prophesy in which this year's day may actually become the biggest online shopping day of the holiday season. (Hat tip to Digg.)

E-commerce health is either thriving or diving. About those e-retailers: two reports released this week are painting vastly different pictures of the online retail landscape, with one estimating that e-commerce saw a 2 percent drop in Q3 and the other charting expected 8 percent growth in November and December compared to last year. So who to believe? There's no easy answer according to the Wall Street Journal. comScore and Forrester Research, who respectively churned out the conflicting numbers use dramatically different approaches to evaluate online shopping. comScore measures the behavior of a large body of volunteers while Forrester surveys consumers and retailers as well as pooling data on things like Google ads to flesh out the picture. Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru pointed to Amazon, which is predicting Q4 growth between 21 and 35 percent, to bolster the group's findings. "The entire rest of the industry would have to be really negative" to lead to a down quarter, she said.

Boston vs. Seattle vs. Boulder: how does the climate for tech startups measure up? peHUB points to a thoughtful post from Seattle business blog Xconomy which has the highlights from a VC panel comparing startup culture in different cities. Boulder has the nation's highest per capita of computer scientists and PhDs--not to mention a wealth of executive leadership imported in during the dotcom boom--but around 2003 the "endless cocktail party circuit" got stale, says the Foundry Group's Brad Feld. He launched Tech Stars, a seed fund and mentorship program, to make first-time entrepreneurs the new core of the ecosystem--partnering them with experienced founders and energizing the community in the process. Chris Sheehan from CommonAngels said Boston has a deep bench of entrepreneurs, and the wealth created from startups is being reinvested via VCs. But "the dispersed ecosystem" makes things difficult, which is why clusters are forming in the city around mobile, gaming, Web, e-commerce, tech, and marketing. In Seattle it looks like the next wave of angels and entrepreneurs will likely come out of Amazon, but Steve Hall of Vulcan Capital was frank about the city's perceived shortcomings. "People outside Seattle, particularly fund investors, believe that Seattle is a little too nice. We enjoy our lifestyle too much. Boulder may have a little of this as well. That doesn't build the most competitive companies when you've got people in the Valley who live and breathe this for sport."

Calling all NYC entrepreneurs. The New York Public Library's Science, Industry, and Business wing has announced their first annual New York StartUP! Business Plan Competition for any aspiring Big Apple entrepreneurs. The winner will receive $15,000 to help start their business, while other cash awards totaling $28,000 are also available to runners-up. In addition to the money, entrants will also receive orientations and business mentoring. Full details and due dates can be found here.

Chairs that Tweet. The hip furniture maker Blu Dot picked a novel marketing campaign to celebrate the first anniversary of its New York City store. The company placed 25 blue chairs, which retail for $129 each, in New York City and let people grab the free samples. The catch? Each chair has a cell phone with a GPS chip attached to the bottom. When someone picks one up and takes it home, the chair sends a Twitter message with its location. The second catch? If you grab a chair, you get followed by a video crew and interviewed for a promotional video. But you get to keep the chair! Fast Company has some nice pictures of the campaign and asks, justifiably, "But is it marketing?" We're not sure either, but the promotion is working well as a PR stunt.

Unemployment hits 26 year high. The unemployment rate hit 10 percent last month, for the first time since 1983. The Wall Street Journal has the historic (and depressing) news, but notes that it could be worse. Only 190,000 jobs were lost last month, compared to 741,000 jobs lost in January. Welcome to your jobless recovery.

Employers who are hiring consider their options. Despite those abysmal unemployment numbers, some small companies are actually switching to hiring mode. But should that new employee be hired full-time, temporarily, or as a contracted position? The AP reports that despite the onerous responsibilities that come with hiring someone on staff--from federal and state labor laws, workers compensation insurance, and employment taxes like Social Security and medicare--hiring full-time employees is the often best way to build the business for the long-term. Said Arlene Vernon, president of the Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based HR consulting firm, HRx Inc., "If you know you're growing, then find someone who's really committed. They're going to think for the benefit of the organization."

More from Inc. Magazine:

Get this delivered to your inbox.

Friend us on Facebook.

Robots in Medicine

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:00:18 -0800

According to the Telegraph, researchers have designed the world's smallest motor, allowing a robot submarine the width of two human hairs to potentially enter a stroke victim's bloodstream and travel to sensitive parts of the body like the brain. A spokesperson from the Institute of Physics says this device could "save lives by reaching parts of the body, like a stroke-damaged cranial artery, that (other instruments) have previously been unable to reach ."

If robots are able to enter patient's bodies, what else could they potentially treat years from now?

My good buddy, Jim Tulenko, has been working for years on nuclear power sources for nano-bots and particularly the heat dissipation problems inherent in such devices. Good things are coming.

Related Links:

Robotice Surgical Assistants as Safe as Humans

Museum of American Heritage: Robots in Medicine

Curt is the founder & CEO of a timesheet software company in Austin, Texas.

Biz Lessons from the Poker Table; Google's New Idea

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:19:28 -0800

Yanks win, but few spoils for Bronx businesses. Congratulations to the New York Yankees, for winning (yet another) World Series championship. But while the team celebrates, owners of the struggling small businesses whose shops flank the new $1.5 billion House that Steinbrenner Built, are feeling more like the defeated Phillies. As the New York Times reported earlier this week, despite the Bronx Bombers' winning season, sales at local businesses were down significantly from previous years. New traffic patterns around the stadium are one reason for the drop, but some vendors blame the team's owners for opening up more concession stands outside the stadium. "I think what they're trying to do is force everybody else out," said one business owner. "It's dismal, very dismal."

Google's new e-commerce offering. Google's ever-expanding product line just got even bigger thanks to its new Commerce Search, a search function tailored for retailers. The service, which incorporates Google's search capabilities into your online store, carries a price tag of $50,000 a year according to TechCrunch, but Google says it's worth it. Their claim is that faster search speed will help customers navigate to what they want quickly, making them more likely to buy. Other perks include the ability to customize the search function to match the rest of your site and integration of other Google products like Google Analytics.

Entrepreneurship lessons from the poker table. In business, as in poker, sometimes you have to know when to fold 'em. So says serial entrepreneur and blogger Eric Ries on GigaOM. Ries takes the lessons he's learned from watching the World Series of Poker and explains how entrepreneurs and poker players share many of the same qualities. Namely, "Both rely on acting strategically under conditions of extreme uncertainty. And, in both, small changes in your odds of winning can have a big impact on the final outcome." Ries goes on to point out that just as in poker where amateur players sometimes beat the pros, many successful businesses are run by generally poor entrepreneurs. A frustrating truth in both cards and business. As Ries says, "Just because someone has had a success doesn't necessarily mean they understand why they were successful at all." For a look at an entrepreneur who helped launch the professional poker phenomenon, check out this profile of the World Poker Tour's Steve Lipscomb from the Inc. archives.

The Droid arrives. Verizon has been courting app entrepreneurs with those creepy commercials for its new smart phone. The Motorola Droid comes out this week--and the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg has a review. Long story short: The phone is pretty good. "It's the best super-smart phone Verizon offers, the best Motorola phone I've tested and the best hardware so far to run Android," he writes. But will the Droid, named for Google's Android operating system, be able to replace (or join) Apple's iPhone as the preeminent platform for app entrepreneurs? That seems unlikely in the short term. Mossberg notes that the iPhone marketplace currently dwarfs the Android's offering, and he finds a number of problems with the new phone, namely a cramped keyboard and some software bugs.

Skype founders settle, finally. Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom's four year old sale of Skype to eBay just got a little sweeter. The pair, who unloaded the online phone company for roughly $3 billion in 2005, will get 10 percent of a newly independent Skype, two board seats, and an option to buy more stock. Kara Swisher has the news and says that the deal marks an end to legal wrangling that stemmed from a dispute over software licenses and over eBay's decision to sell Skype to an investment consortium that included the former CEO of another of Zennstrom and Friis's companies. Swisher says that the lawsuit was especially fierce, "using embarrassing emails and making pointed accusations of...plotting all kinds of nefarious schemes."

The power of women-owned businesses. Last month, the Center for Women's Business Research released a study which found that 28 percent, or an estimated 8 million, of all U.S. businesses were women-owned. The study also showed that those 8 million cross-industry businesses created or maintained 16 percent of the country's jobs. However, only 4.2 percent of the nation's revenue is generated by women-owned businesses. The Center plans to approach the Obama administration, the Small Business Administration, and House and Senate small-business committees to request more resources and programs in support of the women business owners, reports the New York Times. On how the sector of support for women business owners needs to expand, executive director of the national Women's Business Council, Margaret Barton said, "Women really have to fall in love with running a business. They have to move into the state about being excited and motivated by running a business. We need help with that area."

Finding the right business partner. Tech entrepreneur Neil Patel shares some advice on his blog, QuickSprout, about the benefits of having a business partner, and how to find the right one. Patel, who admits he's been through his share of partnerships, warns that the union can be as tumultuous as a marriage and recommends setting expectations for each partner on day one. To that end, he suggests "sealing the deal" by putting both names on the LLC -- with clearly delineated percentages -- to prevent issues with money or ownership.

More from Inc. Magazine:

Get this delivered to your inbox.

Friend us on Facebook.

The Bill In Congress To Censor Fraud Sites

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:00:00 -0800

It sounds like a well-intentioned bill. The U.S. House of Representatives has a piece of legislation making its way through (it passed the Financial Services Committee this week) that would make Internet Service Providers subject to fines for not blocking fraudulent web sites. Specifically, they are targeting bogus financial scams.

Well, who wouldn't want those kinds of sites blocked (besides the criminals committing actual scams)?

Once again, Washington looks like it is still living in the time of Washington.

Here's why this is a bad idea:

- When sites are blocked, it is inevitable that some sites get blocked that really don't fit the blocking criteria. What if it were your business's web site?

- Today it's financial scammers (great!). But what if its a politically motivated criteria in the future? Heaven help the person or organization on a future President's enemies list.

- If an ISP can be held responsible for giving access to rogue financial scam sites, then doesn't it open the door for it to be liable for any web site that inflects damages of any kind. A litigious minded ISP could end up blocking a whole lot of sites and content areas that you don't even realize is now off limits.

Discuss!

The Workforce of Crowds

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:11:53 -0800

In 2004, James Surowiecki wrote The Wisdom of Crowds to describe the way that groups can aggregate information and use it to make decisions more effectively than an individual. The example often cited was that a crowd was able to guess the weight of a slaughtered ox more effectively than individual experts, when the crowd’s guesses were averaged together. However, not all small businesses need an ‘intelligent crowd.’ Sometimes what's needed is the brute force of a large group of people, all working on an uncomplicated, repetitive task that humans can do but computers can’t.

Amazon, the folks who bring you books and other things via their online site, created a service called “Mechanical Turk” that allows people to create such “Human Intelligence Tasks”, and parcel out the actions to any workers that show up to do the task. Users have to take a ‘test’ to prove that they can do the work, and then they work on as many or as few assignments as they want to.

One challenge, however, is that the quality of individual workers can vary, and you, the job creator, are responsible for your own quality control. Enter CrowdFlower.com Luke Biewald, Founder and CEO, told me that in a previous role, he occasionally needed a bunch of people to quickly check local results for search engine Powerset (now part of Microsoft’s Bing team), but he couldn’t just hire and fire them overnight. He started using Mechanical Turk to parcel out tasks, but found the quality of the results would vary depending on who did the tasks.

Luke and his partners made a decision to create Crowdflower. Their website redundantly assigns tasks to different workers. They then test the results. If multiple workers agree on a result, it gives a higher degree of confidence about the quality of the work. Crowdflower works “on top of” sites like Mechanical Turk, even splitting work across different crowd sourcing sites.

Why farm out this kind of work? Luke described a wedding photography company that assigns a task of looking at pictures, labeling them (Is the Bride in this photo?), and then asks “does this seem like a good photo that someone would want?” The photographer doesn’t have to look through a bunch of pictures to judge brightness, or focus, and he also gets a result “bride and groom in the photo.”

Christian Wiklund Founder & CEO Skout, Inc. (warning- dating site, not all images are appropriate for a business office), a mobile-focused location-based dating site said “One thing that we have to do is content moderation – making sure there’s no copyrighted or explicit material on our site. We used to do this manually, but as we’re growing, we either have to hire more people in our operations team, or outsource this in some way. Crowdflower provided a cheap alternative. All our content uploads go to Crowdflower, and we get back an ‘approved’ or ‘not approved’ message. This works out really well for us. We did side by side manual approval to Crowdflower’s work force, and they were basically equivalent.This kind of work has to be done by people, and this solution is saving us money and time."

Crowdflower marks up 33% on top of the cost of the crowdsourcing sites. The company recently took a $1MM angel funding round.

How could you use a ‘crowd’ to solve your problems? Give some feedback below.

Robots Boldly Going ...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:04:18 -0800

... Where No Man Has Gone Before

In June 2009, a remotely-operated robot submarine plunged 6.8 miles into the Pacific Ocean to film and collect samples of the Mariana Trench. (You can read about it in Discover Magazine.) You can even view these ocean depths yourself with the latest version of Google Earth.

Robots have also been to other planets. In fact, NASA has a Mars Exploration Program that uses robots called 'rovers' to scout out the planet. Two rovers were sent up in 2003 and you can track their location even to this day.

Related links:

Google Earth Version 5 goes underwater

NASA Mars Exploration Rover Mission

Curt Finch writes for a project management blog as well.

The "Other" Entrepreneurship; Inside Intuit

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:50:19 -0800

Private companies still cutting back. A new employment report from ADP estimates that private companies cut another 203,000 jobs in October, Bloomberg reports. The good news? That's down from a decline of 227,000 in September. The bad? "I’m still expecting to see payroll employment decline probably through the end of the year," Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, told Bloomberg, "not turn up until January or February."

Google's definition of disruption: the "less than free" business model. Benchmark Capital's Bill Gurley considers himself an aficionado of business disruption. Think game-changing movements like software-as-a-service, open source software, and the freemium internet model. "As a venture capitalist it is imperative to understand ways in which a smaller private company can gain the upper hand on a large incumbent." But Gurley says Google topped all other disruptive plays of all when it announced this week that it was including free turn-by-turn navigation directions with each Android mobile OS. To understand how disruptive this is to the GPS data market, says Gurley, you need to know how "turn-by-turn" data became the lynchpin that held the duopoly of NavTeq and Tele Atlas together. In a market where maps are free, turn-by-turn data, which was costly to build and maintain, became a differentiator. On the heels of Google's announcement, stocks at companies like Garmin and TomTom fell upwards of 16 percent. For Google, argues Gurley, "less than free" doesn't stop with the iPhone. If Google goes the same route with its Chrome operating system and Sony or HP or Dell build a netbook with Chrome as its base, Google would gladly pay the ad splits to the computer manufacturers to put even more pressure on Microsoft's Windows.

To build or buy a business. The popular conception of entrepreneurship involves building a business from scratch in your garage, but buying an existing venture can be a less glamorous but savvier entree into the business world. On the New York Times You're the Boss blog, Barbara Taylor outlines some of the perks of buying rather than building, including less risk and more cash flow. Also, check out Inc.'s new section on buying a small business as well as a piece on a machine shop in Indiana that's on the broker's block.

Minting a new Intuit. After Intuit closed its deal to acquire personal finance site Mint.com earlier this week, TechCrunch caught up with Mint founder and CEO Aaron Patzer to discuss the details of the acquisition. Along with the $170 million for the start-up, he also receives a new title: vice president and general manager of Intuit's Personal Finance Group. His first official mandate as boss? Putting the kibosh on Quicken Online, which, according to the post, has significantly fewer active users than Mint.com. "Over the next six to nine months," he says, "we will end-of-life Quicken Online and their customer's data will be migrated over to Mint." The move will prove to be a particularly ironic one, considering that the Quicken Online team, which Patzer now oversees, was dubious of Mint's success prior to the acquisition. Patzer says later directives will include Mint and TurboTax integration, and helping users with financial planning for "big life goals" such as paying debt or buying a house. Click here for an Inc. Q&A with Patzer, in which he explains why he finally decided to sell.

Tough economy sends even laundromats into a spin. Coin-operated laundromats have long been touted as recession-proof businesses. After all, no matter how tough times get, people will always need clean clothes. Still, today's Wall Street Journal reports that this difficult economy is even affecting laundromats, putting a strain on their reputation for always turning a profit. "Now more than ever, the adage that we're recession-proof is being tested," says the president of the Coin Laundry Association. The Journal speculates that the economy has led people to wash their clothes at the home machines of friends and family and that people are wearing clothes longer between washes. Laundromats may collect their revenue one quarter at a time, but their effect on the economy is no small change; coin laundries represents a $5 billion industry with roughly 35,000 stores nationwide.

Foursquare's Eurotrip. The location-based social networking application Foursquare, started by the founders of the similar but too-early-for-its-own-good Dodgeball, has been building serious momentum since it picked up $1.35 million in seed funding in September. First, it announced an advertising platform for small businesses to offer rewards to its members. At the time, Mashable said Foursquare beat Twitter to the "local advertising goldmine." Then it added 15 cities in the U.S. and Canada. And today, TechCrunch reports that it's also rolling out its service in 15 European cities. Earlier this month, founder Dennis Crowley told us the service only had 100,000 registered users, but it looks like it won't stay that small for long.

Social, computer-based games are dominating the video game sector. The holiday season is typically the biggest money-making time for the gaming industry, but recent price cuts for Sony's PlayStation 3, Microsoft's XBox, and Nintendo's Wii have failed to generate much of an increase in profit. However, one company that has been capitalizing on the $50 billion industry is the two-year-old London-based start-up, Playfish. Unlike traditional console-based video games, Playfish makes social, computer-based video games, which can be played through social media sites, like Facebook and Myspace. With tens of millions of people playing social games, and buying virtual goods, such as presents, clothes, and furnishings, so far, some believe that the social gaming industry is just in its infancy. Playfish chief executive, Kristian Segerstrale told Reuters, "The video-gaming market is in the middle of this fundamental tectonic-plate shift, away from being a physical product-driven industry to being a digital service-driven industry."

Tweets in Your Pocket and the Danger of Multitasking

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:46:42 -0800

Get ready for Twitter, the gadget. One of the reasons for Twitter's breakneck growth has been the company's decision to make its data available to anyone interested in building applications on top of its messaging system. (This approach has worked pretty well for two other companies you may have heard of.) Until now, all of the Twitter upstarts--such as the iPhone app Tweetie and the link-shortener Bit.ly--have focused on making software. But now, one company is trying to turn Twitter into a profitable gadget. Peek, a New York start-up that makes a cell-phone like device for email, just introduced a $199 hand-held gadget "built exclusively for sending tweets," according to the Wall Street Journal's venture capital blog. According to the article, Peek "expects the TwitterPeek to be popular among those who use Twitter to promote their business, likely equipping an employee with a dedicated device." (Via Techmeme.)

Hiring data shows a glimmer of hope. Good news! As reported in the Houston Chronicle, a recent survey of small- and medium-sized businesses showed that 28 percent are planning to add new positions. That number is up significantly from six months ago when only 18 percent said they were planning on making new hires. The survey, which was done by HR outsourcing firm Administaff, also revealed that 23 percent of companies are planning to increase their employee compensation.

Are multitaskers more productive?. Web Worker Daily says no, citing a recent study. Stanford researcher Clifford Nass started looking into the subject because he envied his students' ability to multitask and wanted to know how they did it. So Nass and his colleagues studied a group of 100 "high multitaskers" (who used four or five types of media at the same time, like texting while reading email while chatting on the phone) and "low multitaskers" (who used a piddling two at a time). The results showed that the high multitaskers did worse on all three aspects that define success: the ability to focus on the relevant and ignore the rest; the ability to organize information; and being able to move between tasks. Of course, it's possible that high multitaskers are just naturally bad at those kind of things. It's also possible checking your Blackberry while you browse the internet while you're on the phone with the client isn't actually improving your productivity. Inc.com's own Josh Spiro talked to Pandora founder Tim Westergren about this topic back in September. Read Westergren's tips for staying productive.

An academic start-up incubator. It's not always clear how to take the great ideas hatched in universities and turn them into companies. But, as TechCrunch reports, the University of Southern California's Stevens Institute for Innovation is doing its part. The college is set to announce tomorrow that the Stevens Institute has helped raise $115 million in funding for 15 USC spin-offs in the past two years, connecting entrepreneurs with foreign investors, grants, and local VCs.

How to pick your angels. Hacker News flags a post by Chris Dixon on mistakes start-ups make when choosing their angel investors. He cautions against picking angels who are suggested by your lead investors and against picking investors simply because they are well-known. Instead, Dixon recommends picking "a varied group of people." He writes, "If you want a few celebrities to create some buzz, fine. You should also pick some people who are connectors – who can introduce you to key people when you need it (varying connectors by geography and industry can also be helpful). Also very important are active entrepreneurs who can (and will) give you practical advice about hiring, product development, financing etc." For help finding angels, check out our angel investor directory.

Are entrepreneurs the new celebrities? Maybe not, says the Wall Street Journal, but things seem to be moving in that direction--at least when it comes to product endorsements. The article cites several companies, including Dell, American Express and Intel, that have recently used entrepreneurs in ad campaigns. After AT&T spotlighted Blake Mycoskie, the founder of the Venice, Calif.-based Toms Shoes, in a 30-second commercial during the Masters Golf Tournament, the spot became so popular online that the phone company produced a 60-second version that premiered on American Idol. Mycoskie also notes that his daily online traffic tripled. "There can be no doubt that AT&T is responsible for this increased exposure," he says. The Journal goes on to highlight the cost-effectiveness of using entrepreneurs, who will often do the campaigns for free, versus A-list celebrities, who can come with a million dollar price tag.

Build-a-Bear cleaning up. It's hard to believe that an industry that specializes in making cute and cuddly teddy bears, and other fuzzy friends, is worth $1.5 billion in the U.S. alone. It is, and the St. Louis, Missouri-based retailer Build-a-Bear Workshop is dominating that market, reports CNN Money. Founder Maxine Clark started the business in 1997 in her local mall, and has since expanded the enterprise to 400 locations nationwide. Build-a-Bear's 2008 revenues hit $468 million. Says Clark, "When customers create toys at Build-A-Bear Workshop, they make something that is theirs alone...At Build-a-Bear it's all right to act like a kid. That's appealing to people who are 10 or 60."

Time to diversify? When the economy is bad and revenues drop, diversification seems like a reasonable strategy. But in a Harvard Business blog post, Monica Tate-Maile discusses how hard it can be. Meanwhile, check out the Case Study in Inc.'s November issue about how a troubled company found new opportunities in lean times.

Free WiFi Codes On American Airlines

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:00:00 -0800

Attention business travelers: Lexus is sponsoring free WiFI for American Airline passengers this week.

Here's the promo code: 2010LEXUSLS

You will have to sit through an advertisement for the new Lexus LS, however.

First time WiFi users on American can use the promo code: AATRYGOGO for free access one time only.

Air Trans is offering two-for-one WiFi sessions through the end of the year.

There's a hitch to that one, however.

Uh, you would have to fly Air Trans (Oops! Was that my outside voice?).

File this one under no strings attached:

Amtrak will be launching, next year, free WiFi service to Acela passengers on Northeast routes.

Robots in the Home

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:00:41 -0800

It was just as the creators of “The Jetsons” envisioned. In 2002, Helen Greiner invented the Roomba, a hands-off device that vacuums people's homes. While it can have the occasional glitch – namely, getting stuck under the couch or something – it is an ingenious invention that has become quite popular. Interestingly enough, some people have taken this technology to new levels by “hacking” the Roomba and allowing users to do a variety of things, including make it sing, drive it around, and connect it to the internet.

Not only is a robot in the home incredibly useful, but some people find it more endearing than other types of appliances. A 2007 MSNBC article stated that many people actually become emotionally attached to their Roombas, even going so far as to name them and to re-organize their homes to make them more Roomba-friendly (and avoid the couch problem). Does this mean that we are ready to embrace robots as a more integrated part of our lives in the future?

Curt Finch is the founder & CEO of a resource management software company.

Unprepared for the Unexpected: A Look At Partnership

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0800

In the past year, all of us have had to confront huge problems—credit crunches and massive financial uncertainty—that we did not create. Now, virtually every business owner I speak to tells me they are preparing for another unforeseen macro-economic event.

The topic of our new research paper—how to properly plan for unknown events between you and your partner(s)—falls into the same category. Only in this case, the trouble begins at home.

Let me sum up this research for you in one simple statement: most business owners are ill-prepared for unexpected events between themselves and their partners. This shouldn't be too surprising. When one is working towards growth everyday and putting out fires all the time, it's hard to find room for things that haven't yet happened.

My advice? Find the room. Because an unexpected event—a partner's divorce, an accident or illness, even the death of a key colleague—can lay asunder years of hard work. We looked to Russ Alan Prince and Hannah Shaw Grove, our friends who always have an ear pointed in the direction of business owners, for guidance on this serious topic. Their research shows us both the worst and best practices in this crucial area of business emergency preparedness.

When you read this research, don't just get scared. Act. As the old saying goes, the best time to plant an Oak Tree was 30 years ago. The second best time is today.

Like all emergency planning, we hope you never have to confront the challenges that set up the solutions outlined in this paper. But inevitably, some of you will. When that happens, be prepared.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Inc. Business Owners Council will be holding an event on "Partnership Agreements" on Nov. 17 and 18 in Greenwich, CT, New York City, and Norther New Jersey. For more information, click here.

Confessions of a Facebook Spammer; Starting Your Own Category

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:38:46 -0800

How Facebook spam works. Facebook just won a $711 million lawsuit against an email marketer who had operated a spam scam on the social network. But scams are still endemic on the social network, according to a guest post on TechCrunch. "The underlying premise of all the advertising techniques we've discussed so far is that trickery is profitable," writes Dennis Yu, CEO of BlitzLocal. "Fool them into thinking the new friend request is from Facebook, lie to them that the miracle skin creme is actually free, tell them they'll earn points if they just click this button-which then puts their email address on a list that's resold to the top spammers in the world." The post is a great read if you're interested in the dark side of online advertising, and it contains an interesting prediction about Facebook." I honestly believe from my meetings at Facebook, that they've all drunk the Zucker-koolaid and are putting the user experience ahead of earnings," Yu writes. "That's why, if you're a UK resident, you're not seeing those sexy Russian dating ads from a couple months ago-but man, were those profitable."

Starting your own (profitable) category. "If you can't be the first in a category, set up a new category you can be the first in." So say the authors of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. Entrepreneurs like Gary Vaynerchuk and Tim Ferriss are certainly evidence that you can build a brand the around a unique personality or passion. But where do you start? Web Worker Daily outlines five steps to building your own category, including abandoning the idea of appealing to everyone, being laser-focused and building the framework to support your individual voice.

Federal agencies try the cash-for-innovation model. In the past, businesses have often taken the lead in advertising high-profile competitions that were accompanied by sizable cash prizes in order to spark inventors' interest in developing new technologies. These days, however, it has become the norm for federal agencies to also use contests to inspire innovative inventors by offering financial rewards. As reported by the Boston Globe, the Department of Defense has used these types of contests to hasten the design of military robots that soldiers can carry during combat, and NASA has also awarded more than $2 million since 2006 through its Centennial Challenges program to innovators who have designed space-faring robots. According to Andy Petro, manager of the NASA prize program, "We're not paying for ideas; we're only making awards when an idea has been translated into practical reality."

Small business lender files for bankruptcy. The will it, won't it, drama surrounding commercial lender CIT Group came to an end yesterday when the 101-year-old lender said it was entering a "prepackaged" reorganization plan through bankruptcy court, The New York Times reports. The company said it expects to emerge from the proceedings before year's end. CIT is one of the nation's biggest players in the "factoring" industry, whereby "suppliers and manufacturers sell payments owed for goods and services to companies such as CIT because they need immediate cash," Bloomberg explains. With an estimated 70 percent of the factoring market, CIT is a huge lender to the retail industry, including thousands of small and mid-sized businesses. "Short term, it's going to cause some difficulties for startups and smaller borrowers," Jean Everett, a partner at Hiscock & Barclay LLP, told Bloomberg. The big losers on the deal? Likely the taxpayers, who are expected to lose most, if not all, of their $2.3 billion bailout investment in CIT.

The balancing act with virtual goodsAs we've noted before, virtual goods are flourishing, but it can be a tight rope act for companies to get revenue from players of their virtual games without scaring them off. Companies need to employ both economists who help find the perfect price for the goods, and creative types who ensure that the virtual games and social networks stay engaging and competitive. Virtual goods are estimated to be and $1 billion business in the U.S. according to the San Francisco Chronicle but usually only 5 to 10 percent of users help the companies pull in money. Plus, there's always the danger that a newer, cooler game will drag players away. But despite the risks, the industry is expected to remain lucrative. Charles Hudson, founder of the Virtual Goods Summit which was held last week in San Francisco says, "People are going to keep spending money on virtual goods because they're spending time in these places, building relationships and engaging content. It's just like another hobby."

Amazon and Zappos make it official. And the price is $1.2 billion. The acquisition was announced several months ago, but the deal has received government approval, and it closed over the weekend. (In the interim, the total size of the deal went up by $300 million, thanks to a jump in Amazon's stock price.) CEO Tony Hsieh writes, "I'm excited because Amazon supports us in continuing to grow our vision as an independent entity, under the Zappos brand and with our unique culture." (For more on how Zappos grew itself into a billion dollar company, check out our May cover story.)

More from Inc. Magazine:

Get this delivered to your inbox.

Friend us on Facebook.

I Can't Stand ICANN's Latest Decision

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:00:00 -0800

I do not consider myself a xenophobic ugly American. I am not one of these English-only types that cringes everytime I see a sign in two or three languages or gets excited everytime Congress makes noise about making English the official national language.

ICANN (the people who regulate domain names and web site extensions, like dotcom and dotinfo) has passed what it's calling the "Internationalized Domain Name Fast Track Process", which will allow a long list of non-latin alphabet characters to be used as domain extensions.

This means you could be doing business globally with sites ending in Chinese or Farsi or Arabic characters, for example.

I guess the West is getting some of its own back in this decision in all fairness.

For purely selfish reasons, I dread this (I have no idea how to type in Japanese characters).

I'm sure that I'm not alone in this.

Here's what I predict will happen:

- Any web site that does business with Westerners will have an all Latin alphabet address that redirects to their site anyway.

- This goes into effect sometime next year. Google will undoubtedly have something in beta by then to translate extensions into the Latin alphabet.

- Microsoft Office won't have alternative alphabets in its font offerings. But it will still have Wing Dings, which is of no use to anyone.

Sprint Says No More Tethering

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:19:20 -0800

I suppose they can't help themselves. They are a phone company, after all. How many of you out there use your smartphone to get online with your laptop by tethering the latter to the former?

Uh, huh! I don't have to see you to know there are a lot of hands shooting up right now.

Bad news if you're a Sprint customer. Sprint announced this week it will no longer allow its customers to tether their way online with their smartphones. From now on, you'll have to use a special Sprint dongle and get yourself a separate data plan (No, you're not wrong. You are being turned upside down by your ankles while your carrier shakes you down for more cash).

Eeeee-vil!

That's just wrong as my best friend, Zelda, would say.

You can bet the other carriers will be right on their heels with this one.

I got one word to say: netbook.

That's what this is about.

Let me harkin back to a posting of mine from earlier this month, "Will Telcos Kill The Netbook?"

I made the prediction that the telcos are aiming to co-opt the netbook business with their own business model that is not so user-friendly.

It's already happening.

I bought my netbook for $330 this summer, competitively priced to undersell the larger, more powerful laptops. I fear these days are dwindling. It appears the phone carriers are hoping to sell netbooks like mobile phones with a monthly data plan and a two-year contractual commitment (plus whatever extras they can sell you).

Of course, in order for this to work, they need to make sure you can't use your smartphone to get your netbook online,

This would be like your cable television provider making you get separate accounts for every television in your house with cable access (instead of a nominal monthly fee on the same bill for each additional outlet).

This would be like your electric company making you set up a separate account for every plug in your house.

This would be like the water company making you set up a separate account for every faucet, washer and dishwasher hook-up in your house.

This would be like your electric company no longer allowing you to power small appliances with a handful of Duracell batteries. Instead you would have to use a proprietary battery of theirs set up under a separate account with a monthly basic fee that is double your basic electric bill fees,

Not much will be said about this up front. Trust me, there's going to come a time when the consumer catches on and realizes what a shameles stick-up this is.

We pay for Internet access at home. Businesses pay for it at work. We pay for Internet access on our mobile devices. Now Sprint wants you to pay separately for netbook access.

Monthly Internet access should not look like a car payment.

People use the Internet on the move across multiple devices. People should not be forced to pay for separate data plans for every location and device they use to go online.

I wish I were a Sprint customer so I could dump them in protest.

Sprint Says No More Tethering

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:00:00 -0700

I suppose they can't help themselves. They are a phone company, after all. How many of you out there use your smartphone to get online with your laptop by tethering the latter to the former?

Uh, huh! I don't have to see you to know there are a lot of hands shooting up right now.

Eeeee-vil!

That's just wrong as my best friend, Zelda, would say.

You can bet the other carriers will be right on their heels with this one.

I got one word to say: netbook.

That's what this is about.

Let me harkin back to a posting of mine from earlier this month, "Will Telcos Kill The Netbook?"

I made the prediction that the telcos are aiming to co-opt the netbook business with their own business model that is not so user-friendly.

It's already happening.

Of course, in order for this to work, they need to make sure you can't use your smartphone to get your netbook online,

This would be like your electric company making you set up a separate account for every plug in your house.

This would be like the water company making you set up a separate account for every faucet, washer and dishwasher hook-up in your house.

Not much will be said about this up front. Trust me, there's going to come a time when the consumer catches on and realizes what a shameles stick-up this is.

We pay for Internet access at home. Businesses pay for it at work. We pay for Internet access on our mobile devices. Now Sprint wants you to pay separately for netbook access.

Monthly Internet access should not look like a car payment.

People use the Internet on the move across multiple devices. People should not be forced to pay for separate data plans for every location and device they use to go online.

I wish I were a Sprint customer so I could dump them in protest.

The Best and Worst of Female Bosses

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:40:12 -0700

I don’t know what kind of boss I am at VerticalResponse—you’d have to ask my staff about that. I think they’d say I’m fair, fun, I like to cut to the chase, and will use fewer words than most to try to get my point across. They’d probably say that as long as they’re getting their jobs done, I don’t interfere too much, and I’d like to think I try to remove obstacles for them. I hope that they’d say I believe in growth from within a company. I like to think I learned this from a few bosses in my past that just happened to be women.

Cut back to the early 90’s and my second job out of college when I was a sales assistant at a major media corporation in New York. I was privileged to have a wonderful boss, Tracy. I was a bit nervous to take the job because I was leaving one department to go to another and I felt guilty for leaving my current boss, but I was really in a dead-end position. Tracy really gave me a chance given that I didn’t know anything about sales in a media corporation and she went out of her way to help me grow.

Tracy was a nice, elegant, Southern woman, about late 30’s, and even though there was nothing pretentious about her, she probably made over $250K a year. She took me under her wing and made the time to sit with me and teach me the ropes. It was my job to make sure her sales orders got processed and instead of telling me to “just do it,” she explained why it had to be done. It took an investment of her time up front, which took away from her selling, but in the end, she knew it would benefit her.

Tracy had respect. When things were going awry with her clients, she never let it get to her and never blamed me. “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” she always said. She made me feel very much a part of her work life and let me really get to know our clients. And although I made a mere $19,000 a year, she always took care of me and encouraged me with spot bonuses and beautiful holiday gifts all tied to work well done.

In the end, she wanted to help elevate me so that one day, if I wanted it, perhaps I could “graduate” into a successful salesperson like her.

Now for the dark side.

When Tracy left her job, I was re-assigned to Liz. She was a tough, divorced, single, fast-moving, New Yorker who was looking to “climb to the top” and she was taking no prisoners on the way. Liz was anything but calm; she ran around the office shouting orders at me, but always stamped her shouts with a wink and a smile as if that would make me feel better about being yelled at. If something was going wrong with a client, her first thought was to point the finger at me: “Let me see the order YOU wrote up.” She rarely took responsibility.

She never made me feel like I was part of her accounts and often kept the clients to herself. I often wondered, Was she so shallow that she thought I would rise up through the ranks and compete with her? Or did she simply want to keep me in the current position forever and not help elevate a young up-and-comer?

You might be thinking I wasn’t lucky for having Liz in my life, but I don’t see it that way! I learned a lesson from her that year—what I don’t want to be and how I don’t want to treat people—which can be just as valuable.

Remembering a Fast-Food Icon; The Rise of NYC Start-ups

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:20:23 -0700

Fred Wilson on "slow capital".The VC and blogger Fred Wilson tackles the slow movement today, and introduces a new term: slow capital. The slow movement encourages people to focus less on accomplishing tasks and more on taking one's time with things. Wilson's take includes focusing on meeting the company's needs rather than the investors' and being flexible with timing. "I've spent almost twenty five years in the capital markets watching investors behave," he writes. "Way too often it is a 'wham bam' experience and then off to the next deal. Things like exploding offers, 'fly by' board members, and shotgun marriages are so common that you sometimes wonder how anyone makes any money. There's a reason why Warren Buffet is the best investor of his generation."

How to come up with a company name. Don't stress. That's the advice of Thomas Petersen who says that a great product will more than compensate for a bad name. So focus on that. "There are no perfect names only great products," he writes. Still, coming up with a name--especially at a time when many short dot-coms are taken--is hard. Petersen advises picking a name that says something about your product. And keep in mind that bad names can start sounding pretty good if your company does a good job. "Your brand cannot make your product better, only you can make your name better," he writes. "By making sure that your customers and users get good experiences when they interact with you, your name will gain value. Therefore concentrate on your customer service, optimizing the service, providing superior experiences and maximum utility and your name is well on its way to be the perfect name you wanted it to be."

Remembering a fast-food legend. Sad news for fast-food aficionados as Troy Smith, founder of the drive-in burger chain Sonic, passed away this week at the age of 87. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Smith's burger joints were originally named Top Hat, but after he introduced a system where drive-in patrons could deliver their orders via speakers, the name Sonic was chosen and gave birth to the company's slogan, "Service with the speed of sound." An innovator in the restaurant field, Smith's original fast-food chains in the 1950's included waitresses on roller skates, a streamlined kitchen, and angled parking spots so that the "wild teenagers," as he described them, couldn't park window-to-window. Smith became Sonic's "chairman emeritus" in 1983, but remained involved with the business as an advisor. In 2008, Sonic had $3.8 billion in sales and 3,600 stores in 42 states.

The SBA ups the size limit for small businesses. If this first round of proposed revisions is adopted, more than 12,000 additional companies would be considered small businesses, and hence become eligible for SBA loans and preference for federal contracting, reports the Washington Business Journal. A total of 71 different types of businesses would enjoy SBA-sanctioned benefits should the changes be approved, including hotels, retailers, and various sectors within the service industry. According to SBA Administrator Karen Mills, the size increase is designed to "reflect changes in the economy and the marketplace."

Facebook and Zappos on hiring strategies It seems like there's always some new company started by former Google employees, but is that good press for the company or brain drain? As the Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Zappos' Tony Hsieh recently discussed their opposing philosophies of employee hiring and retention at Y Combinator's Startup School. Zuckerberg favors a revolving door of bright people honing their craft at Facebook and then going on to their own creative endeavors. Hsieh said he aims to keep employees for the long haul and explained how he achieved that goal. "We now provide mentorship and training so employees can join at the entry level and, over a period of five to seven years, have the opportunity and training to become senior leaders in the company," he said. "Constant growth is what will keep them in the company for a very long time." Get some additional hiring tips from Whole Foods' John Mackey.

Do you know where your children are? Well, if they're at Keith Valley Middle School, be afraid, says TechCrunch. Very afraid. That's because Microsoft has gotten a hold of them, and the result is a cult-like video starring the Bing jingle. (Director's note: What isn't shown is the aftermath in which the Bing students get stuffed in lockers by their Google counterparts.)

Vibrant tech startups emerge from New York's financial wreckage. According to Wired, New York City's tech scene has got an unexpected boost from the financial sector's demise. Investors that used to look to larger institutions are giving startups that need just a couple hundred thousand more of a chance. Scrappy tech CEOs are also having an easier time pulling good talent. With the financial and media industries in turmoil, the market in general is more hospitable to these upstarts. Engineers that were once hard to lure away from six-figure salaries are attending suddenly maxed-out events like NY Tech Meetup. And VCs like Spark Capital, Polaris in Boston, and First Round in Philly are creating a network effect. In fact, New York has been quietly, asserting itself as a hub for tech startups for the past couple years. First Round Capital's entrepreneur-in-residence Charlie O'Donnell tells Wired, "Some of the entrepreneurs who have been 'head down,' building great businesses, are now able to take a breath for the first time in years . . . so there's more visible participation from them in the community." So who are some of these phoenixes rising from the ashes? Ivy Exec: "like an even more velvet-roped version of Ladders.com" that Inc. profiled in July. And GiveReal: a site that started out as a Facebook group and lets people give gifts at nearly a million different merchants by piggybacking on existing credit card networks. (Hat tip, peHUB).

More from Inc. Magazine:

Get this delivered to your inbox.

Friend us on Facebook.

Abraham Lincoln's Financial Adviser Slept There

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:57:51 -0700

On Wednesday, Oct. 21 and Thursday, Oct. 22, local members of the Greater New York business community got together on the shores of Stamford, CT, then downtown Manhattan, and finally in an imposing home on a hill in Short Hills, NJ, to discuss a serious topic: year-end tax planning for businesses and business owners.

Lucky attendees to this Rothstein Kass and Co. sponsored event received a free copy of High & Dry: Retirement Planning Mistakes by Business Owners.

In Stamford, CT, we were treated to a gorgeous evening in a beautiful new home on the shores of Long Island Sound. The house was "move-in" condition for the first lucky duck ready to fork over $8 million. Throughout the home, original art from the likes of Warhol and others hung on the walls, courtesy of Samuel Owen Gallery, also in Stamford, CT.

In New York, we met in the wood-paneled conference room of Darby and Darby, an intellectual property law firm in downtown Manhattan. If you can imagine floating 42 stories above New York, you can imagine the scene at Darby and Darby.

Finally, in Short Hills, NJ, we gathered in the historic home of Abraham Lincoln's Financial Adviser's home. That's right, Abe's financial advisor slept there. The house, more like a castle, was set on 2+ acres and was modernized from top to bottom over the last 4 years. Buy it for $11.9 million and they'll throw in the squash court.

Okay, enough about real estate. We were together to discuss ways to use advanced financial and tax planning techniques in order to turn 2009 from a crummy year into a so-so year and turn 2010 from a re-building year into an outstanding year.

(NOTE: Abraham Lincoln's financial adviser did not respond to requests to speak at our event. Something about his voice mailbox being full.)

With just 70 days left in the year, our experts were given the difficult task of imparting at least one solid piece of wisdom that the business owner participants could take home to their financial advisers and accountants and apply to their current situation--a challenge, indeed.

Alan Kufeld, a partner at Rothstein Kass, the CPA firm, was first up. Kufeld opened with a game-changer: "forget the conventional wisdom," he said. "After a year of financial turmoil, learn to embrace the 'new normal.'" Kufeld quickly dove into specifics.

For example, while most business owners are told by their advisers and accountants to speed up expenses at year-end while simultaneously slowing down accounts payable from our clients, Kufeld says that in 2009 that should be reversed. Why?

"With health care legislation in the offing, tax rates are likely to be higher in 2010 than they are in 2009. Why accelerate expenses in 2009 when you can take them in 2010?. The reverse would be true with revenues."

If, like most of us, you believe taxes are going to go up, that little chestnut could save you lots of money. Kudos Kufeld. What else have you got?

"Give part of your company away now, while it's probably worth less than it will be in the future."

Say what, Alan?

"When your company suffers a bad year, that's the perfect time to pass it on to the next generation or place it in a trust. That way, you can get the value of the company out of your estate and into the hands of your children most cost-effectively. In the years to come, when the value increases, that value will not be part of your taxable estate."

POW, I did not expect that. Give away equity when it's worth very little? "Yes," says Kufeld, "and soon, before Washington D.C. takes away some of the advantages."

While the audience was pondering that one and scribbling calculations on scraps of paper to see how much money Kufeld may have saved them, he pulled out his best for last.

For this idea, Kufeld teamed up with high net worth specialist, Frank Seneco, of Seneco & Associates in New Haven, CT. To summarize, Seneco and Kufeld presented a way to effectively create your own liquidity event on your own terms. Using their idea, you can take hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax losses over several years, saving you thousands of dollars in taxes and fund a lifetime pension plan for you and the other owners.

WHACK! Out of the ballpark!

It's called a benefit-focused pension plan and it's been around since 2008. While it's not right for everyone, Kufeld and Seneco walked through the scenario enough to get the audience's juices flowing. "That," Seneco says, "is how you turn a crummy 2009 into a good year and how you turn 2010 and beyond into great years."

In Seneco's scenario, you could create as much as $33,000 per MONTH payments for life out of your business.

Of course, the details are far too complicated to address in a blog. For more about benefit-focused pension planning, consider downloading our new research report for business owners about falling behind on retirement planning, entitled "High & Dry."

The next Inc. Business Owners Council: Greater New York event will occur on Nov. 17 and 18, 2009 in Greenwich, CT, Elizabeth, NJ, and Manhattan. For more information, email "events@inc.com".

AI Technology

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:00:24 -0700

I was recently interviewed by a reporter from ComputerWorld about overhyped technology, and it got me thinking about artificial intelligence. When I was reading books about LISP in the 1980s, I envisioned that by the 21st century we would have come up with multipurpose devices to both understand and react to the reality surrounding them. Instead, all we have are toys like the Roomba.

So what have our biggest advances in AI and robotics actually been? I did a little research on the web (and YouTube) to gather some examples.

Robots on the Battlefield

Peter W. Singer just published “Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century,” which focuses on how military forces from 44 different countries are already taking advantage of this kind of technology. You can watch an interview where Singer discusses his work on YouTube (below).

What does this kind of technology mean for the future of warfare?

9 Ways to Cut Energy Costs

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:33:00 -0700

You changed the light bulbs and lowered the thermostat and for a long time, that was enough. Reducing energy use was traditionally for environmental crusaders. But energy costs have been rising in recent years and new taxes are on the horizon, so every business has a reason to become more efficient. Here's how.

Pay Scales for 20 Different Job Descriptions

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:25:45 -0700

Talent may be cheap right now, but if your dazzling new hire proves successful, don't expect the bargain to last. That's because salaries rise, often steeply, as employees gain experience--human resources experts call it the maturity curve. Inc. asked PayScale, the Seattle-based salary and compensation data provider, to calculate the maturity curves for 20 jobs found at most growing companies.

10 Free (or Cheap) Tools for Start-ups

Wed, 27 May 2009 12:55:24 -0700

"As the head of a startup with no money, I use as many free tools as possible," says Chadd Bennett, founder of RetroRazor, a Seattle-based company that sells old-fashioned safety razors. Here are 10 free or inexpensive web-based tools that Bennett uses to save time, cut costs, and boost sales.

Reengineering the Human Body

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:07:00 -0700

Today’s biotech entrepreneurs are confronting medical conditions head-on with innovative technologies -- some changing the way new procedures are marketed, others looking to drive down health care costs altogether. From head to toe, here are some promising companies who are transforming the human body -- one organ at a time.

Company Contests: How to Foster a Little Friendly Competition

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:04:39 -0700

Want to encourage competition through a company contest? Here's how to get the most out of an internal rivalry–and make sure it doesn't get ugly.

Meet the Designers of the 21st-Century Factory

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:31:39 -0700

Ponoko is bridging physical reality and digital efficiency with a global, distributed manufacturing network that takes as much inspiration from Flickr as it does from a machine shop.

30 Under 30: America's Coolest Young Entrepreneurs

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:02:44 -0700

The honorees on this year's 30 Under 30 list are perhaps our most
dynamic group yet -- building successful companies online, overseas,
and in the skies above us (literally). Meet America's coolest young
entrepreneurs.

Fountain of Youth: The Under 30 Hall of Fame

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:12:08 -0700

Some of the biggest names in business got their start before their 30th birthday.

The Next Big Ideas: Cool Products from America's Coolest Young Entrepreneurs

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:08:01 -0700

Do you fantasize about doodling on your office walls? Want to host your own live TV show online? Are you craving truffle oil popcorn? The companies on this year's 30 Under 30 list might have just what you're looking for.

A Free Beer With Every Haircut

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:01:45 -0700

Birds Barbershop has tapped into the energy of Austin, Texas to build a $2 million business with four locations in just three years.

Business Advice from the 2009 Inc. 500 Conference

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:07:18 -0700

The speakers at the 2009 Inc. 500 conference, held in National Harbor, Maryland, share their tips and advice on how to run a fast-growing company. Among them: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, BET founder Robert L. Johnson, Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith, Tastefully Simple founder Jill Blashack Strahan, and author Jim Collins.

Start-up Secrets: Tips from America's Coolest Young Entrepreneurs

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:46:34 -0700

We asked the honorees on our 30 Under 30 list for the best business advice they had to offer other prospective entrepreneurs. Here's what they had to say.

How This Kid Made $170 Million in Two Years

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:46:31 -0700

Aaron Patzer launched Mint.com as a user-friendly alternative to Quicken and other personal-finance software out there. Little did he know that just two years later, Intuit, which makes Quicken, would fork over $170 million for his website. So how'd he do it?

The 2009 Inc. 5000: Top 10 Oldest Companies

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:23:28 -0700

These Inc. 5000 companies have continued to generate growth, despite getting started more than 150 years ago.

5 Great Software Packages for Bootstrappers

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:11:16 -0700

Free is a lovely word; unfortunately, it's often followed by a disappointing product. We have found 5 great free apps that will help you run your business. Some are so good, you might even be willing to (shudder) spend money on them.

How to Live Stream a Meeting

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:34:15 -0700

Scott Kurtz was looking for a way to promote his 10-year-old Web cartoon business when he decided to broadcast himself drawing the strip, an ode to video games and the geeks who love them called PvPOnline.com.

After some initial experimentation, the 38-year-old Dallas resident hit on a winning formula: he draws the strip directly onto a touch-sensitive computer screen and live streams the video and audio over a website called Ustream.tv so fans can watch him work.

At first Kurtz was self conscious about sharing his creative process with the world. But once dozens and then hundreds of fans started logging on at any given time -- and sticking around to chat with each other and buy the strip’s merchandise -- Kurtz got a lot more comfortable with the concept. “They really are getting to know me, they’re getting invested, and that’s the X factor between a causal viewer and someone who might want to buy something,” he says.

Like Kurtz, small business owners are starting to use live streaming in all aspects of their operations, including sales, marketing, and customer service.

Broadcasting in real time

Live streaming is like podcasting with a few major exceptions. Both consist of an audio or video segment broadcast over the Internet. But while a podcast is recorded for future download and playback, live streaming happens in the here and now. Unlike the solitary experience of listening to a podcast, broadcasters also link live streams to chat rooms and other social networking features so viewers can exchange comments with each other while they’re watching.

Live streaming is taking off in and out of business circles because the equipment that’s required has become plentiful and cheap. It’s also been helped by a proliferation of Internet-based broadcasters such as Ustream, Livestream.com, and Justin.tv that small business owners can use to stream their feeds for little or nothing.

In many parts of the country, companies that would rather not take on the logistics of live streaming a meeting themselves can now hire a live streaming producer or consultant to do the work for them for hundreds or thousands of dollars depending on the length and complexity what’s being produced.

For do-it-yourself types, a basic live stream set up doesn’t cost much. Must-haves include:

A reliable high-speed Internet connection and some kind of video input -- a high resolution or high-definition video camera is recommended but even a PC’s built-in webcam will do
Audio from a video camera or stand alone microphone
A computer with enough processing power and memory to handle upload speeds of 500 kilobytes per second for normal broadcasting or 1 megabytes per second for HD pictures

Kurtz, the Web cartoonist, uses a free software program called CamTwist to stream what appears on his Mac’s monitor to Ustream, and Audio Hijack Pro, another free program that lets him stream audio from his video camera, Skype, iTunes, or another audio source.

Though she can’t quantify exactly how many of Livestream.com’s 450,000 active channels are run by small businesses, the number is growing, says Deborah Kornfilt, the New York City company’s head of content and partnerships. Among them: Network Solutions, which streamed its recent GrowSmartBizConference on the network; Women’s Enterprise Network, an Ohio-based organization that runs a channel devoted to promoting women in business; and a retailer that streamed a fashion show to market its wedding dresses. “They had a contest to win a wedding gown and used live stream as an incentive to bring traffic to their site,” Kornfilt says.

Like several other live stream broadcasters, Livestream.com offers a free service that’s supported by advertising, as well as premium plans with lots of extra, including a white-label player companies can put on their own website. At Livestream.com, premium plans cost $350 and $1,250 a month for additional channels and storage as well as HD-quality video.

Hiring a live stream producer

Businesses that would rather not do their own live streaming can hire Internet broadcasters and live event producers to do the work for them. SLL Productions in Portland, Ore., handles everything related to designing, setting up, and broadcasting an event. The firm, run by husband and wife team Mike and Cami Gebhardt, also provide extras such as conducting interviews at a company’s event and broadcasting them along with the event’s main stream. “It provides a deeper online experience for people who can’t attend” in person, Mike Gebhardt says.

Joe Christiansen, owner of Blaze Streaming Media, also of Portland, thinks of himself as a virtual event coordinator, staging a client’s live stream, testing Internet access at a meeting space and capturing e-mail addresses from people who watch the live stream for the client to use for lead generation afterward. He also acts as the liaison between his client and the live stream broadcaster and provides extras that a Livestream.com or Ustream might not offer.

Such customization doesn’t come cheap. Christiansen’s fee for live streaming an event runs $1,000 to $10,000. His bill to live stream an Oregon soil company’s three-hour fall meeting, including running multiple cameras and live chat was $3,500. Christiansen’s fee also included statistics on exactly how many minutes each one of the company’s customers tuned in, information sales reps will use in follow-up calls. “Times are tough and their attendance was down” but the live stream gave the company a way to connect to customers anyway, he says.

Browser Wars: Does IE8 Change the Game?

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:26:07 -0700

Built into Windows 7 or available as a free download for other operating systems, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) offers a number of improvements and new features to go up against the likes of competing browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, and Opera.

IE8 delivers Internet users stepped up security against cross-site scripting attacks, downloads of malicious code, phishing, and other security risks. At the same time, the new browsing platform provides businesses with tools to centrally manage and configure group policies for the office, streamlined browser management, built-in developer tools to help save your developers time, and backwards compatibility with the earlier browser version, IE7.

The question for businesses now is whether IE8 is a game-changer in the battle of the browsers and whether your organization should standardize on IE8 -- or any of its well-regarded rivals.

Browsing issues to consider

There are several ways small and mid-sized businesses use Web browsers. Employees often use browsers to look for information about customers, competitors, or products on the Internet. At the same time, a growing number of companies are using and/or developing Web applications that need to be compatible with Web browsers.

Deciding which browser is best for a small business "is like asking an Italian and a Frenchman which country has the best food," jokes Steve Hilton, vice president of small and mid-sized business research at the Boston-based Yankee Group.

The advice may depend on which computing platform your business uses, PC-based or Mac. "My advice for picking a browser is simple: Internet Explorer 8 is your default, but if you feel like experimenting consider Firefox or Chrome and you might find one particularly appealing from a user-interface point-of-view," says Hilton. This isn't the case for a Mac user, though, he adds. "Apple-heads should just stick with Safari."

So, does it really matter which browser you go with? Not really, say some experts. "For most companies it's the path of least resistance, so whatever is the default on the operating system -- Internet Explorer for Windows or Safari for the Mac OS -- is the first one to try," advises Michael Gartenberg, vice president at Interpret LLC, a market research firm based in New York and Los Angeles.

The launch of IE8 provides businesses with a safe bet for standardization -- sort of. "At the end of the day, you won't have an issue if you go with IE8 as it's secure and stable," Gartenberg says. "Microsoft has done an excellent job to move the product forward over the years, but honestly, any modern browser is going to work pretty well for you."

That said, Gartenberg says Microsoft's dominance of market share in the browser space means some applications might favor IE8 over others in the compatibility department.

A company involved in writing Web apps should also take a browser-agnostic approach, both Hilton and Gartenberg say. "Web builders need to optimize sites for all of these browsers, but at least make sure IE and Firefox work, and then pick-up the Apple-centric products," Hilton advises.

"If you're writing Web-compliant apps, you shouldn't play favorites," adds Gartenberg.

Windows 7's relevance

Gartenberg says IE8, which is bundled in every copy of Windows 7, gives Microsoft a "home court advantage" in the browser wars. But it's not without merit: "IE8 does work better in Windows 7, so the combo helps Microsoft -- and ultimately, its users, too."

But that doesn't mean there isn't room for competition. "While I have not tested all browser and operating system combinations, I can't imagine Microsoft would do anything intentional to impede the use of competing browsers in Window 7," says Hilton.

Referencing antitrust issues, Hilton adds "surely Microsoft, and their legal department, would follow that old adage, 'once bitten, twice shy,' when it comes to their operating system and browser issues."

Quick pros and cons

While some technology analysts take laissez faire approach to deciding which browser is best for your business, there are still some advantages and shortcomings to each of the big players. Here they are:

Internet Explorer 8

Pros: Most websites and plugs-ins work well with IE. Faster speeds and handy time-saving tools. Compatibility View helps see older websites easier. Available in multiple languages. Built into Windows.
Cons: Security holes still found. Market share leader means more susceptible to attacks. Some crashing.

Mozilla Firefox

Pros: Newest version is roughly three times faster than Firefox 3.0. Tabbed browsing works well. Convenient features, including location-aware browsing. Vibrant and passionate development community.
Cons: Some bugs and security issues that requires "patching."

Opera

Pros: Lean and fast. Secure. Mouse gestures and other extra features in Opera (including Opera Unite) are handy additions.
Cons: Doesn't fare as well on heavy multimedia sites. Not as much plug-in support than IE and Firefox.

Apple Safari

Pros: Good looking. Fast. Reliable. Minimalist design.
Cons: Close button on left side. Not much mouse functionality (e.g. middle button). No status bar. Not all plug-ins supported. Built into Macs.

Google Chrome

Pros: Clean and fast. Some nice features like shortcuts. Available in 50 languages.
Cons: Lack of add-ons; not all websites/plug-ins are supported. No support for Macs.

Track Comments about Your Business Online

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:17:57 -0700

A few weeks ago, a Twitter user tweeted that she was planning to try Zitune, a restaurant in Los Altos, Calif. David Auerbach, the restaurant's co-owner got an e-mail alert from a Web-based service Trackle, calling his attention to the tweet. As he often does, he sent a response thanking her for visiting Zitune and asking how she'd liked it. Soon, they had a dialogue going. Then she asked if Zitune's chef (and Auerbach's brother-in-law) would like to be interviewed for her video blog.

"The restaurant business has been tough for the last year and a half," Auerbach says. "Having a blogger or video blogger write anything about us, any extra PR we can get is a huge plus. And Trackle found it."

Trackle is one of a new crop of online services that helps you "listen" for keyword mentions on social networks and around the Web, and will send an alert when someone mentions your business or product -- or your competitor. Services like Trackle go way beyond Google Alerts and other news alert services because they monitor microblogs such as Twitter, social networks such as Facebook, and the blogosphere, as well.

"Increasingly, it's consumers, not news outlets, that are putting out information other consumers use," says Blake Cahill, senior vice president of marketing at Visible Technologies, which both tracks keywords and interprets the resulting data. "Consumers have as much impact on your brand as you do." The majority of consumers check user reviews before making a major purchase, he notes.

But if knowing what customers and others are saying about you online is absolutely essential, it can also be very time-consuming. "You can spend a lot of time doing searches on Twitter and Facebook and Google and so on to find out who's talking about your restaurant," Auerbach says. "It's really helpful to get a daily update where everything is all in one place."

For Veronica Sopher, executive assistant at Ben Bridge Jeweler, looking after the company's social network presence is only one part of her job. She uses Social Mention among other services to follow Ben Bridge, but also flag mentions of "ring shopping," so as to find and start conversations with brides-to-be under her Twitter handle @BenBridgeGirl.

"I talk with them in a girly fashion and find out what wedding dress they're dreaming about or ask them to send me photos of the ring they're considering," she says. "My strategy is not to make sales with tweets, but to raise brand awareness and present a more personable side of what is often perceived as a cookie-cutter jewelry retailer." The advantage of a service like Social Mention, she adds, is that it also flags the company's name all over the Web, so if, for instance, a non-profit organization thanks Ben Bridge for a donation on its website, Sopher can follow up with a friendly e-mail.

Picking the right service

Most every small business can benefit from some online tracking of its name and product mentions around the Web and in social networks, but picking the right service can be tricky. Services range from completely free to a minimum charge of $500 a month -- and most seem to fall at one extreme or the other. The pay services will aggregate thousands of mentions according to metrics like "sentiment" (whether people are mentioning you in a negative or positive light).

Here are some popular choices:

Social Mention, a free service, allows you to search the Web, as well as Twitter and Facebook for keywords, and can list them in a once-a-day e-mail alert as well or get a "Realtime buzz" widget for your website.
Trackle tracks keywords across the Internet and social media, but also tracks many other items, such as weather in your location, local news, real estate values, and even crime in your neighborhood. You can get email alerts, or any of the company's "tracklets" can also be used as widgets.
Viralheat alerts you to mentions with some analytics and a new option to filter results by location. It's a rare moderately priced pay option, with plans starting at $9.99 a month a month to track up to 10 keywords or phrases.
Visible Technologies has plans starting at $500 per month for up to 20,000 results and offers analysis to help you get the sense of what people are saying. "Small businesses can do a lot of tracking with free tools," Cahill notes. "But as brands get popular and the volume gets big, it becomes difficult to follow all those mentions."

Whichever service you use, experts agree, it's important to not only listen to what people are saying, but respond promptly. "Social networks can help bring a problem to the surface faster than it would otherwise," Cahill says. By letting users know you're working to solve the problem you may find some of your critics turn into defenders, he says. But, he adds, "Once you start engaging in a dialogue with customers on a social network, you have to be genuine, you have to be transparent, and you have to keep at it."

"I try never to go 24 hours without checking what people are saying about us and posting," Sopher adds. "Once you have a presence in social media, it's like adopting a puppy. You can't ignore it."

Should You Create an iPhone App?

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:11:34 -0700

Tripware, an online travel management company, recently started the design phase for its new iPhone application. The company focuses on business travelers, and many business consumers rely on BlackBerry smartphones. But, says Dean Wright, vice president of marketing and brand, “All the buzz says iPhone.”

Debbie Robertson Bialick, founder of Sweet Dog Organics, an online organic dog treat store, thinks iPhone apps are “cool,” but she’s not investing in development. She doesn’t see an app driving business to her company.

A ubiquitous iPhone commercial rattles off a list of functions, repeatedly telling viewers, “There’s an app for that.’’ And indeed, there’s a tsunami of apps flooding the market, with the count in the Apple iPhone Apps store approaching the 100,000 mark. And just as small and mid-sized businesses have had to decide what their presence will look like in social networking media, many are evaluating the value of an iPhone app.

While it might infer a bit of status at the gym or among friends and family, an iPhone app needs to be about more than buzz or coolness to add value to your business. Developers, advertising experts and small business owners who’ve gone through the process advise running through a checklist before you begin the process.

Know your customer

Wright, the Tripware vice president, lobbied for his company to develop a Research In Motion app first since so many businesspeople rely on Blackberrys. “I think people in Marketing are too iPhone happy,’’ he says. Understanding your customer’s online behavior is essential, says Dan Neumann, emerging platforms strategist at interactive advertising firm Organic. “How does your target use digital? Do they have iPhones or Blackberrys or a combination of the two? Do they spend their time on Facebook or in e-mail?’’

Define your goal

The vast majority of apps developed by businesses today are about marketing rather than function. Large companies might be able to afford to develop an app that is little more than a gimmicky marketing tool, but that’s a luxury ill-afforded smaller businesses. Your business will be better served if you develop a useful app, says Mohamed Alkady, CEO and founder of after10studios, an interactive media firm. “Please give a value to your user,’’ he says. “You’ll never see us doing an app for the sake of doing an app. Ask yourself ‘Is this an extension of your business to make your customer’s life easier?’”

While being able to order a dog treat with an iPhone might make life a bit more convenient for her customers, Bialick figured it’s not the sort of task people necessarily have to do on the go. “Once the novelty of a new app wears off, successful iPhone apps seem to be used regularly for recurring tasks, tasks that need immediate attention, tasks that you can’t do using the mobile function of the phone, or tasks that cannot wait until you get home or to your office,’’ observes Bialick. “Ordering dog treats does not fall into any of these categories.”

However, apps for both the iPhone and the Blackberry are absolute necessities for JumpForward, a company that assists college coaches and the athletes they recruit in managing the often byzantine recruiting rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Mobility is a way of life for coaches, so JumpForward needs to push its information from the web site to mobile solutions, says co-founder Adam McCombs.

Develop a budget

Demand for iPhone developers has sent costs skyrocketing. Big brands are spending as much as $100,000 to develop an app, says Chris De Vore, co-founder of AppStoreHQ, an app search/discovery site that also hosts a developer directory and a developer matching service. A custom app is likely to cost your business $20,000 to $30,000.

For a small business, it might make sense to take advantage of the burgeoning market of app templates. Services such as Sweb Apps allow you to build a basic application, even creating a virtual storefront that will accept PayPal transactions, with no technical expertise. Using what amounts to a cookie cutter app won’t generate buzz or excitement, but, says Alkady, the developer, “It’s a good way for a very small shop to test the water.”

Using a toolkit, you can likely get to market within 30 days, says De Vore. Plan on a three- to six-month timeframe if you’re developing a custom app.

Separate yourself from the crowd

If you’re using the app to generate new business, you face a big hurdle. “The phenomenon is huge, but how do you get eyes on your application?” asks De Vore. “With the flood of information, it’s very hard to make your information stand out. The biggest problem with the iPhone is discovery.”

That’s one reason Wright, the Tripware executive, thinks a presence in the BlackBerry App World would make sense for his company. With far fewer apps with which to compete, Tripware would stand out, he reasons. So, Tripware will likely develop a BlackBerry app next. Meanwhile, Wright will promote the upcoming iPhone app through Twitter, the company’s website, its listings on business directory websites and e-mails to existing users with a promotional offer for downloads and referrals.

At after10studios, Alkady says he’s a bit choosy when it comes to accepting clients. He’s looking for customers who understand the need to come in with a well-developed concept that will have appeal for their customers. He’s looking to create buzz-worthy apps that attract attention, such as the after10studio-developed Viper SmartStart, which lets you open and start your car from your iPhone with the use of an in-car receiver. “Everybody jumps on the wagon because they think they’ve got to have it,’’ he says. “An app has to be an extension of your business value.”

Discovering Your Advantage with CRM

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:00:10 -0700

You’ve heard the expression, “the customer is king.” In today’s economy, the customer is key to your future success. The right customer relationship management (CRM) strategies can give you insights that lead to increased revenue, improved earnings and solid competitive advantage.

Bill Gates once said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Whether happy or unhappy, your customers are a vital, often underutilized source of business intelligence. Companies that take the time to understand their customers are better able to anticipate and respond to their needs. They also gain a distinct advantage over their competitors.

At this stage of the recession, many companies have lost sight of the competition, focusing instead on cutting costs and improving efficiencies. And they have succeeded; in fact, today’s companies are leaner and meaner than ever before. But now is the time to look outward – focusing on better CRM to grow top line revenues, improve earnings, and take market share away from the competition.

Know your customers and reap rewards

The key is capturing the right information about your customers. With effective CRM processes and technology, you can build a single “book of truth” about each customer. It’s a data warehouse that chronicles each customer’s history, including the products they typically buy, how often they buy, as well as their individual preferences and any problems they have had in the past. CRM delivers instant, company-wide access to valuable customer profiles and gives you the insight you need to turn this data into actionable information.

With a detailed customer history, you can easily segment customers, identifying which are your best customers and why. Is it their margins? Or is it their consistency of buying particular products and services? Linking your data warehouse or business intelligence system to your CRM process and technology can help you answer questions like these and gain an enriched insight that allows you to know how and when to focus on particular customers.

Profitable communication

Consider, for example, a customer who prefers doing business with your company over the Internet. If you don’t know that information, you may unnecessarily redouble your sales efforts by having a direct sales person call on that client. Had you known the customer’s preference, you could have eliminated the effort and cost of a direct sale and freed up your direct sales force to focus on generating new clients.

CRM is a great way to streamline and optimize your sales force. The information you gather in various systems can show you where to focus your efforts, directing your sales force to certain sets of clients. When implemented properly your CRM system will enable you to be more successful in attracting new customers, responding to new leads and closing deals more quickly. By improving your responsiveness to customers you also build loyalty and decrease customer "churn."

At the same time, you can identify the best ways to cross-sell and up sell to each customer, either through direct sales, telemarketing, Web marketing, or other sales or marketing activities. If your goal is to better enable your website for e-business activity, CRM is the ideal approach. It establishes a single point of contact with your company and enables you to capture vital customer information and put it into various applications. The result is a cost-effective and efficient way to communicate with and learn from your customers.

Creating your system

Practicing CRM does require discipline in the form of a more efficient and integrated internal business system. When it comes to developing a CRM system, it is important to remember that this is an “outside-in” approach that focuses on customer input. The most critical component is spending time with customers, learning what they find most valuable about doing business with you. By doing that, you are essentially identifying your main competitive advantages. From there you can design your processes and the supporting systems that will capitalize on that competitive advantage.

As with most IT initiatives, there is a wide variety of CRM hardware and software available from major vendors like SAP and Oracle. When choosing your CRM system, be sure to couple it with business intelligence capabilities that allow you to capture data in a variety of areas and organize it into a single book of truth about that customer. As you put that information into your CRM software in the right fields and capture all the types of transactions you do with clients, you now become very effective in the way to interact with them.

Keep in mind that CRM can only work to your advantage if you view as more than just a tool for getting more from your customers. It helps you do more for your customers. When you become more responsive to customers and understand the way they want to do business with you, you give your organization a head start over the competition and prepare for the impending recovery.

Mike Gorsage is a Partner and Leader of the Business Operations and Technology Practice for Tatum LLC. Tatum is the nation’s largest executive services firm, providing financial and technology leadership nationwide.

Tech Talk: Publisher Puts Kibosh on Spam

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:54:08 -0700

Hay House, a book publisher based in Carlsbad, Calif., was founded 24 years ago and has grown to become one of the largest self-help publishers in the world with 125 employees in the U.S. and locations in four different continents. The publishing house relies on e-mail for internal communication and for communicating with writers, often sending manuscripts back and forth. But employees were being deluged with spam – the company receives up to 10,000 spam messages per day – until information technology director Mike Fishell and his staff installed an e-mail security appliance.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What are the plusses and minuses of using e-mail in your business?

Mike Fishell: It's much faster for moving information around. Whether it's information for a book, fact-checking, public relations, or passing on quotes to be inserted into our books, we rely on our e-mail. We also have offices located in time zones that don't match up. We have offices in the U.K., Australia, South Africa, and India, in addition to the U.S. So if it's noon in London and someone e-mails us with something that has to be addressed that day, we can get back to them before they go home that night. We also may receive manuscripts via e-mail from our authors. Instead of sending a manuscript via FedEx, they can e-mail it to us directly.

Wasserman: What are the security risks to a business posed by relying on e-mail? Do you get a lot of spam?

Fishell: We get in the neighborhood of 10,000 spam messages a day.

Wasserman: What did you do about that?

Fishell: We were using software-based spam solutions in the past, but the spam problem was growing faster than our application could deal with it. I looked at appliances and Axway’s Mailgate was the first one I brought in-house for a trial. It worked so well that we couldn't even think of taking it out of production. The trial unit we were sent was kept in production for three years.

Wasserman: What does it do? How does it help you?

Fishell: It helps us with spam by using a context-based algorithm. Some of our books may deal with health and we may have the word Viagra show up in a book, maybe with someone giving medical advice related to it. It's not in the context of someone trying to sell it, because that wouldn't be delivered to the mailbox. Our users receive an e-mail every day at 5 p.m. showing everything that was quarantined by the filter. They have an option to release it to themselves or ignore it.

Wasserman: What have the results been?

Fishell: On the inbound side, the time savings is money savings. I do a report once a year for the directors explaining the cost savings associated with it. I have calculated out in the thousands and thousands of dollars in terms of man hours for our people not having to delete spam. The cost savings worked out to about $54,000 a year in terms of man-hours we would have spent deleting spam.

There are a lot of these e-mails being sent around maybe directing people to a website and it's not enough of an e-mail to be caught as spam or a virus. But it directs them to a website that may have malicious intentions. We're able to plug keywords into our filter and have it blocked in a matter of minutes instead of waiting for the virus companies to have something out there to block one. I don't have to worry about anyone clicking on the link.

It also allows me to set policies to prevent certain types of sensitive data from being e-mailed outside the office accidentally. Not only viruses, but personal information or confidential information, certain contracts we don't want leaving the building, or proprietary material we don't want leaving the building.

In terms of time management, it's nice having something in the business that doesn't require babysitting. I take a look at the reports once a day. If I skip looking at the reports once a day, I'm not worried. The box gets restarted once or twice a year. That and software updates a couple times a year and you can pretty much set it and forget it.

Tech Talk: Vehicle ID Firm Upgrades Internet

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:46:17 -0700

DLG Group, headquartered in Bedminster, N.J., started out in the 1960s inspecting vehicle and cargo at sea ports and handwriting reports for manufacturers and insurance companies. The Internet era allowed the company to issue those inspection reports on the same day from the field and use the data to help customers improve quality control. Upgrading to fiber-optic based Internet service today has let the business expand and offer online services for customers, CEO and President Andrew Vazquez Jr. tells IncTechnology.com.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What's your company's story?

Andrew Vazquez: The DLG Group started out as Automotive Visual Inspections (AVI) as a family business that began in the mid-1960s. My father started the business and I started working for it full time in 1980. It's an automotive inspection business that verifies vehicles for damage for insurance purposes for imported and exported vehicles shipped overseas.

Wasserman: How has your business evolved?

Vazquez: One of the shipping lines came to me in the early 1980s and wanted to automate statistical information on damage for claims settlement and to improve quality control. They came to me and asked if I would assist them in developing an electronic system to do that. They would give me the programmers and I would help them design a system. Later we needed our own electronic systems and started developing our own proprietary electronic system tracking inspections, warehouse management and vehicle tracking. Taking that technology around 2004 we branched out into the vehicle logistics side of the business and launched Vehicle Logistics Solutions, which is a logistics company that works with various vehicle manufacturers in the Midwest, starting in Michigan and Ohio. But we positioned ourselves to be flexible if a customer needed a facility for short-term or long-term use to keep vehicles until they were sold.

Wasserman: How did the Internet change your business?

Vazquez: We started inspecting in the 1960s and 70s with a typewriter and carbon paper. If our customers in Europe received a report to settle a marine claim two months later, they were happy. In the 1980s, we were one of the first companies to use hand-held computers in the field. It helped us basically save a lot of steps. It used to be our inspectors would go out in the field and record information on paper, transpose to type back in the office, and then the report would hit the mail. Now we are able to take that electronic data and upload it immediately to our databases and send our files electronically. It saved us a lot of time and gave our customers a lot of power. The customer did not just receive data to settle claims but could actually use data for quality control of service. The quicker they could act on either a problem on their hands or the factory where the vehicle was manufactured the better.

Wasserman: How did that impact your needs for Internet service?

Vazquez: Back then the files weren't as large and the bandwidth wasn't as big. Most of the handhelds we used were more like electronic notepads. Now that the bandwidth is here and the technology is state of the art and has much better coverage, we've upgraded our systems and now data with photos can be transmitted in real time. Our workers can upload data and photos out in the field which means they don't have to return to the office to file their report. Now our customers can have their report immediately. We can communicate with any employee by putting a cell phone in their hand computer equipped with a wireless card. You probably would have needed two or three times more people to do the same job we're doing today.

Right now, I have offices in seven different states and also do other projects that have to be in various states across the country. We've had projects in the past where we've had to be in 32 cities around the country each quarter. Having Verizon as our communications provider really helped. We've upgraded to Verizon FIOS Internet for Business, which enabled us to become an application service provider for our customers, as well. We started another business called Vehicle Inspection Network which allows our customers to use our electronic inspection and reporting systems. We give them a log on and password. We have a lot of traffic now in and out of our central office here so it's very important that we have very good, reliable service. You can't sell a service if your Internet is slow or weak.

Wasserman: What have the results been?

Vazquez: It gave me the confidence to launch the application service provider portion of the business. If I was having a problem with companies accessing our system, I wouldn't have been able to do it. We've also started another new company called Hybrid Intermodal Transportation. This business is a freight distribution company. What makes it unique is that we've developed these specialized containers that can be loaded with freight. Today, in the automotive industry, whether they are transported by truck, rail, or vessel, vehicles are being carried in one direction and being dropped off. Many vehicle carriers or assets go back empty. It's a waste of fuel. We've developed containers that we can load with freight onto these car carrier assets, creating the opportunity to fill the empty miles of the industry. We track these containers electronically with our systems.

The Real-Time Web and You

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:39:39 -0700

One of the biggest technology trends in 2009 has been the emergence of the "Real-Time Web." The real-time Web is a made up of technologies and practices that can inform users as soon as information is published, instead of requiring users to check for updates. The real-time Web discards the traditional notion of the more static “webpages,” and instead adopts the notion of dynamic “streams” of information. The real-time Web is also very conversational because it makes it possible to get instant responses across very large networks of people.

Action in the real-time Web started with companies like Twitter and Friendfeed, which built their own infrastructure for large scale delivery of real-time messages. By providing Web service application programming interfaces (APIs), these companies enabled many other developers to create applications based on the real-time Web. However, Anil Dash, a prominent blogger, points out that real time services need not be built on the back of Twitter and Facebook anymore. Due to emerging technologies, the pieces are falling together for creating a free, open and decentralized “pushbutton platform,” which makes it easy for websites to add real-time messaging services. With these developments, we can expect many more websites to jump onto the real-time bandwagon.

Growing importance to business

The real-time Web is becoming increasingly important to businesses in multiple ways. Firstly, as many webmasters and Web analytics companies have pointed out, the real-time Web is starting to rival search engines like Google as a source of website traffic. For example, Mark Cuban talked a few months ago about how his blog receives more visits from Twitter and Facebook than from Google. Secondly, the real-time Web opens up communication opportunities that the traditional Web could not have provided. For instance, if an airline wants to sell off its last minute tickets, the real-time Web provides a great outlet for advertising this very time-sensitive deal. Thirdly, by making information instantaneously accessible, the real-time Web can create, or erase, instances of information arbitrage. As an example, take a look at Skygrid, a service that provides high quality financial news in real time, giving its users an edge, but at the same time leveling the playing field between professional investors and amateurs in terms of the speed of access to reliable information. Finally, because the real-time Web is very conversational, it becomes a repository of people’s sentiment, and mining this sentiment can be very useful to marketers and others.

Taking advantage of real-time Web

Beyond creating an account on Twitter, how can you take advantage of the real-time Web? Here are some thoughts to get you started:

Engage with the real-time Web with tailored offers and content. Several companies are seeing success with time-sensitive programs that could not have been conceived without the real-time Web. Jet Blue’s “cheeps” and United Airlines’ twares are exclusive Twitter promotions for last minute fare deals. Another company that has encountered great success with offering exclusive deals on Twitter is Dell. A Dell blog post from June mentioned that Dell had surpassed $2 million in Twitter sales fro Dell Outlet, which sells refurbished items, scratch and dent items, and previously ordered new laptops. The real-time Web also acts as a place where people express their intent to shop (e.g. someone may tweet “thinking of buying an ipod touch.”) Selectively targeting such users, without spamming them, might also be a great way to help your customers make real time buying decisions. A service like Twitterhawk can be used to automate this kind of marketing.
Make use of real-time Web tools for business intelligence. The real-time Web is a great source of knowledge and sentiment about your customers, your competitors and your industry. You can use services like Firstrain to research the real Web for the news that matters to you. You could also use Twitter’s search functionality in simple ways to keep track of some of this information, or go to one of the many real time search engines. A recent article in mashable talks about the many tools that help analyze Twitter content.
Join in the conversation about your company. In one of my previous articles, I had talked about how companies like Comcast are using Twitter to understand their customers’ concerns and address them. The conversational nature of real time web can be very powerful in building relationships with your customers.
Create the infrastructure that allows your company to respond in real time. Real-time enterprise data integration has been around for a long time. However, with the emergence of the real-time Web and the opportunities it creates, it is becoming increasingly critical for companies to be able to access all their internal data in real time. In other words, “real-time data integration is no longer a luxury.”

Vijay Chittoor is the director of product management at Kosmix, an exploration engine that offers a 360 degree view of any topic on the Web. A former McKinsey consultant, Chittoor is a graduate of Harvard Business School and the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He shares his thoughts on technology at his blog.

Tech Talk: Travel Agency Trains Staff Online

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:36:07 -0700

Grand Circle Travel, a Boston-based travel chain, has 30 regional offices around the world and 400 employees. The firm sells pre-packaged tours around the world to mature Americans. The company saved time and money and increased productivity by switching to online presentation software to train call center employees about new tours, replacing face-to-face training sessions, John Utter, performance coach and trainer for the call center tells IncTechnology.com

Elizabeth Wasserman: When did your company realize that the use of the Internet could help cut costs?

John Utter: With the advent of a new CEO, we've really made a push into Web technology and significantly upgraded our website. Mostly, it's quite the informational tool for us. We have approximately 120 different types of trips worldwide. Some of those destinations have three or four departures per week. We've made a huge investment into the Web portion of our business. We also hired a senior vice president who had experience using Brainshark in a previous job. He brought it on board. Think of it as a voice over PowerPoint delivered over the Web. One of the huge powers is that it does backend reporting. It's not just a narrated PowerPoint that lives online. The beauty is all the reporting applications to us so that we can use it for product knowledge to get our call center employees up to speed on all the trips we offer. We can do it in an on-demand fashion.

Wasserman: How does it work?

Utter: Normally what would happen is we would pull these employees together and have 15 or 20 associates sit in a classroom for 20 minutes or 30 minutes for presentations and then go back on the phone. Now what happens is it's all done on demand. They have a library of available sessions or modules or presentations that they can do before work, after work, at home, or in between calls. Missing calls is a huge issue in our business. If the average reservation is a $4,000-$6,000 sales opportunity then missing a call is a missed opportunity.

We're able to squeeze that in now in between calls and that means we don't miss those opportunities. If all of a sudden the call volumes slow down, we can have a bunch of people educating themselves about the products. We're now using it for a variety of marketing purposes as well. We have a group sales division because a lot of groups go with our travel packages. We just finished a presentation to go out to 2,000 retirement communities to solicit their business, as well.

Wasserman: What have the results been?

Utter: In the first week of August, the year-to-date result from January to the end of July was that we dropped $473,000 from the bottom line. Our 200 call center associates received 855 hours of training online on-demand. Not once did they have to be pulled off the phone into a group meeting. We figured we saved 266 reservations in that 855 hours of call time and also gained a half customer service employee based on all the calls saved.

Wasserman: What type of reporting can you gather?

Utter: In terms of product training modules, we can test associates in terms of product knowledge. They are required to get 100 percent. We ask eight to 12 questions to validate their learning and it's pretty much a pass or fail system. When we send a presentation out to the public, we can track who opened it and how long they spent on it, and the retention rate for every single slide. It's an extremely powerful tool.

Tech Talk: Biochem Firm Shares Network

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:30:16 -0700

BBC Biochemical, based in Mount Vernon, Wash., is a maker of the stains, reagents, and fixatives used for diagnostic and medical lab testing. The company shares a building and a network and phone system with its sister company, Medical Diagnostic Labs, which collects specimens and performs patient testing. Adrian Biesecker, CEO of BBC, tells IncTechnology.com that a new network and phone system helped the firm better protect patient data while improving customer service and productivity.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What does your firm do?

Adrian Biesecker: We make the stains, reagents, fixatives, and lots of solvents that are used in testing medical samples. If you go to the doctor to get a mole removed, the doctor puts the piece of tissue in a bottle. They bring that bottle to a lab. The lab runs it with different stains and fixatives and other chemicals used to determine an accurate diagnosis. We make the products that improve the accuracy for many different diagnoses -- cancers, tumors, you name it.

Wasserman: Your business is located in the same building as a sister company. How does that work?

Biesecker: I own BBC Biochemical. My Dad owns Medical Diagnostic Labs. They're housed under the same roof. Medical Diagnostic Labs is a clinical lab that runs tissue samples and blood culture. All that data has to stay very secure. , There are lots of regulatory agencies that require patient information held close to the heart. HIPAA [the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act] is one such regulation. With the two businesses being on the same network, we needed to make sure we could share results of how our products performed but not share patient information. Being able to be on the same network but only being able to share parts of information was a challenge.

Wasserman: How did you address that challenge?

Biesecker: We looked at many different options. We looked at many companies but they couldn't provide the solution that Cisco was able to provide, encompassing everything including network, phone, mobility -- all of the great things that we use today. Only one company could come to the table with all the appropriate technology. They were able to separate the information on a network with multiple VLANs to house the phone system across both companies and have it act like separate companies. We have routers here that have VLANs [virtual local area networks] and they keep all the data separate except what we choose to share. We can have multiple networks, subnets on the same router, and you can choose when you want to traverse or cross over to another VLAN. It keeps the information completely separate 24 hours a day until you choose actively to go across the network to get pieces of information that you're allowed to get. We have to have results on our chemicals and how they perform, but we don't want to get patient results. We want to know whether the stain we produced is as strong and intense as it should be. We need to keep that data accurate as far as different lots of product.

Wasserman: What have the results been?

Biesecker: Flawless. We don't have any problems. With regard to BBC, it used to be we had a phone system where you could page or activate a speaker phone on the other end to see if anyone was there. It often took a long time to find someone and pin them down. With this installation we are able to get people quickly. We have a wireless solution so people can take their phone anywhere in the building. Everyone has to have their "Batphone." We have many people who don't just sit at desks and this helps everyone be more productive. It also gave us peace of mind. We don’t have to worry about data leaving the building or leaving the network it's housed on.

The Office: In Praise of Morning

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:56:59 -0700

For risibly unscientific reasons, I've concluded more CEOs are owls than larks. Over the years I've heard countless business leaders describe their 80-hour workweeks in last-car-out-of-the-parking lot terms. It's an existence of flickering fluorescents; take-out dinners, and the clatter of cleaning staff emptying trash. As these leaders sit nodding over their stacks of reports, the day's stresses, frustrations, and failures hang in the air around them like stale smoke.

If I owned a company I would work long hours too, but I'd burn my candle at the front end. That's because I love offices at dawn. I want to be there as pale light washes slowly over the utilitarian landscape of desks and computers. I enjoy the hush that plays prelude to the soundtrack of workaday activity.

Every place I have worked has had at least one great reading chair. It is soft and deep and broad; but it is often in the preferred spot for small-team meetings, so I'm lucky to steal ten minutes there. At 6 a.m. I can usurp that chair for a full hour and churn through the newspaper in comfort and quiet. Sometimes I take off my shoes or drape my legs over the arms without fear of being discovered in professional flagrante delicto. Night breeds similar solitude, of course. But by then my newspaper is reduced to relic, and all I want is to go home.

I like to make the first pot of coffee. I like to drink the first pot of coffee; then pretend I didn't and start another. Night coffee is queasy making: that burnt smell lingers no matter how thoroughly you rinse the pot. By morning—miraculously—it is gone.

The very early morning is the best time to go desk-browsing. During the day no one spares more than a glance for their colleagues' workspaces. Yet many cubicles are made over into miniature museums of collectibles, galleries of beloved images, scrapbooks of rich family lives. Such exhibits powerfully evoke their curators. As you peruse the idiosyncratic display on a desk, you find yourself looking forward to its occupant walking through the door.

If you walk by an office where a colleague or employee labors after hours, it seems natural to poke in your head and commiserate. But often commiseration devolves into passing the time; and after 6 P.M. another's time is not yours to pass. In the early morning, by contrast, no one is yet late for anything and so conversation is relaxed. During work hours I have argued and gossiped and traded stiff pleasantries with office mates. But my best true "chats" have been with fellow early risers, who usually start to trickle in before 8.

When I gaze out the window at night I see my face floating in dark pool. In the morning I see the world. And I am reminded that everything I do that day will contribute to it.

I'm sure that you know your company better than anyone, that you love it more. Still, try going in some day at dawn and wandering around in the silence. To watch the office wake up is to see it fresh.

Amazon Buys Zappos for More Than $900 Million

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:38:12 -0700

Zappos, the online shoe seller that has won renown for its stellar customer service and feel-good employment practices, announced that it was selling itself to e-commerce rival Amazon.com. If the deal gets the SEC’s blessing, Zappos would become a subsidiary of Amazon and Zappos shareholders would receive Amazon stock worth roughly $900 million.

CEO Tony Hsieh, a serial entrepreneur who provided the company with its initial investment and who has led the company for most of its 10-year history, emphasized in a letter to employees that although Zappos would be a part of the larger company, it would preserve its quirky culture that focuses on keeping workers happy. He said that rather than describing the transaction as an acquisition, he’d prefer a looser formulation: “Zappos and Amazon sitting in a tree."

Hsieh has long shown an uncanny ability to navigate the new media landscape, and this announcement was no exception. The deal was kept secret from rank-and-file employees and from the press for months. Hsieh released the news to the world through his Twitter feed, beginning with “Big day!” He then directed employees and outsiders to view a YouTube video staring Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. “Zappos has a totally unique culture,” Bezos said in the video. “I have seen a lot of companies and I’ve never seen a company with a culture like Zappos’s.”

In his letter, Hsieh said that he would do his best to keep Zappos independent of Amazon. The company will maintain its Las Vegas headquarters and its management will remain in place. “[W]e are planning on continuing to run Zappos as a separate company with our own culture and core values,” he wrote. “And we're not going to be giving the Zappos discount to Amazon employees either, unless they bake us cookies and deliver them in person.”

Administration Committed to Innovation

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:47:28 -0700

Amid tumbling banks and bankrupt companies, small businesses may have cause for celebration. The Senate reauthorized the Small Business Administration's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs last Wednesday. In the House, Congressman David Wu (D-OR) shepherded the bill through, with a resounding 386-41 vote.

The bill will now head to the conference committee, where differences between the House and Senate bills will get ironed out, says Edsel Brown, assistant director for the Office of Technology at SBA. Congress has until the July 31st to conference the bill. If the revision passes, this legislation will reauthorize the programs for eight years, as well as add some much necessary fixes. One major adjustment includes allowing small businesses backed by venture capitalists to participate in the programs.

"The fact that we can move forward provides stability to the programs and gives small businesses an experienced program," says Brown, "not only for themselves but to move America forward in terms of innovation."

The SBIR program was established by Congress in 1982, while the STTR came later in 1992, to aid the government in research and innovation. Today, federal agencies with an extramural research and development budget of more than $100 million allocate 2.5 percent of their dollars to the SBIR program, while agencies with more than $1 billion must donate an additional 0.3 percent to the STTR program. With 11 different agencies, the SBA on average receives $2 billion annually for SBIR and $200 million for STTR programs.

"SBIR is fundamentally an innovation program. Given the current economic climate and growing global competition, we need a robust SBIR program that supports cutting-edge companies," said Congressman Wu in his floor statement. The SBIR awards have produced more than 85,000 patents and created millions of jobs, according to the SBA.

"We are here to make sure small businesses get their fair share," concludes Brown.

CIT Group Gets Last Minute Save

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:23:56 -0700

In a last-minute attempt to save the company from bankruptcy, CIT Group secured $3 billion in rescue financing from its bondholders late last night. CIT could not be immediately reached for comment, although an announcement detailing the intricacies of the arrangement is expected to be released later today.

The loan may strengthen the company’s financial position as well as assuage the pressure to pay the $1 billion in debt that's due from the company in August.

CIT is the nation's largest commercial lender, providing loans to roughly a million small and mid-size businesses. Last week, CIT received the bad news that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) would not provide the company some relief by granting access to its debt guarantee program.

"We have a comprehensive and aggressive strategy to restore stability to the financial system," the Treasury said in a statement. "Even during periods of financial stress, we believe that there is a very high threshold for exceptional government assistance to individual companies." Last Wednesday, CIT issued a brief statement announcing that there was "no appreciable likelihood of additional government support being provided over the near term."

For small businesses with loans from CIT this relief could prevent disaster despite the fact that some customers have already begun drawing on their credit lines, adding to an already mounting pressure onto the embattled company.

Dr. Kim Jones of the Stoney Brook Veterinary Hospital in Lebanon, N.H., took out a $1.3 million loan from CIT in June 2008. "I don't know what it will do to me," she says, "they have to do something, the money has been spent, the money is done."

Unlike the $2.33 billion taxpayer-financed bailout CIT received last December, CIT will likely pay interest rates 10 percentage points above the London Interbank Offered Rate, a benchmark interest rate index, for the bondholders loan.

Obama's 504 Loan Helping Businesses Expand

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:53:42 -0700

Dr. Lena Smith is not one to throw up her hands in defeat. She was facing mounting financial trouble a year ago, after she built a customized assisted living facility in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. She struggled to nail down a commercial lender willing to loan her money, and instead opted to apply for the Small Business Administration's 504 loan program. Although this program has been around for 51 years, now small business owners, as part of President Obama's stimulus package, can refinance any existing fixed asset loan as long as the amount is 50 percent less then the total expansion. In addition, most all loan fees have been eliminated.

"Quite honestly, I don't know if this facility could have gotten off the ground if all the elements hadn't coincided at the same time," Smith says. "It took close to $5 million to build this place." With over $30,000 in fees covered as part of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Smith was able to take that money and "green" her facility, adding eco-friendly insulation and air conditioning systems.

As of July 10, the SBA has supported $6.5 billion in small business lending with the approval of $4.8 billion in loans since February of this year. They received $730 million in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to galvanize the small business lending market. "It lowers the cost of capital," according to Eric Zarnikow, associate administrator for the Office of Capital Access. "It encourages small businesses; it's like we're putting our loans on sale."

John and Kimberly Henderson of Royal Window Films in Anaheim, California, received a $410,000 loan to purchase a new office building and expand their company, which sells and installs energy saving window films. "A lot of the fees went down," Kimberly noted. "The market has gone down, so it is a good time to invest." Without the 504 loan, the Henderson's would have had to put $205,000 as a down payment instead of $82,000, a price well outside their budget.

"I'm fortunate," adds Smith, "Those businesses that receive a 504 loan have great potential for success."

Auto Sales Bolster Overall Retail

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:25:55 -0700

Although department store and restaurant sales continue to wilt, automotive and gasoline station purchases are enough to account for a slight uptick in overall monthly retail sales, census numbers show.

In June, auto parts and vehicle sales climbed 2.3 and 2.6 percent, respectively, from the month before. Gas station sales rose 5 percent in June after increasing by the same amount in May. Total retail sales climbed just .6 percent, dragged down in part by general merchandise such as department and warehouse stores, which fell .4 percent from the month before.

Amid mostly negative news for the auto industry, this is a relative bright spot says Jack Plunkett, CEO of Plunkett Research, an industry research firm; relative being the key word. "It's going to continue to be a very difficult environment, he says."

Gasoline sales can rise and fall fairly significantly with a few pennies' increase or decrease in the price of a gallon, but auto sales can be more telling of the economic climate.

Plunkett says the time of year might be what has spurred sales more than anything else. With a new model year due out soon, dealers are more prone to making deals, he says.

For dealerships that have been forced to close their doors, they're also being pressured to make room for the next tenant. "The dealerships that are closing have been under a deadline to eliminate inventory," Plunkett says.

So while the initial reading of climbing sales might look good, Plunkett advises to stay wary of the broader ailing marketplace. "We're going to have bad back-to-school business," he says, "and a lousy Christmas."

Lights Out For Incandescents?

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:13:40 -0700

By 2012, incandescent lightbulbs - or "lamps" to those in the industry - were expected to be phased out because of updated energy laws. The brainchild of Thomas Edison, although serving the country well since the 19th century, isn't as energy efficient as its 1980s successor, the compact fluorescent lightbulb.

Facing industry extinction, incandescent manufacturers have charged ahead with research and testing to bring older lamps up to speed. But even post-innovation, efficiency has only increased by 30 percent, which means they still have far to go to catch up with CFLs' 75 percent efficiency lead.

Try as they might, Ellis Yan, CEO of Technical Consumer Products, doesn't think his competitors will ever catch up. Although his Cleveland, Ohio-based company strictly manufactures CFLs, his lighting industry involvement prior to founding TCP gave him experience with incandescent lamps.

"I think for everybody in the lighting industry there is an opportunity to innovate," Yan said. "You're able to achieve energy efficient lighting at different levels and in different ways. It's absolutely possible that incandescent bulbs can be made more efficient, but will it be enough?"

He considers the question rhetorical, but knows Americans would never rescind their comfort level with that familiar yellow light.

"Incandescent bulbs are the icon associated with the history of this country," he said. "People's consistent behavior is to pick up incandescent bulbs."

But the prejudice Yan said people feel toward CFLs is largely based on misconception. Even though upon their creation, CFLs gave off a slightly garish color, he said great strides have been taken in color correction thanks to the recognition of tri-phosphors.

"When CFLs debuted on the market, their manufacturers only knew how to mix basic red and blue phosphors," he said. "Now, give me ten days, and I can match any color you desire because we use these tri-phosphors."

Instead of spending time on developing newer incandescent lamps, Yan said small business research dollars might be better spent on LEDs.

"Everybody thinks LEDs are the future of lighting," he said. "We agree, but it won't happen today. There needs to be more innovation to bring down the price and increase efficiency."

Perception Isn't Everything to Shoppers

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:30:49 -0700

Slap the right price tag on a Timex, wax a little rubbing alcohol over the first several letters, etch out a few new characters, and voilà -- you've got a Rolex.

"Perception is everything," goes one marketing mantra; and according to accumulated economic data, the theory holds true in pricing economics. If consumers are told one apple costs $5 while another costs $2, they will often conclude that the $5 apple must be better than the other apple.

Before gouging prices to increase demand, however, economist Ori Heffetz is quick to warn that the higher prices also can decrease demand – maybe even more so in a recession.

"You have to know how this positive effect of prices on perceptions compares with the possibly large negative effects of higher prices on demand for a specific product," he says.

A recent study that Heffetz, a professor of economics at Cornell University, authored along with Moses Shayo, a professor of economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, found that consumers' perceptions do indeed sway in accordance with prices, but their buying behavior doesn't necessarily follow.

In the study, volunteers in a lab proved that higher prices associated with different candies translated into an elevated perception of value. In a second experiment in which prices of entrees on a prix-fixe menu were altered, the researchers found that people pretty much stuck with what they liked. Because the price for the dinner remained constant, the diners (who were unaware of the ongoing, 14-week-long experiment) might have been expected to opt for whichever dish had the highest value on the a-la-carte menu, whether it be artichoke, pork, sausage, shrimp or a mullet fillet.

The results of the experiment found that increasing the prices of any of the options did not result in an increased demand, and the mullet remained most popular throughout the experiment. "It's one thing to show in a lab setup that I can manipulate you into thinking, feeling, and even doing something by manipulating prices. But it's quite another thing to think that such price effects will be large enough to matter when compared with other economic consequences of manipulating prices," Heffetz says.

It is possible that consumers aren't quite the rubes they were once believed to be, or maybe that placebo effect is finally beginning to wear off – or perhaps palates are just stubborn. Either way, Heffetz says, boosting prices can sink demand as much as it can raise it. "More expensive products might be perceived as more attractive -- which could increase demand -- but they are also more expensive, which turned out, in our study, to decrease demand by much more."

Middle America Coming Out of the Recession?

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:10:43 -0700

Although every metropolitan area has suffered job losses and a decline in gross metropolitan product, city centers in Texas and Oklahoma, among others, look as if they will lead the way out of the recession.

Judged by changes in employment, GMP, and housing prices, none of the 20 strongest overall performers extends west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. California alone is home to seven of the 20 weakest performers.

There's a "last-in, first-out" effect here, says Alan Berube, a senior fellow and research director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program and MetroMonitor report that assesses the nation's 100 largest metro areas. "This recession is battering the interior west, Florida, and the manufacturing parts of the Midwest." By comparison, areas that incurred softer recessionary blows are standing out as bright spots among the competition. The balance of the top 20 metro areas dot the Northeast, with the exceptions of Washington D.C. and Virginia Beach, Va. to the south.

All six large metropolitan areas in Texas – one of the few states where home prices are actually up -- are among the 20 top performers. Berube attributes the lone-star state's success to a combination of its insulation from the housing market crash and the industries that have taken root in major metropolitan areas there, such as energy.

Austin is increasingly becoming recognized as a high-tech hub says Robin Dommisse, CEO of Austin-based Austin GeoModeling, a company that provides 3-D geological interpretations to oil and gas companies. The technology industry, combined with an attractive environment and the University of Texas at Austin, Dommisse says, makes finding qualified employees easy. "There's a good talent pool available of highly-trained technical people," he says. "We never have a problem convincing people to move to Austin."

The full map can be viewed here.

7 Ways to Secure Your Email

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:32:22 -0700

E-mail just might be the most critical business application your company uses. Increasingly, businesses rely on e-mail even when it comes to sending sensitive information such as proprietary materials, private employee or customer account numbers, and confidential negotiations.

You depend on e-mail as a necessary form of communication. But is your e-mail really secure? “The important thing is for people to realize when they send an e-mail over the Internet, it’s the same thing as sending a postcard,’’ warns Bradley Anstis, director of technology strategy for Marshal8e6, an e-mail and Web security firm.

However, it is possible to shore up the security of your business e-mail communications. Here’s how to protect your business' e-mail privacy:

Encrypt e-mail and server connections. If you simply send e-mail without ensuring it’s encrypted, it can be intercepted and read by hackers. It’s important to employ e-mail encryption software and to also make sure the connection between servers is encrypted as well, using Transport Layer Security (TLS), says Antsis. If you’re encrypting business communications, then it’s up to you to make sure your clients are provided with the software needed to de-crypt it. “Some of the secure e-mail services will have a website where the person who’s receiving it can go to the website to unlock the e-mail,’’ says Matt Sarrel, an information security expert and executive director of the Sarrel Group, an information technology consulting firm. If expense is an issue, freeware such as TrueCrypt is an option.
Verify. There are two things you need to be able to count on when it comes to business e-mail, says Sarrel. It’s critical to know that the person who sent the e-mail is indeed the person to whom the e-mail is attributed, and it’s vital to know the data in the e-mail hasn’t been altered along the way. Look for software, such as the tools available from PGP, that let you digitally sign an encrypted document.
Be wary of Web-based e-mail. The experts advise caution when using Web-based e-mail accounts. “Web-based e-mail accounts are regularly targeted for attacks,’’ Anstis says. He should know. His personal Yahoo account was hacked and all of his contacts received spam, supposedly sent by Anstis. It was an embarrassing debacle for an e-mail security professional. If you are using a Web-based browser, you need to ensure the connection is encrypted with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protection. Check for https in the Web address. Providers such as Hushmail and NeoMailbox promise secure e-mail.
Educate employees. The best security technology in the world can’t mitigate one of the primary sources of risk for your business: human curiosity. It’s not just a matter of securing outgoing e-mail; your company’s data can be at risk with incoming mail as well. Not only is there a rise in malicious spam, there’s an evolution in delivery methods, says Anstis. Ever creative, the bad guys now use botnets, hijacking unsuspecting victims’ computers to unleash barrages of what is known as blended attack spam. “Forty-two percent of all spam is what we call a blended attack -- an e-mail with a URL in it,’’ Anstis says. The malware that will compromise your network is not in the e-mail, so the e-mail slips past security gateways. The malware is delivered when the curious recipient clicks on the URL in the e-mail to visit a website. “Educate your employees about not following unsolicited invitations to click,’’ advises Anstis. “We’re pretty good, but some of these attacks are going to get through.” It’s smart to show users examples of what a blended attack looks like. That’s why Anstis’ company, Marshal8e6, offers a sampling of different attack methods on its website.
Update software. Too often, says Sarrel, “a lot of businesses just set up e-mail and leave it. Stay on top of e-mail server software.” Understanding vulnerabilities and religiously installing updates and patches is critical. Make sure you’re receiving updates from the vendor when it comes to anti-spam protection software, says Anstis.
Scan e-mail for content. Anstis advises using a software product that will filter for content such as inappropriate language and images, both incoming to provide a professional work environment and outgoing to protect your company’s reputation. Content can also be scanned for information you don’t want sent externally, such as social security numbers and credit card account data.
Vet your vendor. Chances are you’ll turn to a third party for e-mail security. Anstis, whose company competes in this market, offers this blunt assessment: “Don’t trust vendor promises. Try all products. Get references from people you know and trust.”

For most small businesses, simply taking the time to question and to evaluate e-mail security is a big leap in the right direction, says Sarrel. “A lot of these systems get rolled out without thinking about security, and people just keep using them. A lot of people don’t seem to understand that email is almost by nature not secure.”

Inc.com

The Way We Were

How to Market on Facebook; Win a Franchise

Microsoft Admits Mac Inspiration

Internet Addiction in Children

Advertisement:

India's Entrepreneurs Unleashed; Google's New Language

When Mars And Venus Call Tech Support

Biz Tips from the Boston Celtics; When to Dump a Client

Ho Ho Ho Says Google

Are You to Blame for IT Failure?

Playfish Sells Out and A Plan to Save Detroit

The New Red State, Blue State Battle

The Truth about Cyber Monday; Tour the Gawker Offices

Robots in Medicine

Biz Lessons from the Poker Table; Google's New Idea

Advertisement:

The Bill In Congress To Censor Fraud Sites

The Workforce of Crowds

Robots Boldly Going ...

The "Other" Entrepreneurship; Inside Intuit

Tweets in Your Pocket and the Danger of Multitasking

Free WiFi Codes On American Airlines

Robots in the Home

Unprepared for the Unexpected: A Look At Partnership

Confessions of a Facebook Spammer; Starting Your Own Category

I Can't Stand ICANN's Latest Decision

Advertisement:

Sprint Says No More Tethering

Sprint Says No More Tethering

The Best and Worst of Female Bosses

Remembering a Fast-Food Icon; The Rise of NYC Start-ups

Abraham Lincoln's Financial Adviser Slept There

AI Technology

9 Ways to Cut Energy Costs

Pay Scales for 20 Different Job Descriptions

10 Free (or Cheap) Tools for Start-ups

Reengineering the Human Body

Company Contests: How to Foster a Little Friendly Competition

Meet the Designers of the 21st-Century Factory

30 Under 30: America's Coolest Young Entrepreneurs

Fountain of Youth: The Under 30 Hall of Fame

The Next Big Ideas: Cool Products from America's Coolest Young Entrepreneurs

A Free Beer With Every Haircut

Business Advice from the 2009 Inc. 500 Conference

Start-up Secrets: Tips from America's Coolest Young Entrepreneurs

Advertisement:

How This Kid Made $170 Million in Two Years

The 2009 Inc. 5000: Top 10 Oldest Companies

5 Great Software Packages for Bootstrappers

How to Live Stream a Meeting

Browser Wars: Does IE8 Change the Game?

Advertisement:

Track Comments about Your Business Online

Should You Create an iPhone App?

Discovering Your Advantage with CRM

Tech Talk: Publisher Puts Kibosh on Spam

Tech Talk: Vehicle ID Firm Upgrades Internet

Advertisement:

The Real-Time Web and You

Tech Talk: Travel Agency Trains Staff Online

Tech Talk: Biochem Firm Shares Network

The Office: In Praise of Morning

Amazon Buys Zappos for More Than $900 Million

Administration Committed to Innovation

CIT Group Gets Last Minute Save

Obama's 504 Loan Helping Businesses Expand

Auto Sales Bolster Overall Retail

Lights Out For Incandescents?

Perception Isn't Everything to Shoppers

Middle America Coming Out of the Recession?

7 Ways to Secure Your Email