USA TODAY: Where everyone else sees economic gloom and doom, Reid Hoffman sees opportunity. As the freshly minted CEO of LinkedIn (and its founder), he is shepherding a moneymaking tech company in battered Silicon Valley. And he...
Open Forum: Five things that every small business owner should do in 2009. Don’t consider it a New Year’s resolution because there’s a whole psychology behind such things. Just do it. 1. Act like a prospective customer...

Who Owns Your Great Idea?

The New York Times: Peter Zummo, a senior double-majoring in design and mechanical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is used to explaining the products he thinks up for his studio-class assignments. But last spring, he found...
Fortune Small Business: Building and maintaining fences for cattle is a time-consuming and costly endeavor. That's why a GPS bovine headset may come in handy. This past year, Dean Anderson and Daniela Rus have designed and tested...
Star Tribune: Managing sports fan festivals is proving to be an entrepreneurial slam dunk for Joe Gallagher and his St. Paul-based FILO Productions. In February, FILO Productions (FILO is an acronym for first in, last out) will...
David Wallace At Search Engine Guide: If you have yet to hear about Twitter, I might ask you if you have been living in a cave and for how long. The micro-blogging platform that few knew about...
InformationWeek: Spending too much business time on the computer when you're not at work? You're not alone. Small-business owners and managers, already tethered to their computers for long periods, are turning into "mouse potatoes," increasingly eating and...
In a world that's trying to save money and reduce their carbon footprint, many imaginative ideas have popped up to aid those information seekers. My recent find falls within that category. How do you feel...

Readers’ Brag Basket

photo credit: Gaetan Lee Business Opportunities Weblog readers are a smart and entrepreneurial bunch. Everyday I get emails telling me all about their new projects. Once a week, I'm going to feature some...

Super Bowl Means Biz

The Tampa Tribune: Faye Dowdell looks for any edge she can find in today's gloomy economy. Dowdell spent the morning at the Tampa Port Authority office for the first installment of the NFL's Super Bowl XLIII Playbook...
USA TODAY: Almost nobody would question Earvin Johnson's skill on the basketball court. But in his second career as an entrepreneur, there were doubters from the start. Johnson, best known by his nickname "Magic," remains one of...

Small Biz Owners Beware!

NBCPhiladelphia.com: Stacey Pace runs a small florist in New Castle, Delaware. So small that her office is her kitchen and she works from a laptop. "I got this e-mail directly to my business e-mail address from a...
Metro.co.uk: You'd be forgiven for never hearing of designer Alfred Shaheen. Yet he inspired one of the most colourful, amusing and unforgettable styles of fashion ever known - the Hawaiian shirt. Sadly the pioneering textile manufacturer has died...
Matt Cutts' Blog: Matt Cutts (who works for the Search Quality group in Google) has a great idea for starting the New Year. Start with a fresh and empty inbox in your Gmail. There’s nothing like an...
Montana's News Station: A Missoula-based Internet company recently launched "Pet Living Wills" as a way to protect your favorite dog, cat or goldfish when you are not there. If you could speak on behalf of your pets,...
Telegraph.co.uk: Since 2002 Tom Burrough, 43, has reinvented himself not once but twice: from well-paid advertising executive to stay-at-home father, and now, as the founder of a baby food company, launched from his kitchen table. In 2003...
The Wall Street Journal: Even though gift-giving was relatively stingy this Christmas season, enough stuff changed hands to generate plenty of leftover trash. And that means good tidings for the artists who transform cast-offs into commodities. Curbsides...
Suburban Life Publications: Start out right for your business in 2009 with SCORE: Counselors to America’s Small Business.” SCORE provides a resource page called “Small Business Smart Start Tools”. This content area offers valuable resources for...
intellectual properties: Columnist David Brooks, commenting in the Dec. 16th New York Times about Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book called “Outliers,” made a statement as profound as it was accurate: “Control of attention is the ultimate individual...

2009 Web Predictions

Website Magazine: 2008 has drawn to a close, and many Web professionals are wondering what next year will bring. It may seem arbitrary to make predictions, but the Web business is not a static industry and...