New York SBDC Research Network

My stepdaughter is doing a months-long project for school on the state of West Virginia. Part of her assignment is to write a profile on a famous citizen from that state. She chose the famed aviator Chuck Yeager, and we've since been inundated with the minute details of his breaking of the sound barrier in 1947. We at the Research Network recently broke a barrier, though it didn't cause a boom or any other noise. For years, when giving tours of the library to guests, I'd state that we spent, on average, about 1.25 hours per request. I repeated that statistic so often that I began to wonder whether it was just a tale I heard around the campfire when I was new here. Lately, I've been tracking that figure. Starting last December, we now spend on average 2 hours per request. Clearly, all of you have become much better in finding resources on your end that can help answer questions that, in the past, we would do for you. (I'd like to think that the blog has, in so

Ben and I must be on the same wavelength because I came across a similar item. So while on the subject: Free Love Trendwatching.com March 2008 This month, we'll be looking at FREE LOVE, which is all about the ongoing rise of 'free stuff', and the brands already making the most it. Not to mention the millions of consumers who are happily getting into a free-for-all mindset. Absorb and apply!

Ben Ropp, former Research Network intern, recommends these two articles of recent interest in the "Business 2.0" category. Social Media Will Change Your Business "Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up...or catch you later." From Business Week. Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business By Chris Anderson. From Wired.

We have sports coaches, life coaches, career coaches, and now- garden coaches? I recently saw a blurb in Newsweek about garden coaches - consultants who will advise you on your gardening needs, teach you some techniques and help first time gardeners get their feet off the ground (or in this case, their hands in the dirt). If you're looking for more business-related information on gardening and gardeners, check out the National Gardening Association . There's good market research about home gardeners, organic gardening, and lawn and landscaping services.

The test consists of 20 questions from four areas; the last grouping is audible recognition, so I hope you have your sound on your computers. I got 18 out of 20, but misread one of the questions or I would have gotten 19. How did YOU do?

Alright, this is a little random, but here goes... Ever want to make a booklet from a digital PDF document? Here's a neat tool: " BookletCreator - is a free online tool that allows to create a booklet from a PDF document. It reorders pages so that after printing and folding the pages you get a small book." You set up your PDF file in portrait mode, upload it here , and it will do all the tricky formatting . You print (double sided, of course), staple, and voila! Booklet! Have a great weekend!

LooseTooth This is great site for a prolific jewelry (among other things) artist. She uses her blog to describe her artwork and her process. The site is clean but contains a lot of stuff, lots of images and a friendly, casual style. The goods are sold through CafePress.com I think she's found a great work-around the commercial web-site by combining products and not limiting herself by product type. For our artist-clients this ought to be inspirational. It is not a short-cut in the sense that obviously an enormous amount of attention went into this but in terms of using existing tools for good, it's a great example. For artists who may be daunted by the idea of getting started advertising themselves online, getting started as a blog may be a way to go.

Each year, the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration is tasked with documenting the importance of entrepreneurship to the American economy and with highlighting policy issues of relevance to small firms. This report summarizes the publications produced by the Office of Advocacy’s Office of Economic Research in 2007. A copy of this report can be obtained here (PDF) . Should you need further information, please feel free to contact Chad Moutray at (202)205-6533 or advocacy@sba.gov. Yet, this study (PDF) documents the pervasiveness and the magnitude of the tax burden among small business owners in bankruptcy. The data suggest that the tax burden is more pervasive among small business owners in bankruptcy than among consumer petitioners. While less than one-quarter of all consumers in the bankruptcy sample reported tax debts, more than half of individual small business owners reported owing some tax debts. The research summary can be found here (PDF) . Should you ne

Every so often, we'll get a question on behalf of a client who seeks to know the population concentration in the U.S. for a specific nationality. Until recently, I didn't know that the Migration Policy Institute has on their site a series of maps that can help meet this need. The site is limited, though, in the number of countries that it has tracked. In addition to a map of the U.S. that shows "States with the Largest and Fastest-Growing Populations of Foreign Born (2006)," the site links to county-level maps (in PDF form) for these categories: 1) The foreign born as percentage of total county population, 2000: Foreign-born population (total) Foreign born from Mexico Foreign born from the Philippines Foreign born from India Foreign born from China Foreign born from Vietnam 2) The number of foreign born by county, 2000 Foreign born from South America Foreign born from the Caribbean Foreign born from Africa Foreign born from Iran Foreign born from Pakistan In additi

Map pinpoints disease 'hotspots' By Mark Kinver Science and nature reporter, BBC News Map of world's Emerging Infectious Diseases hotspots A detailed map highlighting the world's hotspots for emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) has been released. Research shows that many of the diseases we contend with have beginnings in the wild kingdom and offers one more reason to be concerned about environmental issues. I am impressed that my native Canada is remarkably clear of disease.

You probably heard that we at the central office lost power yesterday. Apparently it was half the office park and a bit down the road too. Now don’t worry about us - the generators turned on, illuminating staircases and bathrooms and allowing the server equipment to beep incessantly . And since it happened around lunch time, there was still plenty of natural light, especially near Al’s cubical. So we all huddled around, and I got caught up on my newspaper–scanning for mentions of you all (reminder – send me your news items!) Eventually Jim told us we could go home. So that was our afternoon. Do you have a plan for when the power goes out? If you need extra help, the CDC has created a handy web page , “ What You Need to Know When the Power Goes Out Unexpectedly .” Read it now, and be better prepared for your next outage.

I've been enjoying the Modern Mechanix blog . It featured Face Masks for Arctic War (Jun, 1940) on January 28; Death Ray Machine Is Invented by Cleveland Scientist (Sep, 1934), plus FILMING TABLE TOP EARTHQUAKES (Dec, 1935) on January 27; Letter Chopper [think shredder](Aug, 1935) AND Electric Glove for Police Stuns Victims With 1,500 Volts [think taser] (Sep, 1935) on January 26, 2008. The blog started on October 18, 2005 with Mechanical Willie (Aug, 1934), a Westinghouse gadget that combined crooning with housework [think Rosie the Robot on The Jetsons].

This is a 92-page PDF file recently released by the Federal Trade Commission. It provides all kinds of data for 2007, summarizing the 800,000+ complaints of consumer fraud and identity theft received by the FTC's complaint database (known as the "Consumer Sentinel"). I've often wondered what the Consumer Sentinel contains regarding specific companies. This database exists as a tool available only to law enforcement agencies across the U.S., for use in any investigations that they might be undertaking. Up until page 20, data is presented on a national level for a variety of categories (e.g., "Number of Internet-Related Fraud Complaints," "How Identity Theft Victims' Information Is Misused," etc.). The rest of the report focuses on complaint data broken down by state (New York is on page 53). I've blogged about this before, and, unfortunately, I'll feel compelled to blog about next year, too. Be careful out there.

It sounds like a band but they are two slide shows available at www.businessweek.com The first is a look at knock-offs of first class designs. It is interesting that in some cases it looks as though the copiers are trying to maintain the slightest difference in the design. Some things like the quality of materials/finshes etc were not duplicated but some things that would seem to be easily copied - size and shape - were not and I wonder if it is to differentiate from the original. Plagiarius Award 2008 Award Winning Fakes At the world's largest annual consumer goods fair, organization Aktion Plagiarius shames makers of knockoffs by singling them out By Jessie Scanlon The second slideshow is the originals: designers who have developed green-er products - often very pretty ones. Green Design Hot Green Products Apple's new MacBook Air makes an impressive eco-conscious statement—as does an array of other recent items ranging from flashlights to diapers By Paula Lehman

Josee noticed today that you can see her house on Google maps. Not just the roof as captured by satellite – it's the front door and the recently trimmed shrub. Mine’s on there too (apparently I wasn’t home, my car isn’t on the street). In fact, there are now street level views of most of the Capital Region. To check it out yourself, go to Google Maps, and click on the “Street View” button. Areas where street view is available will appear in blue. So far it looks like they’ve only captured the Capital Region and NYC, but stay tuned, and I bet many of your front doors will show up soon. In related news, GIS fans will have some new data sets to check out. Layers depicting neighborhood “boundaries” are the latest and greatest in geographic information systems. Although neighborhood boundaries are frequently fuzzy, in many cases this information has been gathered from local real estate experts, and areas are allowed to overlap. Read more here: Neighborhood Boundaries: The Next