Archive for the 'News' Category
11 Year Old’s Eco-Friendly Fashion Accessories
Starting a business is hard enough if you’re an adult. If you’re a child, the complications only increase. However, many children succeed in business. Some mow lawns, walk dogs, or baby sit for a living. Maya Penn runs a fashion accessories business. Maya Penn, CEO and owner of her own online boutique “Maya’s Ideas,” started [...]
Artisan Creates Glamor From Grocery Bags
While many people argue whether plastic bags should continue being used, one woman is upcycling them into unique products. Based outside of Washington, DC in Stafford, Virginia, Tina Dean Designs is owned by Tina Dean Allen. No one will guess that these stylish accessories were once grocery bags. Plastic bags are prepared into plarn (plastic [...]
The inventor of the digital camera, Kodak, is now leaving the camera business, reports Reuters. Kodak, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month, said on Thursday that getting out of cameras would result in “significant” job losses. Most of the 400 people in that business are based in Rochester, New York, and work in research [...]
Infographic: How Coffee Changed America
View a larger version here. If you like coffee and enjoyed this infograhic, you’ll probably like the book Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in Abyssinia to its role in intrigue in the American colonies to [...]
The franchise restaurant Buffalo Wild Wings is testing iPads in their restaurants. Patrons will be able to order their wings and drinks from the devices as well as jump online to keep themselves entertained while they wait for their ordered food to arrive at their table. Computerworld: The 830-store Buffalo Wild Wings chain is about [...]
OC Register: More than one in five small-business owners (22%) expect to add jobs over the next 12 months, while 8% expect to eliminate jobs, according to the new Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index poll. This is the most optimistic owners have been in four years, Gallup says. Small-business owners tend to be optimistic. Otherwise, [...]
Apple, Inventor Face Off Over driPhone
Apparently one “I” can make a big difference if you choose to name a product with the word phone in it. At least, that is what driPhone recently discovered. Apple, through a Wellington-based patent firm, told Hayden Crowther it was opposing his application to trademark the driPhone name in New Zealand because it is too [...]
iPhone Apps Create 500,000 Jobs & Small Biz
Yesterday I posted that Apple’s iPhone business was larger than all of Microsoft. Some of you said, “well good for them, but what about us?” Today, I’ve found a report that indicates that nearly half a million programmer jobs/small businesses have been created by people programming apps for devices like the Apple iPhone and iPad [...]
The Future is 3D Printed Manufacturing
Forbes: Now the economics of large-scale production runs carried out overseas are being disrupted by the possibility of making, selling and delivering millions of manufactured items one unit at a time, right next to the customer. The question most people ask when thinking about the possibilities of 3D printing is: which of our existing products [...]
Infographic: Is Free Shipping Essential?
Free shipping was once a something that could set your online retail business apart, has it become cost of doing business? The infographic below from Monetate points out that: Nearly half of all online orders now include free shipping Shoppers spend more when shipping costs are waived I know I discriminate against retail websites that [...]
Infographic: 10 Ways to Increase Sales in 2012
Customers are always the core of any business. However, in 2012, customers will require more personalize attention than ever before. Luckily, businesses can easily accomplish this by embracing analytics and new technologies that will help them build unprecedented relationships with their customers. Here are Truaxis’ top ways to increase sales in the new year while [...]
Lifehacker has up a list of the best sites to raise money and get your ideas off the ground For The Most Attention: Kickstarter For App-Builders, Game Designers, and Developers: IndieGoGo For Inventors and Gadget Creators: Quirky For Musicians: Bandcamp For Crafty Types: Etsy For Global Users: RocketHub Photo by mmaxer/ShutterStock.
The iPhone is Bigger Than Microsoft
Henry Blodget: Apple’s iPhone business alone is now bigger than Microsoft. Not Windows. Not Office. Microsoft. Think about that. The iPhone did not exist five years ago. And now it’s bigger than a company that, 15 years ago, was dragged into court and threatened with forcible break-up because it had amassed an unassailable and unthinkably [...]
If you live in Detroit, and you need to go to the doctor, you now have a new option: a computer screen in Rite Aid. American Medical News: When patients walk into a NowClinic at any one of nine Detroit-area Rite Aid pharmacies, they can choose among multiple physicians to see about what’s ailing them. [...]
How Healthy Is Your Small Business?
Not sure how healthy your small business is? Take a look at some advice from the Herald Sun. IS YOUR BUSINESS UP AND COMING? A NEW business needs a proper financial, operational and legal structure to chart its early days, including market research and a monthly or weekly cash flow projection and budget. IS IT [...]
From The Shed To Internal Combustion Engine Wizard
NZ Herald: Shepherd was always bothered by the inefficiencies – especially the lack of leverage – in the internal combustion engine. With the overall idea in his head he began to sketch out an engine design, which was built into a prototype and exhibited at the Hutchwilco Boat Show and is now on display at [...]
Debbie Pifer never imagined her doughnuts would go to the Superbowl, but this year they were delivered to the NY Giants. The mother-in-law of Jim Cordle noticed her blueberry doughnuts and ordered dozens for the team. “We were just a little excited,” said Debbie Pifer, owner of White House Fruit Farm. “Here we are in [...]
Stride Rite Seeking Mompreneur Ideas
Boston Herald: Stride Rite hopes to reach a wide audience of “mompreneurs,” according to product line manager Kate Cox. “Robeez by Stride Rite was created by a mom for moms, and we wanted to continue in this tradition as we look to add new ideas to our celebrated footwear brand,” she said. Stride Rite is [...]
WSJ: Atomic Object, a Grand Rapids, Mich., software-development firm, holds company meetings first thing in the morning. Employees follow strict rules: Attendance is mandatory, nonwork chitchat is kept to a minimum and, above all, everyone has to stand up. Stand-up meetings are part of a fast-moving tech culture in which sitting has become synonymous with [...]
Watch Out For Fake Facebook Stock
If you do construction work on someone’s home and they offer to pay you in Facebook stock — before the IPO — it might not be a good idea to accept it in lieu of cash, as one Wisconsin man learned last week. Marianne Oleson, 46, made her initial appearance in Winnebago County court Wednesday [...]
Japanese Entrepreneurs Dream Of Silicon Valley
Manufacturing.net: Small but growing numbers of Japanese entrepreneurs are jumping into the startup scene in northern California, particularly since the earthquake and tsunami last March. They include Naoki Shibata, who took the plunge by giving up the sort of life many Japanese in past decades spent their lives trying to attain. Only 30, Shibata had [...]
Business Plan Competitions Revamped
I’m glad to see that some business plan competitions are focusing more on the business and less on the plan. WSJ: Less planning, more legwork. That’s the formula some business schools are using to overhaul the competitions they conduct each year to test their students’ mettle as entrepreneurs. The contests, which have been an academic [...]
Small Biz Optimism At Three Year High
Fox Business: Three out of four (75 percent) small-business owners in the U.S. are confident about the future of their businesses, a new economic report shows. This is the highest level of small-business optimism in this country in the past three years and a jump from 64 percent of owners giving future prospects a thumbs-up [...]
Shark Tank is Good, Even If You Don’t Get Funded
Speaking of the Shark Tank, Nashville chef Shawn Davis was on the show last year asking for a $200,000 investment for 40% of his company that made shrimp hamburgers. Well the sharks weren’t biting that night, but Davis wasn’t concerned. After all, all publicity is good publicity: His wife and daughter were crushed when he [...]
Shark Tank is back for a third season on ABC in the United States. I haven’t had an opportunity to sit down with the first two episodes yet, but I will review them after I get the chance. What have you thought of them and of the entrepreneurs and their ideas so far? If you [...]
Parenting Advice That Works In Business
Who wants to learn the same lesson twice? Forbes has a list of advice that works for parents and entrepreneurs alike. Don’t lose sight of who you are. The experience of owning and running a business can be all-consuming – and so too can having a child. But be careful; don’t relinquish all of your [...]
Boy Scouts of America and Edison Nation’s Innovation Challenge
The Boy Scouts of America and Edison Nation have come together to challenge kids between the ages of 7 to 21 years old to participate in the Boy Scouts of America Innovation Challenge. The Innovation Challenge is looking to today’s kids to develop tomorrow’s products. Whether the invention solves a problem around the house, the [...]
Knowem: Check Every Social Networking Site At Once
Are you tired of having to manually check all of your potential domain names against Twitter, Facebook, and all of the other social media websites? Never again. KnowEm is a website that allow you to check for the use of your brand, product, personal name or username instantly on over 590 popular social media websites.
Superbowl Ad For The Little Guy
Superbowl ads may represent the largest companies around the world, but one ad this Sunday will be for the “little guy,” reports OC Register. Kauffman says that the ad, which employs the same animated illustration style used in the Foundation’s popular Sketchbook series, outlines the growth of a simple idea into a successful business. It [...]
NPR: Everyone knows what an Oreo cookie is supposed to be like. It’s round, black and white, and intensely sweet. Has been for 100 years. But sometimes, in order to succeed in the world, even the most iconic product has to adapt. In China, that meant totally reconsidering what gives an Oreo its Oreoness. But, [...]
How to Save Endangered Species: Hunt Them
CBS News: The scimitar horned oryx … the addax … the dama gazelle – three elegant desert antelope that you’d hope to see on a journey through Africa, except that their numbers are dwindling there. Which is why Lara Logan went to Texas — yes, Texas. There, on large grassland ranches, some exotic species that [...]
MarketWatch: For the period spanning Dec. 24 to Jan. 23, Intuit reported small business employment inched up 0.2%, equating to an annual growth rate of 2.9%. During the month, small business hourly employees worked an average of 107.5 hours, down slightly from 107.6 hours in December. Average monthly pay for all small business employees slipped [...]
Teenager On Forbes 30 Under 30 List
If Forbes 30 under 30 list wasn’t interesting enough, they made it even more interesting by listing a 17 year old as one of the successes. A 17-year-old inventor from Texas, Javier Fernández-Han, the son of immigrants from China and Mexico, was named one of “Forbes’ 30 under 30″ this year, for his inventive use [...]
People in most countries may never see it, but Africa has welcomed a new competitor for the iPad. The tablet computer was invented by one of their own citizens. The tablet is called the Way-C – “the light of the stars” in a dialect of northern Congo. It measures 19 x 17 x 1.2 centimetres [...]
Small Biz Advantages In The Cloud
If you haven’t jumped on the cloud bandwagon yet, The Washington Post has a few reasons why you should. Take computer backup, for example. The old way of backing up computers was to purchase an external hard drive and a software program, install the software, physically connect your computer to the hardware, then run the [...]
Inventors Celebrating Thomas Edison’s Birthday At Free Invention Expo
MarketWatch: Sarah Miller Caldicott, the legendary inventor’s grand niece and author of “Innovate like Edison” is among an illustrious roster of speakers from 10 AM to 6 PM. Attendees will be treated to a phantasmagoric display of remarkable inventions stretching across a wide spectrum of creativity. Attendees also have a chance of winning a valuable [...]
FTC Shuts Down Fake News Sites Selling Acai Berries
FTC: Six online marketers agreed to settlements with the Federal Trade Commission that will permanently halt their allegedly deceptive practice of using fake news websites to market acai berry supplements and other weight-loss products. As part of its ongoing crackdown on bogus health claims, the proposed settlements will require that the six operations make clear [...]
Entrepreneur Creates His Own Stonehenge
The more money some entrepreneurs make, and the more money they have to spend on their hobbies. For Edward Loyst, that includes $65,000 on carving and building with stones. “Nobody is going to rush up and say, ‘Here is another Rodin or Henry Moore. But it’s interesting to build something that people will wonder in [...]
FBI To Use Social Media To Predict Crimes
The Telegraph: The Bureau is asking companies to build software that can effectively scan social media online for significant words, phrases and behavior so that agents can respond. A paper posted on the FBI website asks for companies to build programs that will map sentiment and wrongdoing. Although the software would only be able to [...]
10 Things That Will Be Obsolete by 2020
Wrist Watches Paperbacks Traditional Homework Newspapers Car Keys College Backpacks DVDs Instruction Manuals Corked Wine Offline Voting 38 more can be found on Socialnomics.
Veterans Small Biz Conference Visiting Detroit
Detroit Free Press: The National Veterans Small Business Conference and Expo will be held at Cobo Center in June, bringing an estimated 6,000 veterans, small-business owners, federal employees, and advocates to the city, Mayor Dave Bing and U.S. Veterans Administration officials said Wednesday. The conference will be June 25-29 at Cobo. The event is billed [...]
UK Inventors Need More Support
Trevor Baylis has seen success with his inventions like the wind-up radio, but he cannot help but wonder why the government isn’t doing more to help inventors get going. So, he is doing something about it. He set up Baylis Brands to help inventors to patent their ideas and get them to market, and he [...]
Business Insider: “I’ve found that entrepreneurs, unlike smart people, get focused on working with whatever they have at hand and doing one important thing at a time. Smart people tend to enjoy thinking about a lot of things at once.” Perhaps all entrepreneurs are smart people, but not all smart people are entrepreneurs. In order [...]
At first people wondered if the iPad would be undercut by competitors with a cheaper tablet, like Amazon’s Kindle, but it appears the opposite has happened. Not only are iPad sales on the rise, but they have also had an effect on the sales of regular computers, reports Apple Insider. Demand for iPads helped to [...]
Furniture Maker At The State Of The Union
Instead of going to China, Bruce Cochrane set up his business in the US to give Americans jobs. His actions grabbed the attention of the President, and he was invited to the President’s recent State of the Union address, reports KTVZ Bend. Cochrane interrupted years of business consulting in Asia to reopen a furniture factory [...]
No More Resumes: Send Us a Link
WSJ: Union Square Ventures recently posted an opening for an investment analyst. Instead of asking for r’esum’es, the New York venture-capital firm-which has invested in Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga and other technology companies-asked applicants to send links representing their “Web presence,” such as a Twitter account or Tumblr blog. Applicants also had to submit short videos [...]
Infographic: Who Buys Advertising on Google
(Larger view) Finance & Insurance – $4.0 Billion (example keywords in this industry include: “self employed health insurance”, “cheap car insurance”, “credit cards for bad credit”) Retailers & General Merchandise – $2.8 Billion (example keywords in this industry include “zumba dance dvd”, “proform treadmill”, “weber grill accessories”) Travel & Tourism – $2.4 Billion (e.g. “new [...]
Website Helps Homeowners Keep On Track
Sacramento Business Journal: The new enterprise is HomeZada, an internet site and a mobile application that helps homeowners organize and protect household inventory documents and receipts. The interactive software also sets checklist schedules for all types of household maintenance, such as when to change heating filters, clean the chimney and other duties.
Google+ To Welcome Nicknames And Pseudonyms
Google has announced that it will begin supporting nicknames and pseudonyms for user accounts on its Google+ social network. This has been a sticky subject since the network launched seven months ago with a strict real name policy that saw violating accounts flagged and deleted. The revised Google+ name policy will begin rolling out this [...]
If you don’t work for a fortune 500 company, or a government agency, do you still have a business card? I don’t. Well, actually I do, but I last printed them in 2007 and so much has changed since that I don’t think that any of the contact information is valid anymore. According to Fox [...]
