While known as the live music capital of the world, Austin is making serious inroads as one of the most social-media savvy cities in the country. The famed SXSW festival isn't just about the music anymore – a film festival and an esteemed technology and innovation conference have been added to the mix.In recent years, SXSW Interactive has been a particularly important venue for social media companies to debut new technology. Three years ago, Twitter launched there. The microblogging site was the talk of the event and grew quickly from there. Similarly, the location check-in app Foursquare debuted at SXSW last year. The resulting buzz helped founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai bring in $1.35 million from investors.Inspired yet? Even if you're not angling to be the breakout product of this year's SXSW, there are ways to maximize your time at the event by building future partnerships and exposing your product to a core audience of enthusiastic early adopters. Here are some tips.Your Guide to SXSW: Getting the Lay of The LandAt SXSW Interactive, you're going to have to do more to get noticed than simply handing out business cards. In fact, business cards are pretty archaic; at SXSW, iPhone apps such as BeamMe, Bump, Handshake, and Fliq have become the vehicle of choise for charing contact information. And, anyway, we all know how to find each other on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, right? Still, you should know before you go whom you'd like to meet face-to-face – and make a point of doing that. Other networking will come naturally if you're a social person, thanks to the glut of activities, from the panel presentations to the cocktail parties.Additionally, if you're representing your company, you'll want to do some formal things to be recognizable and omnipresent.

• Attend the trade show. Everyone from Samsung to O'Reilly Media to AOL will be there. Take a walk through the exhibit space with an eye toward finding potential future partnerships.

• Enter the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator competition. If you're just starting out or want to debut something new, enter the Accelerator competition, where you'll pitch, demo, and distribute your product. Everyone's there looking for the next big thing, remember – and here's where the demos show 2,500 attendees what you're up to. The exposure from the Accelerator can also help you learn about funding opportunities and take advantage of the SXSW media presence.

• Take part in the screen burn. This arcade of gamers' delights is a great place to meet people—and the ideal venue for a company to demo a new game.

• Mingle at the Interactive parties. Nightlife is an important part of SXSW. Established companies and even some start-ups host evening mixers not only to have fun, but to get their names out. Choose your nighttime schedule just as carefully as you choose your daytime itinerary. RSVP for your top-priority events, but remember that getting your name on the list doen't always ensure entry. Overcrowding can be a big issue at SXSW's hottest events – so remember to arrive early.Dig Deeper: The Business Owner's Social Media ToolkitYour Guide to SXSW: Speaking on a PanelEven if you're fresh to the start-up world, you're an expert in something, right? To gain both industry cred and street-level exposure, you should be billing yourself as such. Typically, panel-based talks are at an academic level, for an insulated audience. At SXSW, by contrast, panels are open to any attendee – so a speaker can reach an opt-in audience that's also fairly diverse. It's like every marketer's dream come true.Of course, even if you're a growing company's online security guru, you're not going to get on the "Securing Web Behemoths" panel with Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft. But there are other opportunities; you simply need to plan ahead.

First, submit your name to SXSW's online PanelPicker. Making an edgy and innovative case for speaking is important; remember, hundreds of other entrepreneurs are doing the same thing as you. Chris Brogan, a social-media expert and author of Trust Agents and Social Media 101 didn't, for instance, pitch a panel called "Social media basics." Instead, his panel is called "I don't trust you one stinkin' bit" – far more intriguing. Public votes count, though only for 30 percent of the formula for choosing panels. SXSW's advisory board (40 percent) and staff (30 percent) comprise the rest. If you have something fresh and coherent to say, you'll have a solid shot. For next year, think ahead: the PanelPicker opens in June.Even if you can't get on a panel, it doesn't mean the exposure is closed to you and your company. You can always see what panels are relevant to your field and build a relationship with the presenters ahead of time. Show them what you've got, offer to kick off the Q&A, and maybe they will mention you in their presentation. Dig Deeper: Learning to Love NetworkingYour Guide to SXSW: Hosting a Must-Attend EventEven the most serious geekerati like to joke that SXSW Interactive is a drinking festival with alittle innovation on the side. So, if you feel comfortable hosting an open bar, consider throwing a party. You can registerthe event with SXSW – and gain exposure by adding it to the festival's interactive nightlife map, which lists parties at 44 local venues surrounding the Austin Conference Center. In doign so, you'll be in the company of big names such as Microsoft BizSpark, Volusion, Mozilla and Groupon. If the nightlife schedule seems too crowded for your taste, consider an alterna-event at a local bar. Groupon is hosting a "Recovery Breakfast" at the Cedar Door this year, for example. In addition to a varying nighttime schedule of smaller gatherings, some companies sponsor week-long lounges or gathering places. This year, for example, Beaconfire Consulting of Arlington, Viriginia, is hosting a lounge with free Wi-Fi.If you're niche has a possible event tie-in, by all means, use it. If you've designed an iPhone app for distributing Yoga instruction, for example, host a daily morning yoga session, or an evening quick-hit pose competition. Be inventive, because almost anything goes – and with such a diverse and layered schedule of events, you want your event to get added to a participant's calendar the first time they come across it.Dig Deeper: Going Beyond Just Creating ConnectionsYour Guide to SXSW: Giving Away Memorable FreebiesWhen it comes down to it, SXSW Interactive is a convention. Everyone's got their tote bags, and is collecting goodies along the way. But, as we're moving toward post-business-card networking, consider that staying green is important, and extra junk is a faux-pas. If you are going to distribute cards, though, consider something innovative—such as these. If getting your company's name or image out is more important than personal networking, consider gadgets that will end up on office desks, or stickers attractive enough to land on laptop covers. If you don't have a booth at the trade show, or can't lug materials with you to dole out, you might consider landing some promo material in the signature SXSW tote bags, which every registrant – whether they're there to see music, film or participate in Interactive panels – receives. In 2008, Adobe included a cute Chinese food take-out box and fortune cookie. It was a fun and relatively low-cost way of making an impression.Dig Deeper: The Best in Corporate SwagYour Guide to SXSW: How to Find People (and Be Found)If you're on a panel, if you're attending or hosting a party, if you know where you will be ahead of time... let people know. Post your schedule on your website  and let people know how to contact you in the case of missed connections. Or, if you're expecting to be bad at answering calls or email during SXSW, let people know that, too. Don't allow networking overload to set in.

If you're an avid Tweeter, come to sessions armed with their individual hash-tags. Incorporating them can make others in the room – or at the festival – aware of your presence, and what you're thinking, and thus establish instant connections.

Finally, Gowalla and Foursquare are great ways to spread information as to your present location. Both online services are widely embraced by the the throngs at SXSW. Dig Deeper: How to Make Money on FoursquareMaking a Splash at SXSW: Reaching Beyond Austin

SXSW can be a good place to try out small partnerships with an eye toward something larger. This year, for example, Gowalla has arranged a partnership with Chevy to put on promotions and host games throughout SXSW. And Foursquare is including partnership promos with companies such as SPIN, Pepsi and PayPal. Look for more collaboration between these brands going forward.

Amid the partying and the panel discussions, real work can also get done. For instance, Brian Dresher writes at USA Today's social media lounge that he arranged last year to meet up with Fark founder Drew Curtis to discuss how new media and traditional media might collaborate. "During this in-person get together, we were able to knock out several key details and develop a solid foundation for building a strong working relationship," Dresher writes. A partnership launched several months later.

Keep this anecdote in mind as you are racing around Austin. The point of the trip is not networking for networking's sake. Your ultimate goal is to channel the energy and activity you experience in Austin into tangible business results.Dig Deeper: Helping Start-ups Promote Themselves

As applications for the 2010 Inc. 500 | 5000 arrive, we thought it would be worthwhile to shine a spotlight on some of the companies that are vying to appear on our ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. (For more information and to apply, go to http://www.inc.com/inc5000apply/2010/.) One that caught our eye was Butler, Pennsylvania-based Turbie Twist.In 2005, new college graduate Angela Carr and her slightly younger sister Christina Cummings found themselves buying the rights for a small, super-absorbent hair towel from Pittsburgh Plastics, a company that the sisters felt was vastly underutilizing the product. The women renamed the hair towel the Turbie Twist and set out to reconceptualize the marketing of the product.  The original model, while functional, seriously lacked a customer base, explains Carr, but once they realized that the target audience were girls about her age, brainstorming improvements became much easier."We began asking ourselves, 'What would I like? What would I want to buy? What do I think is cool?'" she says.The duo also upgraded the product material to plush micro-fibers, increased its environmental friendliness, and offered new colors and prints. Carr says her company landed their first big break in 2006 with the television shopping network QVC, which placed the first large order with the new company. Today, the co-owners own and operate the sole manufacturer of the Turbie Twist hair towel, with its signature elastic loop, which allows for its specially-designed shape to fit securely on heads of all sizes. The company, which now has eight full-time employees, continues to add clients, selling their product at huge retailers such as Ross Stores and Sally Beauty Supply, as well as online retailers such as Cosmeticmall.com and Cachebeauty.com.Carr says she expects the company to continue to grow: "Wet hair, dry hair, children or adults – if you have hair, you can use this product," she says.

I'm here at Inc.'s GrowCo. Conference where over 400 small business owners have convened to network with other business owners, listen to some great speakers and be in sunny Orlando! You'd not know we're in a tough economic time with the positive outlook that a lot of these businesses have.What a great and inspirational start to the show with George Forman as the keynote. Talk about someone who has perseverance. From the streets in Houston, who would have known that George Foreman never wanted to be a fighter?  He was actually driven by the need to help his mom and his give his brothers an education. He talked about where he started as a fighter, making just $5,000 from one of his first fights then fighting his way to beat Joe Frazier and finally losing his heavyweight champion title to Mohammed Ali. And even though he lost, he walked away with $5 million. Sadly, 10 years later he found himself with no money left and realized he had to go back to the only thing he knew; boxing. He started at the bottom again, getting offered just $2,500 a fight. At this point he was pretty old for a boxer. What inspired me is that he didn't turn it down. He had many fights along the way getting paid more with each match and finally lost to Evander Holyfield walking away $12.5 million!So what does boxing have to do with business? George realized that boxing is what makes him, and he needed to use boxing as a way to sell "George Foreman." So for his third "chance" he used his name to sell his own products. The George Foreman grill is one of the best selling products on the market today because he's a great salesman. According to George, the greatest product he's ever sold is himself.The takeaway from George? If you get knocked down, keep getting up and keep going. Be tenacious! The only thing that can stop anyone from achieving greatness is themselves. Great start to the conference.

You've heard it over and over: Social media is essential for preserving and enhancing your brand in today's market. So you tweet. You post on Facebook. You link on LinkedIn. And in your few remaining spare moments, you wonder whether you ought to be posting on Google Buzz as well.

You know that all this is important for your company, but you also need to spend time actually running your company. So you decide to take the next step and delegate the care and feeding of your social media presence to someone else. Who should that someone be?

Here are some considerations that can help you make the right choice.

Inside or outside?

Facebook had more than 111 million visitors in 2009, and chances are some of them were your employees. "We did a social media survey for a finance company with 42 employees," recalls Dallas Lawrence who heads the social media practice at Levick Strategic Communications. "Twenty of them told us that they regularly use social media and/or read online news." That company can likely find an effective social media representative among those 20 employees, he says. "Before you go outside the company, look inside at who you already have."

In fact, you may have one or more employees who would be eager to use social media on your behalf. That was the case at junk removal service 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, where Travis Dudfield, public relations manager, approached top management about a year ago, proposing that he add social media to his duties. At the time, he says, the company's leadership was aware of social media and saw its potential, but wasn't sure how to start using it. "I said, 'Let's give it a try,'" Dudfield says. "'I'll set up an account, find some people to follow, and see how this works.'"

Today @1800GOTJUNK has 1,583 Twitter followers and 1-800-GOT-JUNK has 570 Facebook fans. Some of these are customers who report how pleased they are with the service. "One woman loved what we did so much she posted pictures before and after we came. In the 'after' picture her car was actually in the garage," Dudfield says. "That's an interaction with a customer I never could have had otherwise." He's since passed the pictures on to others at the company and to its franchises. "That kind of thing is great for morale," he says.

Who controls the message?

There's no need to limit yourself to a single social media representative. If a formal or informal survey of your employees turns up a dozen people who are interested in tweeting and posting your company's behalf, consider inviting all of them to do so. "If you've decided you want a Twitter presence, you might ask each of them to give you one tweet a week with a link," Lawrence says. "They may all have different expertise that would all be interesting to your customer base."

Even when you have multiple employees representing you on social media, one executive, perhaps from corporate communications or public relations, should be responsible both for making sure the posts and tweets actually happen, and for a vetting their content. "You want someone who will give something a lot of thought before they post it," notes Steve Birnhak, CEO of Inwindow Outdoor, which creates promotional displays for its clients in urban unused storefronts. "Even though social media evolved as an outgrowth of friendships, you have to be very careful what gets posted from a business standpoint." Birnhak started out handling social media himself, but soon found the time demands overwhelming, and so hired the company's public relations representative to handle social media instead. He appreciates the PR professional's expertise about what to say and what not to.

"Remember that everything that gets posted lives forever as part of your online reputation," Lawrence says. "A mistake can have a devastating impact on your brand." On the other hand, he notes, "It shouldn't be a 10-step legal approval. If your company's nature is that everything must go through multiple approval processes, and it would take two weeks to approve a tweet, then Twitter may not be the right medium for you."

Can your social media representative make a human connection?

While it's important to keep tweets and posts in line with your company's image and goals, it's just as important that your social media communications show transparency about your company, and convey a human connection. "One mistake we often see is that a company assumes it must either be the corporate communications director or the CEO who posts on social media," Lawrence says. "In many cases, the CEO is the wrong person, because he or she isn't good at providing transparency."

"I think it's a red flag if someone has a sell, sell, sell mentality," Dudfield says. "Or if someone values metrics over human engagement. I believe there's nothing more important than creating that connection with another human being. If that's not your primary goal, then that's a problem."

He adds that human-to-human contact is especially important for 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, because of what the company does. "What we do is very personal," he says. "We go into people's homes, pick up their possessions and take them away. They need to trust us to come into their homes and engage with them on their turf, so we need to make a connection with people." And, he says, in the social media world, "People don't talk to brands. They talk to other people."

In fact, Dudfield says, he stopped automatic direct messaging on Twitter precisely so his followers would know they were always conversing with an actual human being. "I've been blown away by how responsive people are," he says.

Does your social media representative truly understand your company?

If Dudfield were hiring someone else to handle 1-800-G0T-JUNK?'s social media, he would look for a representative who understands the company as well as he does himself. "I'd want someone who has passion for what we do," he says. "It's about helping people get their space back, and handling their stuff with environmental sensitivity. You need to really appreciate the ethics and principles we operate by so you can speak with a voice that makes sense to our brand as a whole."

"A lot of top executives believe social media is a good job for an intern," Lawrence says. "But that's not effective at all. You shouldn't put an intern in charge of social media, just as you wouldn't have an intern handle your relationships with NBC or the New York Times. It should be someone who has a full view of your company's agenda."

President Barack Obama wants small firms to think big and export their way out of recession -- but a new survey says the companies don't think they know enough about exporting and worry about foreign customers paying up.

The president's (ambitious) goal is to double U.S. exports to $3 trillion within five years. To achieve it, he'll need the help of small businesses. Currently, fewer than one percent of the nation's 29 million small businesses export, though small business exports accounted for 30 percent of total U.S. exports in 2007, just slightly higher than a decade earlier, according to an International Trade Commission report.

To help, the Administration hopes to make exporting easier for small businesses by helping them "find their way through the labyrinth" of bureaucracy, Small Business Administration head Karen Mills said last week.

Translation: the administration is moving to improve access to resources and financing -- welcome news for the some 40 percent of small business owners who said in the recently released Small Business Export Survey that they couldn't tap foreign markets because they weren't sure where to start. The survey was conducted the first week in March among 250 members – both exporting and non-exporting – of the National Small Business Association.

On Thursday, Obama announced five steps the administration is taking as part of the New Export Initiative, first mentioned during his State of the Union address in January. Among them: the creation of a Cabinet-level focus on US exports (called, not surprisingly, the Export Promotion Cabinet) and  a new facility at the Export-Import Bank to provide up to $2 billion a year in trade finance to small and medium-sized businesses. Most businesses that export currently rely on earnings and savings of their business, as opposed to bank loans or government back programs, but the bank's chairman Fred Hochberg said recently that no deal is too small to consider. The bank's recent transactions ranged from $11,000 to a $1 billion deal with Air India. 

With lagging consumer spending and the specter of a jobless economic recovery, "exporting may be one of the few areas remaining where small businesses can grow right now," said Todd McCracken, president of the National Small Business Association.

Why then -- besides lack of knowledge -- aren't small business owners diving into international commerce? Nearly a third are worried about getting paid from a foreign customer, the survey revealed. (Nearly half said if this concern were addressed they'd consider exporting. Another part of the Obama plan: Loading up on trade officers in embassies -- the 2011 budget includes 238 positions.) Among current exporters, the biggest concerns were extracting payment and the red tape and complexity of international finance. 

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a Georgia speech in February that one of the administration's prime targets is businesses who only export to one country – six out of 10 exporters fall into this category. (The single country is usually Canada or Mexico.) "I think we get more bang for the buck focusing on those who are now exporting," Locke told the Los Angeles Times. "They are primed and ready to, let's say, go to Europe. And if they are in Europe, then we need to help them export to Latin America. If in Latin America, then Asia."  To help, Locke announced partnerships with FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc. to offer seminars for small businesses who already are exporting to one country.

The FBI has released its annual "Internet Cybercrime Report" and surprise, surprise; Internet crime complaints are up dramatically.

Total dollar losses related to Internet crimes reported to the FBI topped $559 million dollars in 2009. That's up from $264 million dollars in 2008. That's what I call a dramatic increase. Either cybercrime is way up or the FBI is just getting much better at tracking complaints. I suspect some of both is in play.

I would have guessed that identity theft would be the number one complaint. Not so! The number one complaint was scams that involve impersonating the FBI (let's think about that one and consider who put out the report). The number two complaint was non-delivery of merchandise. Number three was non-payment. Number four was identity theft.

At the bottom of the top ten crimes reported: #7 spam, #8 credit card fraud, #9 auction fraud, #10 computer damage.

I found that interesting considering those last four (and identity theft) are the ones we hear the most about; often on a daily basis it seems.

- About one in five crimes reported involved losing $100 or less.

- 37% of complaints; between $100 and $1000

- 28% of complaints; between $1000 and $5000

- Higher amounts only make-up about 13%

Cheers!

How you are seen to protect your customers' personal information can have a huge effect on your brand – and your bottom line, according to a new report.

Security researcher Ponemon Institute released its list of the "Top 20 Most Trusted Companies for Privacy", based on a survey of 6,627 US adults. Some 38,000 individual companies got mentioned, 229 of which were ranked more than 20 times. American Express was top of the list, followed by IBM, Johnson & Johnson, HP, and eBay.

No small businesses actually made the Top 20 – could it be because 56 percent of small businesses don't even have a privacy policy on their Web sites? – but the Ponemon results still provide a useful lesson. Facebook, for example, made the list last year but not the current one – which comes as no surprise, as 2009 saw the site face serious security breaches as well as a very public debate about their privacy policies.

Said Larry Ponemon, the Michigan-based institute's chairman and founder, in the report:  "Facebook draws a great deal of attention because they have chosen to innovate on the issue of privacy in a highly visible manner, and while they were rewarded for their efforts last year, consumer were less kind to them this year, showing just how important privacy protection is as a brand asset."

Mike Spinney, a Ponemon senior privacy analyst, thinks Facebook may return to this list. On his blog he praised the company's "transparent approach to privacy" and "typical responsiveness to public comment," saying he believed it would serve the company well in the long run. (What other movement was there in the Top 20? Besides Facebook, AOL and eLoan dropped off the list. Four not listed the previous year who made the cut this year: Google, Weight Watchers, Walmart and AT&T.

The study also found that consumers' feeling of control of their personal information is dropping steadily: 41 percent in 2010, down from 45 percent in 2009, which was down from 56 percent in 2006, the first year the study was conducted.

A top area of concern for those surveyed: Identity theft. Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed rated the subject a major factor in how much they trust a brand. Other threats to brand trust: Abuse of civil liberties and annoying "background chatter" in public venues. Translation: Lay off the unnecessary Twitter and Facebook updates.

How can you help encourage trust? Sixty percent of those surveyed said "substantial" security protections were a huge plus, while 53 percent gave great weight to accurate data collection and use. Ponemon cautions that the latter also includes marketing. You should gather all the information you can from customers, but be careful what you do with it.

"Any time customers receive marketing that's irrelevant or annoying, it's a privacy issue to them," Ponemon said.

Not surprisingly, Fran Maier, CEO of TrustE, which monitors online privacy practices, advocates a sturdy privacy policy – a survey done for the company last year revealed that of the less than half of small businesses who actually had a policy, a third had just cut and pasted it from elsewhere. (Looking for some help crafting yours? Click here.)

Niceties that may be overlooked – such as privacy – she says "are the very elements that give small businesses an edge over their competitors. Especially in times of economic downturn, a good brand reputation is something small businesses should not jeopardize."

What do you think? Does your business have a written privacy policy? And do you think Facebook's new policies are cause for alarm?

iPhone apps that will help you get through conference season. For the small business owner or entrepreneur, springtime often equates to conference season. From booking flights and accommodations, to finding out what's going on in the local area, there are plenty of apps that will ease your stress, Mashable reports. For the procrastinating businessperson, Priceline's Hotel Negotiator app is free, and will allow you to find last-minute hotel deals within a radius of your current location. Also free of cost, the Free Wi-Fi Finder app will use your location to find local spots that offer free Wi-Fi access, with the ability to filter results by types of location, such as cafes and hotels. Another great freebie app is beamME pro, which allows you to e-mail, text or tweet all of your contact information instantly - perfect for staying connected with fellow conference-goers, especially if you neglected to bring enough business cards.

Online ads that adjust to you. We've written before about the slightly creepy but cool trend in online advertising that is behavioral targeting, which allows websites to display ads to customers who, for instance, abandon their shopping carts. Now, Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times looks at something new: a start-up that allows companies to buy and customize online advertisements in a matter of milliseconds. The company, AppNexus, uses information collected about a given web user's purchasing and search history to make real-time decisions about which ads will perform best. Clifford reports that eBay is trying the system out, and that it's returning three times as much money as it costs. "Previously eBay had to buy a block of ads from a network or exchange, and when someone it recognized showed up, they could partially customize the ad," she writes. "Now, customers are offered one by one, and eBay--using AppNexus's automated system--only bids on the ones it thinks are worthwhile."

Did Mark Zuckerberg commit a felony? Last week, Business Insider broke the story (supported by more than a dozen sources) that early in Facebook's history, Mark Zuckerberg, then a 19-year-old Harvard student, used Facebook members's information to break into their private e-mail accounts, hack a competitor's site, and alter users profiles. Now, BI has interviewed privacy lawyers who say those actions from 2004 could be considered felonies under state and Federal law. It's a troubling development for a company that has access to the private data of some 400 million people.

How to advertise green products legally. It's no secret that making your product a little more green can also add some green to your profits. But it's important to make environmentally claims legally. The Federal Trade Commission has already gone after Kmart, Tender Corp., and Dyna-E international for making false claims of "biodegradability." There have also been class-action law suites against companies like S.C. Johnson & Son, which added its own "Greenlist" seal to its Windex products that misled consumers into believing that a third party had certified the product independently. The FTC has a guide for the use of environmental marketing claims. An updated version is expected later this year, but in the meantime smart marketers should follow these tips from Advertising Age to avoid dishonest labeling.

Foursquare grows by leaps and bounds. Foursquare, the location-based social network/game just celebrated it's first birthday and it has been experiencing wild growth for the occasion. The site surpassed its own record of 275,000 check-ins in a day. TechCrunch contextualizes this milestone, explaining that the company had 1.2 million check-ins in a week just a month ago and half as many a month before that. Both Foursquare and it's top competitor, Gowalla, are gearing up for SXSW and TechCrunch writes that "both are absolutely on fire right now and could go nuclear this weekend." So stop procrastinating and get your business on Foursquare.

Homes of the next big things. Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal and VentureSource teamed up to identify the top 50 venture-backed companies with the best chance to become "the next big thing"--a list that included HomeAway, Fusion-io, and Etsy. This morning, The Journal took a look at where these companies are located. Not surprisingly, just about half call Silicon Valley home. But New York City was well-represented, too.

A survey of over 3,000 IT professionals recently showed that they consume more social media content than other types (editorial, vendor) and that they consider this to be a good method not only for staying informed, but for networking with peers as well. According to the study, IT professionals at all levels spend an average of 4.59 hours a week on social media sites, and they report that it has helped to increase their level of expertise in their field.

Aside from LinkedIn, some IT workers use Slashdot.org for up-to-date ?news for nerds? or IT Toolbox to keep in touch with other professionals.

I just spoke Monday at the Atlanta PMI about Web2.0 and how it affects project managers, the summary of which is that it raises expectations on UI, adds stakeholders, and steals control from IT (part of a continuing trend).

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

If you're feeling bogged down by the busywork of tracking bills and payments, or if you've found yourself being a less-than-ideal client to your providers, then there's a good chance your accounts payable system isn't up to snuff. For businesses in their early years, often a trusty Excel file and a business check-writing system are enough to keep accounts payable adequate. But if your business has grown and you're now spending more than a few minutes a day (or an hour a week) on managing payments, experts say you should look to tweak a few things. And doing so will not only save you time in the long-run, but increase the accuracy of your balance sheets. Prompt payment of bills will also make you seem more credible in the eyes of your vendors service providers."If you’ve taken the leap of faith to go into business for yourself, driven by the passion for what you do, you want to spend less time fretting over the books and a lot more time doing what you’re great at (so you can get paid for it)," says Mitch Solway, a small-business finance expert who is the vice president of sales and marketing for online expense-tracking software FreshBooks. "But it’s still a critical piece of your business."If you need motivation to upgrade your system, just take a look at the numbers. Companies with streamlined accounts payable systems are efficient in terms of time and staffing, according to a study by the American Institute of CPAs. The average billion-dollar company processes 12,500 invoices per employee dedicated to accounts payable. That's about $3.55 per invoice. By contrast, the companies with the best accounting departments process invoice at a cost of $.35 each – and that can save $40,000 a year. Even if you're not a billion-dollar company, the savings – and headaches avoided – can resonate.Dig Deeper: More Advice on Accounts PayableStreamlining Accounts Payable: Reevaluate the Basic StructureIf you are receiving more than a bill or two a day, you should be using an accounting program, such as QuickBooks. If you like the style of online money-management programs such as Mint, you might work well with an online system such as Outright or FreshBooks. If those programs aren't natural for you to use, you can take a class or hire a coach to get you started. What's not an option is letting someone else do it all for you. If your business has several employees, it's just fine to have an administrator involved in entering data into the accounts payable, but you should plan to keep final tabs of it always, advises San Francisco-based financial advisor Kathryn Amenta."I would recommend a business owner understand their finances fully before they turn it over to someone else to handle," she says. "It's super important as an owner to have a finger on the financial pulse. That's the bottom line – that's why you're in business."Of course, there are exceptions. If your business is large enough to have or hire an accounts payable professional, that's a step to consider. But in general every CEO should have her eyes on and fingers in the books every day.Some basics you should already be doing:•    Every incoming bill should be entered into your accounts payable file daily, with date of arrival, date due, relevant account information and comments. •    Business credit-card items should ideally be filed on the same day they are expensed.•    Employees should be comfortable and trained in filing expense reports. If evaluations show you that it's a drag for them, consider implementing a piece of software that will help, such as Expensify. Also, segmenting all employee expenses onto individual business credit cards can both eliminate false reporting and ease uploading expenses. •    For classic paper bills, retain the stub and envelope for records as well.•    Bills should be paid promptly, but en masse. Set a time at least once a week for yourself or your accounts payable staffer (or assistant) to do this. If it's someone other than you managing payments, be sure to review approve the list before sending out checks.Dig Deeper: One CEO's Effective Accounts Payable SystemStreamlining Accounts Payable: Enlist an AdvisorIf you're still spending too much time paying money rather than making money doing what you're good at as a CEO, you might feel it's natural to delegate some of your bookkeeping responsibility to an assistant. You may also consider a certified public accountant or even a part-time CFO. 

Kathryn Amenta, a San Francisco-based financial advisor, suggests that an accountant with a regular monthly relationship with your company can help streamline the process by advising you on time-saving methods – and they can catch costly errors. Moreover, they'll have your future financial health in mind. "That person can also help craft a plan for going forward, say, a two-year plan," Amenta says. "It's really important to look at: What is this business paying too much for? Is this business venture supporting itself?"

A part-time CFO can step in if your needs are more strategic in nature, or if you are setting up the business to scale. "They are people who have reputable business and finance training and now make business their livelihood," Amenta says. "They have a number of clients, and can come in once a month to oversee what's going on financially."  Dig Deeper: Renting a CFOStreamlining Accounts Payable: Avoid FraudIf you've never paid a double check, a fraudulent bill, or experienced some level of employee embezzlement, consider yourself lucky. Accounts payable is a flashpoint for fraud in many companies, large and small. To avoid fraud, you can institute a variety of checks and balances. One simple method is to separate duties. A junior employee can process and print a check, but a senior one – maybe even you – should be required to review and sign it. This dual duty can be incorporated into most basic business accounting software, so employees can only access and perform assigned functions. For checks that exceed a predetermined amount, requiring a second signature – either from you or your CFO – is a best practice. Separating the process of adding a new supplier to your system from the ability to issue payment is also advised.

If your company incorporates employee expenses into your accounts payable system, you might insist that employees use a business credit card – one per employee – for paying and filing expenses.  "Fraudulent cash purchases are fairly rampant in companies of any size," says David Barrett, CEO of Expensify. "With software that uploads data directly from your card account, you can't report the same expense twice."Dig Deeper: Catching Costly Errors

Streamlining Accounts Payable: Assess Your WeaknessesOnce you're accustomed to your accounts payable system, you'll naturally start to see trends. Notice when the most spending occurs for your business. What categories of spending vary from month to month? When do you rely most heavily on suppliers' credit? For retail companies, the holidays are a time of tremendous inequity of accounts payable and accounts receivable. The goal is to be financially prepared for times of big spending that come in advance of payments received, but when that doesn't happen, there are a couple of simple things you can do to maintain your relationships that might come under stress.Amenta advises clients to be proactive. Be honest with your suppliers about when, if not within the payment window, they can expect to receive a payment. "I believe they should act quickly. Pick up the phone, call creditors and let them know what's going on," she says. "Be clear. Say 'I'm going to pay this much this month, and this much next month, even if it's just a token amount so they know you are on it."Second, thank your suppliers for their flexibility and remind them about your prompt previous payments. If they become hostile about not being paid, offer references to your long-term financial stability, or even last year's balance sheets to prove you've got the means on the way.Dig Deeper: Keeping Track of Crunch TimesStreamlining Accounts Payable: Simplify AuditingIf you're transitioning to a new accounting software, accountant, or part-time CFO, tax-time can be tough. That's because auditors focus on invoices, expense reports, and your own payable list to record annually your expenses. It's best to make a transition to a more streamlined accounts payable system at the start of your fiscal year. If that's not going to be the case, ask your accountant to help you ease the transition from the start, by inputting the rest of the year's previous data into your new system. Working with the same accountant throughout the year and through reporting your taxes is the best way to streamline the process. If that's not possible, you'll want to make sure you have documentation to support your own accounting of payments, including transaction confirmation from your suppliers.Dig Deeper: Best Practices for Accounts Payable

How many times has a friend showed you his or her favorite new iPhone app, and you lamented: Why didn't I think of that?With total application downloads from Apple's iTunes app store topping three billion, and monthly sales of upwards of $200 million, the marketplace for apps is booming. If you're a designer or programmer, how can you afford not to be creating apps? Well, it's not quite that simple. Apple says it receives between 8,500 and 10,000 application submissions every week. That's a mighty lot of competition, even for experienced game and media designers.Greg Trefry, a veteran game designer who teaches at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, recently founded Gigantic Mechanic with Mattia Romeo. The partners this year debuted their first app, a location-aware, golf-inspired game called Gigaputt. Trefry says that while the new publishing structure under Apple's purview coupled with a dense marketplace can be intimidating, he's found there's still ample opportunity for designers to carve out a niche for their app."There are so many apps out there, it's an extremely crowded market so that the barrier to entry is so low and the barrier to success is so high," he says. "But you're not necessarily aiming to have the biggest game out there, so there's still room to make a business out of it if you're trying to capture a certain audience."Of course, there's more to making a profitable app than just having a good idea. And lots of the work comes after the design and programming is already done. Here are some tips to helping your app turn a profit.

Dig Deeper: More News on Apple's iPhoneMaking Money on iPhone Apps: Getting ApprovedIn a market where everyone wants in on the action, as an app creator, you have two big hurdles. The first is creating an app worthy of a favorable review upon submission to the Apple iTunes App Store. The second is promoting your app so that it breaks through the pack and sells well. Though there's a lot of negative hype concerning the first hurdle, developers generally say that getting their app approved isn't the struggle it's made out to be. Apple's standards for apps do restrict some racy and pornographic content, and the company excludes apps that, in its view, do not enhance the iPhone experience or that duplicate existing iPhone features. When it comes to fresh, inventive content, however, most apps are readily approved.Zach Saul, founder of Retronyms, a San Francisco-based app creating company, has been creating apps since the 2008 iTunes App Store launch, in which his popular, 99-cent app Recorder – an audio recorder – was included. "We haven't had any trouble getting apps approved and included, but our work is very non-controversial, entertaining and fun," he says. "The approval process seems like a confrontational thing, but every time we've had an app rejected, there's been something wrong with it and they've given us a bit of free testing and helped us solve a problem, so it's very helpful."And despite the fact that thousands of apps are submitted to Apple for approval each week, app creators tell Inc.com that the turnaround time tends to be swift."It actually wasn't that bad a process," says Trefry, who learned that Gigaputt was given the thumbs' up after a three-day wait. "You just have to do your contract with them, and it's pretty clear."

Dig Deeper: What's New at the App Store

Making Money on iPhone Apps: Promoting Your App

After an app has been approved and is listed for sale in the iTunes App Store, your next goal is to get customers to download it. To some extent, this process becomes a chicken-and-egg scenario. Vaulting into a top-selling category is the best way to encourage sales – but you first must have sales to rank highly within a category. Fortunately, the process of gaining exposure isn't completely out of your hands. Apple features new apps daily.What does it take to win over Apple's support? Good design is important. "As far as we can tell that's based on polish and quality," Saul says. "Make something that's useful and also is nice and polished and looks good, and your chances are vastly increased."

Looking good is a matter of solid design. Enlist a designer to help create the interface a user will experience, as well as the logos and screen shots that will appear on the Apple iTunes App Store. This collateral is the first thing a potential buyer will see, so maximizing its impact is crucial.Besides design, being polished includes being technically solid. If you are developing the app yourself, you may want to consider bringing on a programmer who is well-versed in Objective-C to help you; though apps can be built using other programming languages, this version of C++ is the standard. You should also be sure to give your app the full battery of beta-testing it needs before you make your submission. An inexpensive way to test it is to distribute it among friends and solicit feedback. Just remember: Without smooth functionality, your app will be dead in the water.Dig Deeper: The Rush to Develop iPhone AppsMaking Money on iPhone Apps: Leveraging Your Existing Business

If you already have a business, creating an app – or multiple apps – to enhance your clients' experience can be a tremendous opportunity. Often, a small business is already filling a niche – and can also do so when their client is on the move. Take the case of Yelp, the online review site. Its iPhone app not only provides its standard customer-reviews, but also can tap into GPS to allow a user to find nearby businesses. So, thinking along the lines of "what do we already do, and how can it be used on the go?" is a great place to start. Look for an area that will be a natural extension, or a macro view of what you do.When Zillow, a real-estate listing company, built an app, for example, it not only included its standard real-estate listings, but also allowed users to scope out rentals and homes for sale in their immediate geographic area. This feature tapped into casual consumers' desires to learn, say, what their neighbor's condo might be worth – or to take a self-guided real-estate tour. It took off, and now Zillow is selling mobile ads and incorporating social network link-posting – in other words, running a quite profitable app.Dig Deeper: Should you Make an iPhone App?Making Money on iPhone Apps: Think Big or Think TinySome of the most successful apps are the most complex: Location-aware, social-networking-capable apps such as Whrrl, FourSquare or Glympse. And some of the most successful apps are very simple, one-off jokes. It may be that the best app for you is limited in scope.Simple apps, the kind people whip out at parties to emulate chugging a beer (iBeer) or wielding a light saber (Lightsaber Unleashed), require far less up-front time designing and programming. And if you haven't invested a lot of time into developing a simple app, you can afford to make it inexpensive. In a best-case scenario, with minimal marketing such apps can to go socially viral. Then again, if it doesn't sell, no biggie: just try again. On the opposite end of the spectrum, complex, multi-faceted apps are born most often out of an existing business or business model, and can require a team of designers working for weeks or months. This model is best for existing websites and businesses that can add value through creating an app. With these, you're going for polish, perfection, and possibly a higher price-point. What's more, complex apps need to be sticky to be effective. That's where marketing comes in.

In the middle ground stand a host of simple-concept games with great graphical interfaces. If you look at the App Store's top 10 sellers for paid apps at any given time, most of them are games. Games that either educate or temporarily amuse, especially ones that anyone from age 4 to an adult can understand and appreciate, are almost always in demand.

Dig Deeper: A Guide to Multimedia MarketingMaking Money on iPhone Apps: Flaunt What You've GotOnce your shiny new app is available in the App Store marketplace, visibility is vital to profitability. Getting into the App Store's top 100 – much less top 10 – list is of course the best way to see sales soar. If that's just not happening for you, start small. Build an audience from the ground-up. "It's not necessarily the day that comes out that it needs to have blockbuster sales," Trefry says. "Think about what audience you're going after, and how that person interacts with their device."Some key tips: • Generate pre-release buzz. Have a website up and running before your app even launches. Make sure information is available for any interested parties. Existing social networking you or your company use can be beneficial in generating buzz, too.• Do your own marketing, or enlist help. Craft a press release, or have all relevant information, including your contact info, available online. Create a list of blogs and websites that might be interested in reviewing your app, and ping them to spark interest. Be casual but informative – confident but never pushy. If being your own PR person sounds like a drag, enlist a tech PR firm that specializes in product releases on a contract basis.• Plan for tie-ins or cross-app promotion. If you have existing apps, building in promotions for a new product is a simple way to get its name out to customers who already like your work. In-game advertising isn't a quick-fix to boost sales, though; it's more of a way to create a longer tail for your product's sales. Separately, think about other companies who aren't direct competitors you could form a mutually beneficial relationship with once you launch.• Create an infrastructure that will support momentum and future growth. Consider what will keep customers coming back as well as what will attract new ones. Are there promotional tie-ins or giveaways that can help attract new interest on your website and in the App Store? What level of connectivity with buyers are you expecting and can you maintain? Trefry stays in touch with his app's fans on Twitter and Facebook, and since hearing input from them modified Gigaputt for use on the iPod Touch. "From social games on Facebook to iPhone games, there's no longer the old-school concept of putting it out there and then it's done," he says. "Now it's all about interacting with your fans, and making appropriate updates based on feedback."Dig Deeper: iPhone Apps for Small BusinessMaking Money on iPhone Apps: Entering a Contest or Get in a FestivalThis year, New York City invited programmers and developers to dig through their data and create urban apps. Offering $20,000 in prizes, the city hoped to spur technological innovation. For app developers, though, it was a big chance not just for a cash prize, but for exposure. When the prize winners were announced, everyone from politicians to venture capitalists were there taking note.If you're a member of a tech or academic community, speaking on a panel or holding events in which you can discuss innovation in your field (and in your app) can hone in on your ideal audience. As a bonus, you'll gain clout in the community, and possibly open yourself up to future business opportunities. For example, Saul debuted Retronyms' iPhone game Seek 'n Spell at a New York big-games festival, where he introduced dozens of gamers to his location-based competitive spelling game. This year, he is speaking on a SXSW panel, and regularly hosts meet-up events to play Seek n Spell in San Francisco. "Even just talking about the market and space we're working in gets people excited and creates a market where new people will buy the app," Saul says.Dig Deeper: Even a Kid Can Make an AppMaking Money on iPhone Apps: Additional ResourcesCheck out 31 example apps to get your ideas flowing at appsamuck.com. See a fairly exhaustive guide to making an iPhone app in one month.Check out the O'Reilly guide Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: Making App Store Apps Without Objective-C or Cocoa by Jonathan Stark, 2010. iPhone Application Development For Dummies by Neal Goldstein, 2009.The Business of iPhone App Development: Making and Marketing Apps that Succeed by David Wooldridge and Michael Schneider. Apress, 2010.Inc.com's additional coverage of the iPhone and app development.

There are two Apple headlines this week. One is official, you can pre-order an iPad as of this morning (8:30 am EST, to be exact).

The question is; why would you?

The other Apple headline is, like most Apple headlines, unofficial. According to Apple Insider, Apple will be releasing the latest version of iPhone software this summer (iPhone 4.0) and Glory Bee, it will finally make multi-tasking possible.

I'm not a midwesterner. I don't even play one on TV. However, I am a soul of practicality. Believe me, this second announcement is far more important than the first. Who cares about being the earliest of early adopters to pull the trigger on a bling bling product that no one really needs? (I'm sure someone is going to have something to say about that, so just bring it on.)

On the other hand, there are how many iPhone users out there already? (answer: gazillions!). Now, here is some news that is going to make what they have infinitely more useful.

The question is have the whiz kids at Apple pulled it off?

One of the things that makes Apple so secure is that it runs one open app at a time. It doesn't allow rogue spyware, etc. running in the background that you don't know about it.

So, how is Apple resolving that one?

The other biggie? What does this mean for battery life? The more programs running, the more life getting sucked out the battery.

Will this be a Pyrrhic victory, after all?

It's never fun to ask people to pay up. Having a formal, professional system for keeping track of accounts receivable and billing not only will make the process relatively painless for you, but also help your clients' pay you promptly.Creating a method for timely and accurate billing is just one step to creating a well-oiled bookkeeping system. But just a couple baby steps can have immediate impact in relations with your clients. Good documents with your logo and consistently accurate figures can make you look like a large corporation – even if you're operating out of a basement home office."It can make your business feel a lot more established and professional, right away," says David Barrett, the founder and CEO of Expensify, an online bookkeeping tool. "Your clients will appreciate getting your billing information in a quick and clear way – and will feel a need to reciprocate in how they pay you."If you're only dealing with a couple regular clients – or issue just a handful of invoices a quarter – setting up a solid accounts receivable system is neverthless worthwhile because it lays a solid foundation for the future. We've compiled a guide to getting started on the right track – and incorporating best practices – to managing your accounts payable.Dig Deeper: More Accounts Receivable BasicsSetting Up Accounts Receivable: Getting OrganizedThe first step to realize is that you likely already have an accounts receivable system – however meager or malfunctional it may be. For offline, manual-entry accounts payable, Excel is still the standard. If you're already comfortable with a program like QuickBooks, or are willing to take a class or hire a coach to get you started, that's another option for record-keeping. If you like online money-management programs like Mint, you might work well with an online system such as FreshBooks.Once you pick a system, you should start loading billing information kept in your head or on your Outlook calendar into the system. Your basic setup, whatever accounting software or spreadsheet you choose, should include a listing of all open invoices and balances, as well as either monthly, weekly, or per-project billing capability.

You should also make sure there is a way to print invoices in hard copy. Although bills can be sent by e-mail,  some of your clients may prefer receiving a hard copy of a bill. You can choose to use an automated service, such as billing handled by FreshBooks, or you can task an administrative employee with printing and mailing hard copies of your invoices.Next, you must decide who will handle billing. Kathryn Amenta, a San Francisco-based financial advisor, suggests you handle it at least for a time. "I would recommend a business owner understand their finances fully before they turn it over to someone else to handle," she says. "It's super important as an owner to have a finger on the financial pulse. That's the bottom line – that's why you're in business."Dig Deeper: Tending to the Business of Collecting MoneySetting Up Accounts Receivable: Invoice Schedules and Other GuidelinesThe structure of accounts receivable bookkeeping can vary tremendously depending on your client base and service or product type. But whether your billing is going to be consistent from month to month or includes a new client list every week, you'll want to back up a step. Before taking on a new client, present to them the terms of the transaction. This can be a payment policy on your sales-based website, or a cluase included in the formal contractual agreement signed by both parties before the start of your service – or something in-between. The important thing, experts say, is to put the terms of payment in writing. For example, a terms-of-sale agreement should always include is payment schedule. To determine a payment time-framethat will be reasonable for both you and your clients, consider industry standards as well as what your business needs to maintain steady cash flow. Say you decide 30 days is a reasonable expectation. Not only include that fact in your agreement, but prepare to include pay-by dates on future invoices. Consistency is crucial in maintaining clients' respect and trust.Additionally, you'll want to establish guidelines for how much credit you're willing to offer to clients. It may be no more than a basic formula that leaves room for you to be  flexible about clients' payment schedules. One question that might be helpful to ask in deciding a credit policy is: How long should a client be a reliable business partner before you put yourself at risk? Another: Do you want to treat large corporations and small companies differently? Dig Deeper: How to Create a Smart Credit PolicySetting Up Accounts Receivable: Mastering the Invoice

Once your clients clearly understand the terms of payment, it's time to create the invoice. Every invoice should include the following:

• The product or service (listed by number of hours worked or by project) sold.

• A breakdown of expenses involved (if relevant).

• The amount due.

• The due date.

Your invoice should be a clean, straightforward document that features your company logo. It is common to offer a percentage discount – however tiny – for prompt payments. Some small businesses also offer a tangible reward to clients who don't fall overdue – say, a gift certificate, future discount on your services, or tickets to a sporting event.

The complex psychology of invoicing also dictates that you would be smart to exhibit certain element of grace, according to Mitch Solway, the vice president of sales and marketing at online bookkeeping and invoicing company FreshBooks, which has recently studied its customers best practices in accounts receivable.

"One of the best pieces of advice we’ve uncovered in recent months is to think carefully about the actual wording on the terms you apply on your invoices," Solway says. "Being polite and asking for payment within 21 days seems to get our customers paid a lot faster than terms such as 'due on receipt' or 'due immediately.'"In other words, treating customers in a human way can actually create good-will and speed up payment. Dig Deeper: Collections in a Tough EconomySetting Up Accounts Receivable: Drafting a Collections PolicyEven for businesses with all the best accounts receivable practices in place, some clients never seem to keep up with payments. In general, you want to give these late payers the benefit of the doubt – but you also need to stay true to your business's bottom line. Setting up a clear collections policy at the outset of establishing an accounts receivable system is the best way to lay a groundwork for collecting overdue amounts.

Amenta suggests being kind but not meek in the process – after all, your clients should know what to expect if you’ve already laid out their payment process at your relationship's outset. "It's definitely necessary to have a follow-up plan for overdues," she says. "Is it going to be a phone call? Is it going to be a series of emails or a hand-written note?"You'll want to be establishing a timeline of steps to take on collecting – say, first a call, then a note a week later, then a call daily until your debtor has established with you his or her ability to pay. Consider how much flexibility you can offer to a client in a dire situation. Amenta suggests allowing good clients an opportunity to establish a payment plan. But if you're in real doubt over whether a client has the ability to pay, after you've given them an extended payment window, it's okay to ask for assurance. Asking for references who have found the client reliable even in tough financial times is one option; another is asking for past balance sheets so you can analyze whether there's a seasonal cash flow issue for the company.

If you're anticipating some collections will present real trouble for your business in the future, take some time early on to research your state's collections laws, so that you will know what your steps must be before taking a seriously overdue debtor to small claims court. For information and commercial lawyer referrals, check out the Commercial Bar Directory.

Dig Deeper: How Much are You Actually Lending Your Customers?Setting Up Accounts Receivable: Knowing When To Enlist Outside HelpFrom the beginning to the end of establishing a quality accounts receivable system, there are some circumstances under which you might want to employ a bit of assistance. 1. System Set-up. While most experts agree that you, as a small business owner, need to keep your eyes on the bookkeeping at all times, it is often wise to bring in outside help when you're implementing a new software system. 2. Establishing Credit for Customers. If large clients do not want to pay at the outset of a service or transaction, or in a proscribed period thereafter, you'll want to enlist a Credit Bureau service or credit-rating agency to review the credit of customers, so they can get a green light to spend with you—and you can have peace of mind in serving them. The fee is typically $1,000 per every 100 credit checks. If you're working with an number of high-cost new clients, working with a credit agency can be worthwhile to avoid trouble.3. Collecting Overdue Accounts. After you've implemented your collection plan, including multiple conversations with the client who isn't paying up, you might feel like giving up. Enlisting a collections agency is another smart option. If it seems like the step could offend a customer, just think: would you rather take them to court? Dig Deeper: Dealing with Missed PaymentsSetting Up Accounts Receivable: Additional ResourcesFor managing collections, check out this list of collections laws and how they vary by state. With a variety of training and professional development programs for people working in accounts receivable, the non-profit group International Accounts Receivable Professionals can be a great training resource. If you're just getting started and find yourself unfamiliar with some of the terminology involved in accounts receivable, check out this thorough online glossary. The Financial Managers Society is another professional organization where you can look for advice, tools and guidance. You can check out form templates at the site of the International Accounts Payable Professionals.Dig Deeper: Managing Your Receivables

The amount of fraud being perpetrated against businesses is getting worse, both in terms of the number of instances and the amount of money that is being lost, and some of that can be attributed to worsening economic times, according to research. Almost half of the companies around the world surveyed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (www.pwc.com) in 2009 reported that they suffered one or more instance of economic crimes. The survey, which involved 3,000 executives of businesses large and small in 54 countries, found that 88 percent of U.S. companies that reported some type of fraud also reported declines in financial performances. In addition, three-fourths of the crimes against businesses in the U.S. were carried out by insiders.

For small and mid-sized businesses, the vulnerability to fraud can be compounded because of the sometimes informal nature and the fact that fewer staff members can result in less oversight -- and a lack of checks and balances.“Small businesses tend to be very informal in nature. A lot of times they’re either formed with friends or family members, and all the formalities are not in place as they would be in a larger business,” says Elena N. Lougovskaia, co-founder of Lougovskaia Boop, LLC (www.lougoboop.com), a law practice in Cleveland, Ohio, focused on business law and commercial litigation. “Employees wear many different hats and perhaps decision makers should be separated from people who sign the checks or one person should be responsible for signing check and a separate person should be responsible for accounting, processing invoices, and purchasing.” The following pages will cover the types of fraud against business, how to detect fraud in your business, and how to set up policies and procedures to prevent your business becoming a victim of fraud.

Dig Deeper: Are Your Staffers Stealing from You?How to Protect Your Business against Fraud: Types of Fraud against Business

The media is filled with stories of consumer victims of fraud.  But the reality is that businesses, especially smaller enterprises, are more often the victims of fraud than consumers.  The types of fraud can vary wildly, from accounting scams carried out by employees to fraudulent returns from customers to data theft by outsiders. Businesses have less protection than the consumer and, in some cases, can be held responsible in a business fraud scheme, owing liability to banks, shareholders, insurers, credit card processors and other entities. New laws also hold businesses accountable for liability in the event of some types of fraud perpetrated by third parties, such as data breaches.Sources of Business FraudIn order to understand the types of fraud that your business may be vulnerable to, you must first understand the different sources of these crimes. Most professionals agree that the top sources of business fraud, ranked in the order of frequency and cost, are as follows:Employees and OfficersIn previous surveys, PriceWaterhouseCoopers had found that the sources of crimes against business were evenly split between insiders and outsiders. But in the 2009 survey, the numbers tipped in favor of insiders carrying out the majority of crimes -- in 76 percent of the cases in the U.S., according to the survey. The increased financial pressures in many companies have also prompted a rise in the amount of fraud committed by middle managers, which now accounts for 42 percent of internal frauds globally from 26 percent in 2007, the survey found. Meanwhile, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) (www.acfe.com) estimates that business organizations lose 5 percent of annual revenue to fraud by employees and officers. “Managers and small business owners have a tendency to trust their employees to a higher degree and, because they are doing more, they may not be as detail oriented as they should be,” says Allan Bachman, education manager for the ACFE. “That level of trust is often betrayed. Sometimes employees start taking advantage of the fact that the boss isn't looking and thinks I'm doing a great job.”The most common types of insider frauds include theft of assets and accounting frauds, but this type of crime can also include other categories, such as fraudulent worker’s compensation claims. “If you’re in a no-fault worker’s compensation state, as long as they’re injured within the scope of employment, they can receive compensation for their injuries,” Lougovskaia says. “That’s an area where employees could be taking advantage.”Employees, managers, and directors have the inside track and understand how a business works. That’s why they are able to perpetrate so many different types of schemes -- and how they can often go undetected. Bachman says that the biggest source of insider fraud against businesses involves purchasing and procurement of goods and supplies. Insiders may be buying more goods than a business needs and lining their own pockets or paying invoices to an external third party for fraudulent orders. Other common schemes, says Bachman, include creating fictitious vendors or no-show employees -- who get paid for doing nothing. Accounts payable is another area where insiders may be skimming money by taking cash payments and failing to report them or replacing today’s payments with cash paid at later dates.CustomersCustomers can also be notorious for trying to perpetrate fraud against businesses. Whether writing bad checks, using stolen credit cards, returning items not purchased from a business, or filing fraudulent injury and liability claims, there are a whole host of schemes that customers can perpetrate that will cost your business money.“This is a very litigious society, so if you own a store or surface where customers walk or you have a parking lot, you are susceptible to people claiming they fell and injured themselves,” Lougovskaia says. “If you don't have any surveillance and safety procedures in place, you are susceptible to frivolous liability complaints.” False return schemes are another type of fraud that tends to impact retailers. People sometimes bring back merchandise from one store to another or they bring back merchandise that has been used. “I’ve seen frauds where someone walks into a store and bought three pieces of merchandise, went out to their car and put the merchandise away, and came back into the store and picked the same stuff up and put it in a bag and walked out with it,” Bachman says. ContractorsBusinesses are often the target of unscrupulous contractors’ overcharging, over billing, kick backs, failing to perform contracted work or service, and other actions.Some vendors you hire may try to scam you by billing for work they never complete. “I can come into your company to provide carpet cleaning and you give me the alarm code and I come in once a month instead of once a week but bill for providing the service once a week,” Bachman says. “Of you can short out services or goods because no one is paying attention. You order 50 chairs and I send 45. There are a lot of different ways of doing this.”Third-Party AttacksA growing number of types of fraud are being perpetrated by electronic means.  Hacking, slamming (changing your telephone service without your knowledge), phishing (acquiring user names, passwords, credit card information), identity theft and other forms of business fraud are some of the most difficult to control. More businesses are being held accountable for data breaches perpetrated by third parties, as 45 states, the District of Columbia, and some U.S. territories now have laws on the books requiring companies to notify potential victims if their personal information has been stolen or otherwise compromised.

Dig Deeper: Keys to Improving Network Fraud Protection

How to Protect Your Business against Fraud: How to Detect FraudGiven that fraud against your business can impact the bottom line, it’s important to set up procedures to verify adherence to anti-fraud policies and to detect and deter possible business fraud. Lougovskaia says business executives should commit to talking control by developing an enterprise-wide, anti-fraud policy that:

Below are several ways to deter and detect fraud in your business:Employee Tips and ReportingAn often overlooked, but excellent way to prevent fraud is to develop an anonymous way for employees to report suspected fraud and work practices that lead to fraud.  Businesses that institute anonymous employee reporting detect fraud earlier and significantly limit financial losses. “You could have an anonymous tip box,” Lougovskaia suggests. If you do opt for a tip box, you should take steps to ensure that the process isn’t abused to settle personal grudges. One way would be to appoint one individual to investigate all claims and ensure that anonymity is protected.Internal Audits and Surprise AuditsWork processes, inventories, and accounting should be subject to regularly scheduled and announced internal audits.  In addition, unscheduled -- or surprise -- internal audits also should be conducted.  Work processes, inventories, and accounting can be altered in advance of regular audits, but knowing a surprise audit may occur removes temptation and increases the chance for fraud detection.External AuditsAt a regular interval, external auditors should be employed to review company accounts, contracts, inventory and work processes, Lougovskaia says.  Depending on the size of your business and whether it is a publicly-held enterprise, this may be required by law.  Thus, it makes sense to set up external audits early in the history of your business so compliance with applicable laws and regulations can be achieved as your business grows.

Dig Deeper: Learning to Love Whistleblowers

How to Protect Your Business against Fraud: How to Deter Fraud

There are ways to deter fraud. One of the most important steps a business can take is to create a system of awareness at the top level of management. “Never think that it can’t happen here,” Bachman says. “Create a level of awareness throughout the organization that we're watching for it. Make it clear in terms of deterrents that, if we catch it, we're going to prosecute, both criminally and civilly.” Civil action may be needed because people who have profited from ill-gotten gains may not have the cash on hand to return – they may have bought items, such as fancy cars or jewelry.Written procedures are necessary to develop internal consistency and to insure adherence to anti-fraud work practices and policies.  At a minimum, the business should take the following steps:

Dig Deeper: New Tools to Battle Online Fraud

How to Protect Your Business against Fraud: Creating Checks and Balances

Internal controls are one of the great fraud deterrents. Internal controls involve the processes by which a business operates and goals are achieved. In accounting, it refers to the reliability of financial reporting and compliance with laws and regulations. Setting up good controls is important for a business to detect and deter fraud.“A lot of organizations have an internal audit department, but small organizations can’t always afford that luxury,” Bachman says. “But they do have accountants and other people in charge of keeping track of accounts.” However, small businesses may have some weaknesses in terms of controls, such as putting the same employee in charge of making deposits and reconciling bank statements. Allowing one employee/department to perform multiple critical functions is inconsistent with preventing fraud. By dividing the responsibility of certain functions, a system of checks and balances is created and this creates an environment where fraud is less likely to occur. Lougovskaia says businesses should consider the following examples to establish better checks and balances:

Implementing a fraud prevention plan requires commitment and also requires the business to provide the right tools and support to its employees. Businesses are better off if they build in deterrents, establish good controls, and provide oversight. It’s also important to encourage employees to have a conscientious attitude, says Bachman, such as: “Our business’ survival depends on employees being honest.”

Dig Deeper: How to Set Up Accounts Payable

Recommended ResourcesTen Ways to Prevent Identity Theft from Staples.comhttp://www.staples.com/sbd/content/article/i-n/identitytheft.htmlThe FBI’s List of Common Fraud Schemes:http://www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/fraudschemes.htmUnderstanding and Detecting Fraud by the Department of Justicehttp://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/ole/video_info/ubf_part1.pdfThe United States Treasury’s Financial Crimes Divisionhttp://www.ustreas.gov/usss/financial_crimes.shtmlThe United States Post Office Mail Fraud Unithttp://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/fraud/welcome.htmPriceWaterhouseCoopers 2009 Global Economic Crime Surveyhttp://www.pwc.com/gx/en/economic-crime-survey/index.jhtml

When clients owe you money, you shouldn't have to move heaven and earth to collect it from them. If your accounts receivable system is a few years old, or still just consists of an Excel spreadsheet and invoice letters, then it is probably time for you to take some simple, additional steps to ensure that you get paid promptly and in full. If you're spending an hour a week on managing your billing process, experts say that something is amiss. Slow collections can cost you tremendously over time, in the form of wasted labor, poor cash flow, and inaccurate financual forecasts. Plus, a solid accounts receivable system has a tendency to being self-fulfilling: The more professional your billing system is, the more likely it is that your clients will pay up in a timely manner. "If you’ve taken the leap of faith to go into business for yourself, driven by the passion for what you do, you want to spend less time fretting over the books and a lot more time doing what you’re great at—so you can get paid for it," says Mitch Solway, a small-business finance expert who is the vice president of sales and marketing for online expense-tracking software FreshBooks. "But it’s still a critical piece of your business."Dig Deeper: Best Practices for Accounts Receivable and CollectionsStreamlining Accounts Receivable: Invoicing SoftwareIf you are sending out – either digitally or in hard copy – more than a handful of invoices a week, you should be using an accounting program such as QuickBooks or Peachtree. Or, if you like the style of online money-management programs, you might work well with an online system such as FreshBooks or Outright. If you're not already comfortable with any new software options, you can take a class or hire a coach to get you started. What's not an option is letting someone else do it all for you, says San Francisco-based financial advisor Kathryn Amenta."I would recommend a business owner understand their finances fully before they turn it over to someone else to handle," she says. "It's super important as an owner to have a finger on the financial pulse. That's the bottom line – that's why you're in business."

Once you know the process thoroughly, good software can help you track receivables, including how many invoices have been sent, how many have been viewed, how many have been paid, and how much remains outstanding. The only thing to keep in mind when you automate: Before you adopt a new software or billing process, make sure your clients are notified ahead of time of any changes that will affect them or how they receive or pay their bills. The best invoices include every relevant piece of data, including hours billed if you're a service, or all the specs of a product if you're a sales organization. Being clear with clients avoids the need for follow-up questions on items that may be confusing to anyone who receives them, and that can delay payment. Your invoice should be a clean, straightforward document that includes your company logo. That said, it can contain a certain element of grace, suggests Mitch Solway, the vice president of sales and marketing at online bookkeeping and invoicing company FreshBooks, which has recently studied its customers best practices in accounts receivable."One of the best pieces of advice we’ve uncovered in recent months is to think carefully about the actual wording on the terms you apply on your invoices," Solway says. "Being polite and asking for payment within 21 days seems to get our customers paid a lot faster than terms such as 'due on receipt' or 'due immediately.'"In other words, giving customers a bit of flex room actually appears to create common good-will and speed up payment. That's just one example of the complex psychology of money manifesting itself in the receivables process. Knowing your clients well, and understanding what motivates their accounting – and accountability – can help you implement other strategies in the future to get paid without being unfriendly.Dig Deeper: How to Choose Small Business Accounting SoftwareStreamlining Accounts Receivable: Optimizing Your Billing ProcessWhatever software you choose, the goal is to stay on top of accounts and billing. That means monitoring when an account opens, the timeline of work being done, and when precisely a bill is to be sent. That can vary depending on the type of product or service you provide, but terms of payment should be clear to all clients before you provide anything to them. Setting up expectations and payment standards first allows you to be in control from the get-go. Before taking on a new client, present to them the terms of the transaction. This can be a payment policy on your sales-based website, or part of a formal contractual agreement signed by both parties before the start of your service – or something in-between. The important thing, experts say, is to put the terms of payment in writing. The most basic item a terms-of-sale agreement should include is payment schedule. To determine a timeframe for payment that works for you and your clients, consider industry standards as well as what your business needs to maintain steady cash flow. Say you decide 30 days is a reasonable expectation. You should include that fact in your agreement, and note pay-by dates on future invoices. Consistency is crucial in maintaining clients' respect and trust.

You must also establish a clear-cut method for following up on overdue invoices. Set a clear schedule of, say, a call after the payment deadline, then a follow-up e-mail within a week, followed by another call. When making collection calls, be sure to first know your state laws and follow the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (you can check out the text of the FDCPA at the FTC website). It's the law dictating when you can and can't call a debtor (the guidelines are generally during business hours). Knowing your rights can also help you be confident throughout the process of collecting on bills – and doing so in a kind and conscientious manner can help you avoid the unpleasant process of enlisting a collections service or taking your client to small-claims court.Dig Deeper: Setting Clear Payment ExpectationsStreamlining Accounts Payable: Enlisting Outside Help

If you're still spending too much time billing for and collecting money rather than doing what you're good at, you might feel it's natural to delegate some of your bookkeeping responsibility to an assistant. Instead, consider bringing in someone at a higher level

•    A bookkeeper or contract accountant to help you stay on top of maintaining accurate records•    A credit manager or accounts receivable clerk to handle billing and following up on invoices if the process is taking more of your time as a manager than is financially worthwhile for your business•    A collection service or officer to deal with large-scale long overdue bills

•    A legal advisor if a client cannot pay up in a reasonable time frame and you think litigation may be necessaryAmenta, the financial advisor, suggests that an accountant with a regular monthly relationship with your company can help streamline the bookkeeping process by advising you on time-saving methods – and they can catch costly errors. Moreover, he or she will have your future financial health in mind. "That person can also help craft a plan for going forward, say, a two-year plan," she says. "It's really important to look at: What is this business paying too much for? Is this business venture supporting itself?"

Dig Deeper: Renting a CFOStreamlining Accounts Receivable: Keeping Tabs On Clients and Cash FlowWhether you handle receivables and collect on them yourself or employ an accounts receivable clerk, the person who regularly deals with accounting should always keep an eye on slow-paying clients. Get to know the payment schedules of your regular debtors, and know when they tend to come up short. If a client is regularly late, schedule a conversation with their bookkeeper or CEO. Without being accusatory, ask the person how you can help them to be more consistent in making payments to you. Sometimes, the answer can be as simple as synching your invoice numbers or shifting a payment schedule to an earlier or later date in the month.However, if the company you're dealing with seems to consistently pay late and doesn't want to make an effort to change, you need to reevaluate the relationship. Have they effectively created a system in dealing with paying you and their other suppliers that amounts to supplier financing? If so, how much money are you willing to lend to your client? Dig Deeper: How to Collect from AnyoneStreamlining Accounts Receivable: Adding SafeguardsIf your company deals with large accounts that may not always be reliable about payment, you might want to consider investing in payment insurance. Insuring your accounts receivable (after, of course, you have a solid system for billing and receiving set in place) can be a smart way to protect your sales against non-payment risks. Some policies can even protect you from the commercial risks that cause non-payment that you can't control, including if your client goes out of business, changes ownership, files bankruptcy, or is the victim of a natural disaster. Most policies also include coverage for general economic climate issues and seasonal hardships clients might encounter. Dig Deeper: Additional Ways To Ensure Payment

Bo Burlingham, author of Small Giants (and well on his way to being the father of a new "Small Giants" movement) will be joining me in conversation next week. Our topic: the DNA of the best small companies in America.

Too many businesses focus on revenue growth at the expense of profitability. They're choosing a dollar today even if it may cost them 99 cents to deliver the value. Small Giants, on the other hand, focus on profit. They run systematic, efficient companies and celebrate their nimble size as well as the purity of their products and brand reputation.

Many of us are at a critical juncture. Having slimmed down our companies, do we ramp up again for growth? Or stay small for profit? Burlingham's case studies will give you more to think about as you map out your business strategy.

For more information about our upcoming meetings decoding "small giants", taking place in New Jersey, Connecticut and New York City, click here.

Our special guest will be Bo Burlingham:

March 17 @ 8AM: Greenwich, CT March 18 @ 8AM: Union, NJ March 18 @ 12:30PM: Downtown Manhattan

The appetizer approach to raising funds. Mark Suster proposes the rule of hors d'oeuvres to decide how much money your company should raise. The idea is that it's bad form to take the entire hors d'oeuvres tray, but it's probably a good idea to take two servings (in case the tray doesn't come around for awhile). In other words, if an investor offers you more money than you think you need, but still at reasonable terms, take the extra money. "I know you think you're going to do a bigger round later at a higher price but the problem is that if someone offers you [extra money] now it's guaranteed," he writes. "That same extra [money] might prove very difficult to get one year from now if something fundamentally changes in the market, your company isn't getting traction as quickly as expected or your competition makes a lot of noise in the market."

A handy social media cheat sheet. Our friends over at Fast Company have a quick and dirty cheat sheet that breaks down the value of different social networking sites for communicating with customers, getting brand exposure, boosting site traffic, and helping your SEO. For a more detailed guide, see how you can use social netowrking sites to drive your business.

Ex-assistant to Yahoo's CEO disses her old company when she moves onto Twitter. Kristen Cordle, who tweets at GGateGirl, has shrewdly ascended the corporate ladder, moving from program manager at Logitech to assistant to Yahoo's Carol Bartz to assistant to Twitter CEO Evan Williams, according to Valleywag. But as soon as Cordle fully transitioned to Twitter, the veiled insults started. First with a tweet about Twitter having the most outstanding company culture she'd experienced ("#goodpeople") and then maligning Twitter rival Facebook. We're keeping it in mind for next year's list of the op 10 Most Awkward Social Media Moments.

Competition for group buying heats up. GroupOn, the Chicago start-up that helps local businesses find new customers by offering discounts to groups, is very hot right now. The company raised $30 million from venture capital firms in December and, according to TechCrunch, is projecting $100 million in gross sales for this year. GroupOn is so hot, in fact, that it's spawning lots of well-funded competition. VentureBeat reports that LivingSocial, a a Washington, DC group buying start-up, just raised $25 million. VentureBeat notes that part of the attraction of group buying for investors is that it's easy to turn a profit--most group buying companies simply take a cut of sales--and because there's "room for niche-focused competitors. (Think Groupon for moms or LivingSocial for athletes.)"

Have you been neglecting your company's Twitter account? You're not alone. According to Mashable, a recent study found that only 21 percent of Twitter accounts are active. Thirty-four percent of Twitter users haven't even made one tweet, and 73 percent have tweeted fewer than 10 times. The rapid growth of the micro-blogging site has also slowed: in April of 2009 the site grew 20 percent, but in December of the same year it only grew .34 percent.

The Future of Mobile? Superphones. By 2013, the installed base of smartphones and superphones will exceed the installed base of PCs and web-browsing will become fully mobile. So predicts ex-RealNetworks chairman Rob Glaser, in his first speech since stepping down. GigaOm lists the five big opportunities that Glaser says will emerge from this new tech landscape, including "digital persistence" (the idea that all content will be available everywhere at any point in time), access to content across devices, and improving the discovery process.

New apps from the Google Apps Marketplace you should try. Google has caused quite a stir among cloud-computing enthusiasts with the announcement of their new app store, which allows software developers to sell their Google Apps-integrated web tools to other businesses. To help users get the most of the search giant's new offering, Mashable has suggested a few of the best apps available so far, such as Intuit Online Payroll, which allows employees to retrieve their paychecks from Google Calender and help with e-filing taxes, and Aviary, a nifty graphics editor that helps create business cards and slide presentations. "We're only scratching the surface in terms of what the Google Apps Marketplace can potentially offer users, as well as developers and other providers," the post says. "But just looking at some of the apps and integrations that already exist, we have to say, this is exciting."

Is it possible to teach entrepreneurship? In the past we've written about whether entrepreneurship is in a person's genes but a new article on CNN Money attacks the question from another angle: can entrepreneurship be taught? More specifically how good of a job are we doing of teaching it in schools. While the number of colleges and universities with entrepreneurship programs has increased tenfold in the last three decades, a study published by the Kauffman Foundation earlier this year found that that explosion has resulted in "no appreciable impact on entrepreneurial activity in the United States." Still, the next generation of entrepreneurs is honing their skills one way or another.

More from Inc. Magazine:

Get this delivered to your inbox. Or get it on the Kindle

Follow us on Twitter or Tumblr.

Friend us on Facebook.

Apply now for the 2010 Inc. 500|5000.

What's the value of your business? That depends on whom you ask. Ask potential buyers, especially when they're being cautious in tough economic times, and it might not meet your expectations. Negotiating a sale of a privately-held business is never a breeze – and it's much less so in a down market in which there is little competition among buyers to drive up the multiple. When a seller's expectations aren't being met by potential buyers, including an earn-out provision in the acquisition contract can help narrow the price-expectation divide.A common feature of many acquisitions, an earn-out stipulates that the original owners of a business are paid for the sale of their company, following which they are contractually obligated to stay with the company through a transition period, and they are provided with the incentive to have a demonstrable effect on the company's financial performance going forward. Achieving or exceeding a certain level of performance – criteria are typically set over a period of several years – means the original owners will earn a much larger profit from the sale. For buyers, an earn-out can offer the owner protection against overpaying for a company that doesn't end up thriving or growing in the way its original owners expected. It can also smooth the period of ownership transition.Call it an incentive; call it delayed gratification; call it a compromise. Brian Mutert, founder and CEO of San Francisco-based investment bank Stratagem, which specializes in mergers and acquisitions, says earn-outs can benefit both buyers and sellers. 

"It's a way for the buyer to put some skin in the game for the seller after the deal closes, and to provide some financial incentive for them to work hard in terms of the company's business after they close the deal," he says. "In a situation where the seller might believe there is a great opportunity for future growth potential, they can take some added benefit in the transaction."

Dig Deeper: What's Your Business Worth in a Buyers' Market?

Structuring an Earn-out: Setting Realistic ExpectationsWhen there is a gap between an owner and a potential acquirer in the perceived value of a business, it is usually caused by the expected future growth of the company. That's only natural. But as a small business owner, it's necessary to step back and ask yourself: If your expectations are higher than those of your buyer, why is that? 

After all, it's commonly known that roughly three-quarters of all mergers and acquisitions fall short of the expectations that are stated when the deal is announced. And about half of all deals result in a loss of value for the buyer's shareholders. So, analyze exactly what you're optimistic about – and how much of your purchase price you're willing to risk on being successful in the future.Being equipped with solid expectations for your businesses success over the next five years can prepare you well for negotiating an earn-out.

Consider next what portion of your asking price you'd be willing to risk – and work for in the future."An earn-out is a contingent payout, which essentially involves shifting some of the purchase price to be paid in the future on the realization of future earnings or some other benchmarks of success," says George Geis, an associate dean of the Executive MBA Program at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. "So the owner needs to be wiling to delay some of the price, and be aware they might never get it."Because most earn-out clauses are tied to the company's performance (measured in sales, earnings, or some other benchmark) over a three-to-five-year period, that's the timeline you should be thinking about your company's health within before embarking on negotiations. If your company had a track-record of performing at or exceeding forecasts in the past, this fact should give you added negotiating power.

Knowing expectations is vital is because the range of earn-out terms that could be offered is vast. A buyer might agree to pay 90 percent of the total purchase price you desire upfront with the remaining 10 percent paid in stock or cash after a year of earn-out time. Alternately, the buyer might split the sale price 50/50 over five years during which time the owner must agree to stay with the company and optimize its performance.When Disney acquired Club Penguin in 2007, for example, it paid $350 million upfront, with $350 million more promised through a series of earn-outs. For high-tech and service businesses with high-growth potential, a typical deal might include an upfront payment from an acquirer of between 60 and 80 percent, with the balance paid over time possibly as an earn-out tied to performance. Geis estimates that, in the post-dot-com-boom era, the owners of private companies regularly have been taking between 40 and 45 percent of the total pay-out through an earn-out agreement, according to surveys. If you are embarking on a sale, you will want to make sure you know their future involvement is worthwhile – and is the best way to spend time for the money offered.

Dig Deeper: What Happens After You Sell a BusinessStructuring an Earn-out: Keeping it SimpleFor entrepreneurs looking for a quick sale of their business, the simple st earn-out is none at all. There are significant risks involved in any acquisition that involves future conditions – especially when the old owner is expected to come on board to work for someone else and live by their rules. "A CEO must recognize they will not be in control of their own destiny in any part the same way they were," Mutert says. "They will have new bosses and will have to march to a new set of rules than they had to when it was their own company."Many earn-outs depend on an extremely complicated matrix of variables and goals. This should be avoided if possible. Earn-outs are most effective as an incentive for the seller when the size of the payout is determined based upon one or two simple variables. A buyer who constructed a complicated set of goals covering earnings, customer retention, and myriad other circumstances should be challenged. These conditions might not be fully under your control should you accept the earn-out. And too many variables – especially when some are out of your hands – can make achieving your earn-out impossible, Geis says."What you don't want to happen to make it so they control you and that you don't make your earn-out," Geis advises sellers. "That can be that they control some marketing expenses or some other element that would change the game for you and take any control of the situation out of your hands within a year or so out."In order to avoid spending years of your life working on a possibly unattainable goal, you'll want to enter acquisition negotiations armed with a legal counsel, as well as financial advisors, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. Instruct them to fight for a simple deal with an earn-out based on an easy-to-quantify metric, such as higher corporate revenue or an expanded client base.

The simplest earn-out might be a model newly being set by Google. The search giant's director of corporate development told the Wall Street Journal that though the company used to be "addicted to" earn-outs and milestone-based compensation, the company is now shying away from such practices. Identifying myriad benchmarks and determining fair pricing for the earn-outs proved to be just too difficult. Now, “we tend to have pretty generous packages but they’re time-based, whether in equity or cash, instead of specific milestones,” Google's David Sobota told the paper. Aiming for simplicity is best, too, for the future relationship between a company and its new owners. With aligned incentives and clear objectives, you will have less cause for arguing – or potential legal squabbles – when it's time for your payout. Dig Deeper: A Case Study in Managing an Earn-out AgreementStructuring an Earn-out: Avoid Earn-out Burn-outJust as simplicity is key, for the seller, staying true to your priorities as a business owner is equally important. Sure, if you believe strongly in your company's potential, and want to guide its success through new ownership, an earn-out might give you the opportunity to do so. But ensuring that a few key elements are in place in your agreement can greatly strengthen the new arrangement.• Keep your key players. If other executives were integral to your company's growth and success, will your company be able to function under new ownership without them? If not, come up with deals to lock them in, too.

• Keep the length of your contract as short as possible. It sounds obvious, but you'll minimize the potential for burn-out by minimizing your time working with your new parent company. You can always renew and re-negotiate, but can't hit undo. It's that simple.

• Make sure you have control. Ensure that the contract expressly states that you will oversee any departments that will be executing on the goals and standards set forth in the earn-out. You should never allow yourself to be accountable for what you cannot control.

• Ensure that incentives are in place. You know what motivates you at work. One is seeing your business succeed, and the second is money.  If you've made a lot of cash in the initial sale, it's natural to loose attachment to future goals for the company. The earn-out percentage should be high enough to keep you from losing interest, especially in the event of a setback. If you are going to commit, commit fully. Each of these standards, which you and your buyer will negotiate, can and should be included in your earn-out agreement. To vet that document, enlist acquisition specialists on both the legal and financial front. Mutert cautions that both buyers and sellers should expect to pay top-dollar for acquisition services, though, due to the complex nature of the work. In no case should the buyer be the only voice in determining any of these elements, though, Mutert says."In downstream earn-outs you have to be very, very careful," he says. "Know the people that you're dealing with on the other side of the table, and work very hard to get the incentives aligned for all of the parties."Dig Deeper: Retaining Employees Through AcquisitionsStructuring an Earn-out: Ensure Good Chances for Success (and Avoid Disaster)You already know the importance of laying out simple, clear-cut standards that must be met for an earn-out to pay-out. There are some additional questions both parties should consider before signing on the dotted line.Will the acquired party have enough autonomy?"Earn-outs tend to work well when the seller is going to continue to run pretty much as before," Geis says. To that end, a seller should get in writing the seller's commitment to leave operations largely unchanged. If certain redundancies or back-office functions are to be folded into the acquiring company, that's fine. You simply want to make sure that every part of the acquired company that can be run independently is run independently.

Is the purpose of the earn-out financial or strategic?

An earn-out can be made for purely financial reasons, or a buyer can be making a bet on the owner's ability to expand the business. You will want to know which motivation is at play—and whether it is likely to change after the deal is closed. If the acquirer keeps a respectful distance and seems to be giving you autonomy, that is a good sign. 

Who is the umpire? How will progress against an earn-out's goals be evaluated?

Consider both who will be evaluating the entrepreneur's performance under new ownership, and when evaluations will take place. Is it simply at the end of the period set in the contract, or will progress be tracked quarterly? Will the earn-out be allocated piecemeal or in one lump-sum? There's no right answer, but these questions should be addressed early on in your negotiations.

What will happen in the event outside factors drastically change the outcome?Factors in neither party's control can harm the buyer's and entrepreneur's ability to maximize the rewards pledged in an earn-out. What if your industry tanks? What if a natural disaster hits? What if your biggest client was Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns? Make sure to create contingency plans to address the most unlikely of scenarios – especially if you're entering into a long-term earn-out deal.Dig Deeper: Striking a Good DealStructuring an Earn-out: Additional ResourcesWhat not to do:Deals from Hell: M&A Lessons that Rise Above the Ashes by Robert F. Bruner. Wiley, 2009.A solid textbook:Mergers, Acquisitions, and Other Restructuring Activities: An Integrated Approach to Process, Tools, Cases, and Solutions, by Donald DePamphilis. Academic Press, 2009. On financial and legal issues:Mergers and Acquisitions: A Step-by-Step Legal and Practical Guide by Edwin L. Miller. Wiley, 2008.

More resources from Inc.com: How to Structure an Earn-out

You've got to spend money to make money and, at any given time, your business undoubtedly owes someone something. Even if you're a solo entrepreneur or an independent contractor, you're likely spending for business purposes, and you need to keep track of expenses – both before and after they're paid.Though the terminology can sound intimidating, accounts payable is simply the process of accounting for and paying invoices—it's your company's updated list of debts and liabilities. Managing accounts payable boils down to adding an invoice to a log – it can be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet – as soon as you receive it. When you pay a bill, you should remove it from your current log.

You probably already have an accounts payable system, however meager. If you track in a to-do list or calendar what bills are due, voila. That's your starting point.

Formalizing accounts payable into professional documents so is not difficult, nor should it take a great amount of effort, says David Barrett, who worked in a string of start-ups before creating Expensify, an online finance program that aims to simplify business expensing. "Overall, setting up accounts payable doesn't have to be terribly hard. There are bigger problems for any small business to deal with, so don't stress," he says. "But foresight here can save a lot of headaches down the road."As your business grows, your accounting system will likely grow more complex, as you turn your focus to maximizing cash flow and integrate with suppliers. Strong accounts payable can also give you a leg up in managing your critical numbers and developing financial reports for your bank or for outside investors. We've compiled a guide to getting started on the right track – and incorporating best practices – to managing your accounts payable. Dig Deeper: Basic Small Business Accounting TipsSetting Up Accounts Payable: Getting OrganizedIf you have a business banking account (hint: you should), and you're setting up a formal accounts payable system for the first time, you should pick an application with which you're comfortable. Any spreadsheet or online finance program will do. For offline, manual-entry accounts payable, Excel is still the standard. QuickBooks is a good online option, and you can often find local classes to help you learn the in's and out's of recordkeeping. If you already use an online personal money-management program such as Mint, you might take a look at Outright.Once your system is set up, every receipt, business credit-card item, and incoming bill should be entered into your digital file. You'll also need to keep your paper bills organized. Prepare to open them immediately, enter them digitally, and file the hard copy until it is paid. Once it is, retain a stub both virtually and in hard copy. Your next decision: Will you be the only person handling accounts payable? If not, who else will have access to this information and for what purpose? If your business has several employees, it's just fine to have an administrator involved in entering data into the accounts payable system, but you should plan to keep a close eye on it always, says Kathryn Amenta, a San Francisco-based financial advisor."I would recommend a business owner understand their finances fully before they turn it over to someone else to handle," she says. "It's super-important as an owner to have a finger on the financial pulse. That's the bottom line – that's why you're in business."That said, in growing companies, it is advisable to have more than one pair of eyes on outgoing payments to avoid both honest mistakes and billing fraud. If you have a head of finance, he or she should oversee bookkeeping operations and keep you updated on your company's payables.Another consideration: Is there anything else you want to incorporate into accounts payable? Employee expenses are one possibility if you use the cash-based method of accounting rather than accrual. If you don't know which of these you will be using, or if you're not yet registered as an LLC or an S or C corporation, you should pause here and make some key decisions about incorporation.

Dig Deeper: How to Choose the Right Legal Structure

Setting Up Accounts Payable: Listing Expenses

If you're using a straightforward cash system, the expenses you classify as accounts payable can include any of your own that are not strictly personal. Barrett suggests that you – and any employee allowed to file expenses – might want to be extremely disciplined about using a business-only credit card for expenses. "As you are growing, having everyone make purchases with on one business credit card is a great way to mitigate fraud," he says. "Fraudulent cash purchases are fairly rampant in companies of any size, and with software that uploads data directly from your card account, it's harder for someone to try to report the same expense twice."If you're using a spreadsheet rather than an accounting program, a basic template should include, in rows, the invoice provider's name, account number, the category of the expense, the date the invoice was received, and the amount to be paid. Ideally, you'll want to get this information into the spreadsheet as soon as a bill arrives. You'll need a few other forms, too, for enclosing with payments, and to keep your own future books. Sample templates can be found on the site of the non-profit educational organization International Accounts Payable Professionals. Dig Deeper: Best Practices for Accounts PayableSetting Up Accounts Payable: Establishing Invoice Schedules and Other GuidelinesOnce you have the basic tools in place to track accounts payable, remember exactly why you are doing so: To monitor spending and maintain good relations with your service and product providers. For the latter, it is important is to establish a standard window for payment – with a reasonable expectation being to have each bill paid within 30 days.Amenta recommends you go a step further and strive to have any given bill mailed out three weeks before it is due. That will earn you professional respect from your suppliers. You can also, after a time, ask them about discounts or added-value services in return for prompt payment.Another goal of a sound accounts payable system is to monitor and maintain cash flow. Having a parallel, well- functioning accounts receivable system will help with this. Getting behind on your bills might seem inevitable in a start-up, but both of these systems can help you recognize and mitigate imbalances – by, for example, identifying seasonal patterns cush as periods during the year when purchases might outweigh sales.

One simple and necessary step to knowing how much flexibility you have on paying each account is to review existing supplier payment terms. If you have a contract with a supplier, it should include payment terms and available credit. Keep these on file so you can reference them if you should get in a tight spot.

Be cognizant of the risks of getting behind on your bills. You may alienate reliable providers, risk damaging your company's credit, and could ultimately face legal action. Unpaid bills also cause stress and distraction at a time when you should be focused on managing your business.

Dig Deeper: Creating a System of Accounts Payable Safeguards

Setting Up Accounts Payable: Recognizing Trouble SpotsOnce you're accustomed to your accounts payable system, you'll start to observe trends. Notice when the most spending occurs for your business. What categories of spending are most in flux? When do you rely most heavily on your suppliers to finance inventory? For retail companies, the holidays are a time of tremendous inequity of accounts payable and accounts receivable. The goal is to be financially prepared for times of big spending that come in advance of payments received, but when that doesn't happen, there are a couple of simple things you can do to maintain relationships that might come under stress.First, Amenta advises clients to be proactive. Be honest with your suppliers about when, if not within a 30- or 60-day window, they can expect to receive a payment. "Pick up the phone, call creditors and let them know what's going on," she says. "Be clear. Say 'I'm going to pay this much this month, and this much next month, even if it's just a token amount so they know you are on it."Second, thank your suppliers for their flexibility and remind them about your prompt previous payments. If they become hostile about not being paid, offer references to your long-term financial stability, or even last year's balance sheet to prove your continued viability. Help them get over their "check-is-in-the-mail" concerns.Dig Deeper: What to Do When You Can't Pay a BillSetting Up Accounts Payable: Choosing Business Accounting SoftwareOnce your accounts payable grows beyond the size of a bill or two a day – or a manageable handful of checks to cut each week – you might want to consider either putting an employee in charge of the basic data-entry and accounting or adopting software to streamline the process.Some free options online can help at any stage of your company's growth. Check out Outright, a free online bookkeeping system with a clean aesthetic. Some businesses swear by QuickBooks, which offers a free online trial. Intuit's Quicken is another choice. If expenses are a big part of your accounts payable, check out software options that help integrate employee expenses into your accounting system, such as Expensify or Concur.If you're looking to implement software but don't feel as if you have the time or skills to set up the system, you can always hire a business accountant or bookkeeper to integrate an accounting system for you. Hiring for a quick set-up process should only require a contractor. Search sites such as eLance.com or TeaSpliller.com or even Craigslist can help you find a qualified professional in your area.Dig Deeper: How to Choose Business Accounting SoftwareSetting Up Accounts Payable: Additional ResourcesWith a variety of training and professional development programs for people working in accounts payable, the non-profit group International Accounts Payable Professionals can be a great training resource. The group's website also offers accounts payable form templates for you to download.

If you're just getting started and find yourself unfamiliar with some of the terminology involved in accounts payable, check out this thorough online glossary. The Financial Managers Society is another professional organization where you can look for advice, tools and guidance.

To speed the start-up process for student (and faculty) entrepreneurs, the University of Texas is launching a program called Texas Venture Labs.The university-wide initiative will guide entrepreneurs through the company birthing process and connect them with business, technology and legal resources. Funded by alumni from the McCombs School of Business, where it is housed, Texas Venture Labs will selectively take on projects and provide (student) labor to help the firms get off the ground. That includes doing market research, developing a business plan, building a team and seeking outside funding -- all of which students will do for course credit. The program, which won't take equity in the companies, will work closely with the university's schools of engineering and law.Texas Venture Labs will also guide Austin companies and investors to the fledgling firms. Its first partnership: the 67-member Central Texas Angel Network, one of the nation's leading groups. In 2009 -- as venture capital funding declined across the US -- CTAN invested $3.5 million in 12 ventures, 10 in Austin itself. That's up from $1 million in nine deals during 2008. The news of the program, announced Wednesday night, comes as a Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report shows U.S. entrepreneurship education lagging and follows a decrease in VC fundraising last year. In 2009, 125 funds in the US took in $13.6 billion, compared to $28.7 billion raised by 203 funds in 2008 and $40.8 billion from 217 funds in 2007, according to VentureSource data cited in The Wall Street Journal."Employers are looking for people who can manage innovation, and satisfying that demand requires that our students have tangible experience turning ideas into products and services," said Thomas Gilligan, McCombs' dean, in a statement.Rob Adams, the program's director, said the program aimed to be a "central clearinghouse for helping entrepreneurs transform ideas and technologies developed on campus into start-ups." Adams, who has contributed to Inc., has helped more than eight start-ups through an early stage version of this program  in the last five years, with each successfully raising multi-million dollar rounds of financing. Two of the companies, Phurnace and eVapt, ­ recently were acquired, generating venture class returns for their investors, Adams said.He described Texas Venture Labs as a "very novel" way to help produce results in a down economy.

The question is whether it will be a game changer?

Google has officially launched its Apps marketplace this week. These are third party applications progammed to integrate with everything else you or your company has sitting on the Google cloud (i.e. Gmail, Google calendar, Docs&Spreadsheets, etc.).

The Good

These apps are built to seamlessly integrate with other Google offerings (like Gmail, for example). Ideally you can do all your work in one universe with one password. How handy!

The Bad

These apps are built to seamlessly integrate with other Google offerings (like Gmail, for example). So, what happens to your business when Google has another one of their day-long or even 3 hour outages?

The Ugly

These apps are built to seamlessly integrate with other Google offerings (like Gmail, for example). As the video below demonstrates, it is as easy as pie to set up an app on your network. Step one: give the third party app maker carte blanche access to all your Google accounts (that's Gmail, the calendar, files, etc.) so that it can do all that promised seamless integration.

((insert the souind of a car screeching to a halt))

The idea is to hand over the keys to your data kingdom to a thirdy party company (two college drop-outs working out of their parent's basement).

What about network security?

What about compliance?

If someone isn't already doing it, how long will it be before all the bottomfeeders who create elaborate phishing schemes and DNS attacks think to create apps just to get access to company information?

The stereotype startup guy or gal is a high energy, always schmoozing, hard pitching and hand-shaking go-getter. But since 50 percent of the population are identified by psychological studies as introverts, that stereotype might need some examining.

But most people believe there?s some sort of stigma about being an introvert, according to Nancy Ancowitz, author of Self Promotion for Introverts and blogger for Psychology Today. Ancowitz is a self-proclaimed introvert with a history in both large companies and her own enterprises. Many introverts, she says, ?make great entrepreneurs.? Introvert stereotypes include being more considered, looking inward for approval and guidance, and researching problems looking for perfect answers. These same characteristics can make great business leaders.

What advice can help the introvert succeed in a startup? Ancowitz says ?When selling as an introvert, use your abilities as a good researcher to really know audience, know what matters to them, and figure out a product match before you go in. You?ll be meeting with people, so rest up before social interactions with those you are selling to or speaking in front of. Prepare and practice because as an introvert you will think before you speak - as opposed to extroverts who speak as they think. So having a few lines ready, or thoughts composed in advance will be beneficial. Rest, prepare and practice is the magic formula because of the way introverts are wired.?

That seems to work for Adelaide Lancaster, co-founder of In Good Company Workplaces, a community and workspace for women entrepreneurs in NYC that provides events, consulting, shared desks and meeting rooms. As a graduate student in a psychology program, Lancaster found out she was an introvert. In 2003 she formed a consulting practice helping women in professional transition. It was research and data driven. ?As an introvert it was more comfortable being a resource instead of being in an interpersonal mode all the time. Now I?m in business now with an off-the-charts extrovert. Our focus is on entrepreneurs, and our consulting led into creating the workspace.?

Lancaster gave me a tip for startup introverts. ?While putting your business model in place, feedback is a critical component, but introverts may close themselves off to that - it might not occur to them to ask others for advice. They need opinions and iteration.? Lancaster didn?t talk to lots and lots of people, but she strategically chose 5 people to check in with and get advice from. She also notes ?There's an opportunity cost if you're not connected to other business owners - if you over-emphasize research it can prevent you from finding easy solutions to your problems right, in your business network.? Lancaster uses Twitter and LinkedIn groups to connect with business resources and share tips.

This connects well with Ancowitz?s advice to ?Get known as an expert, and build deep and meaningful relationships. Introverts do well with deep relationships and conversations rather than chit-chat. Be generous in introducing people to each other as well. Then it?s easier for you to ask for introductions from your good contacts.? She also notes ?if you're an introvert there may be activities you'll like more than others, like writing or speaking to one person at a time. There are many ways to market with quiet activities like blogging, using Twitter, writing for newsletters, and doing guest columns that can help you promote yourself.?

Any introverts out there? Share your tips and tricks in the comments below.

(Disclosure: I am quoted in Ancowitz?s book as an expert and an NYU colleague. We both teach at NYU SCPS, but I did not hire her or have a business relationship with her. I report on the book not because of my quotes in it, but because it?s an important guide for those who may have trouble promoting themselves, and that's why I agreed to be interviewed.)

Happy Birthday Craigslist. The schlubby classified ad site, which managed to blow up the newspaper business by behaving decidedly unbusinesslike, was founded nearly 15 years ago, according to a blog post from the site's eponymous founder Craig Newmark. He digs up what he calls "the earliest archaeological find" from the site's early days. It's a message directing users of the Well, an early social network, to Newmark's new home page. "My focus, on this page, is on events around San Francisco that involve arts and technology, privacy rights, local writers and artists, and any other item that strikes my fancy," he wrote. "The approach is as minimalist as I could make." PSFK, which flags the post, puts it in perspective, "From that simple start, today the site serves over twenty billion page views per month, putting it in 37th place overall among web sites worldwide and 11th place overall among web sites in the United States."

When is it okay to check your cellphone? If you're having dinner with your spouse and your phone buzzes with a text, do you reach for it? If you reach for it, do you text back? In Farhad Manjoo's house, that would be verboten (at least not without asking permission). In fact, one shouldn't text at all when having a face-to-face conversation, according to Slate's attempt to set the ground rules for cell phone use. On Twitter last week, young technophiles like the New York Times's Nick Bilton argued the opposite. When Bilton's lunching with his boss he leaves his phone alone, but around other tech-savvy people his own age, he texts without compunction. We're hoping the bit about his wife texting him to get his attention during dinner was a joke.

Google begins selling business software. Apple's iPhone App Store has created a billion dollar opportunity for small businesses that develop applications and games for the popular gadget. Now Google is trying to pull off the same trick for business software, which could be great news for business-to-business companies in need of customers. TechCrunch reports on the release of the Google Apps Marketplace, which allows companies to sell web-based business software that integrates with programs like Gmail and Google Docs. The app strategy will undoubtedly improve Google's already impressive (and free) software offering. But it could also be an opportunity for entrepreneurs. "For...small startup developers, it means instant access to more users than they can likely imagine," TechCrunch writes. "It also potentially means something more important: money."

How to handle employee turnover. Entrepreneur turned venture capitalist Mark Suster posted on his blog, Both Sides of the Table, about how the difficulty of moving from one job to the next. On A VC, Fred Wilson responds by breaking down the issue from every side: the employee, the current employer, and the future employer. One recommendation: If a key employee leaves suddenly, it's worth exercising some patience before bringing an outsider onboard. In that scenario, a "battlefield promotion" might be the best option.

Charting the Facebook economy. We've written in the past about the dangers of building your business on someone else's platform. But many companies, undeterred by that risk--and attracted by the prospect of hundreds of millions of potential customers--have built business models that rely heavily on Facebook. The Guardian takes a stab at estimating the size of the Facebook economy, figuring that among a slew of companies such as Playfish, Zynga, and Plancast, the social network's broader economy is easily worth several billion dollars. The article asks "whether [Facebook is] a viable ecosystem, a bubble or a house of cards."

How to simplify your phone system. Can't get an invitation to Google Voice, the free service that transcribes voicemails and rings multiple numbers? (Read more about Google Voice here.) A start-up called Phonebooth.com is attempting to pick up the slack, Mashable reports. The website is now offering Phonebooth OnDemand, which is a full-featured phone service that will set you back $20 a month per user. The no-cost version, which is called Phonebooth Free and is aimed at small businesses, will give you a local number with up to five extensions, call-forwarding to multiple sources, and voicemail with transcription.

More from Inc. Magazine:

Get this delivered to your inbox. Or get it on the Kindle.

Follow us on Twitter. And on Tumblr.

Friend us on Facebook.

CNN just published an article on a prototype that is being developed in London that could forever change the way we drive and consume resources. Volvo is working with Imperial College scientists to develop a car that would use composite materials to act as its own battery. Aside from the enormous cost savings for consumers, this would also help to reduce carbon footprints and natural resource consumption.

This is not the first attempt that has been made in this area. In 2008, the Paris Motor Show unveiled ?The Eclectic,? a self-powered electric car that had been designed by French carmaker Venturi.

It does not look like a bastion of safety.

Curt's company has software that helps the accidental project manager.

The clock is ticking if you want to apply for bank loan with a Small Business Administration guarantee.

The incentive program – consisting of a 90 percent government guarantee on the SBA's flagship 7(a) loans for start-ups and small businesses, as well as a trim or total cut of the fees on 7(a) and 504 loans – was set to expire February 28. President Barack Obama signed an extension through March 28 into law last week.

Though Obama has proposed keeping the loan breaks through the end of the year, it's best not to wait another minute to apply – the deal runs out when the funding does. If that's not enough to get you moving, consider that the program has proved so popular that the agency has twice run out of money to supply it, first in November and then – despite Congress's last-minute infusion of cash in December – on February 22. So with the $60 million last week's legislation handed the SBA, the agency today starts working through a waiting list of the 652 loans totalling some $231 million that piled up after February 22. Before the Senate passed the bill, Senator Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, spoke of a small-business owner on the waiting list who told the senator she'd have to lay off 27 workers if she did not obtain new financing.

Money for the original program – which helped to lend $22 billion to some 55,000 small businesses – was included in last year's economic stimulus bill. The 90 percent guarantee – up from the usual 75 percent – made the loans less risky for lenders, while also attracting borrowers through lower fees.

SBA Administrator Karen Mills said the program led average weekly loan approvals to leap by 87 percent compared to the weekly average before the passage of last year's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The SBA estimates the new funding will support $1.8 billion in small business lending. 

Got a non-Recovery Act 7(a) or 504 loan and wondering about cancelling or resubmitting to take advantage of better terms? No can do. Nor can you have the fees waived retroactively. 

The extension doesn't affect other SBA Recovery Act programs, including the America's Recovery Capital Loan Program, which offers up to $35,000 in short-term relief to help small businesses ride out the recession. The ARC currently still has money, and will hand it out until it runs out or September 30, whichever comes first.

Landrieu, the chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, said after last week's bill was passed that the extension “is a good first step to providing our small businesses with the tools they need to keep their doors open and growing.”

“I look forward to working my colleagues in the Senate to ensure these programs receive a longer extension,” she said.

Today, Vook released a multimedia version of Seth Godin's Unleashing the Ideavirus, which was originally published online ten years ago. I've been reading a lot about mixed media books designed for tablets and e-readers, so I thought I'd check out the new take on Godin's book, which Vook is calling Unleashing the SUPER Ideavirus.

The e-book, which costs just 99 cents for an online version or iPhone app, has a uncluttered, crisp design. You can choose to view it as text only, video only, or a mix of both text and video. Each section features text and accompanying videos. For example, the section about the decline of "interruption marketing" includes a video case study about the Little Miss Matched sock company. Some of the terms in the text are linked, so you can click on GeoCities, for example, to read about the company on Wikipedia. Of course, there are pictures and plenty of graphs that help illustrate Godin's ideas. Another cool feature of the vook is the ability to click on the "connect" view to comment on the book on Facebook or Twitter or go to Godin's website and blog.

It might take a while to adjust to toggling back and forth between the videos and text, especially if you're viewing the vook on your iPhone. But the concept makes a lot of sense now that more and more books are being read on tablets and e-readers. In particular, the multimedia approach works well for instructional books such as Godin's. I think I'd rather read my Jane Austen the old fashioned way, though.

The label "Vdara" evokes images of tattered curtains and rundown efficiency kitchens. These properties put a sophisticated spin on long-term lodging, offering suites akin to luxury pied-à-terres, with all the hotel amenities.

Located in Las Vegas's stunning new CityCenter, the Vdara has 1,495 suites, each with a bedroom, living room, and kitchen. The hotel has private meeting rooms, a business center, and a boardroom. A resort fee of $15 a day covers extras such as Wi-Fi and bottled water. COST: $149 and up a night

This newly renovated landmark on Manhattan's Upper East Side has 30 elegant suites, each with a bedroom, living room, and kitchenette. The property has a business center and two private dining rooms operated by the four-star Café Boulud. Wi-Fi costs $14.95 a day. COST: $1,100 and up a night

This chain has eight hotels in cities such as Philadelphia and Arlington, Virginia. Each has modern suites with a bedroom, living room, and kitchen, along with a business center, free Wi-Fi, and a Zipcar account. COST: $195 and up a night

A good pick for eco-conscious travelers, the Element has hotels in Lexington, Massachusetts, Houston, and five other cities. Each property has minimalist-chic suites of various sizes, a business center, and free Wi-Fi. COST: $125 and up a night

Hey internet entrepreneurs, celebrities are encroaching on your market. Thanks to flexible technology and an abundance of developers, web start-ups are practically the new must-have accessory for Hollywood types, reports Business Insider. Check out their list of the 10 companies to watch. There are the A-listers like Ashton Kutcher's Katalyst Media and Will Ferrell's FunnyOrDie. But did you know that Ludacris and Will.i.am have social networks? Or that Peter Gabriel came up with a Pandora-killer and Kim Kardashian launched the Netflix of footwear?

Big numbers from Tumblr. We've periodically sung the praises of blogging start-up Tumblr, which boasts slick technology and an entrepreneurial prodigy of a founder. Today, via Mashable, Tumblr announced some serious traffic growth: 1 billion pageviews and 15,000 new users joining everyday. Meanwhile, Mashable reports that Tumblr, which has operated thus far without a business model, "plans to launch a two revenue generating features next month."

Advice for first time CEOs. Bijan Salehizadeh deals with a lot of neophytes but he doesn't mind (via peHUB). "In consumer Internet companies, first time CEOs are the norm - perhaps even encouraged and preferred," says the general partner at Highland Capital Partners. He has two nuggets of advice for greenhorn CEOs: 1) Share bad news with your board and investors early and 2) always be planning for contingencies. "The 'what if' exercise is incredibly valuable and tells me that a CEO is thinking extremely strategically and not afraid to admit that things sometimes do take longer."

Another acquisition for giant vacation rental company. When HomeAway raised an astounding $250 million in a single venture funding round back in 2008, CEO Brian Sharples told Inc.: "There are going to be some great opportunities [for acquisitions] the next couple of years." Now, TechCrunch reports that HomeAway has bought the publisher of AlugueTemporada.com.br, Brazil's best known vacation rental site. This is at least the third acquisition the company has made since its last funding round and the first outside of North America and Europe.

How not to kill your start-up. ReadWriteWeb has put together a list of core principles entrepreneurs should internalize in order to keep their start-ups from biting the big one. One thing the post says to dodge is the tendency to become caught up in the allure of modern technology. "Consider other sources of competitive power than just technological sophistication, such as superior customer experience or service, exclusive distribution partnerships, or other market-based advantages." The most provocative, and perhaps, pertinent piece of advice? "Remember that sometimes start-ups need to be killed, for their own good -- or yours, at least."

Apps for TV have yet to catch on It is estimated that by the end of 2010, Americans will own more than two million Web-connected TVs. And in 2009, Yahoo! announced that Samsung, Sony, LG, and Vizio televisions would come with its Connected TV software, which is open to all developers. However, unlike the Apple App store, which had more than 3,000 programs just two months after its debut and more than 140,000 by 2010, apps for TV haven't taken off. Only 35 full-featured apps are available on the Yahoo! service. BusinessWeek reports one reason apps for TV have yet to take off is that the approval process for television apps is more difficult than for their online counterparts. After Yahoo! approves the App, each individual TV maker must also approve the app. Some TVs cannot run certain types of code, and TV makers are reluctant to take on the risk of being blamed for an app that disappoints.

Selling your business? A lawyer can help. Over at the New York Times' You're the Boss blog, lawyer Harry Styron offers pointers on selling a business and when to get a lawyer involved (hint: not until the decision has been made to sell, ideally not out of necessity). Especially for family run businesses, Styron says, "if the decision to sell is a result of a key family member having died or become ill or if the prospect of selling the business means some family member is going to lose a good job or a good income, the decision to sell was made too late." Now all you need to know is whether your lawyer should specialize in entrepreneurship.

How to cope with changes at the workplace. From budget cuts, to massive layoffs, to new management techniques, there are plenty of reasons why changes at the office can stress out employees. A recent survey conducted by Right Management, a career management consulting firm, shows that 31 percent of employees have trouble adapting to changes in the workplace, Boston.com reports. The Boston.com team has also come up with five tips on how to deal with change in the workplace, which include taking time to get to know a new boss in order to develop a good working relationship, staying on top of the latest skills that employers expect when seeking out job candidates in your field, and having an open flow of communication with your manager if you feel too bogged down by your workload.

More from Inc. Magazine:

Get this delivered to your inbox. Or get it on the Kindle

Follow us on Twitter or Tumblr.

Friend us on Facebook.

Apply now for the 2010 Inc. 500|5000.

This week, Olmstead Williams Communications, a public relations agency in Los Angeles, launched a new division that charges a flat monthly fee for a full range of PR services.

PRTechConnect is geared toward tech start-ups with limited marketing and PR budgets. The News Release Package, which costs $999 a month, includes services such as the creation and maintenance of a master list of media contacts, customized news release templates with tips for making announcements stand-out, targeted media pitching for 20 news release per year, and basic wire service distribution to Google News, Internet search engines, and RSS feeds. Companies must commit to at least three months; a $1,500 set-up fee will be waived if you commit to six months.

A pricier Industry Expert Package, which costs $1,999 a month, includes extras such as filtered email delivery of journalist queries, custom pitches, and follow ups with reporters. There is a minimum three-month commitment; a $500 set-up fee is waived if you commit to six months. If you decide you need additional services, the firm will bill at regular hourly rates.

Last week I had the honor of interviewing International Media Specialist, Sally Shields. Sally was incredibly generous with her ?insider publicity secrets? to becoming a bestselling author and I have her permission to share them here. This is only a small portion of what Sally shared on the Million $ Mindset shows so if you missed it this week, make sure to download the podcast. Sally?s advice is great for any kind of publicity ? even if you?re not an author!

Q: Sally, what is the #1 secret for authors to gain PR on television, newspapers, on-line publications and magazines?

A: Be timely, and have a great Hook! Here are two examples of how I got booked by being timely: First I was quoted in MomLogic.com, which is an offshoot of AOL Living, with this pitch during the presidential primaries:

Joe Biden's Mother-in-Law Dies How to Make Peace with Your Mother-in-Law, Before it's Too Late!

I also got booked on nationally syndicated, The Daily Buzz with this one: October 26th is Mother-in-Law Day How To Turn Your Mother-in-Law From Your Biggest Critic into Your #1 Fan in 3 Simple Steps!

And, (Marla?s personal favorite) I got booked on Fox & Friends with this tweaked pitch: Barack Obama's Mother-in-Law to Move into White House How to Create a Lifetime of Peace With Your In-Laws!

Q: Many people would benefit from having a celebrity endorse their book. How does one go about doing that?

A: The key is to make it as easy as possible for them to reply. Your request should include the following:

- Cover letter - Copy of your book - Self-addressed-stamped envelope - Sample testimonials that they can use as a template - Table of Contents, chapter titles and a sample chapter

Getting a good endorsement or testimonial can take time, but if you do not hear back from them in two or three weeks send a follow-up letter or email.

To find contact information for many celebrities' representatives, visit www.whorepresents.com or www.contactanycelebrity.com . www.CelebrityBlurbs.com will tell you the key agents or PR people you need to get in touch with to contact any celebrity. It's just $1 for a seven day trial.

Also, do not discount the value of endorsements from your fellow authors! The endorser does not have to be known in order to make a tremendous impact. The fact that they are an author in and of itself carries great weight.

Q: How about Bloggers? Can you give us an example of how you can get others to build a buzz about your book? What?s in it for them, and why would they do this?

A: Bloggers need material all the time. Offer to provide them with a prepared Q&A, or a short article about your topic or area of expertise. Offer your book as a giveaway, either a real book or an eBook version. During holiday time, I got about 40-50 bloggers posting my book on their site. How do you find these bloggers? Simple - pick a keyword that applies to your topic. For example, I googled, "Wedding Blogs" and got a list of over 50 million blogs. GASP! Of course, you might want to stick with the top ones with the highest traffic count. You can check a blog's popularity by going to Alexa.com and checking its ratings.

Every now and then I read a business book that changes how I think about my company. One such book was Winning by Jack Welch. In it, the former General Electric chairman discusses the importance of promoting candor within an organization.  It must be delivered in a way that is clear, direct, and timely. When a situation arises that calls for a manager's intervention, you must make a concerted effort to address it as quickly as possible.

Welch's perspective caused me to completely reevaluate how I manage my business, Smarsh, an e-mail archiving business based in Portland, Oregon that services customers in the legal and financial industries. Winning inspired me to encourage open criticism and to build a culture of regular, direct feedback within my organization.

Of course, I have to admit it's not always easy to say what needs to be said. But when you are committed to candor within an organization, you must accept the fact that many of the conversations you will subsequently have with employees and co-workers are not going to be easy. However, if these conversations are direct and professional and if your feedback is clearly intended to assure the long-term success of the employee (as well as the company), then I think you will find that providing constructive criticism is almost always worthwhile.

Here are some tips on how to do it right.

Providing Constructive Criticism: How to Start the Conversation

• Schedule a meeting offsite.  Take the opportunity to step away from the day-to-day routine. Go to a coffee shop or a restaurant or a hotel lobby. Getting out of the office will help both you and the employee get a fresh perspective on the matter at hand. It will also insure the privacy and confidentiality of the conversation.

Dig Deeper: Settling Your Beefs Offsite

• Communicate and prepare. As an entrepreneur, you are always juggling many urgent, day-to-day responsibilities. But the only way to change the behavior of an employee is to make some time for the process, and make sure that both parties are as prepared as possible. This is not one of those times when it is helpful to have the element of surprise on your side. A startled employee is likely to react to criticism in a defensive way, which means he or she will be less likely to absorb the lesson or direction you are trying to impart. "Candid comments definitely freak people out at first," Welch writes.

If your conversation comes in the context of a formal performance-review process, make sure you get a copy of last year's review and a list of the current year's goals into the employee's hands a few weeks beforehand. You should also make sure the employee submits a written self-evaluation well in advance. The review should be more than just a verbal report card - it should be a discussion on how to improve individual performance, as well as the performance of both the employee's department and the company at large.

Dig Deeper: How to Conduct Annual Employee Reviews

• Create a true dialogue. It is never a good idea to focus the conversation solely on the ways in which you believe the employee is lacking. Just as you are candid with your employee about his or her flaws, so too should you solicit feedback about your own management skills and style. Make sure the employee has the opportunity to be candid, honest, and forthcoming with you about things you could do in order to help ameliorate the problem.    

Dig Deeper: Self-Awareness and the Effective Leader

• Focus on the future. Conversations concerning performance too often devolve into cheerleading sessions or lectures from a "disappointed dad." To get away from this, set measureable goals at the beginning of each year and use the progress made against these goals to drive any discussion about performance. That said, it never pays to dwell on a goal that has already been missed; spend more time and energy discussing the road ahead rather than what's in the rear-view mirror. In the words of Welch, you want to use the "encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence."

Dig Deeper: Setting Company Goals

Providing Constructive Criticism: Striking the Right Balance

One of the problems with creating a culture of candor is that you will constantly find yourself correcting employees—to the point where both you and they feel as if you have become a micromanager. You have to manage the anxiety this will create both in you and in them. 

In his book Setting the Table, the restaurateur Danny Meyer writes about how he was taught by a mentor that everyone who comes into one of his restaurants behaves as if it were his or her job to mess up a table setting. Meyer's mentor observed that it was the owners' job "to teach everyone who works for us to distinguish center from off center and always to set things right."

Meyer extrapolated from that advice the need to apply "constant, gentle pressure" to his employees. His theory is that if you provide your staff with feedback only on an occasional basis, it doesn't stick. You have to be candid with them all the time. But if you are constantly challenging employees to do better, you have to be very gentle—otherwise, you risk being an overbearing boss. That said, you can't go too soft—feedback isn't really feedback unless you apply corrective pressure. You have to blend all three elements when providing constructive criticism.

Dig Deeper: Danny Meyer on Constant, Gentle Pressure

Providing Constructive Criticism: Final Thoughts

Learning how to build a culture of constructive criticism is something I am working on at my company. I am also working to refine my skills at giving and receiving feedback. Like many business owners, I tend to have a bias toward focusing on the things that are not working well, as opposed to the things that are running smoothly. The feedback my employees receive more often than not probably seems like dissatisfaction. That's not the case. If something is simply not working well or I disagree with a decision, I tend to say so and call it like I see it.

I learned from Welch that I should never shy away from this, and should encourage my employees to be as vocal in challenging me as I am when it comes to challenging them. Constructive criticism is needed at all levels, up and down the organizational structure, and people who are good at giving direct feedback should be rewarded. As Welch writes: "Leaders establish trust with candor, transparency, and credit." Keep those words in mind the next time you find yourself shying way from a difficult conversation with an employee who is underperforming in one area or another.

Providing Constructive Criticism: Additional Resources

Winning by Jack Welch with Suzy Welch, HarperBusiness, 2005.

"10 Tips for Delivering (Constructive) Criticism" by Dr. Barton Goldsmith, BankersOnline.com

Topgrading by Bradford D. Smart, Portfolio, 1999. Topgrading.com

George Clooney's character in Up in the Air didn't want his days on the road to end, and despite complaining about the hassles of business travel, most women secretly feel the same way. (And not because they might meet Clooney.)

Nearly three-quarters of female business travellers said they enjoyed having someone else clean up after them, in a Hilton Garden Inn telephone survey of 1,020 travellers; just 58 percent of men responded the same way. Sixty-two percent of women said they also appreciated having someone else make breakfast for them, and just over half said a perk of travel was having the bed to themselves.

The women may enjoy the travel more because they do it less: Men average 10 trips a year while women went on three trips on average. One in three Americans travelled for business at least once in the past year, and Monday is the most frequent night business travelers spent away from home.

On the road, men were more likely to miss a home-cooked meal (36 percent of men compared to 16 percent of women), while women were more likely to miss their own beds (43 percent versus 29 percent).

It's doubtful Clooney's co-star Vera Farmiga walked away with the Hilton bathrobe she wears in one scene, but more than two-thirds of travellers admitted to helping themselves to a lot more than an extra piece of fruit from the breakfast buffet. Among the not-exactly-complimentary items swiped: 8 percent admitted to tucking towels or bathrobes in their suitcases, 3 percent took pillows, comforters, blankets or sheets, and 2 percent took the iron, alarm clock, lamps, or artwork. One percent of travellers owned up to breaking one of the 10 commandments to walk off with -- wait for it -- the Bible.

The survey also culled advice from experienced business travellers for first-timers on the road.

The top tip: Nearly three-quarters of respondents suggested travelling the day before a morning meeting instead of trying to get up at the crack of dawn (or in the middle of the night).

Sixty-one percent suggested confirming the hotel has Wi-Fi/Internet access, and more than half (53 percent) advised setting two alarms the day of an important meeting. About half recommended making sure the hotel has a meeting space, and 35 percent said to stay at hotels that offer rewards points.

What -- if anything -- do you like the best about business travel? What tips would you offer first-timers? (And have you ever swiped a "souvenir" from a hotel stay?)

Mr. Cause meet Mr. Effect. Last week, the governor of Colorado signed a new law levying sales taxes on online retailers.

Amazon has officially balked. Effective today this week it pulled the plug on all its Colorado-based affiliates or associates. This isn't the first time it's happened. Amazon made the same decision in the wake of similar legislation in North Carolina. It's currently battling the State of New York and only continuing its affilliate program there while the case is under appeal.

As many as 15 other states are considering similar new taxes.

Amazon says it doesn't want the "compliance burden".

Thanks to iTunes, Web radio, and sites like Pandora, more computers are doing double duty as stereos. Can these speakers do your music justice?

Bell chimes and cymbal crashes on a U2 song were loud and clear on these speakers, which have 112 watts of combined power for lots of volume. Touch-sensitive volume buttons were easy to adjust, and the casing, made from the same material as bulletproof glass, makes a bold statement. COST: $1,000

Our second choice, these speakers had less-distinct bass than the Harman Kardons, even with a separate subwoofer, but they reached a higher volume, thanks to 88 extra watts of power. On the downside, the dial on the volume controller was hard to turn. COST: $199

These speakers sync with your computer wirelessly using a USB dongle, though they connect with wires to a subwoofer that plugs into an outlet. The speakers have a peak power of 200 watts, but the sound was a bit fuzzy, perhaps because of wireless interference. COST: $199

These small speakers, which are just 2 inches tall, produce surprisingly distinct sound and feature handy touch-sensitive volume controls. But with a combined peak power of just 10 watts, they have the least oomph of the test group, and they look a bit flimsy. COST: $130

The "real" story on Facebook's founding. On Friday, Silicon Alley Insider published the results of its two-year investigation into the controversial founding of Facebook. Among the new details to emerge is this purported IM from Mark Zuckerberg to a friend right before Facebook's launch, in which Zuckerberg suggests that he is intentionally delaying the launch of a similar site, HarvardConnections, which he had previously agreed to work on. "I feel like the right thing to do is finish the facebook and wait until the last day before I'm supposed to have their thing ready and then be like 'look yours isn't as good as this so if you want to join mine you can?otherwise I can help you with yours later.'"

How to start a company when you still have a job. Over at a Smart Bear, Jason Cohen tackles the subject of bootstrapping a start-up using your salary. He recommends picking a slow growth business--you can afford this because you already have a salary--that doesn't require you to answer emails or phone calls during normal business hours. "Remember, your immediate goal isn't to make millions of dollars, it's to build a business just solid enough to quit your day job," he writes. You also have to make sure you don't get sued by your employer. To avoid this, Cohen suggests being upfront about what you're doing and getting a signed letter from a company representative that gives you the go-ahead to work on your business on your own time. "When it comes to company property, be paranoid," he writes. "Assume everything you do on the Internet is recorded, cataloged, tagged, and monitored continuously by a methamphetamine-powered slave-army." (Via Hacker News.)

How to get a better night's sleep. Having trouble keeping your eyes open? Couldn't wind down after all that Oscar excitement last night? You're not alone. Seventy-five percent of Americans report having problems sleeping a few nights a week, which can lead to missed workdays, errors on the job, and even diminished job satisfaction. Web Worker Daily has some tips for better sleep in honor of National Sleep Awareness Week and we . 1. Go to sleep at the same time every night. 2. Keep your room in total darkness. 3. Don't drink tea, coffee, or soda late in the day. 4. Avoid sugary foods later in the evening, and opt for snacks with tryptophan in them instead, like bananas, sunflower seeds, or low-fat yogurt. Lastly, experiment with a little white noise.

A plea to abandon ad blocking. As more businesses grow increasingly dependent on a solid Web presence for survival, tech-related news site Ars Technica writes that there's one menace threatening to snatch away the crutch: ad blocking. After observing over a period of time that a substantial amount of users were using software to block the site's advertisements, founder Ken Fisher decided to explain to readers exactly how and why ad blocking can hurt your favorite websites. "If you have an ad blocker running, and you load 10 pages on the site, you consume resources from us -- bandwidth being only one of them -- but provide us with no revenue," the post says. Fisher, who goes on to compare ad blocking to "running a restaurant where 40 percent of the people who came and ate didn't pay," also detailed a 12-hour experiment to make content disappear for visitors using a specific ad blocking program, which was met with mixed results. While it was a technical success, Fisher says he found out that most ad blockers were not doing so with ill intent, which raises an important question for business owners and developers alike: Is it ethical to block content for users who block your ads?

Apple nixes "cookie cutter" apps. In its latest crackdown on the appsphere, Apple is reaching out to companies that build apps from a single template, writes TechCrunch. Apple isn't opposed to these app generators categorically, but just wants to weed out apps that are little more than RSS feeds. Still reaching out to companies individually and suggesting that they add more features seems like unproductive micromanagement to us. See these 15 CEOs on their ways to be more productive and check out the best iPhone apps for business.

Pandora's potential IPO. In the past we've written about Pandora's near-death experience, and how it was saved by it's loyal user base. Now the Internet radio start-up that got 347 no's before it landed it's second round of funding is being wooed by a slew of investors, writes The New York Times. The company's success in the mobile sphere has piqued VC interest and though it says it is focusing on growth rather than going public, it hired a new CFO Steve Cakebread who held the same position at Salesforce.com when it went public.

Wi-Fi phones for China. China Unicom, one of three Chinese state-owned telecommunications carriers, is working with Apple to introduce iPhones with Wi-Fi capability to China, the Wall Street Journal reports. Up to now, government regulations have forced the companies to disable Wi-Fi capability in the iPhone, which makes the phone less attractive than fully functional iPhones that are resold in China from other markets.

More from Inc. Magazine:

Get this delivered to your inbox.

Follow us on Twitter.

Follow us on Tumblr.

Friend us on Facebook.

Apply now for the 2010 Inc. 500|5000.

After surviving the bust at the end of the '90s, online retail has done quite well in the first decade of the new millennium. From being just 0.6 percent of all retail in early 2000,online commerce has now grown to account for nearly 4 percent of all retail in the United States. In this article, we review some technology trends that are likely to further accelerate this trend. Our focus will be around looking at technologies that help consumers find the right product easily as well as help retailers put the right merchandise in front of customers.

While most of these technologies trends apply to a wide spectrum of applications, their impact on online commerce deserves a special mention. Many of these technologies have been around for a while, but it's only now that they are gaining wide adoption.

Semantic Web and structured data

The semantic Web and structured data will make product search dramatically better. Last year, Google made two subtle announcements that have the potential of completely transforming how users search for products.  The first affected Google's organic (or unpaid) results, when the company launched what it called rich snippets, using microformats and Resource Description Frameworka (RDFa) standards. Google was late to the game, as Yahoo had already announced similar support a year ago. The second change applied to Adwords, Google's paid search program, when the search engine started listing richer product listing ads from retail advertisers, displaying an image of the product, the price, and many other attributes. These ads will be priced on a "cost per action" basis, as opposed to the standard "cost per click" model that's offered for all other Adwords advertisers.

It is interesting that Google's rich snippets were first rolled out only for 2 applications, one of which is closely related to online commerce:

• Providing a summary of reviews, when searching for products or services.• Distinguishing between people with similar names, when searching for a person.  Similarly, Google's CPA program was also rolled out only for product searches.

Search-engines are already a very important tool for online shoppers, and a Nielsen study had found that more than one third of shoppers use search engines. Richer snippets and richer ads will make search engines even more important to shoppers, and consequently to retailers. According to Yahoo, "enhanced search results" drive 15 percent more clickthroughs for many websites.  With results like that, it's no wonder that adoption is picking up among websites. In the same blog post, Yahoo reported an increase of more than 400% in the RDFs structured data driven by Search Monkey. Best Buy recently released their entire product catalog in RDFa, perhaps becoming the first Fortune-500 company to join this trend, and has reportedly seen strong results.

Recommendations and personalization engines

Recommendations and personalization engines are now available as plug and play components. Outside of search, one of the most important ways for shoppers to discover products has been through recommendation engines. Personalization and recommendation engines have been around for a while and have been a strong driver of sales. For example, Amazon's recommendation system was said to account for up to 35 percent of sales in 2006. Recently, the adoption of recommendation engines has increased substantially because of the emergence of third party services that are easy to plug into your ecommerce store. For instance Urban Outfitters has seen a triple digit percentage increase in sale by using a solution offered by Baynote. Other companies like Mybuys and Certona also deliver hosted solutions for personalization.

Creating application programming interfaces (APIs)

Creating APIs that distribute products across the Web is easier. Over the last few years, the Web is increasingly becoming a collection of Web services that can be accessed through APIs. Retailers like Ebay and Amazon have for a long time used APIs to expose their data to the external world, primarily to affiliates and partners who then sell these products at other places on the Web. Now many traditional retailers are jumping into the fray, utilizing services that make it easier to create and manage APIs.  For instance, Best Buy recently launched Best Buy Remix powered by API management infrastructure from Mashery.

In addition to these, in one of my previous columns I had written about how the real time Web is becoming an increasingly important tool, and how companies like Dell are using it to increase their online retail sales.

The increasing adoption of these technologies sets up online commerce for an exciting new decade, for shoppers as well as for retailers.

Vijay Chittoor is a co-founder of Six Times Seven. He was previously director of product management at Kosmix. 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.

As applications for the 2010 Inc. 500 | 5000 arrive, we thought it would be worthwhile to shine a spotlight on some of the companies that are vying to appear on our ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. (For more information and to apply, go to http://www.inc.com/inc5000apply/2010/.) One that caught our eye was Seattle-based Twenty20.The front tire of the motorcycle tilts at an impossible angle on the ice as it pulls through a turn and toward an opponent who is blowing a stream of snow powder behind him. You watch in horror as the man ahead suddenly swerves to the ice and out of the video frame, only to appear smiling and waving from a stretcher in the next shot. This is just one of many moments in Motorcycle Ice Racing that was made recordable by co-founders Marc Barros and Jason Green's wearable camcorder business, Twenty20. The company makes two versions of a tube-shaped, high-definition camcorder called the ContourHD that can be attached to helmets, goggles, handle bars, or cars to capture adventure sports from the perspective of the participants. "There's been everything from paintballing to cooking," Barros says. "Anything where you have your hands on the wheel, on the pole, or on the gun, and you want to record video."

Almost 50,000 cameras were sold in more than 50 countries last year, and more than 25,000 videos have been uploaded to the Twenty20 site. But Barros and Green didn't imagine they would have such success when they began Twenty20 as students at the University of Washington. At the time, they simply liked to ski and wanted to show their friends what they were doing. They won their start-up capital in a business plan competition. "We got third place, and the prize was 20 grand, so it was either a keg party or a company, and we decided company," Barros says. From there, they cold-called a designer who they eventually convinced to create a hands-free camera. The original version could be worn on a helmet, but needed to be attached with a wire to a video recorder in a backpack. Sales weren't exactly taking off, the pair was working from a garage with no heat, and Barros's mother asked him when he was going to get a real job.Things turned around when Twenty20 launched the first wireless wearable camcorder in January 2008, which made it possible for adventurers to film hands-free with the flip of one button and to easily share their video on the company's website. In 2009, the company released two HD versions of the product and received a tremendous response that facilitated the growth of the company to 25 employees. Revenue tripled within a single year, and the days of working in a cold garage and living off of PBJ seemed further away than ever."The company took off like a rocket ship," Barros says.

So you've purchased Windows 7, Microsoft's latest and greatest operating system, and found it to be fast, stable and full of features to support your small to mid-sized business.

Critics agree the Redmond, Wash. software giant have their mojo back, after delivering the much-maligned Windows Vista a few years back.

To get even more out of the leaner and meaner Windows 7 for your growing business, here we provide a handful of productivity-enhancing tips and tricks -- with some help from the experts.

One-click access

Windows 7 lets you "pin" large icons to the taskbar for a one-click launch of your favorite applications or files. To do this, simply right mouse-click on a file or program icon and one of your options will be to "Pin to Taskbar." Run your mouse over these taskbar icons and you'll see a live preview of what's inside as a thumbnail image -- and even multiple websites open as "tabs" in your browser.

"A lot of people rave about this feature as it's a fast and easy way to manage and access documents and other files you need," says Microsoft's Sandrine Skinner, a director within the Windows 7 small business group. "I know a manager of a personal staffing company, for example, and she uses pinning to prepare the desktop for temp workers."

It's a snap

You've got a widescreen laptop or computer monitor, so why aren't you taking advantage of this added real estate?

Windows 7 makes it easy to do just that by letting you view multiple files or applications at the same time. Called "Snap," simply open a couple of programs -- such as Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer 8 -- and then hold down the Windows key (beside Alt) before using the right or left arrow keys to snap them beside each other. You can also drag and drop content from one to the other (such as a website photo into Paint or highlighted text into Word).

Lock it up

Your employees likely carry around a laptop, netbook, or USB thumbdrive with company data on it, but what happens if the computer or drive is lost or stolen? The Enterprise and Ultimate versions of Windows 7 include "BitLocker" protection that can encrypt files or folders -- preventing anyone from accessing them unless they know the password. Simply right-click on a drive letter (such as F:) in Windows Explorer to enable BitLocker protection.

"This reduces the risk in case the device goes missing, and makes up for the fact that employees, consciously or not, don't always put data security at the top of their to do list," says Carmi Levy, an independent technology analyst based in London, Ontario. "With the BitLocker To Go feature activated, however, nothing gets copied unless the target device is encrypted."

Kick it old school

It's not secret Windows Vista was plagued with software and hardware compatibility issues, therefore Microsoft made this one of the top priorities in Windows 7 -- including an optional "Windows XP mode" for those businesses who need it.

"We've heard companies tell us 'this software here is my bread and butter and if it's not compatible with Windows 7 I won't upgrade," explains Skinner. "We listened."

To serve and protect

No computer should ever be powered on unless it has at least some protection against malware -- such as viruses, spyware, rootkits and the like -- especially for computers used for business.

"While full-blown security suites from market leaders like McAfee and Symantec do a better job, the free Microsoft Security Essentials tools, along with Windows Defender and Windows Firewall, are more than adequate, and should be activated no matter what other solutions you have in place," advises Levy.

Get outta my way

If things get too cluttered because of multiple programs open at the same time -- such as a Web browser, word document, calculator, e-mail, and sticky notes -- simply grab hold of the program you want to see clearly, by clicking and holding on the top bar of the window, and give your mouse a shake left and right. This will automatically minimize everything else. Do it again and it brings back all the apps that were minimized.

The state of entrepreneurship education and training in U.S. schools has declined sharply, with a 2008 survey of experts rating it barely half as good as it was in 2005. The findings are part of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Special Report: A Global Perspective on Entrepreneurship Education and Training, released today at Babson College, the project's lead sponsor and co-founder. GEM teams conduct surveys in 31 countries, polling a sample of people who are considered experts in some 10 areas including financial support for entrepreneurs, bureaucracy, and taxes, and, of course, education itself. The experts rate conditions such as whether the education system "encourages creativity, self-sufficiency and personal initiative," and whether it provides "adequate instruction in market economic principles." Although training has received low ratings every year since the surveys began in 2000, the ratings in most countries have been consistent even though the pool of experts has changed – with the U.S. and Spain being the exception. "Clearly, this issue is of concern to experts," write the report's five authors, including Babson professor Donna Kelley. Ratings of non-school entrepreneurship education – such as self-study or Internet courses – also have declined in the U.S., although nowhere near as sharply as that of the formal programs. The report also showed that instruction for innovators worldwide is inadequate, especially in primary and secondary schools – which also happens to be where most of the formal training occurs, and where it has greater impact.  A 2009 World Economic Forum report found that the earlier people are exposed to entrepreneurship, the more likely they'll become entrepreneurs in some format during their lives. "Training at a young age cultivates an entrepreneurial spirit early on, but college-level training is important too, because it validates entrepreneurship as a potential career path," says Kelley. "Besides skill-building, training increases an individual's awareness of entrepreneurship and their intent to start a business, and improves perceptions about their ability to do so." (According to the report, college dropouts Bill Gates and Steve Jobs may make for "interesting news stories" but they don't represent the typical entrepreneur, "particularly for businesses with knowledge-based products and services.") One problem with beefing up entrepreneurial education: University doctorate programs aren't producing enough faculty to meet demand – and the faculty available may be too narrowly specialized. "The development of effective programs for entrepreneurship likely requires more than adding new courses," concludes the report. Educators and policy makers may need to move beyond on-site university programs and consider Internet-based learning or creative computer applications, the latter of which "may attract and hold the interest of some people, influencing their attitudes toward – and their understanding of – entrepreneurship." Other study findings: Across 38 countries (not including the U.S.), Finland and Chile – both countries with government policies designed to spur entrepreneurship – had the highest levels of training. Men were more likely than women to pursue training, and the young were more likely to have been trained in start-up techniques, thanks to their being included in many countries' educational systems in recent years.

Angels Flight, a Los Angeles landmark and tourist destination, is back in business after a horrible accident forced the halting of service back in 2001. It's still quaint, but under the classic design is some serious modern security.

Angels Flight is a funicular railway, which is a cabled railway consisting of two cars that move simultaneously in opposite directions, counterbalancing each other, usually up a steep hill--so while one is at the top of the slope, the other is at the bottom, and they pass in the middle. Funicular railways are usually tourist attractions of some sort, found all over the world in hilly places. As your semi-useless fact of the day, the steepest funicular railway is the Johnstown Inclined Plane in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, at an incline of 70.9%. The more you know!

Unfortunately, in 2001, the funicular nightmare happened to Angels Flight: the cable snapped, and the car at the top of the slope rolled uncontrolled down and smashed into the lower car, killing one passenger and injuring seven. The railway was swiftly shut down, but thanks to some advanced braking security, they opened it back up today, nine years later.

The cars may still be classic wood, but underneath, they're equipped with state-of-the-art braking systems and a collision avoidance system that should make a repeat of the 2001 accident impossible.

The redesigned mechanism is much like the original, with both cars counterbalancing each other at opposite ends of the same cable. Each car now has a second safety cable, and there are four types of brake systems and collision avoidance technology similar to positive train control. The system relies on sensors on the track to determine the cars' location and when they are allowed to safely move.

Other updates include entrance gates that automatically open and close.

"It's highly sophisticated technology on the inside, but we try to keep it funky and old fashion-looking on the outside," said John Welborne, president of the foundation.

And if you're still scared, you can take the 153-stair trek instead...oh, who are we kidding. The toll, as always, is 25 cents--and avoiding 153 stairs is worth significantly more to me than a quarter and possibly my life (kidding!).

[Via Breitbart]

While Paypal has been less and less relevant, thanks to competitors like Google Checkout and Amazon, they may just stage a comeback with an idea that's cute and useful at the same time: a bump-triggered iPhone app.

Bump Technologies, the company that makes the Bump iPhone app, provided the underlying tech for Paypal's newly announced app. But instead of exchanging contact information, now you can exchange money. The app also includes a tax, tip, and check calculating feature, so you can figure out who owes what at a table, then simply bump phones to get all the money to one person, who can then pay a single bill for the entire table, saving the waitstaff at the restaurant the headache of running twelve different credit cards through.

The app could, at some point, also be used for very small businesses in place of expensive credit card readers--especially independent sellers like those at a farmers market, craft fair, or adorable lemonade stand. Of course, as not everyone has either an iPhone or a Paypal account, let alone both, this isn't going to replace credit cards, but could definitely be useful in certain circumstances. The app is available now, for free, in the App Store.

[Via New York Times]

MOG, the Berkeley-based do-everything music service (we're not exaggerating; its features include Lala-like streaming, Pandora-like recommendations, Last.fm-like community, and sophisticated blogging tools) is adding two huge new features: an all-you-can-download subscription, and mobile apps for iPhone and Android. Spotify, iTunes, Rhapsody, Zune, Pandora, Slacker, and every other service vaguely involving music: watch out.

Currently, MOG offers a $5 per month streaming service called MOG All Access, which at its core offers streaming music at unusually high quality (256kbps) from all four major labels and most notable indies, in addition to all the social features, blogging, and Pandora-like recommendations I mentioned above. But though it combines the chief features of both Rhapsody and Pandora, it offers neither a mobile app (both Rhapsody and Pandora do) or a download option (Rhapsody). Both those deficiencies are about to change.

MOG is launching a new service sometime later this spring that will add a $10 per month option that offers all-you-can-download capabilities. Other, similar download services like Rhapsody and Zune are more expensive, at $15 per month each, and neither give access to the huge music community MOG has set up.

In addition, MOG's new service will be accompanied by apps for iPhone and Android, giving the option to take either streaming or unlimited downloaded music on the road. There could be a stumbling block in the form of draconian Apple approval policies, but logically MOG has cleared the way already--after all, Rhapsody announced a similar app not long ago, and we asked the same question.

MOG's chief competitor might be Spotify, one of our Most Innovative Companies and a similar ray of hope for the music industry. Spotify should be emigrating from Europe sometime this year, but it costs $14 per month and has a download (or caching, to be more exact) limit of only 3,333 songs. MOG lacks the name recognition of Spotify, Rhapsody, Pandora, or Zune, not to mention iTunes, but if it can pull off this plan, it may become the do-it-all music service to beat.

[Via LA Times]

In a briefing, Google Engineering Vice President Vic Gundotra sounded off on the importance of mobile to Google's future success, saying "Google has bet big on mobile." And when Google bets big, you can bet advertisements are somehow involved.

Ad rates for mobiles are still far less per click than on a full PC, and the total revenues of these different ad streams backs that up (check out our infographic for an overview of ad revenues). But mobile ad rates are skyrocketing, thanks to dramatically increased popularity and capability of mobile devices: Apple's iPhone, BlackBerry, and Google's own Android are leading the way with smartphones that are less related to cellphones than they are to full-blown pocket computers.

And users are taking advantage of these smartphones by performing tasks traditionally restricted to computers, including search, Google's bread and butter. In fact, Google has seen mobile searches multiplied fivefold in the last two years, largely due to the public embrace of smartphones. And Gundotra doesn't see that pace slackening: with advanced capabilities like GPS that can be used for more targeted user-specific ads, Gundotra says, regarding that cost-per-click number, "We hope and believe that there's even a chance that we could exceed desktop in the future."

Given Google's recent purchase of AdMob, Google isn't bluffing when they call themselves a "mobile first" company. AdMob, provided the purchase is permitted by the FTC, will give Google a huge step up in mobile ads against competitors like Apple and, possibly, Microsoft. Combined, Google and AdMob control about 21% of the mobile ad market--and as mobile gets ever more popular, that'll mean a pretty incredible amount of bank.

[Via Reuters]

Daily news of note from our Most Innovative Companies, including Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Frito-Lay, and Google.

Nokia: Apple and Nokia have been at loggerheads ever since they sued and countersued one another over patent-infringement. Now, Nokia is upping the ante, requesting Apple's antitrust claims against the Finnish mobile device maker be thrown out, and accusing the Cupertino-based firm of some unfair legal diversions. According to a Nokia court document: "These non-patent counterclaims are designed to divert attention away from free-riding off of Nokia's intellectual property...Through what charitably could be called an attempt at legal alchemy, Apple employs revisionist history, misleading characterizations, unsupported allegations and flawed and contradictory legal theories to turn these fruitless negotiations into a multi-count federal lawsuit." Snap!

Microsoft: While Nokia's recent legal actions might not be good for Apple, some positive news came out today for Steve Jobs and company. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, roughly 10,000 Microsoft employees use iPhones--about 10% of the company's work force. This is quite an embarrassment for Microsoft, especially as it prepares to launch its Windows 7 phone series; it also gives big bragging-rights to mac-users everywhere. In other news, Bill Gates, who doesn't allow his children to use Apple products, just laid off a tenth of Microsoft's employees, citing...disloyalty.

Frito-Lay: America's favorite potato chip company announced a nationwide marketing campaign to create the world's largest "Happiness Exhibit." All you have to do is snap a few pics of you smiling while munching on some barbeque chips, upload to Flickr, and you'll automatically be entered in a chance to be featured in People magazine. This is all to help Lays kick-off National Potato Chip Day (which was yesterday, in case you didn't know), and to market Frito-Lay's new 100% compostable chip bag.

Google: In preparation for the FCC's planned release of its national broadband strategy tomorrow (a draft of which Politico obtained this morning), Google CEO Eric Schmidt wrote an open-letter about the state of America's Internet network. Comparing the project to the space race of the 1960s, Schmidt says that he supports "a national broadband strategy because ubiquitous broadband connectivity can catapult America into the next level of economic competitiveness, worker productivity, and educational opportunity. But as in the past, we will make this breakthrough by choice, not chance." Let's just hope Google's "choice" is to expand its planned ultra-high-speed across the country.

H&M has been hurting on the green front lately. First the fast fashion brand got in trouble for destroying unused clothes, and then the company was accused of selling fake organic cotton. Not to mention those Madonna tracksuits on the world). So it's no surprise that the company is trying to redeem itself with the "Garden Collection," a line of clothes made with tencel, recycled polyester, organic linen, and organic cotton. Of course, there's still a chance that the new organic cotton clothes are contaminated with GMO cotton, but we're guessing that H&M is being a bit more careful this time around. And in case, it's hard to begrudge a major retailer for trying to bring sustainable textiles into the mainstream. Check out a video of the collection below.

[youtube nL-LeJAwOfM]

[Via Treehugger]

Thanks to a smart TED talk by biologist Janine Beynus that made the rounds a few years ago, books like Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, and new online resources like AskNature.org, more and more designers are realizing a simple truth when trying to find responsible, ecological solutions: If we're trying to do it, chances are, nature already did it better.

Biomimicry is quickly becoming a cornerstone of sustainable design (read our story on biomimicry from 2008), but for designers who want to incorporate biomimicry into their work, many don't know where to start. Some famous biomimetic solutions have gotten passed around the mainstream press--including examples like self-cleaning surfaces modeled on lotus flowers, or the sticky repositionable tape inspired by gecko feet--but biomimicry isn't as easy as using nature as a crib sheet. "One of the big realizations that designers have when they play with biomimicry is that it's not a tool, it's a mindset shift," says Dayna Baumeister, who co-founded the Biomimicry Guild with Benyus in 1998. "Because of that--because of the fundamentally different way of thinking--it's hard."

Biomimicry expert Janine Benyus' 2005 TED talk

Even for biologists, it requires a shift in thinking, says Baumeister, from learning about nature to learning from nature, including how each of those processes fit within a larger ecosystem. In a way, it's examining nature's solutions for survival, but through a design lens, says Chris Allen, project manager for AskNature.org. "You can look at brilliant engineering and strategies for living over thousands of years."

A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGEThe Biomimicry Guild has worked alongside companies to help them achieve that shift in thinking, from a longstanding relationship with flooring and finishes company Interface, to a team currently on-site at an architectural project in India, where they're creating buildings that not only are made from natural materials, they actually behave like natural organisms. Currently there's a great deal of excitement bridging algorithms found in nature and information technology or "generative design," where we're able to extrapolate data from the way that nature goes through its iterative design process in evolution.

A rainforest strategy in need of a real-life application: The bill of toco toucan acts as a heat exchanger to regulate body temperature by adjusting blood flow

And, using biomimetic principles, we've also been able to learn more about our own species: The Biomimicry Guild is starting conversations with global companies that manufacturer things like cosmetics--in which case their own in-house scientiststs have been studying hair and skin for decades.

Because biomimicry experts believe that designers play an integral role in making sustainable, nature-inspired decisions in a project, they believe that's where their influence is best appropriated. A biologist working in biomimetic design is known as a Biologist at the Design Table, or, in a biomimetic-appropriate acronym: a BaDT. There are currently very few BaDTs--only about 75 worldwide--since they have to undergo extensive training. But eventually, the goal is to have a BaDT in every design firm who can help guide the designers towards smarter, more nature-influenced solutions--and that's where we come in.

A lightweight chair design inspired by spiderwebs, by Linda Dong as part of the Student Design Sketch Challenge

A REAL-WORLD BIOMIMICRY CHARRETTETo start a larger conversation between biologists, designers and businesses, we thought we could help by seating at least three BaDTs at three design tables of Designers Accord adopters across North America. We've tapped teams from three firms: Smart Design, New York; IDEO, Chicago and Boston; and Taller de Operaciones Ambientales, Mexico City. Each team will be paired with a Biomimicry Guild BaDT who will lead them through a two-day biomimicry design workshop as they work to solve a business problem, documenting their processes and reporting back to us in a little over a month with their bio-inspired solutions and how they got there.

Now all we need to complete the puzzle is your company's challenge! Do you have a real-life design problem that you just haven't been able to crack? Do you have a system, material, structure, process in your business that's seriously in need of innovation? Explain your problem as clearly as possible in the form below, including what limitations have prevented you from being able to achieve your goals in the past. If we think your challenge is a good match for one of the firms, we'll contact you for more information. Your company could be featured on FastCompany.com as "clients" for one of three biomimetic challenges, and receive a solution for your problem--courtesy of nature, of course.

If you have any questions, feel free to add them in the comments, and be sure to submit your challenge by 11:59pm PST, March 17, 2010. We'll see you back here in a little over a week with an update.

SUBMIT YOUR DESIGN CHALLENGE

If you have a design and sustainability story to share, let us know about it! Check out the brand new Designers Accord Web site. And follow us on Twitter @designersaccord to hear what the Designers Accord community is thinking about.

Browse more Designers Accord Case Studies

Windows Phone 7 Series: It's a thing! And it looks pretty great, so far. Last month's announcement, though, left a lot of questions. Questions which will be answered here, in Gizmodo's live coverage of Microsoft MIX 2010 keynote. Constantly updating.

How exactly will multitasking work? What about those incredible cross platform game demos? Whither WinMo 6.x, and its devs? (And what's with this "Classic" and "Starter Edition" business?) What happens to the Zune? Will we see more hardware? What about the mysterious Chassis 3? Why are developers already worried? We've got at least an hour here, folks, so expect answers. Lots of answers.

When we met Windows Phone 7 Series, it was all about taking a first look. But we really didn't get a great idea as to how the operating system works, underneath the Zune-like skin. Here's are the new OS and dev features Microsoft' announced today.

â?¢ A Push Notification Service: Called the "Microsoft Notification Service," this sounds an awful lot like Apple's push notification system, which lends credence to the interpretation of Microsoft's talk about multitasking as meaning that it doesn't really exist, or that it's at least heavily managed. As you can see above, they pop up in a small tray at the top of the screen, rather than the obnoxious pop-up system that the iPhone uses.

â?¢ A Microsoft Location Service: This is like a clearing house for location data, or "single point of reference to acquire location information." This is more of a developer tool than anything else, I think, but it suggest location service's being totally and easily accessible, and not just in terms of raw data. This is basically just Bing everywhere, in both user and developer terms.

â?¢ Silverlight, Silverlight, Silverlight: Windows Phone 7 apps are largely developed in Silverlight, which you probably only know as that plugin you had to install that one time to watch the Olympics. It can also create apps that are significantly more complicated than video players.

â?¢ Dev Tools Will Be Free: Windows Phone 7 development tools for Visual Studio and Microsoft Expression Blend (a UI dev tool) will be free to download.

â?¢ App Developers Can Start Today: The free tools are available at developer.windowsphone.com, as of right now. While developers won't have phones for a while, they'll have the PC emulator, which even allows for touchscreen input. (If you have a touchscreen PC, of course.)

â?¢ No Mac Dev Support: And yeah, of course, there's not development on Mac.

We didn't even get to to see the new Windows Phone Marketplace in action in February, but now Microsoft's pulled the curtain back.

â?¢ It's Panoramic: It's going to look like the rest of Windows Phone 7, which is to say, it's going to be swipey and zoomy and all those things that made Windows Phone 7 interesting looking. You know, hubs within hubs within hubs within hubs.

â?¢ Buying options: It'll handle one-time credit card purchases, operator billing, and ad-supported apps.

â?¢ App trials: Microsoft is going to require developers to allow buyers to trial apps before buying them. Good for us, potentially scary for devs. UPDATE: It may not actually be a requirement; just an option.

The first round of app partners is solid, for sure:

AWS Convergence Technologies ? WeatherBug, Citrix Systems Inc., Clarity Consulting Inc., Cypress Consulting, EA Mobile, Fandango Inc., Foursquare Labs Inc., frog design inc., Glu Mobile Inc., Graphic.ly, Hudson Entertainment Inc., IdentityMine Inc., IMDb.com Inc., Larva Labs, Match.com LLC, Matchbox Mobile Ltd., Microsoft Game Studios, Namco Networks America Inc., Oberon Media Inc., Pageonce Inc., Pandora Media Inc., Photobucket Inc., PopCap Games Inc., Seesmic, Shazam Entertainment Ltd., Sling Media, SPB Software Inc., stimulant, TeleCommunications Systems Inc., Touchality LLC and Vertigo Software Inc

We also got our first glimpse at the apps, which maintain the Windows Phone 7 aesthetic surprisingly well.

The first batch gives a preview of what Windows Phone 7 apps will beâ??that is to say, deeply integrated. Another instant reaction? A lot of these developers write for the iPhone and Android, which is a good sign and a bad one: A good one, because Microsoft needs these guys to reach anything resembling app parity with other platforms; and a bad one, because it drives home just how much catching up Microsoft is going to have to do come WinPho 7's release. None of the other platforms, for what it's worth, have paps as pretty as some of theseâ??a point that's really driven home when you see their 3D transforms and animations in motion:

With others, like Hush Hush, you can see that Microsoft is open to modal interfaces as well, which is to say, interfaces that look nothing like Zune or Windows Phone 7.

Since Windows Phone 7 apps are developed largely in Silverlight, you can download and incorporate Silverlight libraries that already exist. In other words, some of the interface elements, animations and icons that you've gotten used to seeing in Silverlight app interfaces might turn up in Windows Phone 7 apps later on. We'll also see some services that have depended on Silverlight before easily ported to the phone. Like what? Ho ho, like mother***king Netflix (which, while shown off here, won't necessarily get a real release):

Games, as we've seen a bit of before, have the potential to be great, not just because of the platform's minimum requirements (which make the iPhone's hardware seem downright clunky) but because of the deep Xbox Live integration. Joe Belfiore showed us a quick demo, in which he actually earned Xbox Live achievement points, er, live.

&bull More on Netflix for Windows Phone 7 &bull More on Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7

The takeaway at the end of the app demosâ??which made up a tremendous chunk of this keynoteâ??is that Microsoft knows how important apps are for Windows Phone 7, or more importantly, how instrumental the lack of decent apps was in the decline of Windows Mobile 6.x. They're going all out, claiming that devs can create apps in a matter of minutes, and (so far) coddling them as much as possible. The one thing they can't control, though, is how fast customers pick up on Windows Phone 7 Series. Without an audience, developers won't bother to write apps; without apps, buyers won't bother buying Windows Phone 7 Series phones. Microsoft's new mobile strategy may be impressive, but it could find itself stuck in a Catch-22 come release time.

Obviously, Microsoft didn't run through all the stuff they'd already covered back at Mobile World Congress when Windows Phone 7 was announced, so here's the rest of the story.

In partnership with

At a time when extreme weather events seem to be relatively common, would you feel safe living in a home made out of recycled plastic? Affresol, a U.K. modular home designer, is betting on it. The company is launching a range of $63,000 prefab homes made out of recycled waste plastic. And believe it or not, Affresol claims the homes are well-insulated and completely waterproof, fire retardant, and rot-resistant.

Affresol's secret is a material called Thermo Poly Rock (TPR), a strong, light form of concrete made out of plastic granules fused together with a chemical reaction. Any kind of plastic can be used, but Affresol is sourcing its waste from companies that make PVC windows and doors.

Each modular home features 40 TPR panels bolted together to make the load-bearing frame. Customers can choose to decorate the outside of the home with stone, brick, or block. The three bedroom house isn't designed to last too long--it has a lifespan of approximately 60 years--but the whole thing can be recycled when it's ready to be torn down.

Affresol is moving ahead in the next few months with a pilot of 19 prefab homes in Merthyr Tydfi, Wales. Three years down the line, the company hopes to build 3,000 homes each year. While the scheme is limited to the U.K. for now, we can imagine Affresol homes as a potential housing solution for countries looking to rebuild after a disaster--the homes are relatively cheap, durable, and can be built in just four days.

[Via Ecofriend]

Thought a goat cheese variation was as extreme as Doritos would get? Think again--the snack giant (specifically, its Canadian counterpart) continues to make each new commercial more eye-popping and provocative than the last. Some are successfully clever ("Taste-Test Whistle-Blower") while others fall into the just-plain-wrong category, like "Hot Sexy Dorito Lady," (below), in which a certain body part--not the one you are led to believe--is inexplicably used to promote something delicious that you're supposed to put in your mouth.

[youtube 8k1CsRGFOxM]

The brains behind the Doritos ads know what they're doing, though. The four consumer-created commercials that won this year's "Crash the Super Bowl" contest have generated millions of views in turn for the $5 million in cash prizes the creators received upon being chosen from over 4,000 submissions. The trade-off? By reaching out to viewers and allowing them to express their originality, the Doritos folks can get away with more and accept less of the flack that might come with the more controversial fare. Here's a look at some of the company's recent talked-about ads.

Doritos Canada's "Snax Effect" While this ad might not necessarily make you want to go out and buy the chips, you will at least want to forward it to your friends.

[youtube 1-7fhvcquTs]

"The Smackout," taken from the "Crash the Super Bowl" series, which conveys a common theme of violence. Apparently it's okay to kill people so long as you protect your precious chips.

[youtube UpRbbtHp5Qg]

Doritos Canada's "Share the Crazy Cheezy Dream" A more lighthearted attempt to spread the word about Canada's commercial contest, in which the winner's proceeds will go to Canadian charities.

[youtube NZvrc1QJlpE]

"House Rules" Another Crash the Super Bowl winner, in which a precocious boy watches after his mother, telling her date, "Keep your hands off my mom...and my Doritos." This finalist was the more favorable, gaining over four million views to date.

[youtube r0EVSP_6XZA]

Confused on what Digg was and will soon be? The aggregator in chief helps us understand how he plans to make his all-new site a must-have for social Web surfers.

Digg's touting its redesign, coming in the next few months, but "redesign" doesn't really cover it. This is more than a surface-level change, an aesthetic adjustment or a new skin. This is more of a simultaneous launch of a totally new social news site with minor similarities to Digg, and the elimination of the old Digg. Digg CEO Jay Adelson wasn't exaggerating when he said "every single thing has changed." This is a totally new idea, and one that's bound to alienate some long-term Digg users.

Digg is going social in the most radical way possible. Today, Digg is a list of stories in descending popularity that were submitted by users (or, often as not, the publications themselves), and when you go to Digg.com, that's what you see: a list of stories. The new Digg won't look anything like that. Instead, it'll tap into your other social streams, figure out what you like, and present those stories to you in a personalized homepage. And since you can pick tags that interest you ("green," "design," "Apple"), Digg will have a pretty good idea what you like. That homepage, by the way, is what you'll see when you go to Digg.com--there'll still be a link for popular stories over in a corner somewhere, but popularity is taking a backseat to personalization.

If you want to take advantage of this new personalization, you'll have to give Digg access to your Facebook feed through Facebook Connect, your Twitter, and your OpenID. Digg will then look through all that data, match up your interests with stories already in its system, and pop them into your personal Digg homepage. And given Twitter specifically named Digg as one of its inaugural @Anywhere partners, you should be able to share links both ways.

"When I say the new Digg is socially curated, I?m not kidding," Adelson tells FastCompany.com. "This is just not the most popular or most dugg stories. This is, in theory, what should be the most relevant story to you at any given time. Whenever somebody diggs something, favorites something or tweets something, all of those are calls to action that say, 'Hey, this is something that might be particularly relevant to you right now.'"

And Digg is also integrating new tools for publishers: No longer will you have to manually submit stories, which often gives too much weight to the user who actually submits it. Now, publishers can choose to automatically submit every story to Digg, and let Digg's recommendation system take care of spreading it. The first or first few users who digg a story will have more relevance than the submitter. After all, which do you care about more, that the Huffington Post submitted a story, or that a guy with similar taste to yours likes it?

The new Digg is, to put it mildly, a totally new system the likes of which we haven't really seen before. Some users and abusers of what we now have to call the old Digg won't be pleased--and there are bound to be privacy concerns, with that much personal data flowing in and out of Digg's servers. But it also has the potential to be a pretty amazing social news site, one that knows what you want to read and removes the hassle of navigating through fifty links about the joys of smoking pot. We don't know exactly what it'll look like yet--you can sign up for a beta invite at this page now, and it should officially roll out in a few months. But we're excited.

[Via Wired]

Greg Ferenstein contributed to this report.

In what was likely the most horrifically devastating keynote presentation in SXSW history--people were comparing it to the great Sarah Lacy-Mark Zuckerberg fiasco of 2008, but, hey, at least that was entertaining--moderator and Harvard Business School blogger Umair Haque talked about his vacation, his blog, and generally himself, as he purportedly interviewed Twitter founder Evan Williams, who was so bored he checked his watch at one point, giving the slowly draining ballroom its sole laugh.

And, oh yeah, Williams unveiled an app that will allow people to access Twitter information on any site on the Internet. It's named @Anywhere.

For only about 60 seconds at the beginning of the keynote, Williams flipped through a few slides explaining the app that will allow content producers to embed Twitter data into any Web site. So say you wanted to know more about that company Twitter I mentioned in the last sentence: Hover over their name and one of the previously announced "hovercards" will pop up with all their Twitter account information (including all the wonderful reviews of that keynote). Or maybe, for example, you were really enjoying this blog post (thanks, I appreciate it), so you'd be able to hover up over my byline and start following me on Twitter without even leaving the site. Web sites will also be able to host lists of Twitter accounts, much like the staff lists we've created on the Twitter site itself. You'll also be able to sign into Web sites using your Twitter account, much like you can already do with Facebook.

To launch such a thing, Twitter has a dozen or so content partners from Bing and Digg to Huffington Post and The New York Times, who will begin embedding the new frameworks into their Web pages. This latest announcement will do nothing to help Twitter sell ads or otherwise monetize its content, as some had prognosticated. Instead, @Anywhere was created to save users time and clicks, and to help them find the content that's most relevant to them, faster. "Twitter is about creating better relationships," said Williams. "We're still focused on how to create the best experience." Which, to Williams, means keeping you as far away as possible from their own URL. "Our goal is not to increase the time you spend on the Twitter site." If only they could have reduced the time I spent at the Twitter keynote. Love the app, guys, but I would rather have heard about it @Anywhere but there.

[Twitter]

You've got a big, important report to write for work and you're dreading it. The deadline has been weighing on your mind for weeks and so far, you've done nothing about it. At this point, you'd rather get a root canal than get started. Still, you set aside time this afternoon to buckle down and get to work, but instead you're playing Solitaire, you're checking Facebook, you're reorganizing your pens, you're chain-smoking on the fire escape, and you're feeling like crap. You're procrastinating.

[twistage 4312b48997f91]

Procrastination is a huge productivity problem with no obvious solution: everybody does it, and no matter how smart and efficient you work, you're always going to do it in some capacity too. The only thing you can do is choose to get SOME thing done, even if it's not THE thing you're putting off.

Just because you're procrastinating doesn't mean you're being lazy or wasting time. In fact, procrastination actually CREATES motivation and time: when you're procrastinating, you're highly motivated to avoid a certain activity for as long as possible. Channel that time and energy into something worthwhile and procrastinate productively.

Stanford professor John Perry calls this "structured procrastination." Your to-do list usually has a certain structure: urgent stuff at the very top, and less urgent but still worthwhile stuff at the bottom. When you procrastinate productively, you knock out worthwhile tasks while you put off the urgent ones.

For example, when faced with a stack of papers to grade, Perry would hang out in the student lounge. He did that so much he gained a reputation of being one of the friendliest and most accessible professors at the university.

When I was working on my book, I got a whole lot done while I avoided writing. My closets were cleaned out, my bookshelves were alphabetized, my kitchen was sparkling clean: because I was willing to do anything OTHER than write the next chapter.

When you're procrastinating, in comparison to the dreadful thing you can't bring yourself to do, everything else seems like a piece of cake. Take advantage of that. While you put off doing those slides this afternoon, instead of playing Solitaire or checking Facebook, do SOMEthing worthwhile. Clean off your desk, write that thank you note, empty your email inbox, or brainstorm a new project. You'll still feel bad about not getting your slides done, but at least you'll be able to say you got SOMEthing done.

Procrastination doesn't have to equal paralysis. Some of the most motivated people you know just might be putting something off.

Gina Trapani is the author of Upgrade Your Life and founding editor of Lifehacker.com. Work Smart appears every week on FastCompany.com.

Last week: Three Ways to Use Google Wave in Your Business

On Friday, the NYT had a revealing Q&A with the founder of ChatRoulette , Andrey Ternovskiy. The 17-year-old was over in the U.S. to talk to developers and potential investors about how to evolve his site, which he developed over three days in his bedroom. His responses to Nick Bilton's questions--specifically when asked if he was talking to investors*--brought back memories of the first Dotcom bubble, when the Nasdaq peaked at 5,048.62, on March 10, 2000 (almost 10 years ago to the date). Fast Company undertook a whistle-stop analysis of Ternovskiy's words to discover whether he and his site will make a mint out of the Internet.

Name: Inspired by, we guess, The Deerhunter, ("I watched a movie about American soldiers who were fighting in Vietnam and were captured and forced to play Russian roulette") ChatRoulette does exactly what it says on the url. Verdict: simple and punchy, it's a winner.

Concept: ChatRoulette is one of those blessedly simple ideas that has just about everyone slapping their foreheads and wishing they'd come up with the concept. Rather like the guys from YouTube, Ternovskiy was looking for a Web site that would let him chat randomly on Webcams and, when he couldn't find one, he built it himself. Verdict: This is what the entrepreneurs of the future are made of. Top marks.

Execution: Ternovskiy showed ChatRoulette to his friends who didn't get it. Undeterred, he posted his handiwork on a few Web forums, inviting people to try it out. Result! The number of visitors doubled each day, and last month 30 million people checked his site out. Verdict: Shows both initiative and a singlemindedness in getting his product out. Good work, fella!

Marketing: Asked his views on all the media attention, Ternovskiy shrugged. "I haven't read a single article. I don't want to read them. I see a wall of text and I just look at the picture and click next." Either this was a fabulous joke that references the action that most ChatRouletters take when they see a fat man playing Sweet Child O' Mine on his genitals/ukelele, or that he's just not bothered. There shouldn't be a language barrier, as the teenager studied English and Chinese with a view to being a translator. Verdict: Let's hope it's a joke.

Relationship with Google: Although ChatRoulette has AdWords, Google aren't sending Ternovskiy the money. "At first it took two months to verify my address in Moscow because I wrote a code down incorrectly. Then when that was fixed and everything should have been fine, I received a letter from Google that said they could not send me the money because I was not 18 years old yet." Verdict: Hard to tell whether he's indulging in some clever reverse psychology or merely being sloppy.

Willingness to tweak his product: A "report" button has been added to ChatRoulette , and three strikes of that and they're banned from, as Ternovskiy wants his site to be clean. Very reminiscent of Facebook's original incarnation, as a way of rating hot girls at Harvard. Verdict: Well, that's the iPhone app sorted, then.

Thinking big: Ternovskiy knows his site could be worth a lot. "People say they want to buy my site, but they are only offering me $1 million. Six months ago I would have said yes, but now I want to keep it." He's in it for the long haul, making him more Facebook than Boo.com. Verdict: He's already talking the talk.

Thinking forward: "I don't have a business plan. I'm looking for ideas. I personally don't know, but I'm debating changing everything. I'm meeting with people to look for ideas and see what to do next." He's certainly honest. Verdict: Oops. Unless it's reverse psychology again, in which case expect to see Ternovskiy as Russian President in two decades.

Conclusion: It's hard to say whether Ternovskiy's naivete and candor will work for or against him. His age is both a boon and a curse--The world loves a clever, Web-savvy teen--and so, sometimes, do investors, but not for the same reasons.

*Response: "Well, for now they are more interested in me than I am in them."

[Via The New York Times]

Unlike many shampoos and conditioners, the Herbal Essences brand doesn't contain parabens--a class of chemicals thought to cause breast cancer and estrogenic activity. But apparently the popular brand contains high levels of another carcinogenic chemical: 1,4-dioxane. Herbal Essences contains so much dioxane, in fact, that it should carry a warning label required for cancer-causing chemicals under California's Proposition 65. Proctor & Gamble is well-aware of its transgressions and is currently changing the hair product line's formula so that it contains less dioxane.

Even though P&G is fixing Herbal Essences, dioxane remains a problem in many brands. The worst offenders, according to the 1,4 Dioxane Product Safety Watch, include Dial, Palmolive, Head and Shoulders, and Mrs. Meyers Clean Day Liquid Dish Soap, which contains 10 times more dioxane than any other brand.

Want to steer clear of the chemical? The Safety Watch has a handy shopping guide for dioxane-free products.

[Via Greenbiz]

Apple's done something weird, and yet nerdishly cool at the same time: It's hired a Senior Prototype Scientist with expertise in wearable computing. Knowing Apple's innovative heritage this gives us happy Tron-imagining shivers.

The chap in question is engineer/physicist Richard DeVaul, a PhD-touting graduate of Texas A&M University and MIT. His LinkedIn profile gave the game away. Among his stated business credentials like "leadership for early stage companies," "tech startup CTO" and other good stuff, we find some absolute gems in terms of technology expertise: "product development for mobile & wearable technology" and "Student leader and organizer of the MIThril wearable computing project" are the most precious of these. His own Web page reveals he worked on "new human-computer interaction techniques for wearable, mobile and portable applications." We also know that during his time as founder and president of AWare technologies he worked to "deliver effective behavior-change solutions for increasing fitness" and his company also had "one of the most popular health-and-fitness iPhone apps, StepTrakLite."

So what exactly is he doing at Apple? We can but guess--Apple is fiercely secretive about the kind of future-facing cutting edge research that DeVaul is almost certainly working on. But looking at Apple's vast and creative patent archive, DeVaul's expertise, and knowing Apple's conscious of the trend toward more and more computing happening while mobile, we can imagine all sorts of potential exciting Apple kit. Maybe Apple's looking at utilizing on-body local networking (something DeVaul already owns a patent in,) to communicate between different mobile Apple devices carried about your person, or between, say, your iPhone and a secure touch-sensitive lock using near-field comms. Or possibly it's looking at the display market, and imagining a head-worn display system for future iPhones or iPads. Perhaps Apple's designers have seen trends like recent touch-panel on-arm controls, and they're imagining future body-control interfaces for the iPhone. The sky is literally the limit when dreaming up this sort of equipment.

The only way we'll probably find out what DeVaul is up to, though, will be by combing through Apple's future patent applications: While wearable computing initiatives are guaranteed to fire up your inner imaginative nerd and get him all excited, it's unlikely that we'll be seeing any of this faintly Tron-like stuff for years. After all, even in our Wi-fi signal-soaked World, Apple's not even enabled wireless syncing on the iPhone yet.

[Via ComputerWorld]

Ed Note: Yes, we know Tron's characters were computer programs, rather than "wearing" computers. But there's no movie of Snow Crash yet, so there aren't any cool visuals.

Its time for Tesla to watch its back. The electric vehicle startup has generated considerable excitement for the sort-of-affordable ($50,000) Model S EV sedan, scheduled to be released in 2012, but Nissan already has over 56,000 pre-orders for the 2012 Leaf EV--a $25,000 model that will have the advantage of being the first entry level-priced EV on the market.

The Leaf has some impressive stats: 100 miles on a charge with a top speed of at least 76 mph. The vehicle can be charged up to 80% of full capacity in less than 30 minutes with a quick charger, and can be charged in standard 200V outlets in about eight hours.

Nissan shouldn't get too comfortable with a top spot in the EV market quite yet. Coda Automotive is planning to release its own $30,000 EV with a 90 to 120 mile range in 2011. But Coda is a small startup and Nissan already has a household name. And unfortunately for Coda, most people in the market for an entry level sedan will probably opt for a name brand. Nissan also has Tesla beat in the size department--while Tesla can boast a big name, it doesn't come close to having the production capacity of Nissan. Of course, the all-electric vehicle market is still new, and there's plenty of room for competition. Companies like Tesla, Coda, and Nissan may be the innovators, but they won't be alone for long.

[Via VentureBeat]

I subscribe to Verizon FiOS and have no complaints on the service itself. However, their forays into social media drive me absolutely nuts! Verizon, like other TV service providers, are experimenting with widgets. Widgets are bite-sized pieces of information you can access with your remote to get up-to-date traffic, weather, sports scores, and recently, access your Facebook and Twitter accounts. So far so good.

The other day I decided to pull up the screen for Facebook and started to type in my email and password. For reference my email is gc@giovannicalabro.com and password is...you almost got me. It's at this point I start to lose my patience. Try typing that into a screen, across your room, with an alphanumeric keypad. I'd rather run into a wall repeatedly.

After I type using Verizon's hunt-and-peck screen keyboard, I'm presented with a screen that lets me scroll through status messages, or more horrifying, enter my own status by using the hunt and peck method. To make things worse, manufacturers are actually starting to build these features directly into your TV.

I decided to check out how Tivo is handling this. They're a bit more clever; taking a step forward to realize that perhaps their customers might want to type on a keyboard rather than hunt and peck through the awkward remote. I have to give them points for trying. While the keyboard/remote is a respectable first step, I think Tivo and TV service providers are missing the larger picture.

As an expert in "couch potatory," I'm imploring TV service to companies hear me. I LIKE TO SURF THE 'NET AND WATCH TV! I know others do the same. I surf the 'net on a laptop and look up at the TV when something catches my interest. This pattern would lend itself to an entirely different experience design if only the TV service providers would open their ears to my plea and open their eyes to what's happening in the world beyond TV.

With Dell's Mini 5, Apple's iPad and HP's Slate, we're at the precipice of a drastic change in TV watching, streaming, and interactivity. Here's how: By moving the source of interaction from your set-top box or TV, to your lap via a tablet. The prospects can get really interesting! Think about being able to use your tablet as a remote control. You'd scan TV listings and set DVR options much more quickly and intuitively, and hell, the tablet may even solve that pesky problem of turning off half of my peripherals when I'm trying to kill them all! A tablet makes interacting with social networks and games even easier (two things that are virtually impossible to do comfortably with a simple remote).

So, if I'm so smart as to tell TV service providers what they should do with their remote, where do I think they should start? Hint: Check out Boxee or Plex.

In my dream world of total remote control domination, I can even imagine slimming the set top box down and moving the DVR storage and control to the remote/tablet. This of course would take the argument about who controls the remote in my family to new levels when I happen to take the "remote" with me on business travel so I can watch Spartacus.

The Boxee Box remote, designed by Astro

So why haven't we seen any changes to the remote? And why am I living in a dream world? I blame Disney. Disney, Viacom, and other premium content providers are very concerned with ensuring their content is not pirated or misused. And make no bones about it, TV service providers make a killing off of premium content. So in order to appease these premium content providers, TV services create very secure set top boxes and encrypt the heck out of them. Would it be possible to encrypt your tablet remote? Sure. Will it make Disney skittish that you are watching Hannah Montana on a train to New York? Possibly, along with anyone sitting next to you.

Service providers are so careful about encrypting their content that they invite third party security auditing firms to review the set top box, the encryption, and the middleware (screens you click through). Disney trusts the auditors. If they say the service provider is good, Disney provides content.

With all of that, it is possible to have the encryption move to your lap, but in the eyes of a TV service provider, why rock the boat when remotes work. On behalf of couch potatoes everywhere, please PLEASE rock the boat!!!

Read Giovanni Calabro's blog Design PragmatistBrowse blogs by other Expert Designers

Giovanni Calabro has over 13 years of experience leading interactive research and design efforts for a wide range of business sectors. At Siteworx, Giovanni leads the design team responsible for user experience strategy, brand analysis, search engine optimization (SEO), search and analytics integration and social media strategy. With clients as diverse as MTV Networks, USATODAY.com, NPR, and JPMorgan Chase, Giovanni provides expert strategy and advice in the areas of stakeholder and staff alignment and new publishing models for emerging platforms such as social media and mobile channels.

Bhagwan Chowdhry, a Professor of Finance at UCLA's Anderson School, outlines his organization's mission to give every newborn in the world access to financial legitimacy. The most stunning part of the FinancialAccess@Birth (FAB) campaign isn't the remarkable impact that participants would get from a mere $100 starting balance or even the GNP metrics envisioned to fund this campaign, its the idea that this could help erase poverty. Here's the organization's plan in full.

The FAB Campaign, by Bhagwan Chowdhry, Joshua Coval, Paul Hudnut, Vijay Mahajan, and Peter Singer

Imagine putting your life savings into a piggybank or under your mattress. That would be crazy, since neither offers much security, nor any interest to make the account grow. Yet, nearly half of the world's population does not have access to any formal financial services. Their savings are kept in small jars or trunks, or through a patchwork of informal methods. Nandini, a village woman in India who deposits 5 rupees every day for 220 days with her village deposit collector, only accumulates 1000 rupees after 220 days--an astonishing APR of minus 30%, notes Stuart Rutherford in his book "The Poor and Their Money." If Nandini had access to a simple bank savings account that paid a modest interest rate of 4% per annum, she would have instead saved 1113 rupees. This loss of 113 rupees may not appear to be significant, but consider the following scenario. Her young daughter, Krupa, gets ill and needs life saving medication which costs 100 rupees. If she does what any desperate mother would do, she may have to pay 5% a day to the local moneylender paying him 150 rupees month after month and still continuing to owe him 100 rupees. Lack of access to formal financial services, forces Nandinis of our world into a cycle of constant indebtedness, preventing them from building up household resources for security or investment, and perpetuating their poverty.

The emergence of the microcredit industry, with innovators such as Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, ACCION in Latin America and more recently Kiva in cyberspace, has begun to address the issue of financial services for the poor. But microcredit is only one piece of the puzzle of financial inclusion, and while these early leaders provide inspiring examples, they help only a small fraction of the world's poor. The poor also suffer because they are inadequately insured against unanticipated shocks and contingencies caused by events such as illness or death of a family member, and natural calamities such as floods, droughts or earthquakes. Any security provided by savings and assets is grossly compromised for the poor who are excluded from the formal economy, as emphasized by Hernando DeSoto and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright in a recent U.N. report. Even during catastrophic events, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, floods and droughts, attempts to provide social insurance in the form of aid and charity are often inadequate and inconsistent.

What is required to bring billions into the formal economy, and start them on the path out of poverty? We believe there is a relatively simple solution. It isn't easy and it isn't fast, and we need your help. But the proposal is feasible, and comprehensive enough that it will lead to financial inclusion for every child and young adult by 2030. We propose that starting November 11, 2011 (11/11/11), every child born in this world will start life with a Financial Access at Birth (FAB) bank account. The opening of these "FAB" bank accounts would be integrated with the official birth registration process and perhaps with electronic banking. Governments, with the help of institutional/individual donors will make a deposit of US$100 in each FAB account.

This will entice parents into registering the birth of every child. An initial deposit of $100 could significantly change lives for people in poor countries. The deposit cannot be withdrawn until the child reaches an age of 16 - preventing a parent or another adult from misusing the money. Use of new technology, such as biometric identity systems, could further minimize the possibility of fraud and manipulation.

How much will it cost and where will the money come from? Currently, 134 million children are born worldwide each year. Assuming that 25% of parents will voluntarily forgo the initial $100, this would require a funding of $100 per child for approximately 100 million children every year, which amounts to a total of $10 billion. It would seem sensible to require the host governments to share part of this burden themselves. This could be managed by a multilateral agency such as the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in which all member countries could contribute an amount that is proportional to their GNP and would receive a transfer that is proportional to the number of children born in that country.

The total requirement per year of $10 billion is about one-fiftieth of one percent of the world GNP of about $50 trillion, and this would be the contribution level for each country. So, for instance, Rwanda with a GNP of nearly $4 billion would contribute less than one million dollars, and would receive a transfer of nearly $30 million for FAB accounts of nearly 300,000 children born every year. India with a GNP of nearly $1 trillion would contribute $200 million and receive $2.5 billion for FAB accounts for nearly 25 million children born in India every year. Developed nations such as the United States with a GNP of $14 trillion would contribute less than $3 billion - raised by a partnership between the government, private banks, and charitable giving - for FAB. These amounts would require prioritization, but are within the ballpark of many other development initiatives.

Once the FAB account is set-up, a number of useful benefits become feasible. Relatives, private donors, other social organizations could design plans in which regular payments are made to FAB accounts to provide for education, training, health-care. Imagine that, at the time of Krupa's birth, Nandini opens a FAB account for her. A retired teacher in Germany might like to sponsor Krupa's school fees for middle school. By using the FAB account, this can happen easily, with the bank transferring payments directly to the school. Imagine further that your teenage daughter Emily decides to contribute $10 a month for Krupa for her college education. Krupa's initial $100 deposit plus a $10 a month contribution from Emily accumulates interest until Krupa turns sixteen. At a (real) interest of 4% a year, Krupa would have accumulated nearly $3000 or Rupees 150,000 that can pay for her college education in India. Another direct mechanism could be to pledge a small amount every time those who wish to give use a credit card. Supported by electronic banking, these transfers could occur automatically, at very low cost, and at limitless scale.

The interest earned on the initial deposit could either be reinvested or used for providing critical services such as immunization, health-insurance or catastrophe insurance. Perhaps most importantly, delivery of aid or charity in times of emergency can be targeted to individuals and communities in affected areas. When FAB accounts are integrated with mobile telephony, those to whom the aid is directed, such as Krupa and her mother Nandini, could withdraw (only) emergency funds donated by private citizens or aid agencies, or direct payments to the FAB account from catastrophe insurance, in time of need almost immediately and without any slippage or loss that is often associated with traditional aid.

This would require a serious commitment and coordination among many. Governments will have to agree to fund the initiative and allow the official birth registration process to be integrated with setting-up online bank accounts. Banks would have to do their part and determine business models to implement such accounts. Technology companies will have to develop and provide the necessary hardware and software support. The telecom industry will have to integrate mobile banking with telecom services using mobile phones. Civic and charitable organizations will have to assist with financial education and enrollment systems that would make it simple for individuals to participate in making donations and sending targeted aid. Furthermore, we would need to ensure that funds are transferred in their entirety to the recipients, which means that institutions involved must agree to bear additional administrative and transactions costs as acts of corporate social responsibility.

All of the required pieces to make this happen, in fact, exist today. Korea, Singapore, Canada and the U.K. have all tried opening bank accounts at the time of birth. Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) in the United States, pioneered by Michael Sherradan, provide mechanisms to match, through a variety of government and private sector sources, savings accounts of low-income families. India is embarking on an ambitious unique identification program (UID), headed by Nandan Nilekani, a co-founder of Infosys, for its entire resident population, using biometric technology. Online access for banking is the norm in many countries. Mobile banking using cell-phones has arrived in Kenya, Philippines and other countries. Organizations such as Kiva and United Prosperity have made it easy to identify people in need, and companies such as Paypal make transfer of even small amounts of money easy and instantaneous. Large amounts of financial aid from rich to poor countries already occur though organizations such as the World Bank. The time has come to integrate all of these together and provide financial access to every child that is born in the world.

The idea is simple, transparent and universal. Many details need to be worked out. We invite the world community to come together to work on the implementation challenges, think creatively and persuade each other on the simplest ways to achieve various parts of the concept. You can support the FAB Campaign by visiting the Web site FABCampaign.org and signing your name. We urge leaders of technology and telecom companies, banks, non-profit foundations, microfinance institutions and government and multilateral agencies to support and join the FAB Campaign team by writing to us through the FABCampaign.org Web site. The FAB Campaign team will study the implementation of the idea by identifying a country or two to get started, and showing that this can work. For instance, it would take $30 million a year to get every child born in Rwanda a FAB account. Let's make financial security a reality for Nandini and billions just like her. Let's put our resources to work and help the poor gain another foothold on the slippery path out of poverty.

To read more about the names behind the FAB Campaign, and to include yours visit FABCampaign.org

Consider these funds if you can invest in them through a 401(k) or adviser so you can avoid the sales charge.

These tested individuals have launched new offerings for investing in currencies, global small caps and emerging markets.

After a painful year of losses, this fund’s bet on corporate bonds has paid off. Now management is growing cautious.

If you want to dabble in merger arbitrage, leave it to the experts who run these funds.

The editor of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance is adding followers and generating buzz on the popular social-networking site. But what does it all mean?

Chuck Akre’s experience is the key factor in our decision to replace FBR Focus.

As bad as 2008 was, our favorite funds are having a banner 2009.