Archive for June 2010
Multitaskers Paying A Mental Price
When one of the most important e-mail messages of his life landed in his in-box a few years ago, Kord Campbell overlooked it., reports The New York Times. Not just for a day or two, but 12 days. He finally saw it while sifting through old messages: a big company wanted to buy his Internet [...]
In a matter of weeks, Stanford University graduate students have built an electric car they hope will make daily travel more environmentally friendly, efficient, and fun. The WENG—”Where Everyone Needs to Go”—is built for short-range, low-speed drives and may soon be the cool new way to cruise the neighborhood—and possibly the antidote to the fully [...]
Inventor Hopes To Stop Oil In The Gulf
mlive.com: Michael Wiley, 59, of Mt. Morris Township believes he has invented the answer to BP’s prayers and will travel to Louisiana tomorrow to meet with the company’s officials. The local inventor invented what he calls the “Wileyf Oil Spill Containment System” that will stop the oil from spewing 100 percent or allow tanks to [...]
What Makes #2 Pencils So Special?
Most of us pick up pencils and lose them without giving it a second thought. Pencils are a bit more interesting than you might, think, though. Mental Floss answers a few not-so-frequently asked questions about everyone’s second-favorite writing implements, including when pencil sharpeners were illegal. What makes #2 pencils so special? They’re the absolute middle [...]
DesMoinesRegister.com: Lana Lewis makes warm chocolate chip cookies five days a week for her son, Dereck. But this isn’t some Donna Reed style stay-at-home-mom ritual – it’s business. “Who doesn’t love a warm cookie?” said Dereck, 24. His cookie delivery business, Tank Goodness, cashes in on the warm, fuzzy feeling the fresh, gooey treats create. [...]
Oprah Wants To Give You A Talk Show
Looking to break free of the cubicle and kick start a career in the spotlight? The mighty Oprah may be able to help. O and TV uber producer Mark Burnett have joined forces to find the next big (basic cable) star. Upload a video or attend an open casting call for your chance to host [...]
Closing The Gender Gap: Maxine Clark
With more than 250,000 woman-owned businesses in the US that bring in $1 million or more, it’s obvious that women have the potential to grow large companies. So why don’t more women try? That is what Forbes recently asked. This question brings to mind an observation that Build-A-Bear Workshop founder Maxine Clark once shared with [...]
Solve A Problem? Live Inside It
Solving a problem is hard – but truly understanding a problem is even harder, says Josh Makower, founder and chief executive officer of ExploraMed, a medical-device incubator. The real trick, he notes in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University, is to resist the urge to latch on to the first solution that [...]
Non-Profit Helps Local Inventors Cash-In On Ideas
9News reports that Colorado is leading the way with inventions and one non-profit is helping people turn their ideas into profitable businesses. Colorado is in the top 10 for number of patents filed and issued each year. “We are a hotbed of innovation here and we do have a big impact on the economy,” Inventors [...]
With millions of units sold, thousands of apps, and e-book sales numbers that might be making Amazon nervous, the iPad appears to be a continued success. Mashable checks in with the infographic below for the full skinny on the state of the iPad. Photo by Mashable.
In a world of music-playing phones, Internet-enabled refrigerators and satellite-based car navigation, some companies still find success with such low-tech products as urine, dirt and even air. WalletPop has the story. A clever duo from Ireland was inspired by the ground under their feet. Business partners Pat Burke and Alan Jenkins founded the Auld Sod [...]
Business Insider: While there are always cases where stories hyped by the media and entrepreneur folklore do come to life (I suppose entrepreneurs do occasionally share elevators with VCs), this generally isn’t how business gets done. While entrepreneurs can meet investors at networking events, at pitch events and, yes, in elevators, they don’t need to [...]
Every Entrepreneur Needs Some Backup
Entrepreneur Richard Branson writes in Business Day, people tend to think of entrepreneurs as lone heroes, but this isn’t how it works in real life. Many live up to their reputation as risk-takers and some remain outsiders, but despite this outlier status, entrepreneurs need support to be successful. In fact, we’re a lot like Formula [...]
While at first it might seem that penguins, salty waffles and precious gems might have nothing in common, when you look a little deeper you can find a connection and her name is Nicole Donnelly. Nicole was the founder of Babylegs Inc, which she later sold to a hosiery manufacturer, but that isn’t all she [...]
Safety First For American Wurst
According to The Kansas City Star, we’ll consume an estimated 7 billion dogs between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Call them weenies, call them franks or call them red hots. But should we call them dangerous? The American Academy of Pediatrics says so, because children can choke on them. Now an inventor says that he [...]
Americans Prefer Funny Videos To Online News
According to VentureBeat, the latest report from Pew Internet Research, The State of Online Video, confirms the suspicion that grown-up Americans see the Internet primarily as a source of unlimited cat videos, rather than a hard news medium. And when they do watch current events clips, they go for politics rather than reporting. Seven in [...]
SpaceX hit an important milestone by sending its Falcon 9 rocket into space, reports VentureBeat.SpaceX’s promise of commercialized space travel seems to be inching closer to reality. Back in 2008, it successfully launched the Falcon 1 after three unsuccessful tries, but that was more of a “proof of concept” vehicle, while SpaceX plans to use [...]
photo credit: Robert S. Donovan It’s not easy to know what is worth reading in social media these days. As technology makes it simpler and simpler to create content, the predictable problem this causes is that people who have no business creating content are doing it with abandon. Do any Google search that returns more [...]
Husband And Wife Herbalife Team
Direct sales may not be for everyone but for Donald & Claudette Beckwith, Herbalife is where it is at. Like many people who become sales representatives, Donald and Claudette were simply looking for a way to make a little extra money each month. After learning for some time they came upon Herbalife and they were [...]
Connecting The Dots In Your Business
photo credit: Josean Prado I’ll describe what needs to happen if you want to connect disparate pieces of information about the same person, organization, or entity. I hope you’ll be further persuaded of both the difficulty and the value of such an effort. The need is widely felt, whether you’re trying to connect the dots [...]
What Were You Thinking Marketing Moments
photo credit: Mr.Thomas We have all been there, those times when you temporarily loose your mind for a few seconds and do something very stupid and often funny. However, I read an article posted recently on Small Biz Trends that takes the cake on “what were you thinking moments”. Wearing a sweat pant suit to some [...]
If APIs are “crack cocaine for developers,” as Mashery CEO Oren Michels told Jolie O’Dell of Mashable.com, then Michels is a dealer. His company specializes in creating and managing APIs for companies from Netflix and MTV Networks to Etsy and Cafe Press, and has recently published a survey on how developers use APIs. Whether for [...]
US Soccer Fans Ready Their Cell Phones
According to AppScout, a new Nielsen report said that over 20 percent of cell phone users worldwide intend to download at least some World Cup soccer information on their cell phones, according to FierceMobileContent. Interestingly, 23 percent of U.S. subscribers are planning to do so when the 2010 FIFA World Cup launches June 11th. That’s [...]
Is Your State Entrepreneur Friendly?
ThomasNet News reports that states vary in their degree of “friendliness” to entrepreneurs, with some offering more favorable conditions than others. Some of the key criteria in determining the small business and startup climate in a particular state are capital gains and corporate income taxes; property, sales, gross receipts and excise taxes; local operational costs; [...]
A British inventor recently came up with a gardening application for the iPad and sold it to an American company reports This Is Somerset. The iPad, the latest must-have gadget to be launched by Apple, was released in the US in April and a clever gardening application by a Somerset entrepreneur was selected to be [...]
Where VCs Are Putting Their Money
According to Inc.com, the motto of the venture capital industry this year could be: Well, anything is better than 2008 and 2009. Driving such a renewed sense of optimism is the relative resurgence in the IPO market and a strong pickup in mergers-and-acquisitions activity. That means VCs now at least have some hopes of exiting [...]
Website Magazine takes a look at one of the most creative uses of Twitter we’ve seen yet, and how it landed 300,000 visitors onto the site of online footwear retailer SuperShoes.com in less than two hours. SuperShoes recently held the first-ever known games of Twitterbingo to promote its new Drag & Share feature, which it [...]
Welding Designs Focus Of Mom’s Business
NewsChief.com: Today’s mother is more than a cookie baker and a boo boo doctor. Today’s moms are college professors, bank presidents and business owners. Connie Combs of Dundee is one of them. As a full-time mom and business owner, she’s in charge and in heels at her Winter Haven business, Metal Momma’s, a custom design, [...]
Retailers Taking in More Cash with eBillme
According to Website Magazine, online supplier of home appliances Number1Direct.com is one e-commerce company that has experienced firsthand the value of expanding its checkout options for a growing customer demographic: shoppers who prefer cash over credit. Since adding the secure payment option eBillme, the leading retailer has seen a 44-percent improvement in cart abandonment, a [...]
Brian Alger is hoping to inspire nostalgia in the older generation by reviving the Pop Shoppe line of sodas reports The Globe And Mail. “It was touch and go if we could do the run,” Alger yells over the cacophony, “because we weren’t sure we’d get the bottles in time.” The clear “stubbie” bottles were [...]
Cheaper Ways To Ship FedEx And UPS
photo credit: JOE M500 Many business owners ship products by using the services of FedEx or UPS so all of you know by now just how expensive those darn shipping charges can be, especially if you are shipping out of state or out of the country. I recently read an article posted on Bizmore.com that goes [...]
Easy Steps To Starting Your Business
Starting a new business can be very time consuming, hectic and confusing at times. But rest assured that we have some suggestions to help. Look below for some great easy tips on starting up your own business that I came across on Biz Start-up Services that I know are surely going to be helpful [...]
Tracking Your Daily Marketing Activity
photo credit: accent on eclectic Many of us do a lot of marketing activity throughout our day of doing business, the problem with this is that we don’t have time to track it, forget to track it or don’t know how to track it. Below are some great tips that I came across on Small [...]
According to Seventeen.com, when Jessica Cervantes was 18 years old, she realized that as delicious as cupcakes were on their own, they would be even better on cookie sticks! So she founded PopsyCakes.com to sell exactly that. (The frosting and chocolate chips keep the cupcakes from falling apart!) Since its launch in 2006, these popsy [...]
Why walk around the office when you can roll? The U3-X from Honda eliminates the need for strolling around the sea of cubicles and offers users the freedom to function without all that pesky leg movement. via HolyKaw
Fake Limes And A Flash Of Inspiration
According to Entrepreneur.com, as owner of Moman Sales, a South Florida specialist in plastic flowers, what Matt Moman knows is fake flora. In June 2007, Moman was on a business trip to San Francisco, checking out the latest in nature’s plastics, when he hit on the citrus creations of Winward International. The lemons and limes [...]
Dane recently asked “How are you profiting from the World Cup?” Well, I found these cool T-shirts from Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam. Apparently when your team scores a goal and your facial expression isn’t exciting enough, you pull the shirt up over your head exposing a second more excited cheering face.(Perhaps a celebrity [...]
Here’s another selection of the many offers available on fiverr.com It’s a new web site that allows users to buy and sell services and products. Everything is $5. What would you do for $5? Here are some new offers I thought were interesting. Photo by fiverr.com.
Gov 2.0: The Next Internet Boom
BusinessWeek reports there is an emerging field that some entrepreneurs call Government 2.0. With the White House urging federal agencies to make statistical data and other information available to the public, the Internet’s next big opportunity may be tapping that information to boost government transparency, efficiency, and responsiveness. Much as blogs and YouTube democratized media [...]
“Hang Ups” To Curb Cell Phone Use
Two moms, both reformed cell phoning-while-driving addicts, want other drivers to kick the habit too says the Chicago Sun-Times. They’ve created a sign, based on the popular “Baby on Board” ones, that warns others to “Get off the phone.” Originally, the pair designed a ping pong paddle with the same message, but scrapped it fearing [...]
Country’s First Scented Billboard
Drivers in North Carolina will have more than just exhaust fumes to smell says the Charlotte Observer. A local grocery chain has erected what is believed to be the country’s first scented billboard. The business partnered with a company that produces smells for hotels, stores and casinos to create their “eau de beef,” a mix [...]
The New York Times: Last year was a fabulous one for entrepreneurs, at least according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity released last month by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. “Rather than making history for its deep recession and record unemployment,” the foundation reported, “2009 might instead be remembered as the year business startups [...]
Wal-Mart Offers Workers College Courses
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s biggest retailer, plans to offer its U.S. employees the opportunity to earn college degrees in a partnership with American Public University, reports BusinessWeek. Workers will be eligible for grants from American Public totaling 15 percent of tuition, the Charles Town, West Virginia- based online educator said today in a statement. [...]
Vanity press used to be for authors that weren’t capable of finding someone else to publish their book. Not anymore, as the WSJ explains: Writer Karen McQuestion spent nearly a decade trying without success to persuade a New York publisher to print one of her books. In July, the 49-year-old mother of three decided to [...]
Zenith Training is offering an amazing offer right now for you to go on a cruise and learn about business. This 7 day cruise to the Caribbean called Dare to Dream Dare to be Great is edutainment, meaning you will be educated and entertained all in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Enjoy [...]
Everyone knows that a teething child will put pretty much anything they can grab a hold of into their mouth. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many moms are creating products that are teething friendly, yet stylish enough for them to wear reports azcentral.com. Amy Maurer of Silver Spring, Md., partnered with fellow [...]
Five Lessons Every Small Business Can Learn from the Karate Kid
The following is a guest post from Company.com. If you’re getting your butt kicked, talk to an expert. Sometimes experts don’t look like we expect them to look. Whether it’s the handyman who’s a martial arts expert or the tech support guy who speaks three languages, we can be surprised by what people know. One [...]
Glenn Old is out to prove to the world that water and fuel really does mix together, reports The Sydney Morning Herald. For six months, the Mackay man has been working with a group of American engineers to design, master and perfect a hybrid fuel cell device that could save motorists money and help reduce [...]
Eight Tips to Help You Be Your Own Boss
The following is an excerpt from Your Million Dollar Dream: Regain Control and Be Your Own Boss. Create a Winning Business Plan. Turn Your Passion into Profit by Tamara Monosoff. 1. Take a stand for yourself. If you are dissatisfied with your current circumstances no one will fix them — except for you. It doesn’t [...]
Clear The Disorder and Make Your Home Business A Financial Success
The following is a guest post by Lloyd Burrell. It can be very difficult to keep a home business running in tip top shape especially when the room in which it is ran becomes unorganized and extremely cluttered. However, if you’ve ever dreamed of having an office where everything is within an arm’s length, then [...]
