New York SBDC Research Network

Hooray! As I imagine most of you have received Brian's email, you now know that www.nyssbdc.org has a new look and some organizational changes. Many thanks to all who contributed suggestions and materials for this revision. It's definitely still a work in progress (Yes- no one likes the request for counseling form. Folks will have to sit down to decide what information we need to collect here and what we should do with it before any major edits occur.) The center sites have a new look, but the same information. We will make every attempt to tackle a major revision of those pages in the near future, so start thinking about what you'd like to see on your center's pages. I hope, however, that some of the organizational changes will better allow the central site to change and grow. And I hope that our clients' happy faces on many of the pages will encourage others to give us a call. Comments, questions and suggestions (as always) are greatly appreciated. Happy New Year...

IE 7 is here - got in our office last week -with all sorts of new features such as: Phishing Filter Proactively warns and helps protect you against potential or known fraudulent sites and blocks the site if appropriate. The opt-in filter is updated several times per hour using the latest security information from Microsoft and several industry partners. This means, starting early next year, the address bar in Internet Explorer 7 will turn green when surfing to a legitimate Web site--but only in some cases, not all. "But the new system adopted for IE 7 has been causing friction, too. Initially, only corporations will be able to get the [green color] online trust indicator--a rule that shuts out smaller businesses. While the CA Browser Forum is still working on final guidelines that would include all legitimate Web sites, those could take a while to complete." Microsoft's Phishing Filter turns address bars yellow if on suspicious sites and red on confirmed phishing sites. ...

Well, not that it has helped me this time, but I’m sure these sites will come in handy one day when I am in my next plumbing crisis. Today, I leave it to the professionals. If you are ever so unfortunate as to be in a wet situation, perhaps these sites might help: www.Theplumber.com "theplumber.com web site, has been called one of the "best web sites" by the #1 on-line multimedia encyclopedia - Encarta" "Even Encyclopedia Britannica has linked to us in the past as one of "The Web's Best Sites" "World Book On-Line Encyclopedia specially selected theplumber.com by their Editors as well theplumber.com was rated a Hot Site by USA Today" Plumbing at DoItYourself.com http://www.doityourself.com/scat/plumbing Plumbing on Wikipedia.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumbing www.plbg.com The Plumbing Education and Information Sharing Site www.Toiletology101.com Basics of Indoor Plumbing & Toilet Repairs ~~Murphy's Law~~ "If someth...

When we get a question about starting a specialty food business we frequently turn to Stephen Hall’s From Kitchen to Market for some practical advice. There is now an accompanying website for the book, complete with a free discussion forum and a Food Entrepreneur eZine, available at http://www.specialtyfoodresource.com/ . The eZine has a variety of short, helpful articles and the issues are archived. The forum includes topics like “Pricing your product,” “Getting distributors” and “Understanding the industry” and Mr. Hall seems to be a frequent contributor. Looks like a great way for our clients to ask questions of other entrepreneurs and an expert in the field.

American Consumer Satisfaction Index "ACSI reports scores on a 0-100 scale at the national level. It also produces indexes for 10 economic sectors, 43 industries (including e-commerce and e-business), and more than 200 companies and federal or local government agencies. The measured companies, industries, and sectors are broadly representative of the U.S. economy serving American households." A blog post from a Usability and Design firm called Adaptive Path . The blog as a whole is rather interesting, too. A recent National Retail Federation/American Express study placed Amazon at the top of online and brick & mortar stores . *** And, apropos of nothing, Keith Richards turned 63 yesterday.

Sometimes I come across a site and marvel at the amount of work put into its upkeep. A few weeks ago, I read about a site called NationMaster . It's a site where you can glean data for a single country from a huge variety of topics (economic, geographic, income, labor, religion, and on and on). The site originates in Australia, but collects data from a wealth of resources and arranges them in a very easy interface. Since our clients are interested in importing and/or exporting with just about every nation on Earth, this site is extremely helpful. As a bonus, this site links to a companion page called StateMaster , providing an additional wealth of data for each state in the U.S. These two sites are great for us researchers, and great for kids out there with a paper to write on the main exports of the Maldives. (And speaking of kids & the Maldives, NORAD once again presents its annual Santa Tracker website . For those of you interested in tracking ol' St. Nick on Christ...

The Future of Web Ads is in Britain The New York Times By Louise Story and Eric Pfanner Published December 4, 2006 According to this article Britain is leading the way – way ahead of the US in terms of online advertising and suggests that maybe we can learn from the UK experience. eMarketer NOVEMBER 27, 2006 “An emerging consensus paints a positive picture. The trend began early last week, when the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released new data showing that US Internet advertising revenues reached a record $4.2 billion in the third quarter of 2006.” British Online Ad Spending Outpacing U.S. By Nearly 2 to 1 Seeking Alpha Posted on Dec 4th, 2006 Carl Howe ( Blackfriars Communications ) The Federal Trade Commission – Facts for Businesses Dot Com Disclosures A guide for the ecommerce marketer.