One week ago a new four-colored dialog box appeared in my Gmail account.  And I don’t mean some clunky square computer dialog box that we’ve all grown accustomed to, I mean an honest to goodness comic book style dialog box.

Clearly this was some new sort of chat functionality, which surprised me, as I already had a GTalk session open.

Apparently Google was launching it’s answer to Facebook and Twitter, and you know what, I couldn’t be bothered.  I already have all the personal social media tools I need.  In fact, I have more social media tools at my disposal than I …

Yesterday President Obama announced that he intends to target a portion of the remaining TARP bailout funds to the needs of Small Businesses.

According to a summary of the president’s proposal posted on www.whitehouse.gov, this new plan would increase the funds available through Small Business Administration microloans from $35,000 per business to $50,000 to business and the funds available through 7(a) loans from $2 million per business to $5 million per business.

7(a) loans are typically used to purchase machinery, equipment, and real estate and can also be used to re-finance existing debts.  In contrast, micro-loans cannot be used to …

Old habits die hard. Such as cramming bulleted lists onto Powerpoint slides.

Remember overhear projectors? OK, I’m dating myself here, but I do recall when overhead projectors were the last word in cutting edge presentation technology. Woo-hoo!

It was my job to type up my boss’s presentation data (for which I used a spanking new IBM Correcting Selectric) and then photocopy the sheets onto clear acetates. I than had to laboriously Scotch tape the acetates onto cardstock frames. (Some people might earn danger-pay, but, alas, secretaries never earn boredom-pay.)

When Powerpoint replaced overhead projectors, it …

For the past two months the Small Business Administration has been posting informational and advice videos to YouTube.  Last week they went a step further and formed an SBA Channel on the video sharing service.

The Delivering Success series, which form the bulk of the channel’s current content, offers tips on topics ranging from hiring, to marketing, to mission adaptability.

These videos on their own would be a sufficient reason to visit the SBA Chanel on YouTube, but there is another lesson that can be learned while there.

While on YouTube you may also look at the historical viewership data of each video.  …