Twitter is the canary in the coal mine of public opinion — for celebrities, politicians, and, of course, corporations. When European discount carrier Ryanair lashed out at “lunatic bloggers” after a Web designer reported a glitch on the airline’s site, its online reputation dipped as low as its fares. Conversely, Mars got a sweet treat when it posted Skittles-related tweets on its Web site, learning immediately how people felt about the candy.

Twitter’s explosion from microblogging curiosity to mass-media phenomenon [0] has awakened a lot of companies to just how fast memes spread on the Internet today. Make a mistake like Ryanair’s — or Johnson & Johnson’s offensive Motrin ads last winter — and the response is brutal. Get it right like shoe retailer Zappos and bask in the love. How can you know if your canary is singing or dead? These tools will help you monitor not just Twitter but everywhere the online conversation involves your brand.

TweetDeck [1]. To follow the raging tweetstream, you need a dashboard. This free download splits your Twitter feed into subgroups, letting you follow shout-outs (@replies) in one window and specific searches in other views. For instance, Pepsi could follow Mountain Dew, Gatorade, Tropicana, and Frito-Lay in four different search fields, receiving instant feedback on announcements and ad campaigns.

Scout Labs [2]. Need to monitor feedback on your new product? Scout Labs reads blog posts and social-networking comments from around the globe and judges them by their words and tone. The sentence “I love Amazon but the Kindle 2 is disappointing” gets properly parsed as a positive comment for Amazon but a negative one for its e-reader. This ultra-targeted approach allows clients such as Charles Schwab, HP, and Netflix to follow comments in real time and react quickly. Pricing starts at $99 a month for five searches.

BlogPulse [3]. This free feature from Nielsen Online searches the blogosphere for what’s happening with your brands. Type in a few keywords and track the number of mentions over the past six months, and view them in a handy fever chart. You can also trace the roots of a Web conversation and learn more about key Web influencers.

Vanno [4]. It’s Digg for reputation. Readers vote on news stories, opinion, and gossip about more than 5,800 companies, and Vanno mashes it up into a numerical score. The free site tracks these companies based on 25 topics, including job satisfaction, customer service, and social responsibility. At press time, Cisco was No. 1.

CoTweet [5]. This free service (currently in limited beta) allows multiple people to tweet from the same user name, using software to replicate the success of Zappos’s hundreds of staff bloggers, including CEO Tony Hsieh, within one account. Employees can delegate tasks, track conversations, schedule posts, and best of all, identify the people behind the brand.

TNS Cymfony [6]. If you need a more heavyweight tool (starting at $40,000 a year), TNS Cymfony goes beyond simple keyword analysis across the Web and analyzes grammar. It also includes crisis PR solutions that track key bloggers, journalists, and consumers. (Nielsen Online’s Buzzmetrics [7] service offers similar features.) During the past Super Bowl, TNS Cymfony reported that the teaser for the anticipated summer hit Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen earned seven times the buzz of the average ad during the big game.

Use these seven tools and you won’t have to worry about revenge; your brand will be transformed into an agile, respected member of the Web’s social swirl.

Get your business going, keep it going strong or take it in a new direction with this compilation of web sites for entrepreneurs.

At last count there were approximately 10 gazillion websites out there. Where’s a business owner to start when looking for valuable information? If you’re reading this, it means you’re on Entrepreneur.com, which is a good start. Read on for 64 more vital online spots you should know about.

Accounting Terminology Guide
http://nysscpa.org/prof_library/guide.htm
If you need to know what a specific accounting term means, no matter how obscure, this is the site for you. Hosted and maintained by the New York State Society of CPAs, nearly 500 accounting terms are defined on this site, all sorted in an easy-to-use alphabetical list.

AccountingWEB
www.accountingweb.com
Updated daily, this site offers accounting industry news, information, tips, tools, resources and insight–everything you need to prosper and interact with other accounting professionals.

Adweek Online
www.adweek.com
This is the online edition of Adweek, a popular print magazine focusing on all things advertising and marketing. This site features the inside scoop on what’s going on in the marketing departments of high-profile companies and corporations.

American Association of Franchisees and Dealers
www.aafd.org
This organization represents the rights of both franchisees and dealers. Here you can learn about upcoming events, read some free publications online, order other publications from the bookstore, and become a member.

Backpack
www.backpackit.com
Backpack is a web-based service that makes organizing your company’s information easy. Backpack lets you make pages that can contain any combination of notes, to-dos, images, files and so on.

Better Business Bureau
http://us.bbb.org
Browse or search for a business or charity’s reputation. Included are instructions for how to file a consumer or B2B complaint.

BizBuySell
www.bizbuysell.com
Looking to buy a franchise? There’s a good chance you’ll find one here. From restaurants in California to auto shops in Florida, you can search more than 25,000 businesses currently for sale, many of which are franchised.

Bizwomen
www.bizwomen.com
Bizwomen is an online community for women business executives and entrepreneurs to connect, support one another, learn and grow. You can share and explore ideas with women across the United States or in your neighborhood to help grow your business.

Business Owner’s Tool Kit
www.toolkit.com
With an emphasis on problem solving, this site features more than 5,000 pages of free cost-cutting tips, step-by-step checklists, real-life case studies, startup advice, and business templates to small-business owners and entrepreneurs.

Business Owners Idea Cafe
www.businessownersideacafe.com
Managed by successful entrepreneurs and the authors of several guides on forming and running a business, this site includes numerous award-winning resources, along with practical advice, business news and humor.

BrandChannel.com
www.brandchannel.com
Run by internationally acclaimed brand consultancy Interbrand, BrandChannel.com provides a global perspective on brands and the art of branding. Site features include in-depth feature articles, conference announcements, career resources and access to white papers.

Brandweek
www.brandweek.com
A leading source of news and information for the branding industry, it’s also the only online trade magazine to offer saturation coverage at all levels of the brand-activation process.

Catalyst
www.catalystwomen.org
Catalyst is a leading corporate research and advisory organization that works with businesses to build inclusive environments and expand professional opportunities for women.

Chief Marketer
www.chiefmarketer.com
A content-rich website, Chief Marketer provides marketing executives with insights into key marketing issues, innovations and practical solutions.

CPAdirectory
www.cpadirectory.com
When April rolls around and you find yourself scrambling to find a CPA, this site will help. Billed as “the largest online database of Certified Public Accountants,” here you can search for CPAs by ZIP code, name, industry or area of specialty.

Customer Service Group
www.customerservicegroup.com
New Jersey-based Alexander Communications Group (ACG) uses this site to provide practical information free of charge to customer service professionals. If you work in the customer service industry, be sure to sign up for Service Starters, ACG’s free customer service industry eNewsletter.

Customer Service Manager
www.customerservicemanager.com
If you work in customer service, this website is for you. Here you will find an active community of customer service professionals, along with daily news, reviews, articles and resources aimed at improving customer service.

Customer Service Zone
www.customerservicezone.com
Customer service expert Robert Bacal’s website for customer service professionals, The Zone offers information to help businesses of all sizes and their employees provide efficient and effective customer service.

Direct Marketing Association
www.the-dma.org
The Direct Marketing Association is the largest trade association for businesses that are interested and involved in direct, database and interactive global marketing. Here you can learn more about the DMA, become a member and access its services.

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Intellectual Property
www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property
EFF works to preserve balance and ensure that the internet and digital technologies empower consumers, creators, innovators, scholars, and average citizens. This section of the EFF website spotlights current challenges and solutions facing the intellectual property rights of everyone.

Entrepreneur.com / WomenEntrepreneur.com
www.entrepreneur.com/ womenentrepreneur.com
Published by the same people who bring you Entrepreneur magazine, this is an excellent site for entrepreneurs, featuring a solid collection of articles and tips from experts, plus hundreds of links to other entrepreneurial resources on the web. WomenEntrepreneur.com offers additional articles, blogs and resources specific to women for starting and growing their businesses.

Entrepreneur Connect
econnect.entrepreneur.com
Entrepreneur‘s social networking site is a gathering place for thousands of business owners. Take part in discussions, join like-minded business owners in groups, and give and receive valuable advice from the trenches.

Entrepreneur.com’s Trade Publication Directory
www.entrepreneur.com/tradepublication/category/index.html
Don’t miss one of the internet’s largest searchable databases of trade publications. From agriculture and biotech to purchasing and procurement, Entrepreneur.com has your industry’s trade publication listed here.

Fambiz.com
www.fambiz.com
Fambiz.com is the internet’s leading website for owners and employees of family controlled companies. Managed by Northeastern University’s Center for Family Business, here you will find insight on every family run business topic imaginable.

Federal Trade Commission: Franchise and Business Opportunities
www.ftc.gov/bcp/franchise/netfran.htm
This site has lots of information, including an FAQ section, Guide to the FTC Franchise Rule, consumer alerts, Before You Buy pamphlets, and state disclosure requirements.

Franchise.com
www.franchise.com
Learn more about available franchise opportunities or advertise your franchise to potential buyers at this site, which aims to connect franchise buyers and sellers, as well as anyone thinking of starting one.

Franchise Expo
www.franchiseexpo.com
If you’re thinking about buying a franchise, do your research here; you’ll find detailed information on nearly every franchising opportunity known to man.

Franchise Zone by Entrepreneur.com
http://www.entrepreneur.com/franchises
Dedicated to linking enthusiastic entrepreneurs with the top franchises, this site provides all the information you need to find the best franchises and become a successful franchisee. How-to articles, advice from experts and lists of the top franchises in various categories make this the first site to turn to for those considering the purchase of a franchise.

FreshBooks
www.freshbooks.com
FreshBooks is an online invoicing and time-tracking service that helps businesses of all sizes save time, get paid faster and look professional.

Fundability
www.fundability.com
Fundability is a marketplace where entrepreneurs and investors can find funding success. Founded by entrepreneurs and investors, Fundability’s Company SnapShot, Deal Search Engine, and DiligenceRoom provide intelligent online tools for the savvy entrepreneur.

Glide
www.glidedigital.com
Glide is a complete mobile desktop providing a secure and scalable platform for personal and collaborative computing.

Google Checkout
www.googlecheckout.com
This online payment system works alone or as an alternative to systems already in place. Customers don’t have to share credit card information with merchants that use the system, and identity protection is increased.

Google Docs
www.google.com/docs
The folks at Google deliver a free web-based word processor and spreadsheet, which allow you to share and collaborate online. Google Docs accepts most popular file formats, including DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, PPT, and more.

Hoover’s
www.hoovers.com

Hoover’s gives you access to up-to-date information about industries, companies and key decision makers. Great for professionals working in sales, marketing, business development, and others who need intelligence on U.S. and global companies, industries, and the people who lead them.

Idea Locker
www.bkfk.com
One of the best invention/patent sites on the Web for novice innovators of all ages, this site is specifically designed for kids. It provides information on how to invent, famous inventors and discoveries.

Internal Revenue Service
www.irs.gov
Business owners can get all of their federal and business tax information–not to mention forms–directly from the source. It’s also a good place to stay current on tax laws that affect business owners.

Jobfox
www.jobfox.com
Started by the former CEO of CareerBuilder.com, Jobfox walks you through creating a skills inventory and then tells you which employers are looking for people with those exact skills. The Jobfox site also provides a free trackable resume and career web page to showcase your skills, experience and work samples.

Kauffman Foundation
www.kauffman.org
The Kauffman Foundation delivers an up-to-date and relevant website dedicated to furthering our understanding of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship and to advancing entrepreneurship education and training. Check out the Resource Center for getting started information on business operations, sales and marketing, human resources, finance and accounting, and the like.

LinkedIn Jobs
www.linkedin.com/jobs
Whether you’re looking for a new job or trying to help someone else find the perfect job, LinkedIn can help you find and get in touch with the people you need to contact. Create a profile and click the Jobs tab to get started.

Microsoft Small Business Center
www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness
A vehicle for selling various Microsoft small-business products, this site also provides plenty of excellent information and advice entirely for free. If you’re starting or running your own small business, Microsoft’s Small Business Center is an excellent place to learn from the experts.

Mint
www.mint.com
Entrepreneurs can get help with the personal finances, money management and budget planning. In addition, Mint offers free financial planning software.

National Association for the Self-Employed
www.nase.org
The NASE provides its self-employed members with support, education and training. The organization conducts surveys relevant to the needs of the self-employed and posts articles business owners can use.

National Association of Women Business Owners
www.nawbo.org
NAWBO is a fierce advocate for women business owners, providing resources and support. It can help women get access to government contracts that most business owners don’t know about.

PayPal
www.paypal.com
Perhaps the best-known payment system, PayPal allows web sites to receive and send money electronically. Business owners and customers find PayPal easy to use–and secure.

Salesforce.com
www.salesforce.com
Easy-to-use web-based customer relation management tools for your entire company, including online solutions for sales, service, marketing, and call center operations.

Small Business Administration
www.sba.gov
Here you can learn how to start your own business and finance it. The site also provides information on business opportunities, local SBA offices, laws and regulations, and much more.

Survey of Current Business
www.bea.gov/scb
The monthly Survey of Current Business is the definitive source of information by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis about its economic accounts. Monthly updates present the latest national, international, regional, and industry estimates, and keep business leaders up to date on relevant BEA issues and initiatives.

Survey Monkey
www.surveymonkey.com
Put your finger on the pulse of your customers with this free basic service. Create and publish custom online surveys to gather data you can use.

TradePub.com
www.tradepub.com
If you’re looking for a trade publication, you’re likely to find it here. This site features an extensive list of free business, computer, and engineering trade newsletters and magazines, all of which you can subscribe to for free.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce
www.uschamber.com
Find your local branch, figure out how to start, learn about new taxes and much more at the national Chamber of Commerce site.

U.S. Copyright Office
www.copyright.gov
Find all of the forms, publications and information you need to copyright your original work.

U.S. Department of Labor: Office of Small Business Programs
www.dol.gov/osbp
The OSBP promotes opportunities for small businesses, especially disadvantaged businesses, women-owned businesses, HUBZone businesses and businesses owned by disabled veterans.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
www.uspto.gov
Official site for searching the U.S. patent database. Includes international treaties, statutes and patent news.

VentureDeal
www.venturedeal.com
Easy-to-use database with the latest information on U.S.-based venture-backed technology companies, senior management, company financings, and M&A transactions. Updated daily, this site offers a convenient way of accessing critical information related to business development, funding searches and venture capital investment goals.

VisualCV
www.visualcv.com
VisualCV reinvents your resume using technologies that transform the way in which resume data is presented, accessed and shared. VisualCV allows you to easily build and manage online career portfolios that come alive with informational keyword pop-ups, video, pictures and professional networking.

Wesabe
www.wesabe.com
The site offers financial advice, analysis and planning for business owners.

Word of Mouth Marketing Association
www.womma.org
Official website of WOMMA, where you can find the latest thinking on a variety of Web 2.0 marketing strategies, including word of mouth marketing.

Work.com
www.work.com
The small-business owner’s manual on where to go, what to know, and how to get the most value from the ever-growing array of web resources for business. The site features more than 2,000 how-to guides written by business experts and organized by common business tasks and challenges.

Women’s Work
www.wwork.com
Women’s Work is dedicated to helping women move from standard 9-to-5 jobs to flex careers–telecommuting, small business and other options. This site is packed with articles, advice, how-to guides, flexible career choices, and success stories to inspire and motivate.

Wufoo
www.wufoo.com
Wufoo is a web-based application that removes inefficiency and tediousness from the form-building process. Wufoo reduces what used to take trained professionals days (if not weeks) into something that can be done by anyone in minutes.

Yelp
www.yelp.com
Yelp provides a fun and engaging website for “passionate and opinionated influencers to share the experiences they’ve had with local businesses and services.” Watch out because “yelping” can be quite addictive.

Zimdesk
www.zimdesk.com
Zimdesk provides all the features and functionality you would expect from a standard desktop PC. The difference is that Zimdesk runs from an internet browser, allowing you to access all your applications, files, games and accessories from any computer.

Zoho
www.zoho.com
Zoho offers a suite of office productivity tools online, including a word processor, spreadsheet program, invoicing tool, presentation creator, web-conferencing functions and calendar organizers.

This list was compiled by the Entrepreneur.com staff, with a major assist from Mikal E. Belicove, author of the 2009 Internet Directory: Web 2.0 Edition.

[via Entrepreneur]

Fortune Magazine put together a list of the top 10 companies that have never laid anyone off. Great idea.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0901/gallery.no_layoffs.fortune/index.html

Rather than a heartfelt note, it’s always more fun to mark joyous/saddening occasions with a snarky message that cuts the recipient to the core — but how to crush them in a classy way? By taking the E out of your burning greetings, with Hard Cards.

Launched late last year by the most natural of duos, a Warner exec and a college professor, Hard Cards boast misleadingly earnest wishes on their fronts followed by cutting, anti-sentimental statements inside on simply designed, 100% recycled soy-ink-printed card stock — so you’ll feel good about helping the world while making others feel like the complete freaking losers they are. Occasion options run the gamut from birthdays to weddings, including these outside/inside highlights:

Sympathy: “I’m sorry you’re going through a rough time right now/but if you’d quit making s#itty decisions this wouldn’t happen.”

Holiday: “Happy Holidays/In lieu of a present, I donated money in your name to an orphanage in Guatemala. I bet you’re upset, but you can’t really say that because then you’d be a jerk who hated orphanages.”

Romance: “You’re so hot/I rarely imagine you’re someone else when we have sex.”

Hard’s constantly adding new cards, and’re talking about expanding to email greetings sometime in the future — for when you’ve surrendered all pretensions of classiness, and sure as hell aren’t buying a stamp.

Salute the snark at HardCardsRule.com

[via Thrillist]

Small companies are finding that almost everything is renegotiable these days.

The economic downturn is prompting business owners — by necessity or by opportunity — to re-examine contracts with suppliers, vendors or landlords and come up with creative deals. And in many cases, they are saving a substantial sum of money.

“Most of us grew up knowing that once you agree to something, you don’t back out of it,” says small-business consultant Bill Bartmann of Bill Bartmann Enterprises in Tulsa, Okla. “That rule doesn’t apply anymore.”

In a survey released in September of more than 1,000 small-business owners and managers, about 15% had recently renegotiated long-term fixed-cost supply contracts, according to the Small Business Research Board, a Buffalo Grove, Ill., publisher of the Small Business Confidence Index, which tracks overall business confidence and issues of small-business owners and managers.

One thing that certainly helps is having the cash to pay your bills on time. “If you’re a fast payer, you can negotiate lower rates with your vendors to help the other company, the company you’re paying to, with their cash position,” says Carl Gould, president of CMT International LLC, a small-business consulting and advising firm in Riverdale, N.J.

Atlanta Refrigeration was able to negotiate new jobs for four employees with a supplier. Above, a service manager checks on a pressure gauge.

Tom Long, an Oak Park, Ill., small-business consultant, said 10 of his dozen or so clients have negotiated discounts of 1% to 5% with at least one vendor for paying with cash or personal check, and usually within 10 days of a product or service’s delivery. Most have negotiated these deals in the past 30 days, he says.

“Conversely,” says Mr. Gould, “if you’re an extremely slow payer, sometimes you can get your monthly obligation lowered because of the financial position you find yourself in. The vendor will often accept that because they’re getting paid as opposed to writing off the entire obligation.”

Mr. Bartmann adds that “sadly, there are not many small-business owners flushed with excess cash right now.”

1800Diapers Inc.’s Diapers.com, which sells baby products, was able to use the fact that it had available capital to secure a better deal when it negotiated new leases for two of its warehouses. The Montclair, N.J.-based company was able to shorten the term of the new leases to two years from five, received more space and got conditions on flexibility that would allow it to lease more space if needed. The company wouldn’t disclose how much it saved in operating costs.

Sid Jaridly, chief executive of The Original Mr. Cabinet Care, an Anaheim, Calif., kitchen-remodeling company, saw the market contracting last year and decided to trim supply costs across the board.

Mr. Jaridly talked to about 40 or 50 vendors with the goal of getting a 10% to 15% price reduction from each. He said he got about 25 to 30 to agree to a discount or new deal, saving the company about 15% of total operating costs, or about $400,000 to $500,000, last year.

“We’ve been loyal with some of these vendors for decades and obviously, during an up cycle, we agreed to certain price increases,” Mr. Jaridly says. “During a down cycle, we expected them to also lower their costs.”

Thinknicity Inc., a San Francisco recruiting firm for the technology industry, in May set out to renegotiate its lease as part of an effort to slash overhead costs. In July, it worked out a new three-year lease with its landlord, reducing the space it leased to 3,000 square feet from 4,000 square feet.

But in the third quarter, Thinknicity had to cut back some more, so management decided to go back to the landlord for another round of renegotiations. Helga Grayson, chief financial and operations officer, says she told the building manager that her company’s revenue was down by 50% and it was prepared to walk away and find a smaller space.

A few weeks later, Thinknicity secured a new three-year lease for 1,700 square feet with rent of $3,500 a month, compared to the $5,100 per month it was paying for the 3,000 square feet.

Some small businesses are even negotiating on behalf of employees, as was the case with family-owned Atlanta Refrigeration Service Co. Dave Brautigan, chief operating officer, in November approached a major supplier, Heritage Food Service Equipment Inc., asking it to take on four Atlanta Refrigeration employees whose job it was to acquire parts for the commercial refrigeration and air-conditioning company. In return, Heritage would become the only supplier for Atlanta Refrigeration, which also would be willing to pay more for parts like thermostats and motors.

The result: Atlanta Refrigeration was able to save more than $250,000 in payroll and benefits costs. And Heritage, of Fort Wayne, Ind., was now poised to gain $1 million in business from Atlanta Refrigeration.

“It has made our relationship with that contractor better,” says Mr. Brautigan. “Because these people used to be employed by me, they know the unique urgency and the systems that we have in place.”

At first, Dave Morris, vice president of Heritage, wasn’t sold on Mr. Brautigan’s presentation, but was convinced when the talk turned to how much more business Heritage could get. “As they grow their core business, as their supplier, our volume goes up with them,” Mr. Morris says. Atlanta Refrigeration generates $12 million a year in revenue and has about 100 employees.

Some companies have found that negotiating better terms sometimes isn’t enough, however. Take New York-based Proximo Consulting Services Inc., an information-technology consulting company in New York that has been feeling the cutbacks from its large clients.

“Being a small company, there’s a lot less fat to cut when you’re looking at making cost cuts,” says David Ricciardi, president of the 25-employee company. “It’s not like I can lay off 1,000 people.”

In April, Proximo was set to stop outsourcing hardware and network support and bring the work in-house. But the vendor, New York-based Perry Technology Group Inc., a technology consulting-services company that monitored servers for Proximo for about four years, came back with another suggestion: Keep us on until the end of the year, but for monitoring of only half of Promixo’s 32 servers. That would lower the contract’s cost to $1,400 per month from $4,000.

Proximo agreed and internal staff began monitoring the other servers. Perry “understood the situation and were very willing to work with us to do that,” Mr. Ricciardi says.

Still, in December Proximo ended the provisionary contract altogether because the company couldn’t afford it anymore. Mr. Ricciardi says when business swings up again, he’ll definitely consider bringing back Perry as a vendor.

[via WSJ Small Business] by Raymund Flandez at raymund.flandez@wsj.com

Laid off in the recession and thinking of starting a business? Or just tired of working for someone else?

It’s hard to start a business alone. Aspiring entrepreneurs must tackle an onslaught of questions like what and where to sell, how to effectively market their product or service, how to structure their business — even whether going solo is the best option for them.

There’s no shortage of advice and resources for fledgling entrepreneurs. In fact, the biggest problem is figuring out whom to trust and what resources will be most useful. That involves scouting out what’s available and judging what is worth pursuing. Yes, it’s time-consuming. But one good piece of advice or personal connection can make or break your chance at success.

Here’s a look at some possible places for new entrepreneurs to turn.

Development Centers

Partially funded by the federal government, Small Business Development Centers provide free counseling and help on a full range of issues such as business planning, financing and site location. There are about 900 SBDCs, spread across all 50 states.

The centers employ full-time business counselors, typically former entrepreneurs or M.B.A. graduates, who are well-networked and meet one-on-one with entrepreneurs or direct them to other services and professionals that can help, says Don Wilson of the Association of Small Business Development Centers in Burke, Va.

“Sometimes the most valuable service we offer is telling someone their idea isn’t going to work,” he says.

Many SBDCs host courses, such as FastTrac, an entrepreneurship exploration and planning program developed by the Kauffman Foundation, an entrepreneurship research and advocacy organization. Some SBDCs partner with local business incubators that offer free and low-cost office space and resources.

To find the nearest SBDC, go to asbdc-us.org on the Web.

Score

Need a business mentor with very specific experience or expertise? You might try Score, a nonprofit group of volunteer business executives who counsel entrepreneurs; it’s loosely affiliated with the Small Business Administration.

There are about 11,000 Score volunteers nationwide and 389 offices. The volunteers mentor entrepreneurs long-term or just help with a specific question or need. People who don’t live near a Score chapter can pose questions to a counselor via email at Score.org.

A search tool on the homepage lets users find counselors in their geographic area or with a specific area of expertise. You can read detailed descriptions of the counselors’ professional backgrounds to pick one that suits your needs.

Campus Help

Universities are eager to give students real-world experience in a host of entrepreneurial exercises, including feasibility analysis, business planning and market research. They do so by providing free and low-cost help to local entrepreneurs.

For instance, law students at the University of San Diego advise local businesses pro bono on legal matters such as business incorporation and getting licenses and permits. For $500 to $1,500, student teams at St. Louis University will conduct a feasibility analysis or help write a business plan. Local entrepreneurs also can get their product or service ideas evaluated in the school’s Idea to Product Competition.

Call your local universities’ entrepreneurship programs or business schools, or check their Web sites, to see what services they offer local businesses.

Other Entrepreneurs

An often-overlooked resource for new entrepreneurs is other successful business owners in their fields. Someone looking to start a business should compile a list of the five “smartest” minds in the industry and try to meet with those people face-to-face, says Bo Fishback, vice president of entrepreneurship for the Kauffman Foundation.

“If you think you’ve figured out a place where you can leverage some great value, go to talk to people in the space,” he says. These entrepreneurs — assuming they’re willing to meet with you — can answer questions about the industry and what it’s like running such a business. “The best things that come out of this meeting are introductions to other people who might be interested in helping you,” Mr. Fishback adds. “It’s a very self-directed kind of school.”

Networking Groups

Starting a business can be a lonely experience — if you do it alone. Meeting other entrepreneurs who are in your town, or have similar experiences and problems, can be both therapeutic and educational.

Pretty much any city or small town in the U.S. has a Chamber of Commerce or other business group that hosts networking events, seminars and other resources for entrepreneurs. You also can find groups of business owners in your area on Web sites like MeetUp.com.

More and more business networking is actually taking place online. Though you might not form as close a relationship that way, you are more likely to find people in your industry to share experiences with.

Social-networking sites for start-ups include Sta.rtup.biz, StartupNation.com and Biznik.com. Other sites, such as MicroMentor.org, IdeaCrossing.org, PartnerUp.com and GoBigNetwork.com, can help match entrepreneurs with a business mentor, or even a potential investor.

[via WSJ Small Business] by Kelly Spors

In 2009, the job market will be full of contrasts: some industries will be eviscerated while others face shortages of workers. The good news is that despite the recession, there are still real jobs to be had. The bad news is that you may have to change fields to find one.

The trick to job hunting in 2009 will be to figure out how your skill-set can translate across industries, says Elaine Varelas, a managing partner at Boston-based outplacement firm Keystone Partners, so that you’re not confined to searching one sector of the economy. “People are frustrated because it’s taking them a while to assess the job market,” she says. “They’ll have to figure out other things they can do and want to do.” Successful job-seekers will be the ones who can figure out how to take skills learned in one kind of job and translate them into assets in others.

Here are the top eight areas where work can be found in 2009:

1) Nursing & Medical Services

Perhaps the best bet in 2009: Becoming a registered nurse or medical technician. With over 50,000 new nursing jobs to be created this year alone, med techs and nurses will have their pick of jobs and salaries, the latter averaging about $57,000 per year.

Social services jobs will see a boom too, as a swelling number of retirees check-in for medical care, says the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report. But not all health care jobs will see equal growth. “The growth here will be more about the services and delivery people–nurses and technicians–than administrators,” Varelas explains. “Hourly workers interested in changing roles should get into any role that services the elderly,” she suggests.

2) Computing & Engineering

Computer-related jobs are projected to grow by more than 20 percent in the next decade, and 2009 will be no exception. Software engineering is particularly in demand, with network systems and data communications analysis also booming. These jobs also had some of the highest median salaries in 2006, according to the BLS, with computer software engineers earning a median income of $79,000 a year.

These positions are expected to grow at nearly double the rate of other types of jobs, but that won’t last forever. “As the software industry matures, and as routine work is increasingly outsourced abroad,” fewer computing jobs will be available in the next decade, the BLS notes.

But for now, technology workers are still in high demand, says Varelas. Most of the open positions will be found at smaller companies, where employers will be looking for a versatile, multi-faceted worker that can fill more than one role. “You have to be a business person who’s also a tech person,” to be an ideal candidate, Varelas explains. That could give an advantage to seasoned workers over recent grads.

3) Education

“To a great extent, education is recession proof,” says Roy Krause, President and CEO of recruiting and staffing company Spherion. In 2009, roughly 38,000 of our economy’s new jobs will be created in colleges and universities nationwide. As more students wait out the recession in college and graduate programs, the need for teachers, administrators, assistants and other staff will expand.

The demand for primary and secondary-school teachers will be booming as well. “There always seems to be a shortage there,” says Krause. Some of the most in-demand teaching roles will prepare workers for the most in-demand jobs. “There are literally not enough educational programs to generate the volume of health-care workers we’ll need,” Varelas explains. As high schools and universities expand to meet demand for nurses, computer engineers and teachers, the demand for teachers and professors will grow commensurately.

Post-secondary teachers can expect a media salary of about $56,000, according to the BLS, while kindergarten through 12th grade teachers can expect between $43,000 and $48,000.

4) Green Jobs

So-called “green” jobs haven’t been measured in BLS reports to date, but some experts have predicted they’ll shake up the list of the fastest-growing jobs before the end of the decade. “More and more companies are adding dedicated staff to focus their environmental efforts,” says Alison Doyle, About.com’s Guide to Job Searching. Green jobs are arriving in two breeds, she explains: some will be at specialized firms that reduce human environmental impact, like environmental consultancies; others will simply be jobs at environmentally-friendly companies looking to improve their eco-image by hiring specialized “green” officers to audit and improve the company’s environmental impact.

But the recession might slow the corporate world’s eco-makeover, as many companies’ transition to green-hood is delayed by financial problems. To see any growth in green job demand, we’ll also need to see some “very creative new organizations,” Varelas explains. Upstart green-services companies may be hiring, she says, but otherwise this sector will be what she describes as a “slow-growth industry: high demand but high competition.”

Companies that can afford to go green will hire staffers like Traceability Managers, who will examine global supply chains and check for suppliers that might be excessively pollutive or carbon-costly to buy from. Environmental consultancies will seek to hire engineers or architects who are LEED-accredited, understand HVAC systems and can help guide developers through the LEED approval process for their buildings.

5) Energy

“There’s a big buzz on campus about renewable energy,” says Chris Higgins, Senior Associate Director of Career Management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Outgoing students are particularly interested in startup companies, he says. “Biofuels seem to be the biggest area of investment.” Those venture-backed businesses should still be in good shape to hire in 2009, since they are more insulated from the broader economy.

“Obama’s talking a lot about green initiatives, so alternative fuels are going to be big,” agrees Spherion CEO Krause. But those renewable energy jobs might also see a glut of interest from workers in traditional energy, thanks in part to increasing volatility and competitiveness in the market for oil and gas jobs that has resulted from wild oil-price fluctuations. “We’re seeing a slowdown in Texas and Canada,” Varelas says of North America’s two biggest oil-producing areas. Workers in the energy industry have very specific skill-sets and knowledge that don’t translate well to other industries, she notes. She predicts that many of these workers may “be jumping at a green energy job” if they have the opportunity.

6) Infrastructure

With the president-elect vowing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on internal improvements like roads, bridges, broadband infrastructure and financial oversight, some experts are predicting niche job booms. “We work with a couple of companies that build bridges, and they’re expecting a lot more business.” says Krause.

Financiers might also find new lives as a part of the government’s new regulatory apparatus, which will need auditors, accountants and compliance officers. Obama’s energy-independence programs will also require electrical and mechanical engineers, grid managers, biofuel chemists, and civil engineers. Electrical, mechanical, chemical and civil engineers made median salaries of about between $68,000-$79,000 in 2006, according to the BLS Median salaries for power plant operators were about $55,000, or about $70,000 for operators at nuclear power facilities.

7) The New Finance

Financiers should prepare to be especially flexible in 2009. “Those people will need to take a look at reinventing themselves. They’ll have to figure out where else they can use their skills, and move into other industries,” Varelas says. For many bankers, that will mean applying their middle or back-office operations knowledge in other businesses. How long before they can move back into their former careers? “This consolidation is going to be long Ð at least three-to-five years,” Varelas says.

But don’t discount finance yet. “We’ll simply see shifts. There will be a shift from originating mortgages, for example, to collecting on them,” Krause explains. “If interest rates go down to 4.5%, you’ll also see a lot of refinancing.” This will require underwriters, actuaries, and administrators.

For financial workers switching fields, an initial pay cut may come with the transition. A financial analyst who made the median 2006 income of about $66,000 and decides to become, say, a commercial loan officer will probably net about $10,000 less in 2006 dollars. However, after three years of experience, that loan officer’s salary would jump to between $61,000 and $100,000, according to the BLS.

Self-Employment & Small Business

Replacing farmers in the self-employment demographic are growing numbers of people “who don’t want to be employees anymore,” says Katy Piotrowski, a career counselor and author of The Career Coward’s Guide to Changing Careers. “I’m seeing a lot of people buying franchises, or setting up arrangements that involve multiple online businesses,” she says.

As a career counselor who assists adults interested in mid-life career switches, Piotrowski reports growing numbers of workers “trying to escape the desk job format.” Experienced career jumpers are also wary of taking new positions that promise little job security Ð jobs Piotrowski likens to “black holes” of employment. Top prospects for small businesses will be Internet companies that can get funding while the venture market is still well capitalized, as well as green consultancies and international sales, which could benefit from the volume generated by a weak dollar.

The BLS does not calculate income estimates for self-employed workers of any kind.

9) Retirement, Reconsidered

The BLS says that over the next ten years, “the need to replace workers who leave a field permanently is expected to create more openings than growth will.” But with retirement accounts losing value, many baby boomers could postpone leaving. Could this affect turnover?

“This recession will delay retirement, but not the traditional way,” says Krause. “Retirees will come back into the workforce on contract or part-time basis, but not keep their old positions.” Because longevity means larger salaries and a lower cost-basis, companies will still pressure older workers to retire, but will also need their experience to weather a recession not equaled in decades. If retirement is your next stop, look for firms where your wisdom could be useful on retainer.

10) Telecommuting

The first quarter of the year will be rough for job-seekers. But the upside will be more employer flexibility. “Candidates will have to market themselves,” says Krause, “but more employers are open to job sharing and telecommuting as gas prices fluctuate and there is more emphasis on getting the candidate with the right suite of skills.” Which means that it’s wise to expand your geographical search, and inquire about whether working from home on a part-time basis is an option, regardless of the job you are seeking.

“What’s heartening,” Krause says of the incoming administration, “is that there’s a recognition that there’s a problem.” If the president-elect’s stimulus package works as intended, American job-seekers could see the creation and preservation of about 2.5 million jobs before 2010.

[via Fast Company] by Chris Dannen

In November, not two weeks after winning the election and still two months from becoming commander in chief, Barack Obama brought the government into the 21st century. Or at least that was what we were told when he released his first Web video address as president-elect. The clip, billed by some as a modern fireside chat, was embedded as a YouTube video on Change.gov, the incoming administration’s Web site. Sitting in a leather chair, framed slightly off center from his chest up, Obama delivered a three-minute talk on the economic crisis, vlog style.

The video quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of views, and within a few days hundreds of blogs were linking to it. Obama’s foray into viral video, the story went, heralded the beginning of a new era in government communication and transparency—”Franklin Roosevelt 2.0,” in the words of The Huffington Post. The Washington Post proclaimed the advent of the “YouTube presidency.”

1 million:
The number of views received by Obama’s first YouTube address as president-elect.

It wasn’t long, however, before savvy observers noted what was missing from this and other Obama videos: the chance for ordinary citizens to talk back. The campaign initially disabled the comment function on YouTube and prevented response videos from appearing alongside. A YouTube video without comments, some pundits groused, is more like a monologue than a chat, fireside or not. “I don’t see how one-way messages provide any more transparency for the work of the White House or government than the current old-style radio addresses,” blogged Ellen Miller, director of the Sunlight Foundation, a government-transparency watchdog group. “Is Obama ready,” challenged TechCrunch, “to be a two-way president?”

Of course, Obama’s transition team had good reasons for disabling responses. For starters, YouTube comments are typically the intellectual equivalent of truck-stop graffiti. (When the team belatedly allowed comments a couple of weeks later, the site was flooded with insights like “USA susks.”) Also, his team would have zero control over the potentially critical or embarrassing response videos that users would post next to the address. The real reason, however, was that Obama wasn’t actually trying to have a conversation with Americans via YouTube. Like every president before him, he was simply harnessing the latest tools to talk to them, one-way.

Technophiles who watched the campaign closely expected more, and now they are putting pressure on the White House to govern with unparalleled transparency and citizen interaction. Dan Froomkin of the Niemen Watchdog Journalism Project and The Washington Post summed up expectations in a blog post calling for Obama to embrace “wiki culture” in which “major policy proposals have public collaborative workspaces.”

150,000+ subscribers
follow Obama’s Twitter feed.

0 tweets
have been posted by Obama staffers since the election.

Obama has himself to blame for raising such expectations. During the campaign, he embraced every form of social media. At My.BarackObama.com, supporters could create profiles, talk to each other, and—by election day—plan some 200,000 offline dinners and living room fund-raisers. Users could log in from home to get lists of swing-state voters to telephone; this generated 3 million calls in the final four days of the race. Those efforts were combined with massive database-crunching to identify potential voters who could be approached door-to-door by last-minute canvassers, myself included.

As for John McCain’s efforts, well, he didn’t really have any. According to Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry, cofounders of the Personal Democracy Forum and the blog TechPresident, Obama had four times the number of Facebook supporters, 24 times the Twitter devotees, and three times the visitors to his site in the final campaign week. The public watched about 15 million hours of Obama campaign videos on YouTube. Along the way, Obama collected 13 million email addresses, more than a million cell phone numbers, and a half-billion dollars in online donations.

There’s also another reason to expect a tech-driven presidency: Obama promised it. He said he would expand government transparency by putting more data up on the Web, streaming meetings live, and letting the public comment on most legislation for five days before he signs it. He said he would bring blogs, wikis, and social networking tools with him into the executive branch—all overseen by a new national chief technology officer. Indeed, Obama’s transition site, Change.gov, offers glimmers of a potential digital presidency with its YouTube addresses, issue-based discussion forums, and inside-the-transition videos featuring future cabinet members responding to comments.

But turning his innovative campaign and transition into Government 2.0 won’t be easy. The nimble Obama startup is about to be absorbed into a stodgy, technologically backward behemoth: the federal government. Ahead are bureaucratic obstacles the campaign never imagined, along with the political land mines that transparency brings. Obama will have to preserve the enthusiasm of his supporters while engaging the larger group of people who either didn’t vote for him or didn’t vote at all. His task is to rebuild the personal connection that supporters felt they had with Obama the candidate, assuring them that he is listening to them—without being deafened by the cacophony. If he can do that, Obama can alter how the government engages its citizenry and accomplish what he really cares about: his own policy goals.

Building that intimacy from the Oval Office will be a delicate and complex task, and just letting “AcidTrout” respond to a YouTube address with “Who’s the black guy?!?” isn’t going to do it. “One of the things that gives me ulcers is that there are a lot of high expectations,” says an Obama aide. “But we’re going to have to change how government thinks about the Internet before we can do the things we want to do.”

500+ PDFs
submitted by third parties for viewing and public comment are available on Change.gov.

Still, Macon Phillips, the campaign’s deputy director of new media, who has served in a similar role for the transition, warns: “Day one is going to be a lot different than perhaps day 100.”

The basement of the General Services Administration building in Washington, with its maze of identical hallways and frosted glass doors, reeks of generic federal bureaucracy. But if the new administration plans to reboot the system, it will find a pair of guides here in Bev Godwin and Sheila Campbell, cheerful doyens of the executive branch’s Web strategy. Godwin, director of USA.gov, the federal government’s all-purpose information Web portal, and Campbell, head of the government’s Web Best Practices Team, know every manacle and chain shackling the government to the 20th century. In a drab conference room one afternoon in late November, they discussed their optimism—and detailed their concerns.

For starters, the federal government operates more than 24,000 separate sites, many of them years out of date. “Nobody stepped back and asked strategically, how do we do this?” Godwin says. “Whenever there is a new initiative or program, they put up a new Web site.” And the first thing they usually do on that site, she says, is post a bandwidth-hogging picture of the bureaucrat in charge.

3,701 comments
on health care were submitted online to secretary of health and human services designate Tom Daschle.

Godwin and Campbell have been pushing government agencies to treat citizens more like customers, rebuilding their sites to help visitors do things like find loans or obtain passports—rather than serve as static repositories for press releases and personnel photos. “At Housing and Urban Development, for example, one of the missions is to reduce homelessness,” Godwin says. “If you go to HUD.gov, can you find shelter? The answer is no.” If the government can improve itself in these little ways, they say, great. Don’t worry about trying wild stuff, like setting up federal social networks. Many agencies bar employees from even looking at sites like Facebook at work, much less building their own versions.

Progress has been achingly slow. There have been some notable exceptions—like a blog on the Transportation Security Administration Web site, open to comments and manned by five agency staffers, and NASA.gov’s numerous social media initiatives, including Twitter feeds from 20 missions and projects. But the successes are rare and isolated. “We know that there are a lot of people advocating for more open government,” Godwin says. “We’re saying, absolutely, put the data out there. But I think we have to be realistic.”

For example, many of Obama’s online campaign techniques would be impeded by a collection of obscure and well-intentioned rules. Amendments to the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, for example, require that all government Web content be made reasonably accessible—in real time—to disabled users. Also, six months of negotiations between the General Services Administration and Google to establish a federal YouTube channel have stalled over similarly intricate legal issues. Meanwhile, a Clinton-era law called the Paperwork Reduction Act requires that an agency undergo a laborious approval process any time it “surveys” more than 10 people. The result: “Agencies tend to avoid doing these kind of surveys,” Godwin says. Would having users submit information to a social network or wiki count as a survey? Nobody knows.

20.3 million:
The number of visits to Obama’s YouTube channel since its September 2006 launch.

Even triumphs like Obama’s 2006 Google for Government bill, cosponsored with Republican senator Tom Coburn, have been caught up in red tape. The bill led to the creation of FedSpending.org, a site allowing the public to track federal contracts and grants. Instead of building it in-house, the Office of Management and Budget decided to license something similar from a nonprofit watchdog group, OMB Watch—for just 4 percent of what the government had expected to spend. It was a striking victory for government efficiency, but the process behind the scenes “was extremely difficult,” says Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch. After floating the idea of donating the system to OMB (“the government can’t take things for free,” Bass quickly learned), the nonprofit had to sign on as a subcontractor and undergo three rounds, and six wasted months, of bidding before the deal was complete.

Changes to what is effectively the president’s homepage, WhiteHouse.gov, will encounter similar obstacles. David Almacy, a PR executive and new media consultant at Waggener Edstrom who served as the Bush administration’s White House Internet director from 2005 to 2007, recalls that following Hurricane Katrina, he posted the transcript of a speech to the site. In the text, where Bush had directed people to Redcross.org, Almacy helpfully inserted a hyperlink. “Within a few hours,” Almacy says, “I got a call from the White House general counsel’s office saying I needed to take out the link.” Some federal government Web pages, it turns out, are virtually barred from linking to nongovernmental sites to avoid the appearance of endorsing one product or organization over another.

The incoming administration is still working to assess the implications of the Presidential Records Act, the post-Nixon legislation requiring the preservation of all White House written communications. But that means that once any page goes up on the White House site, it can’t be altered, only archived and replaced, greatly slowing down the process of modifying and enhancing pages.

The Obama team was able to sidestep these kinds of troublesome rules on Change.gov, in part because, as a quasi-governmental site, it’s not subject to executive-branch restrictions. They were able to post videos on YouTube, link to outside sites, and even publish content under a Creative Commons license, allowing it to be freely shared.

24,000 Web sites
are operated by the US government.

When he does arrive at the White House, Obama or his CTO can lift some of the Internet restrictions with the stroke of a pen. Others will require congressional action or clever technology.

Even if Obama’s tech team gets a free hand to rework the federal webosphere, things can still go awry. Take the 2006 race of Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. Both David Axelrod, Obama’s top campaign strategist, and David Plouffe, his campaign manager, worked for Patrick, a little-known candidate who used Internet-driven grassroots support to win. In a precursor to My.BarackObama .com, the Patrick campaign placed the state’s voter list on its Web site, allowing its supporters to download phone numbers and call neighbors. “We believed in people’s ability to organize themselves and get involved,” says Charles SteelFisher, who ran the campaign’s Web operation.

No We Can’t

Barack Obama wants to transform the way the White House connects with the public. But there are plenty of obstacles standing in his way. After the election, the governor’s team launched DevalPatrick.com to keep supporters engaged. On a MyIssue page, registered commenters could propose, comment on, and vote for legislative ideas.

But the administration was immediately blasted when a database feature designed to verify Massachusetts residency was alleged (incorrectly) to reveal unlisted phone numbers. The privacy flap lured a collection of trolls and conspiracy theorists to the site, crowding out earnest discussion on gambling bills and income taxes with 9/11 chatter and religious debates. Critics, meanwhile, said that Patrick’s efforts were less about engaging the public than about running a permanent online campaign.

Eventually Patrick’s Web site recovered, developing a more sophisticated way of moderating comments and creating forums around the governor’s plans to reduce property taxes and add public kindergarten programs. The site also allowed people to create grassroots communities to work on issues they cared about. Still, the public isn’t exactly burning up the site: The leading vote-getter, a bill to promote fathers’ custody rights in divorce cases, had just 1,100 tallies as of mid-December. Offshore wind power, meanwhile, was losing, 16 votes to 15.

Obama’s team has moved carefully as it transitions from campaigning to governing. Between two wars and an economy in shambles, building an Oval Office social network has not topped the priority list. “Day one, do we need a White House My.BarackObama? I don’t think so,” says the Obama aide, who was required by the transition press office to speak anonymously. “It’s more important to step back and ask, what are the goals for the White House? And I think that making the government more accountable and transparent is more important than getting people to act.”

To that end, the transition team served up small accountability stuff first. Change .gov supplemented Obama’s weekly YouTube addresses with periodic videos from inside the transition process, everything from staff meetings to vlog-type updates from advisers. In early December, Obama’s public director of liaison and intergovernmental affairs announced—via video—a Change.gov feature called Your Seat at the Table, through which the transition would post every document received from every interest group and outside person throwing it advice. Users were allowed to comment next to the documents, while the Open for Questions feature let them submit and vote on questions for the transition team. The latter experiment illustrated the double-edged nature of feedback when the Senate-seat-selling scandal involving Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich broke. Supporters began flagging related questions “inappropriate,” and then Obama staffers buried the queries. ABCNews.com jumped on the story and the apparent hypocrisy. Obama Transition Web Site ‘Open for Questions’—Except on Blagojevich read the headline.

Change.gov does feature some Slashdot-like issue forums where user rankings send the most popular comments to the top. The first forum, in which two staffers appeared in a short video on health care policy and asked for comments, garnered thousands of horror stories and policy prescriptions. A week later, one of the staffers reappeared with future health and human services secretary Tom Daschle in a rehearsed-looking YouTube video response. “We are just so pleased that so many of you have written in,” Daschle said, appearing extra-pleased. “I spent a lot of the weekend actually reading the comments … We want to make sure that you understand how important those comments and your contributions are.” The comments the pair selected to discuss, however, seemed serendipitously aligned with Obama’s proposed initiatives.

550,000 responses
came in from supporters after Obama adviser David Plouffe requested feedback about the campaign.

In other words, with everything he’s done so far, Obama has been acknowledging feedback but not necessarily heeding it. And that’s what we can expect from Obama’s plan to post all pending nonemergency legislation online and allow the public to comment for five days before he acts on it. By mid-December, technology advisers were still struggling to determine the best way to implement the idea. The bigger question is, what will it accomplish? Even the system’s own architects concede that it’s unlikely that online comments and voting will sway the decision to sign or veto.

Nor should it. The Obama team, for all its Web enthusiasm, recognizes that an online community—no matter how vibrant—doesn’t represent all of the American public. “A lot of people consider online interactions and communications as representative of Americans. But we have a lot more high-speed Internet lines to drop before that’s true,” the Obama aide says. And even with ubiquitous broadband, online voting would remain the ultimate in self-selected polling. There’s no reason to believe that commenters would reflect Americans as a whole or even that they’d be Americans at all. Citizens also may not be as interested in the daily machinery of Obama’s workaday government as they were in his novel campaign. Case in point: By mid-December, views of Obama’s weekly YouTube address had dropped by half.

Still, the new administration wants to be able to marshal its supporters to act. Obama himself suggested as much last April. “Our database has a couple million people on there who are activated and inspired,” he told a small group in Indianapolis. “And so what I want to do is to continue that after the election.” In mid-November, Plouffe sent out a series of emails to supporters. The first directed them to a detailed survey of their campaign experience and policy interests and told them, “It’s up to you to decide how we move forward.” Later, a Plouffe missive declared that “you’ll be instrumental in generating support to pass legislation that puts America on the road to recovery.” At a closed-door meeting with its leading activists in Chicago in December, the Obama team took it a step further and told activists to be ready to pressure Congress on economic stimulus, health care, and energy legislation. A couple of weeks later, the campaign encouraged its supporters to organize “change is coming” get-togethers to discuss the future of the Obama movement, online and off.

Obama doesn’t want his 13 million-name email list to serve as just another political interest group. He needs it to be a tool to keep people engaged with his politics and policies. “Even if you push through the best government programs,” says Michael Cornfield, a political-science professor at George Washington University, “it’s hard to solve the actual problems” without effort from regular people. A national health care plan, for example, will work a whole lot better if former precinct captains are willing to explain it to their neighbors, just as they explained how to get to the polls. And a presidential Twitter feed, Flickr photos, or WhiteHouse.gov video Q&A sessions may not vastly increase transparency or deeply inform policy, but they create a valuable intimacy with citizens. “People who think they are being listened to tend to respect more the person talking,” says Rasiej.

That may not sound like a big deal. But contrary to what Web evangelists and the incoming administration would like to believe, Obama’s campaign was never a bottom-up endeavor. The incoming president didn’t crowdsource his view on the Iraq war or use Digg to determine how to allocate campaign dollars. He ran one of the most tightly controlled, top-down campaigns in modern history, to the point of pressuring outside advocacy groups not to advertise on his behalf. Rather, he asked his supporters for money and inspired them to get involved, giving them the tools to organize themselves and a message to sign on to.

Instead of turning WhiteHouse.gov into a governmental synthesis of Facebook and Wikipedia, or running a permanent campaign off the White House email list, Obama’s best shot at rebooting the government is to remember how he got there: making people feel that they were part of the solution and then enabling them to talk to one another and take action. “There is a relationship between Barack Obama and each individual, and that’s multiplied tens of millions of times over,” says Joe Rospars, the campaign’s director of new media. “But there are also millions and millions of relationships between our supporters. Both of those kinds of relationships didn’t end on Election Day.”

[via WIRED] by Evan Ratliff

The U.S. Small Business Administration is offering Web chats to help small businesses across the country weather the recession.

President-elect wants to computerize the nation’s health care records in five years. But the plan comes with a hefty price tag, and specialized labor is scarce.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — President-elect Barack Obama, as part of the effort to revive the economy, has proposed a massive effort to modernize health care by making all health records standardized and electronic.

Here’s the audacious plan: Computerize all health records within five years. The quality of health care for all Americans gets a big boost, and costs decline.

Sounds good. But it won’t be easy.

In fact, many hurdles stand in the way. Only about 8% of the nation’s 5,000 hospitals and 17% of its 800,000 physicians currently use the kind of common computerized record-keeping systems that Obama envisions for the whole nation. And some experts say that serious concerns about patient privacy must be addressed first. Finally, the country suffers a dearth of skilled workers necessary to build and implement the necessary technology.

“The hard part of this is that we can’t just drop a computer on every doctor’s desk,” said Dr. David Brailer, former National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, who served as President Bush’s health information czar from 2004 to 2006. “Getting electronic records up and running is a very technical task.”

It also won’t come cheap. Independent studies from Harvard, RAND and the Commonwealth Fund have shown that such a plan could cost at least $75 billion to $100 billion over the ten years they think the hospitals would need to implement program.

That’s a huge amount of money — since the total cost of the stimulus plan is estimated to cost about $800 billion, the health care initiative would be one of the priciest parts to the plan.

The biggest cost will be paying and training the labor force needed to create the network. Luis Castillo, senior vice president of Siemens Healthcare, a company that designs health care technology, said the laborers will have the extremely difficult task of designing a a system that “thinks like a physician.”

“Doctors cannot spend hours and hours learning a new system,” said Castillo. “It needs to be a ubiquitous, ‘anytime, anywhere’ solution that has easily accessible data in a simple-to-use Web-based application.”

But highly skilled health information technology professionals are as rare as they come, and many IT workers will need to be trained as health technology experts.

Early government estimates showed about 212,000 jobs could be created from this program, but Brailer said there simply aren’t that many Americans who are qualified.

Furthermore, ensuring the privacy of patients’ records in a nationalized computer network will be tricky. There are obvious concerns about hackers and system failures. And new online health record systems, such as Google Health are not currently subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the national health privacy law.

“HIPAA was never intended for the digital age, because the laws never anticipated the emergence of Web-based records,” said Brailer. “Congress can pass one of numerous policy proposals for change, it’s just a question if they have the will to do that.”

The Obama transition operation declined a request to elaborate on Obama’s proposal. The president-elect said Thursday in a speech on the economy thatthe benefits of a modernized national health record system go beyond just cost savings.

“This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests,” said Obama. “It just won’t save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs — it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health care system,” he added.

Still, compared to the $2 trillion a year that the industry spends, the$100 billion experts say it may cost to implement Obama’s planis a drop in the bucket.

“We must reduce waste to become more efficient” said Brailer.

The savings of such a plan could be substantial. Brailer estimates that a fully computerized health record system could save the industry $200 billion to $300 billion a year.

That could ultimately slow the rapid rise of health care premiums, which have cut into Americans’ paychecks. While wages are rising at a rate of around 3% a year, health care costs are growing at about three times that rate.

“Obama’s support for electronic medical records is one of the key efforts of health reform that actually will deliver lower costs for hard-working American families,” said Larry McNeely, a health care advocate at U.S. Public Interest Research Group. “Long-term savings can’t happen unless we have 21st century health information technology.”

Massachusetts has developed a plan to fully computerize records at its 14,000 physicians’ offices by 2012 and its 63 hospitals by 2014. After a pilot program, the state legislature estimates it will cost about $340 million to build the statewide computer system, with a cost of about $2 million per hospital.

“[Obama's] timeframe is very ambitious, but there is a need to be able to track data on patients and talk across providers and health care systems,” said Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, Secretary of Health and Human Services for Massachusetts. “The program will allow for greater patient safety.”

Some say some of the hard work has begun. The Bush administration laid much of the groundwork for the program, leading to several pilot programs in a handful of states, as well as a standardization of medical records.

“The whole structure has already been developed,” said Stephen Schoenbaum, executive director of The Commonwealth Fund’s commission on a high performance health system. “It’s feasible to at least make a lot of progress on this in the next five years.”

[via CNN Money] by David Goldman