New York SBDC Research Network

Two patent searching sites for any lists of science, law or business resources: SumoBrain FreePatentsOnline Both of the sites are totally free, with powerful search engines, large document collections, and many features that other sites lack, including PDF downloading.

Here's an unusual article from the journal Psychological Science that might have no immediate use by any of your clients, but I'm sharing it nonetheless. A study from the University of Toronto argues that certain people, when simply exposed to green products (either in a market, or in advertising), act more altruistically and generously than those who actually buy the same product. This is an extension of what's known as "priming," whereby consumer behavior can be influenced by exposure to imagery - for instance, seeing the Apple logo inspires creativity in some folks. The authors argue that green products, marketed to promote a higher sense of social responsibility, are meant to inspire within the consumer the motivation to do good works. Conversely, they also argue that consumers who act on this exposure are the equivalent of the person who runs a 5K, then goes home and eats three Big Macs as a reward for their good work. Through a series of experiments,

One of the most useful and interesting publications that I read every month is Searcher: The Magazine for Database Professionals . Each issue contains guides to the best resources available for different industries, as well as information on how to find certain types of documents (i.e. dissertations) or where to find information on interesting topics (i.e. Dutch Libraries). The March 2010 issue contained an article titled Environmental and Alternative Energy Information Sources: Part 2: Government Information, Resources, Metasites, and Web Directories . Below is a partial list of the links provided in the article but the entire article is well worth reading and the website above should be checked out. National Council for Science and the Environments - CRS Reports Information Bridge: DOE Scientific and Technical Information DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy US Energy Information Administration The Library of Congress Science Tracer Bullet Series Forest Service Research &

FedSpending.org is a database from OMB Watch that is designed to give journalists, analysts, government officials, and regular citizens easy access to information on federal spending. The website tracks government spending, whether it's through contracts for products and services, grants and loans, or other forms of assistance (including Social Security, veterans' benefits, etc.). The data can be as summarized or as detailed as you like - you can even get minute details on each individual government contract transaction. In the upper left corner of the website, there are three tabs labeled Contracts, Assistance, and Recovery. Select what type of spending you are interested in and click the tab. There are multiple criteria to choose from in basic and advanced search options and though the search was slow, I imagine the database has an extreme amount of data it must search. I clicked on New York State and below is the resulting data on contracts awarded in FY2008. Competiti

Every housing market is unique. These Local Market Reports (LMRs) — which reflect data available through 4th Quarter 2009 — provide insights into the fundamentals and direction of the nation's largest metropolitan housing markets. Each downloadable report evaluates a number of factors affecting home prices, including: •• The health of the local job market •• Foreclosure rates •• Housing inventory •• Debt-to-income and mortgage-servicing-costs-to-income ratios

Looking for business or other software? Try Capterra , recommended by a business librarian. You can use the browse feature on the left navigation bar OR search for what you want.

Is the recession over? Unfortunately, no. Are certain aspects of the economy improving? YES! It's Alive! - Consumer spending, the dollar, GDP, and the stock market are all headed higher. The economic story is much more encouraging than it was just one year ago. But that doesn't mean the recovery is complete. Job Market Brightens as U.S. Payrolls Surge in March - The clouds have parted. After more than two years in which more than eight million jobs were lost, the country’s non-farm payrolls surged in March. Employers added 162,000 jobs last month, and employment numbers in the previous two months were revised upward. Nationwide, the unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent. To many ordinary, out-of-work Americans, the recovery may finally start to feel real. Recession Survival Guide for Small Business - Even the most successful small business will feel the challenges of the rough economic conditions. This guide presents tips, techniques, and experiences from NYS

April 1 is National Census Day and by now we should all have received, completed, and returned our 2010 Census forms. Because just by answering 10 simple questions, we can all directly affect the quality of life, services, and job creation in our communities. To help ensure communities are counted, the U.S. Census Bureau is asking small businesses to voluntarily raise awareness and advocate the importance of the 2010 Census with its 2010 Census Partner Program. READ MORE .

If you like maps, I'd recommend checking of the Department of Environmental Conservation's page of Interactive Online Maps . The DEC offers a variety of mapping tools, including the following: State Lands Interactive Mapper for customized recreational trail maps New York Nature Explorer , a gateway to biodiversity information The Geodata Map Viewer , which allows you to layer a number of geographic features There are also maps for Chronic Wasting Disease, environmental resources, mineral resources, and environmental facilities.

Release Date: March 31, 2010 Contact: Cecelia Taylor (202) 401-3059 Release Number: 10-10 Internet Address: http://www.sba.gov/news/ ************** WASHINGTON – The U.S. Small Business Administration today announced the award of grants to 10 local SBA Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) to increase entrepreneurial assistance to veterans. The grants will provide approximately $1 million to fund programs for veterans that promote business ownership and provide services to small businesses dealing with the deployment of key personnel overseas. Each SBDC receiving funds will promote increased coordination of services to veterans, and will use multimedia tools to connect veterans through distance learning and customized online business counseling by providing services to reach the local veteran business community. Five of the centers were previously awarded grant funds to provide these services, and will now receive a second year of funding. Five centers will receive grant funds for

Yesterday, CNN Money ran a story called " Auditors Crack Down on 'Independent Contractors' ," echoing a similar story that appeared in the New York Times back in February. We've written before on how the IRS differentiates when a person is an employee, or when he or she is considered to be a contractor. Check out the link in that post to an IRS document that spells out the difference between the two. Companies who utilize independent contractors are not obliged to pay unemployment insurance, or worker's comp, or Social Security taxes, or Medicare taxes . . . As these articles mention, at a time where the majority of state unemployment insurance coffers are empty, great interest in auditing companies with significant utilization of contractors has revived. Seven billion dollars is seven billion dollars, which is what the IRS is hoping to generate by conducting these reviews throughout the country. If your business is in the habit of using contractors, mak

I found a link to the number of hunting and fishing licenses broken down by county in New York State which I thought would be helpful for research. The data on this sheet is broken down by year with the amount of revenue obtained from selling the licenses also included in the data. The document is an ftp and the website to get this information is located at ftp://ftp.dec.state.ny.us/dfwmr/licsales . I got this link by going to the website http://www.dec.ny.gov/permits/26368.html and looking at the bottom of the page where it provided the website address where the breakdown of counties would be located.

A recent report released from the Small Business Success Index (SBSI) showed that social media adoption by small businesses is, in fact, increasing. Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business sponsored the report and found that over the last year, the number of small businesses using social media has gone from 12 percent to 24 percent. More HERE , including some downsides. The video . *** What Not to Do on Your Business Website

Recently I heard the song The Now Generation by the Black Eyed Peas for the first time. After listening closely to the lyrics, it occurred to me that the lyrics are a good guide to how businesses should handle marketing to the American youth, or in their words, the "Fast Internet, stay connected in a jet Wi-fi, podcast, blasting out an SMS" generation. Actually, I can think of quite a few adults where "Google is my professor Wikipedia, checker Checkin' my account, loggin' in and loggin' out" is as true with them as it is with their children. Check out the resources below for more information on marketing to today's youth. Click with Millennials Through Multiple Channels - The Millennials market is motivated and has money, but offering them genuinely valuable services is key to winning their advocacy. Print is a Youth Market - According to 2007 research from McPheters & Company, the younger generation not only reads digitally, but they also

March 2010 Dear New Yorker, Census forms have arrived at your address, and I am writing to remind you to take 10 minutes to fill-out the 10 questions for each person living in your home, and mail it back today. The Census is safe and confidential. By law, no one other than the Census Bureau staff is allowed to see your questionnaire for 72 years – not even the President. As you know, the census is a count of every person, regardless of citizenship or immigration status, living in the United States and its territories. It is required by the United States Constitution and is the foundation of our representative democracy. The Census is important. Census data will be used to determine everything from how many representatives you get in our political system to how much money our State will receive from the federal government for essential services like education, affordable housing, and health care. The Census is easy. I am asking all New Yorkers to fill out the census form for each

If you are looking for a mission statement to emulate, your first stop should be MissionStatements.com . It includes statements from Fortune 500 companies, but also from restaurants, technology companies, construction businesses, real estate firms, hospitals, day care centers and more. It also contains some slogans/mottos and business descriptions. The web page says: A company's mission statement is a constant reminder to its employees of why the company exists and what the founders envisioned when they put their fame and fortune at risk to breathe life into their dreams. Woe to the company that loses sight of its Mission Statement for it has taken the first step on the slippery slope to failure. BELL: The Business Ethics Links Library is "a comprehensive starting point for research in corporate ethics and social responsibility. The database provides access to codes of ethics for U.S. companies and trade and professional associations, ethics sites at college and university bu

Here's a fun, short article from this month's issue of The Atlantic . Titled " Pac Rat ," it describes the efforts being made in certain circles of higher education to save the source code of video games that have long since gone out of favor (and whose intellectual property may no longer be in force). It also speaks to the issues behind technological preservation in general - with so much digitization in force, what becomes of data in general? Can it remain in a non-hard-copy ephemeral state forever? What becomes of the 1,000+ digital photos on my hard drive at home? How about this blog post? I'm fascinated by the judgments that will be made in the not-so-distant future, which reveals what amongst the deluge will live on, and what will fade away.

If you have a mail order/Internet business in New York State, and you have NYS customers, you need to charge sales tax on the eligible items at the rate of the location of the purchaser. This can seem quite onerous. Fortunately there is an electronic Sales Tax Jurisdiction and Rate Lookup . You type in the street address and ZIP Code and it will generate the correct rate. Incidentally, trying to find a list of sales tax rates by ZIP Code would be fruitless, since ZIP Codes are no respecters of county boundary. One thing this lookup does NOT do, however, is to indicate which counties have set aside, at the county level, the sales tax on individual clothing items that cost $110 or less. You need to check this chart .

Every household in the US will be receiving the 2010 Census form sometime this week. The Census has eliminated the long form, so every household will receive the same form. There is some information regarding the Census that is not well known or often debated. The links and quotes below are to help clarify Census issues. The Cost of the Census Responding By Mail Can Save Taxpayers Hundreds of Millions : - The Census Bureau today estimated that if every household completed and mailed back their census form, taxpayers could reduce the cost of taking the census by $1.5 billion . The Census Bureau saves about $85 million in operational costs for every percentage point increase in the nation’s participation rate by mail. - “It costs the government just 42 cents for a postage paid envelope when a household mails back the form,” said Census Director Robert M. Groves. “It costs $57 to send a census taker door-to-door to follow up with each household that fails to respond.” Census Confid

We all know the feeling of failure. Well, I guess those few perfect people out there don't know that feeling, but the majority of us humans know that failing never feels good. But it can be good for you. If we are open to learning from our failures, not only can we determine what factors caused us to fail in the first place, but then we can change the way we go forward. So while it's not always easy to view a failure as a learning experience, it may be the best way for your to succeed in the future. A Silicon Valley Conference About Failing Is Big Success 10 Ways Failure Leads to Success