Facebook Moves to Standardize and Own Customer IDs

Adorning the walls of Facebook’s Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters are multiple prints of Rene Magritte’s iconic painting The Son of Man. The image of a man’s face partly obscured by a green apple is considered a critique of people’s attempts to conceal their true selves. It’s also an apt metaphor for the millions who spend [...]

Tools for Tweets (New software lets small businesses get the most out of Twitter)

Twitter is changing the way small businesses market themselves. Now a host of software companies are trying to change the way small businesses use Twitter. The Journal Report These companies are flooding the Web with thousands of tools—many of them free of charge—that simplify a number of common tasks on the microblogging service. Some software, [...]

An Internship From Your Couch (Working at Home Opportunities)

Virtual internships, while relatively rare, are becoming more common, career experts say, fueled by improving technology and the growth of social media. They are most popular among small to midsize companies and online businesses. More than one-fourth of 150 internships posted on UrbanInterns.com, a site that connects small businesses with part-time workers, are labeled virtual, [...]

A Translator Tool With a Human Touch

HOW hard can it be, as the joke goes, to speak Chinese? (Six-year-olds do it all the time.) Yes, it turns out that learning languages is one of those skills that humans, even relatively young ones, master seemingly magically. It is all enough to make a mainframe computer jealous. At I.B.M., a team of nearly [...]

Recovery Act Announcement: DOE to Invest $18 Million in Small Business Clean Energy Innovation Projects

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced more than $18 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support small business innovation research, development, and deployment of clean energy technologies. In this first phase of funding, 125 grants of up to $150,000 each will be awarded to 107 small advanced technology firms [...]

Marketers Find Web Chat Can Be Inspiring

International Business Machines and a handful of other major marketers, including casino operator Harrah’s Entertainment and software giant Microsoft, are experimenting with developing ad campaigns based in part on what consumers are chatting about on the Web. For decades, advertisers have relied heavily on sometimes-dated consumer surveys and focus groups to provide grist for their [...]

Blackhawk Composites to Start-up in Morgantown, Kentucky

FRANKFORT, Ky. Blackhawk Composites, Inc., a start-up manufacturer of advanced aerospace composite parts, will begin manufacturing operations in Butler County. The project entails the creation of 20 new jobs initially, growing to 30 within the first year, and a more than $1.5 million investment in the Commonwealth. Established in September 2009, the newly formed Blackhawk [...]

Louisville’s Sypris Sells Test & Measurement Business to Tektronix

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Sypris Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq/NM: SYPR) has completed the sale of its Test & Measurement business to Tektronix. Commenting on the announcement, Jeffrey T. Gill, president and chief executive officer of Sypris Solutions, said, “The completion of this transaction with Tektronix marks an important milestone for Sypris Solutions. The proceeds from the deal [...]

Small Business Get Free Advice

CitySquares Online Inc. saw sales start to decline dramatically in late 2008 as some of the local-search-engine provider’s customers could no longer afford its advertising services. So the small business turned to its board of six volunteer advisers—experts in areas such as sales, marketing, finance, entrepreneurship and venture capital—who suggested expanding the Web site beyond [...]

Entrepreneurs ‘Tweet’ Their Way Through Crises

Twitter has turned out to be a useful tool for some small businesses coping with customer-service or public-relations crises. The social-media service — where users send short “tweets” to followers who have signed up to receive the messages — came in handy for Innovative Beverage Group Holdings Inc., whose drankbeverage.com site crashed last month after [...]