New York SBDC Research Network

This is purely for entertainment purposes, at least to my mind. The World 66 Travel Guide a wiki that will let you create a map of all the places you have been and to create a travel guide of your own. It calls itself an "open travel guide". You can read travel information from individuals like yourself and learn as I did, that I have only visited 5% of the world. You can also list individual travel to US states and Canadian provinces, along with the countries of the world - though you may not always agree on the boundaries and definitions of those countries. For instance, you can read the England travel guide but you cannot isolate England as a country on your map. It will select all of the UK (including Scotland, Wales - it has Ireland (both presumably) listed separately. My profile also defines me as "Travel Yup" which may not bevery complimentary but is fairly accurate.

I have a new favorite database. Its name is DemographicsNow. I’ve always enjoyed questions of a demographic-nature, but this tool makes answering them considerably easier and more fun. Want to know where to locate your new business? The database can compare up to ten geographies at once, comparing consumer expenditures, income, existing businesses and employees, or retail sales potential for almost a hundred categories. Have you heard of MOSAIC cluster groups? I hadn’t, but the company that owns DemographicsNow describes them here . Using this feature you can see how a geographic area breaks down into niftily-named groups like “small-town success,” “affluent urban professionals,” “urban grit,” or “comfy country living.” It has all the usual census data, including age, race, etc, but its easier to choose your exact geography (the whole U.S., state, metro areas, cities, zip codes) and you can use a radius around a zip code. Seems like a great way to learn more about people and places, an

Scarborough Research, the leading consumer research firm measuring the lifestyle and shopping patterns, media behaviors and demographics of American consumers, released an analysis which finds that the South reigns for eBay Visitors . But Rochester, NY does OK, too.

It's been almost two years since I first wrote about this resource in our collection. I guess our blog has reached the age where we can dip into the archives once in a while to review some older posts. I won't repeat it verbatim (no need to plagiarize myself). However, I have done a few searches for venture capitalists this week, and, in both occasions, lacked information to create a more focused list. Most advisors, when requesting such a search, will let us know the industry in question. Also, as a general rule, we limit our results to those firms with an office somewhere in New York. However, there are two other factors worth knowing: 1) The amount of funding being sought (many firms have a minimum and/or maximum amount that they're willing to invest); and 2) The development stage of the business Galante's defines some of these development stages: Seed - Concept or idea stage. Money needed to research market and concept feasibility. Startup - Pre-operational f

WHO: SBA National Ombudsman Nicholas Owens will host the October Web chat on “Regulatory Fairness and Your Small Business.” Owens, who also serves as assistant administrator for Regulatory Enforcement Fairness at the SBA’s Office of the National Ombudsman, leads the national effort to ensure fairness in federal regulations on small business, while working to diminish disputes between small businesses and federal regulatory agencies. WHAT: Chat participants will have the opportunity to learn more about how the Office of the National Ombudsman can help small business owners with unfair and excessive federal regulatory enforcement, such as repetitive audits or investigations, excessive fines or other unfair actions by a federal agency. The SBA’s live Web chat series provides business owners the opportunity to discuss online relevant issues with experts, industry leaders and successful entrepreneurs. Participants have direct, real-time access to the Web chats via questions they submit onl

I get a number of library newsletters via listserv and one of them is by Mary Ellen Bates of Bates Information Service . She covers a huge number of sources with a little brief about each and today I received one on translators on the Internet. And I note that the contribution was originally from Barbara Verble so it is truly making the rounds. There have been language tools and translators available for some time on the Internet, they are not terribly effective, but still helpful if you want the gist of a passage. While I try not put too much faith in them, I still use them. My options are often limited though to a very few though because I usually need Danish translated and many do not have languages outside of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese and the other most popular languages. World Lingo offers a translation service into several major languages and even includes an email translator - new to me, that translated text and sends the message. They also list PROMPT and f

Next time you call a company’s customer service number and would like to speak to a real person, gethuman.com has the tools for you. One of the American Library Associations’ MARS “ Best Free Reference Web Sites 2007 ,” ALA offers this description: “Aimed at consumers, the gethuman database of 500 companies includes customer service telephone numbers, specific instructions for reaching a human being at each company, and quality of service grades. Users can click on a company name to rate the quality of telephone support.” The companies are broken down by category, including, but not limited to, automotive, credit, financial, stores, internet and products. It’s also nice to see which companies have real people answering the phone from the very beginning of a call. Have clients interested in providing better phone customer service? This May 2007 NPR report, " Improving Customer Service Over the Phone " discusses corporate training for customer service representatives, and offe