New York SBDC Research Network

Both Van Morrison & Kermit the Frog know that bein' green isn't easy. However, for clients whose businesses are environmentally-conscious, there exists the Green Seal website to help them out. Its home page describes this group as "an independent non-profit organization dedicated to safeguarding the environment and transforming the marketplace by promoting the manufacture, purchase, and use of environmentally responsible products and services." If your client has an environmentally-friendly product, a link exists to information as to how they can get a Green Seal certification to add to the product's resume. If your client seeks a "green" product, a link exists to a member directory that'll help find out who sells it.

Two cities in New York State made the list: New York City and Ramapo. Have a look to see where your city ranks. Top 100 finalists City Population New York 8,143,200 Ramapo 112,500 Other cities City Population Albany 96,253 Amherst 114,942 Brentwood 55,720 Buffalo 285,058 Cheektowaga 77,785 Clarkstown 85,350 Clay 59,679 Greenburgh 89,942 Hempstead 58,010 Irondequoit 51,903 Levittown 52,577 Mount Vernon 69,884 New Rochelle 74,320 Niagara Falls 53,728 North Hempstead 223,903 Rochester 216,598 Schenectady 61,698 Syracuse 146,404 Tonawanda 59,894 Union 54,827 Utica 57,721 White Plains 55,763 Yonkers 199,611 Also, check out http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2006/faq/ for "how we picked fthe Best Places to Live".

Have you ever tried to give driving directions and you just can’t remember the number of the highway exit you take everyday to get to work? Here’s useful tool. The Upstate New York Roads Site http://www.upstatenyroads.com/ An independent labor of love, this site provides massive amounts of information about New York’s highways. Find the highway you need, and the page provides a list of all its exits, complete with numbers and the towns or routes listed on the highway sign. You can even find out what vendors are in the rest areas! There is also a mileage chart, and links to other New York road web sites.

There's a column in the Wall Street Journal called "Small Talk", which currently appears every Tuesday. Readers are encouraged to send their small-business questions to smalltalk@wsj.com . A question last month was about prototypes. Columnist Kelly Spors recommended Thomasnet.com/ , from the people who put out the Thomas Register. Click on Engineering & Consulting, then Prototypes. Also, the United Inventors Association makes recommendations. Another more general useful tool from WSJ is the Startup Journal , from the paper's Center for Entrepreneurship, with tabs for franchising, finance, running a business and more.

If you work at Central, you have the option of getting candy every day. However, that's not why I blog. Recently, I did a request for a client who wanted to open an environmentally-friendly cleaning business. As with many research requests, this one included an inquiry as to how to begin marketing this type of service. During my work, I came across the aforementioned Daily Candy site. It promotes itself as being "The Insider's Guide to the Sweet Life". It has several online "editions," each focusing on a specific metro area. One for New York City is available. Once there, the site fancies itself as a broadcaster of what's new, hip, or innovative in that city's scene - fashion, food & drink, beauty, etc. So I read an article on a "green" cleaning service that promoted itself through this site. It exists for businesses to promote themselves (as long as they meet the site's criteria), as well as for people looking for such pla

While it is not particularly new, visual searching seems to be catching on. With a visual search, users type in their search string, same as always, but results are displayed visually and clustered into subtopics, related areas, etc. The goal is to conceptually organize results and to allow users to look beyond the top 10 that appears in a traditional results list. Check out a couple of these engines on their own: http://www.kartoo.com/ http://www.grokker.com/ Grokker’s homesite allows users to “Grok” (and get visual result displays) using Yahoo’s search engine, but more and more databases are using it too. EBSCO Publishing and Factiva now use Grokker to provide a visual results display for several of their databases, and even the Internet Public Library, http://www.ipl.org/ , is now on board. Read more about the use of visual searches in these articles: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6328082.html http://library.stanford.edu/about_sulair/special_projects/stanford_grokker.html

A Review of trends and Activity in the Investment Company Industry 46th Edition146 pages; PDF. ICI Investment Company Institute www.icifactbook.org For an overview of the investment landscape, this report lays out what investment customers are doing, and how the various investment funds work, and industry employment facts. This 146 page report offers a detailed look at how people are investing. It also includes a description of the roles involved and a glossary of terms.