New York SBDC Research Network

Welcome back, everyone. Just a few items of general housecleaning: 1) You all got the email for the new LISTSERV that we set up earlier this week. Some folks have been in touch with us, saying that they'd rather not receive every single email that's posted to the list. If you're one of them, you can set it up so that you receive just one email a day that summarizes activity from the past 24 hours. If you're interested, then just do this: Send an email to: LISTSERV@LISTSERV.ALBANY.EDU Leave the subject line blank. In the body of the message, type: SET NYSSBDC DIGEST You'll get an email confirming this command. I'm not sure if it takes effect immediately, but definitely within 24 hours. 2) Our May 5th presentation was geared mainly at new advisors, but it was also meant to be a forum to exchange ideas on best practices on when & how to use our services. Not all of the new folks could make it, so I promised that we'd send out a summary of what went down t

I would like to start this blog by saying what a pleasure it was to meet most of you at this week's staff training. It was a wonderful opportunity to add faces to the names that are becoming familiar. During this week's training, at the session regarding the updated MQS system that will debut next Spring, a point was made that the NAICS search function within the current MQS system is difficult to use at times. I would like to offer an alternative. The NAICS codes are listed online with definition throught the Census. Although the NAICS search function within MQS searches the text of the Census' NAICS directory, there is a way to do a tiered search of the directory. The search starts with one of twenty broad industry categories. For example, Construction codes begin with 23. After Construction is selected, searchers can choose Construction of Buildings (236), Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction (237), or Specialty Trade Contractors (238). After a three digit

Trying to stay on the bright side? I'm sure we'll be reading more about how we can conserve and make the most of what we have. Encouragement may come in the form of an article in Inc. magazine: Starting up in a Down Economy which looks at companies that got started in lean times. Some of the examples are household names like Coors, IBM, Domino's, Wikipedia, and Clif. On a more personal (financial) note, The Simple Dollar looks at protecting oneself and succeeding in challenging times. MSN Money: Smart Spending has a bit on it as well: Preparing for and Surviving an Economic Downturn Jan 11 2008 by Karen Datko And from Small Business Notes comes Surviving an Economic Downturn with tips specifically geared to small business owners.

Paul Rapp "is an intellectual-property lawyer with offices in Albany and Housatonic, Mass. He teaches art-and-entertainment law at Albany Law School, and regularly appears as part of the Copyright Forum on WAMC’s Vox Pop." He writes a regular column on intellectual property rights. His most recent column addresses the "Orphan Works” copyright and potential legislation regarding it. What is an orphan work? Paul cites Meredith L. Patterson's Radio Free Meredith where she uses this example about "your parent’s wedding pictures from 1955. You want to publish them? Guess what? The copyrights are probably owned by the photographer! Who was who? And is now where? You don’t know? Uh-oh." The proposed bill, H.R.5889, the Orphan Works Act of 2008 , seeks to provide "limitation[s] on remedies in cases involving orphan works." Rapp wrote just before the actual legislation was introduced, but still got it right. "The legislation will...seek to rectify

Rising gas prices dominate the headlines these days. Our paper in Albany featured a photo of a family of three, with a gas pump wrapped around them collectively, like a python. It's a squeeze, all right, and a daily topic of conversation around here. Fuel Economy is a website - an almanac, really - put together by the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy office within the U.S. Department of (you guessed it) Energy. In addition to linking to sites with information on why we're paying $3.80 a gallon (check out the FAQs section in their "Gasoline Prices" section), there's also a wealth of material to help you when you're buying that new hybrid vehicle, or exploring alternative fuels. And now, I'm off to drive my six-cylinder car to Kerhonkson. See you there!

Looking for a contract packager? We’ve written about co-packing for food producers before (see Josee’s entries: Co-Packing and Northeast Center for Food Entrepreneurship ). I recently found that Packaging Digest ’s website offers an online directory of contract packagers in the U.S. You can search by keyword or browse categories like food, health & beauty aids, medical, dental, pharmaceutical, hardware, toys and soft goods. And you can further limit by state. If you’re specifically after co-packers for food products, Specialty Food’s website directory also offers co-packer company information (scroll down to nearly the bottom of the Search by Product Category field).

Back in August 2007, I suggested using TinyURL as a means of shorten a URL, particularly when e-mailing a long URL that might hit a line break. Unfortunately, some folks apparently enjoy hiding embarrassing and inappropriate web content, such as spam and porn, behind a TinyURL and similar services. Some users won't open them because of bad experiences. Here are two suggestions: 1) Avoid blind TinyURL clickthroughs by utilizing TinyURL's preview page and enable previews. 2) Use a service such as unshorten.com to get the original URL. This usually works not only with TinyURL.com, but also SnipURL.com , NotLong.com , Metamark.net , and zURL.ws .