New York SBDC Research Network

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

"Unfortunately, more and more of our target markets are turned off by the old sales pitches and will look for true help elsewhere." This article from Small Business Newz suggests relationship-building with customers as a way of improving the bottom line.

Back in early December 2007, I sent out an email to the advisor population of the New York State SBDC. It concerned how advisors used norms and ratios data when working with clients. Over 120 people were asked this question, and I received 37 responses. What I didn't do, obviously, was tell you about the answers. In short, the question was this: We at the library typically provide you with the last three calendar years of norms and ratios data. We have four distinct sources for this information, but "norms and ratios" has seemingly become synonymous with "RMA". Did you, however, actually need three years' worth, or was the most current year enough? Four were squarely on the fence, where one year or three years applied, depending on the circumstances. Of the remaining 33, there were 19 who said that one year was more than adequate, while the other 14 said that three years of data was still necessary. Back in the early 90s, in the infancy of our library,

There’s been a lot of talk lately about electronic books, what with new portable readers and digitization initiatives. We’ve sent some of you links to Google books, but it often seems that the pages that would be most helpful are precisely those not included! Wouldn't it be nice to have a directory of free online book resources? For those of you willing to take the online reading plunge, librarians at the University of Pennsylvania have put together an index of freely available online books, The Online Books Page . They’ve indexed more than 30,000 books on the internet, and the records are searchable by keyword, author, title, subject etc. There are also special features – like banned books and prize winning books online. I did a quick search for “marketing” and turned up a small handful of books, including a link to Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors . And around we go…

There is a recent article in Forbes magazine , delineating the ruckus that Madison Avenue ad man Jerry Della Femina has found himself in. In the January 23, 2008 edition of Della Femina's weekly Hamptons newspaper, The Independent, editor and columnist "Rick Murphy wrote what purported to be a column written by Barack Obama headlined 'Why I Should Be Our Next President, with a photo of the actual Obama and an overline that was blatantly racist," Forbes' media columnist James Brady writes. I became aware of the imbroglio early on when an SBDC staffer sent me a copy of The Independent column. The previous week's column on Hillary Clinton, for which the paper has also apologized, still had a working link as of February 5. The pieces never made any sense to me because the tasteless stories - yes, I can send you copies, if you want - seemed out of place in what is essentially a Pennysaver-type adzine publication, albeit for the Hamptons. The story has gone fr