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 100, [...]

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 ads. [...]

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 Composites [...]

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 will [...]

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 its [...]

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 a [...]

Do You Need Your Own Web TV Show?

Independent Web shows can attract advertisers, sponsors, and thousands of viewers, but marketing and profiting from them is a challenge (by K.E. Klein, BusinessWeek, September 29, 2009).
Yana Berlin dabbed on a product sample for a new perfume and liked it O.K. But when her three grown daughters got a whiff, they had one reaction: “You [...]

How to listen in a bad economy- 67 social media/web/reputation management tools and sites

You know we listen all the time don’t we? We keep telling companies to do it, but sometimes we just leave it at that. Or even worse, we don’t get specific. well here u go. Here’s the specifics. Here’s a mix of sites, tools and companies that do some kind of listening, monitoring [...]

Manage your company’s online brand and reputation

Whether you have a billion dollar brand or the brand of YOU, people are talking about you online, and you need to engage! Businesses and individuals need to proactively develop, manage, track and monitor their brands online. This session will cover how to manage your brand online, tools and tips for tracking your brand and [...]