Yesterday on Bizopy:

• The Wilcraft: Drive Safely on Water, Ice and Land
• Quick-Finders: The Fastest Way to the Bedroom
• The Practicello: The Portable Cello
• The Chill Frill Pillowcase
• From Garage to Billions
• Steve Jobs: Secrets of Life
• The Cube Bottle
• Do You Consider Yourself An Idea Man?
• Richard Branson’s Advice for Entrepreneurs
• The Concrete Tent

imdb.com:

A disabled man named Agustin in Honduras has been building a helicopter in his home for the past 53 years causing controversy amongst his family and community. Some wonder if he is crazy. Other see him as inspirational. Some believe he is wasting his time. But for Agustin, the helicopter has become a way to cope with his debilitating polio as he painstakingly crafts the homemade flying machine. But will it fly?

Watch it here.

Coast River Business Journal:

Chris Donner likes games… vintage stuff.

Pinball machines and arcade games.

Now, the 29-year-old has purchased Pacific Glass Inc. in northern Lincoln City and plans to showcase nearly 150 arcade games on a revolving basis when he opens a pub and entertainment business this fall.

“I really got into arcade games when my dad was running an arcade route,” Donner said. “We would always have games at the house and I would play them all the time.”

Donner’s girlfriend, Jenny, 23, also has caught “arcade fever,” Chris said. They met in the U.S. Marine Corps following deployments in Iraq.

The two are members of Portland Arcade Collectors, enthusiasts who like to find, collect, repair, restore and play classic arcade games.

The coin-operated entertainment machines include video games, such as pinball machines; electro-mechanical games; redemption games and merchandisers (such as claw cranes).

Their popularity has waned since the 1970s and ‘80s. Yet Donner sees a niche for the business, particularly in a coastal tourist town such as Lincoln City.

No, we’re not talking about the proverbial love bug bite that makes people fall in love or childhood cooties. The Love Bug Solution is a car cleaner that helps protect vehicles from the actual fly. Also known as March Fly, Honeymoon Fly, Telephone Bug, Kissy Bug and Double Headed Bug, these pests are acidic to cars when they splat on the body.

“The Love Bug Solution™ is chemically engineered to be applied wet and when dry it provides a cellophane-like barrier, literally a shield that protects your investment from Love Bugs,” said Sam Yates, The Love Bug Solution™ spokesperson.

Love bugs are trapped on the solution’s surface where they may be safely rinsed off as The Love Bug Solution™ magically dissolves to soapy suds when sprayed with water. “The days of scouring your car or truck’s grill, hood, lights and mirrors are gone. The Love Bug Solution™ takes the major work out of getting rid of love bugs that have taken aim at your vehicle while traveling during love bug season,” Yates added.

The Love Bug Solution™ contains no solvents, is biodegradable and is proudly made in the U.S.A.

Entrepreneur.com:

Entrepreneur: Krystal O’Mara, founder of ReMain Eco Design and Consulting.

O’Mara began transforming bikes into living room décor in February 2010.

“Aha” moment: O’Mara created a table out of bicycle rims early last year to raise money for the silent auction at 24 Hours in the Canyon, an annual bike race in Amarillo, Texas, that benefits cancer research. That first table lit the spark; O’Mara continued designing and building furniture from spare bike parts and other recycled materials, including reclaimed wood. The self-proclaimed handywoman even taught herself how to weld. “I grew up in a family where we never hired anyone to do anything,” she says. “I knew how to do a lot of home maintenance and painting, and I’ve always enjoyed upcycling old family furnishings.”

Biker chic: O’Mara incorporates assorted bicycle parts into each work. One of her tables had a top made entirely of cut-up tires. Recently, she made a chandelier from wheels and rims for a restaurant in Portsmouth, N.H.

TrendBuyers:

… Simon Colabufalo presented at DesignEX 2012 in Sydney his innovative idea: a fruit hanger made in polished aluminum. The Eva fruit hanger is designed to actually bring the fruits back in the tree, thus being an innovative way of storing fruits. It’s an interesting concept and, if it ever goes into mass production, it will also be a great present for anyone. It’s a useful gift and also a functional one. The fruit is hanged by its stem, so you’ll have to be careful not to remove it.

Being made in aluminum, the object is easy to clean. It goes well with a modern interior design and also in an office space…

Jim Bintliff supplies special mud for Major League Baseball. The story goes back to when pro baseball teams began using new balls for each game. They wanted to remove the factory gloss and make the balls easier to grip. The umpires tried in-field dirt, shoe polish, and tobacco juice, but everything damaged the ball.

Lena Blackburne, a Philadelphia Athletics coach, remembered the rich mud at his fishing hole in southern New Jersey near the Delaware River. He started experimenting with the mud, mixing it with varying amounts of water to try to achieve a consistency that was thick enough to adhere to the ball yet didn’t gum up the laces. In 1938, Blackburne eventually delivered a batch to the Athletics, whose chief umpire at the time liked it.

American League opponents found out about the mud and asked where they could buy some. The National League followed. Blackburne, who didn’t have kids, left the business to my grandfather, his childhood friend. My grandfather gave the business to my father, and today I run the company with my wife, Joanne. In a good year we make about $22,000 a year selling mud – I earn my living as a night-shift printing-press operator.

Every MLB team buys the stuff, which we ship in plastic three-pound containers. Umpires used to be the only folks who could apply the mud to balls, but today the job falls to clubhouse managers. The league doesn’t officially endorse the product but says it’s the only substance that works. It’s also about tradition – essentially the MLB wants today’s players to apply the same mud that Ted Williams used.

The mud is on public land, but we’ve always kept the location a secret to keep people from trampling it. I make about five or six trips to the mud hole a year. When I get the mud to my house, I rinse it with tap water and filter out debris. I’d like to expand the business. Recently I sold a few buckets to a few NFL teams, which have found that the mud makes footballs easier to grip. We’re hoping to hear from more of them.

Photo by Nathaniel Welch.

I think that these gold vending machines might do really well in the United States, especially as more people figure out that paper money is basically worthless:

Long attracted to the safety of solid gold, Germans will soon be able to sate their appetite for the yellow metal as easily as buying a chocolate bar after plans were announced on Tuesday to install gold vending machines in airports and railway stations across the country.

The venture by the TG-Gold-Super-Markt company, based near Stuttgart, aims to build on soaring retail interest in gold purchases after a loss in confidence in a range of other investments as a result of the financial crisis.

More from the NY Times:

Within three months, Mr. Geissler’s company, TG-Gold-Super-Markt, plans to have “a substantial number” of machines up and running in Germany, Austria and Switzerland with hopes for 500 around the world. He is aiming for a franchise model in which clients buy the machines, which cost 20,000 euros, or about $28,000, and then pay to have them serviced by TG-Gold.

National Geographic:

Bamboo is among the fastest growing and most adaptable materials on the planet. It can grow up to two inches per hour and matures in about five years, providing a constant and never-ending supply to the marketplace without endangerment to countless species (as long as native forests aren’t mowed down to make way for bamboo plantations, which isn’t common because bamboo can be grown on marginal and already worked-over lands). Compare that to hardwoods such as oak, which can grow about 12 inches per year and takes up to 120 years to mature.

Another possible cause for the dominating positive buzz for bamboo products is the fact that it is so versatile and can be used and made into almost anything, from flooring and paper to clothing and building materials. It’s soft and durable when woven, is extremely durable when made into clothes and boasts anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties. Since it also has a tensile strength stronger than steel, bamboo is popular in building materials. Essentially, you can build your house, your office, your décor and your wardrobe entirely from bamboo.

Photo by mattscoggin.

Seven News Queensland:

Surf Life Saving Australia says unmanned aerial drones will patrol some Queensland beaches this summer.

The organisation’s head, Brett Williamson, says the drones will be used on North Stradbroke Island in a trial of the technology.

He has told Radio National’s the drones, which have a wingspan of one metre, use cameras to search for swimmers in distress.

Mr Williamson says the drones will be fitted with flotation buoys that can be dropped down to the ocean.

Photo by Marion Doss.

AFP:

Scientists in Japan have created a microscopically thin film that can coat individual teeth to prevent decay or to make them appear whiter, the chief researcher said.

The “tooth patch” is a hard-wearing and ultra-flexible material made from hydroxyapatite, the main mineral in tooth enamel, that could also mean an end to sensitive teeth.

“This is the world’s first flexible apatite sheet, which we hope to use to protect teeth or repair damaged enamel,” said Shigeki Hontsu, professor at Kinki University’s Faculty of Biology-Oriented Science and Technology in western Japan.

Photo by jfraser.

Michael Lechter:

Technically, there is no such thing as a “provisional patent.” The patent law provides for a “provisional application,” which isn’t subject to some of the formal requirements for a regular patent application. A provisional application, however, is not intended to, itself, provide any enforceable rights.

It is not examined by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and is automatically abandoned 12 months after filing. It does not itself ever mature into a patent. For a patent to issue on the subject matter described in the provisional, a regular application claiming priority on the provisional application must be filed within a year of the provisional. And the provisional application must include adequate “support” for the claims of the regular application. In addition, any corresponding foreign applications must be filed within that one-year period.

Michael Lechter is author of Protecting Your #1 Asset : Creating Fortunes from Your Ideas : An Intellectual Property Handbook.

If you enjoyed my previous post, Washington Makes You Dirtier, you’ll love a book from Jeffrey Tucker called Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo. The book is about how the government makes everything it touches worse. Its pervasive interventions in every sector affect the functioning of society in so many ways that we just adapt. Tucker proposes another path: see how government has distorted daily life, rethink how things would work without the state, and fight against the intervention in every way that is permitted.

The book is also available completely free to download as a PDF.

The following is an excerpt from the introduction to Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo by Jeffrey Tucker.

The title of this book is drawn from one of those defining moments in life in which a small phrase shatters the social-cultural convention and reveals completely new possibilities. I tell the story herein in the essay on morning drinking.

A great scholar and Southern gentlemen-a man who has written the ultimate guidebook to the writing of the King James version of the Gospels-invited me for an early breakfast, 7:00 a.m. and then offered me coffee.

I said, “yes, thank you.”

He then added: “would you like bourbon in that coffee?”

What is revealed in that sentence and the shock it elicited? We believe, for whatever reason, that drinking hard liquor in the morning is unseemly, contrary to social norms, something to hide, a habit of the lower classes that is dangerous or even evil.

But are any of these assumptions true? A new form of prohibitionism has swept the country, imposed on us by our government masters and their cultural backers, even as alcohol consumption rises and rises. Evidently, we live two realities: the one the government imposes on us and the one we adopt in our real lives.

What struck me about this man’s phrase was how it presumed that he and I were among the rebels against the prevailing ethos-that together we would reject the government’s edicts and create our own norms and reality. This is a wonderful model for living a full life. This book is about seeing that just because government mandates certain things and forbids others does not mean that we must follow or even tolerate the official roadmap for our lives.

The seed of truth to the morning-drinking taboo is that doing this every morning would contribute to a less productive life. But on the weekends or when it is not necessary to be at your sober best, or when you are celebrating some special guest, there is surely nothing wrong here.

In any case, there must be some lost aristocratic tradition of adding a splash, else this highly cultivated, highly educated and scholarly Southern gentleman would not have suggested it. In doing so, he was revealing some lost history with a sense of freedom and possibility. To contemplate the suggestion is to imagine a world that does not exist, one that breaks from the status quo and plays with the pluses and minuses of adopting a new way of living.

Most of the essays in this book do just this. They imagine radical new possibilities of living outside the status quo. Or perhaps we should say “statist” quo because it is the state that is responsible for shaping our world, in brazen ways and also subtle ones that we do not fully realize.

Examples from the book include how and why the “hot” water in our homes became lukewarm and what can be done about it, how our toilets stopped working properly because of legislation that reduced toilet-tank size, how traffic-law enforcement became a racket for extracting wealth from the population to feed the overlords, how copyright and patent legislation is depriving us of cultural and technological innovation, and how politicians who we think are protecting us are really just taking away our own rights to protect ourselves.

To see the costs of statism is to see what Frederic Bastiat called the “unseen.” It is about imagining the existence of some possibility that the state has forbidden from existing, playing with that possibility in your mind, and then acting on what has previously been an abstraction and making it a reality. Art helps us accomplish this mental feat, which is why many of these essays deal with literature, movies, culture, and the arts.

But seeing what is wrong with the world-Chesterton’s phrase-is only the beginning. Finding the solution, the workaround, is the next necessary step. I try not to highlight problems without also offering a solution of sorts, simply because there is nothing productive or enlightening about despair. Hope comes from imaging a better future that does not yet exist.

Most of the essays in here deal with what are often considered trivial or light topics. But the trivial is quite often very serious, while what we think is serious is often quite trivial, as I try to show. At the same time, I deal with topics that libertarians of my stripe don’t often write about, like the ghastly reality of jail (yes, the article is autobiographical) and the problems connected with intellectual property. I make no apology for the fact that the topics are all over the map. Maybe that will make this book more interesting.

Jeffrey Tucker is the editor of Mises.org.

The Globe and Mail:

It sounds like the setup to a bad joke: Two men drive a truck crammed full of skivvies across the country. But Got Ginch, Brent King’s cheeky charity campaign, isn’t just for laughs – it’s fulfilling a desperate need at homeless shelters coast to coast. A successful biomedical entrepreneur who invented the Spider, a surgical limb positioner used in hospitals worldwide, Mr. King, 43, could have signed a cheque and gone to play golf. But in September, he and Robb Price, founder of charitable-giving website DeliverGood.org, drove 75 hours over 11 days from Vancouver to Halifax, dropping off a total of 35,000 pairs of men’s underwear at shelters in 10 cities (the overwhelming preference: tighty-whities).

What keeps you going?

“On the road, it was hard to go three days without a shower, and then look fresh for an interview. It put us a little in touch with what homeless people go through.”

Lessons learned

“I used to think homelessness resulted from bad decisions. I realized that most of the time, it’s circumstance. How do you get a job if you don’t have an address or a phone number?”

Photo by fauxto_digit

den.m bar is a custom blue jean shop in Los Angeles, California. They have turned jean buying into a premium customer experience with a user-friendly online shop that walks the customer through the process of creating their own pair of custom jeans from start to finish. Starting with fabric selection, customers can choose not only the type of denim they prefer, but also the style, color, and any additional accessories. Then, an experienced tailor crafts the custom jeans to the exact specifications of the customer. Unfortunately, the process isn’t fast. Each pair of denim usually takes 3 to 4 weeks to complete and starts at about $300.

I recently had a opportunity to speak to Derek Yip, one of the cofounders.

How’d you guys get into this business?

Richard, one of the cofounders, always had the idea but never really got to actually doing till he saw a inspirational article that was done on 3×1. After reading it and realizing that there was nothing like that in the Los Angeles area, he put together a fantastic team to try and do something similar.

What’s your background?

My background is in business marketing and I’ve been in the corporate world ever since college. What I do at den.m bar ranges from marketing, business development, store operations, and many others. Being that our team is relatively small, we all have to wear many hats as I’m sure you know. There are 3 other partners and 3 other employees in our company.

Sounds like an exciting place to be. I look forward to seeing how your business grows.

On this day in 1923 the first Checker Taxi hit the streets. The Checker Taxi is the most famous taxi in the United States.

It’s history is below.

Morris Markin, (a clothier from Chicago, Illinois) became the owner of ‘Markin Automobile Body’, an auto-body manufacturer based in Joliet, Illinois following a default by the owner on a $15,000 personal loan. The facility made bodies for ‘Commonwealth Motors’ who marketed the vehicles to cab companies under the trade name ‘Mogul’.

Commonwealth Motors was on the verge of bankruptcy but had an order from Checker Taxi (a privately-owned cab company in Chicago that had no affiliation with Markin at the time). Markin merged Commonwealth Motors with Markin Automobile Body in order to honor the contractual commitment.

Inspired by John Hertz who had set up a taxi business in Chicago (later known as Yellow Cab Company) in 1910, Markin began buying up Checker Taxis’ vehicles in 1924, gaining full control of the company in 1937. Markin followed Hertz’s business plan in having drivers open doors for the fares, and outfitted each driver with a uniform.

Competition for fares was fierce in the 1920s, and the easily spotted drivers began ganging up on one another between fares. The fighting between the two cab companies escalated to the point where Markin’s home was firebombed which prompted Markin to relocate Checker Taxi to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Checker became the first cab company to hire African-American drivers and the first to require that drivers pick up all fares, not just white ones.

Hertz had sold his Yellow Cab to the Parmalee Transportation Company, but in 1929, after a suspicious fire at his stables killed his prized race horses, Hertz sold his share to Markin who then acquiring another one-third in the company from Parmalee, thus taking control of both Parmalee and Yellow Cab.

When Hertz had sold off the cab business, the manufacturing arm went to General Motors, which wanted to sell part of the acquired business and made an offer to Markin, but Markin refused. Rather than eliminate the capacity of Yellow Manufacturing, General Motors entered the taxicab business as Terminal Taxi Cab.

A second fare war broke out, with Checker Taxi Co and Terminal Taxi Co staff fighting it out in New York City. To end the dispute, New York Mayor Jimmy Walker created the New York Taxi Cab Commission, which ruled that all cabs in New York had to be purpose-built cabs, not consumer car conversions.

Markin sold Checker Cab to E.L. Cord, but bought it back again in 1936.

In 1940, Parmalee (including Yellow and Checker Cab) became the largest cab company in the United States.

From its inception until 1956, Checker taxicabs had unusual and sometimes bulky, styling. A brand-new body was introduced for the 1956 model year, called A8, and that body would be retained for the duration of Checker production until the end, in 1982.

1956 through ‘58 Checkers featured single headlights and a thick, single-bar grille. In 1958, quad headlights became legal in the U.S., and Checkers featured the quad headlights from that time forward, along with a new egg-crate grille insert. Taillights were also changed to the familiar vertical chrome strip housing dual red lenses. Early models also featured a single separate, bumper-mounted backup light.

Aside from the body, components for the A8 and subsequent models were sourced from various manufacturers. Studebaker parts were used in the interior, suspensions came from Ford, engines were built by Continental, and the automatic transmissions were originally Bendix units.

Starting in 1959, Checker began producing passenger car versions of the taxis to the general public. Called Marathon for most of its life, the Checker car was advertised as a roomy and rugged alternative to the standard American passenger sedan. A Marathon station wagon was also offered, but American buyers preferred style and power over practicality, so the high-riding bulbous Checkers never sold well to the public.

In 1964 the State of New York pursued Markin and Checker on antitrust charges, alleging that it controlled both the taxi service and manufacture of taxis, and thus favored itself in fulfilling orders. Rather than allow Checker drivers to begin buying different brands of cars, Markin began selling licenses in New York City.

As Federal safety rules increased throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Checkers kept pace and despite having the same basic body design, Checker enthusiasts can often identify the year of a Checker based on its safety equipment. For example, starting in 1963, amber parking/directional lights were used up front. 1964 models introduced lap belts in front, energy-absorbing steering columns came in 1967. 1968 models featured round side marker lights on fenders along with shoulder belts, and 1969s introduced headrests for front outboard seating positions.

1970 began the use of full-size Chevrolet steering columns and steering wheels. 1973 and 74 models replaced the chrome-plated bumpers for larger, beam-type units that were painted aluminum and protected the lights in a 5-mph impact. ‘75 and later models were labeled “Leaded Fuel Only,” and 1978s introduced the new delta-style Chevrolet steering wheel.

Despite its bare-bones reputation as a taxicab, ultra-luxury, limousine-type Marathons were also available, especially in later years. The A-12E model, specially built for the wife of the CEO of the company, remains in brand-new condition with less than 50 miles on the odometer. Checker limos offered vinyl roofs with opera windows, power-assisted accessories, and luxurious upholstery.

The final Marathon was manufactured in 1982, when Checker exited the automobile manufacturing business. The company continued operation at partial capacity making Cadillac parts for General Motors until January 2009 when it declared bankruptcy

In 2001, Lisa Liddy plunged into growing her book-publishing company, The Printed Page, to take up the slack that followed her husband’s loss of a job in the hospitality industry.

Her business took off, as she and her husband, Joe, concentrated heavily on book design, layout and publishing.

To counter stress resulting from the long hours, Liddy took up beading as a hobby, learning the process at Ahwatukee’s Another Bead Please store, and from books and magazines.

“It was my own Zen garden, getting the bead tray out at night, pushing the beads around till they came together was relaxing to me,” said Liddy, who has lived with her husband and daughter in Ahwatukee since 1990.

Her evening pastime has given birth to two successful businesses — Joolz by Lisa and Metal Me This. Her original jewelry and metalworks have been spotlighted in national trade magazines, including the March cover of Wirework.

WSJ:

Street sales aren’t the only source of revenue for the gourmet food trucks that have taken the city by storm in a few years. Some are deriving as much as half of their income from catering and rentals.

They cater everything from weddings to bar mitzvahs to movie and television crews filming on the street. Food trucks also are being hired by businesses to woo corporate clients.

Some are even papered over with ads to promote products ranging from Coach bags to airlines to corporate food chains.

“We have a major company that is looking to us to promote their brand,” said Grant Di Mille, president and co-founder of Sweetery, which has three trucks. “How interesting is that? That a company with 250-plus retail locations, a multimillion-dollar company, is coming to us to promote their brand.”

Photo by ross.grady.

How many times have you seen a product and thought, I know how to make that better? Or not seen a product and thought, How is it that no one has invented this yet? And when haven’t you thought, I need to be my own boss?

You’re thinking the right things. Now, the next step is to take action—and that’s exactly what One Simple Idea for Startups and Entrepreneurs is all about.

Stephen Key, one of the world’s leading experts on getting business ideas off the ground, revealed in his groundbreaking book One Simple Idea just how simple it is to make a fortune by selling or “renting” your great ideas.

Now, he helps you live the entrepreneurial dream by delivering a proven, straightforward process for starting, growing, and running a business—without the need for an MBA or millions of dollars in funding. As an inventor and successful business owner, Key brings a unique and fully rounded perspective to the subject, teaching you how to:

• Develop, test, and protect your idea
• Plan and launch your business
• Manufacture, package, market, sell, and distribute your product
• Manage and grow your business
• Prepare for and implement your endgame

Key draws on his own experience as a billion dollar inventor to offer how-to’s and other takeaways you can use to get off the ground and into the black. Case studies, tips, and advice from other successful entrepreneurs underscore key principles to make it easier than ever for you to achieve your business and life dreams.

You don’t need millions of dollars or a business, engineering, or manufacturing background to develop, produce, and sell your own product idea. All you need is one simple idea—and the passion to make it happen.

Short of some Die Hard with a Vengeance sort of scheme, bank robbers can only carry away so much money—whatever fits on their person, in their car, whatever. And because our currency inflates at a rate of about two percent per year, a bank robber’s haul decreases by that much in spending power every year, meaning that the burlap sack of loot clutched in John Dillinger’s palm was worth considerably more to him than the exact same assortment of bills would be in your hand, today.

Singularity Hub:

Philip M. Parker, Professor of Marketing at INSEAD Business School, has had a side project for over 10 years. He’s created a computer system that can write books about specific subjects in about 20 minutes. The patented algorithm has so far generated hundreds of thousands of books. In fact, Amazon lists over 100,000 books attributed to Parker, and over 700,000 works listed for his company, ICON Group International, Inc. This doesn’t include the private works, such as internal reports, created for companies or licensing of the system itself through a separate entity called EdgeMaven Media.

Parker is not so much an author as a compiler, but the end result is the same: boatloads of written works.

Now these books aren’t your typical reading material. Common categories include specialized technical and business reports, language dictionaries bearing the “Webster’s” moniker (which is in the public domain), rare disease overviews, and even crossword puzzle books for learning foreign languages, but they all have the same thing in common: they are automatically generated by software.

The video below explains how his system works.

Photo by Sharon Drummond.

Marketplace:

If you want a glimpse into the future, check out the action in a drab warehouse in Billerica, Mass. That’s where a start-up called Harvest Automation is working out new robots that could wipe out an entire category of agricultural labor.

Harvest sells small, battery-powered robots that move potted trees and shrubs around in a plant nursery. The idea is to create enough space between each of the pots so that the plants have room to grow. “It gets pretty grueling” says inventor Joe Jones.

In fact, right now in the U.S., migrant laborers — some legal, some not — do this sort of work. But recent crackdowns on illegal labor and the expense and hassle of hiring workers through a federal guest worker program have left many nursery owners searching for a solution to their labor problem.

Last year, about this time, I linked to another story on this company.

Video below.

Chronicle of Higher Education:

Professors typically don’t worry about what price point a course will sell at, or what amenities might attract a student to pick one course over another. But a new online platform, Professor Direct, lets instructors determine not only how much to charge for such courses, but also how much time they want to devote to services like office hours, online tutorials, and responding to students’ e-mails.

The new service is run by StraighterLine, a company that offers online, self-paced introductory courses. Unlike massive open online courses, or MOOC’s, StraighterLine’s courses aren’t free. But tuition is lower than what traditional colleges typically charge—the company calls its pricing “ultra-affordable.” A handful of colleges accept StraighterLine courses for transfer credit.

Instructors who offer courses on Professor Direct will be able to essentially set their own sticker prices, as long as they are higher than the company’s base price. One professor teaching an online mathematics course with a base price of $49, for example, plans to charge $99. For each student who signs up, the company will pocket the $49 base price, and the professor gets the remaining $50.

Running a small business is all about balance — managing day-to-day operations, bigger-picture administration, and marketing. If you want to be successful, effective use of social media is key. Not having an entire marketing department at your disposal is no excuse. If you’re a social media noob, have no fear, we’ll get you started in the right direction.

Basic Requirements

When you start on social media, don’t bite off more than you can chew. There’s no need to jump onto every social bandwagon. Better to start with one or two platforms so you can master them and monitor the effectiveness of your online presence. As GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons says, “Anything that is measured and watched, improves.”

Before your first posts, consider the character and nature of your business and establish some rules for your social media use. Identify who is authorized to post or respond to comments, your policy on posting personal opinions, and how often you will be posting and responding. Consider how you define success on social media and identify measurable standards accordingly so you can quantify your success.

Must Have

Start with Google + or Google Places or Google Whatever-the-Newest-Google-Thing-Is. You may have noticed this little company called Google. They — for all intents and purposes — run the internet, so make sure your company’s information is current. Google is ever-evolving, so search for tips and someone is sure to have posted in the last 20 minutes about how to maximize the visibility of your business on Google.

Facebook is essential. Your Facebook page must, at minimum, tell people where and when they can get your product (retail store location and hours, for instance), how to get in touch with you, and give a feel for your company’s culture and attitude (pictures are a great way to do this.) More-advanced maneuvers on Facebook include gaining “likes,” hosting contests or giveaways, hosting polls and receiving feedback publicly.

Foursquare is also a fantastic tool for small businesses. It, like Facebook, can get pretty fancy, but you can gain some real traction just by claiming your location (for free) and setting up your page. Foursquare is a social platform where people “check-in” online to where they are in real life. Most Foursquare users post their activity to Facebook or Twitter. The most-frequent visitor to a location is called “the Mayor.” If nothing else, get your location and contact info online so people can spread the word about you. Who knows, you just may become the next business tycoon like Parsons of GoDaddy.

Could Have

LinkedIn is a fantastic tool for networking, not so much for gaining new business. A small business owner can generally do just fine with maintaining a personal page on LinkedIn rather than managing a personal and business page. You can network with other local business people to stay apprised of local events, legislation that will affect business owners and so on. It’s also a great place to look for new hires or check references for job applicants. If you’re looking to establish yourself as a thought leader in your sector or neighborhood, this is a good place to be.

A business blog is a great way to humanize your business — if you have the manpower to keep it frequently updated with quality content relevant to your audience. It’s a pretty high-degree of difficulty for most small businesses, so don’t start here.

Take or Leave

Twitter can be a great tool to reach a big audience, but you have to build that audience by being consistently clever in 120 characters or less (leave 20 characters for “retweeting”). For the few readers that run a food truck or similar business, you should consider Twitter essential. For everyone else, it’s sometimes more trouble than it’s worth.

Pinterest is fun, but non-essential, and if you’re like most of their users, you’ll spend lots of time on the site which means little return on investment.

I’m sure whatever niche your business exists in, there is probably a social network that will work really well for you, so do some research and good luck on your venture.

Business Week:

An anxious woman in her mid-40s showed up last winter at Atlas MD, a family doctor’s office in Wichita. She had lost her job as a restaurant cook, and along with it her health insurance and her home. She needed to see a doctor.

Atlas MD isn’t a free clinic. It’s a concierge medical practice, which means you can’t get an appointment unless you pay cash. Atlas MD’s two physicians, Josh Umbehr and Doug Nunamaker, don’t accept insurance. Instead, they charge most of their adult patients $50 a month for unlimited visits. They also offer free EKGs and biopsies and cut-rate prices on prescription drugs. Two-thirds of their patients have insurance but feel the fee is well worth it for personalized service, including house calls, the doctor’s cell-phone number, and quick responses to e-mails and Twitter messages