Life at Silicon Valley’s most famous research center: A tech geek's uptopia. BoingBoing looks as the painstakingly cultivated culture of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). In the 14-acre facility, every employee has his or her own office with a view of the courtyard or the Palo Alto Hills. Privacy in the common areas was also ensured with the entire building divided into pods, each with its own feel. Biz dev director YF Juan tells BoingBoing that the PARC inhabitants are divided into “celebrity geeks” like Van Jacobsen who wrote the TCP stack for the internet protocol and the “default geeks” who specialize in a particular subject. Just how geeky are they? On February 13, 2009 at 3:31:30PM the number of seconds since the day that UNIX time was created became 1234567890. The PARC had a party to celebrate. “We just gathered around and took pictures around the computer and had coffee and water.” Despite Google-like amenities, including a killer cafeteria, workers try to strike a good work/life balance, the way George Pake intended when he conceived of Xerox PARC. Says Juan, “We're often hanging out, except that when we hang out we're talking about how to address a particular computing problem. We hang out in our own geeky way.”

Time to pay up. Television executives are coming to realize their position today very closely mirrors the predicament newspapers are facing. Namely, having long-distributed content for free on the Web, how do you convince your customers to start paying for it? Wired sees a new business model in the crystal ball, or screen, as it were. Possibilites include new content where ads are integrated right into the show rather than separated into 30-second spots (which sounds a lot like old-school product placement to me), and a premium subscription plan, something like Netflix. One Disney-ABC executive seems to have the end down, if not the means. "We need to be able to match the appropriate pricing, availability windows and distribution platform to the right consumer," he says.

Breaking the Starbucks barrier. Tuesday marked a milestone for KIND Fruit + Nut bars. After a five year struggle to woo Starbucks execs - and many free samples and e-mails later - Daniel Lubetzky can finally see his company's food products grace the shelves of the coffee giant's retail stores. His dogged persistence caught the coffee company at a point of weakness. It needed to revamp its image, providing healthier menu options. Lubetzky's bars, made with whole natural ingredients rather than paste, fit perfectly into the equation. "This is such a huge break," Lubetzky said. "Now we just have to show we can make it work." This isn't the first successful David and Goliath story we've seen. Tom Szaky of garden products company TerraCycle had similar success when he pitched Wal-Mart.

DFJ’s global business plan competition picks a winner. Venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Cisco announced the winner of their joint business plan competition yesterday. The $250,000 prize goes to Husk Power Systems, launched by two University of Virginia b-school graduates in India in 2007. The startup designs and operates mini power plants that convert rice husks into electricity to serve off-grid Indian villages.

Unemployment rate rises. So much for signs of recovery. The U.S. economy lost 467,000 jobs in June, the Labor Department said today, a month after job losses slowed amidst hopes of a turnaround. Economists had been expecting 365,000 lost jobs, The New York Times reports. The unemployment rate also rose, to 9.5 percent from 9.4 percent. One economist told Times that the stimulus has been "a finger in the dike." But another, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, said, "If we didn't have the stimulus, the economy would've contracted twice as fast in the second quarter."

A toast to entrepreneurial spirits. Finally, as you pause to enjoy a Fourth of July cocktail this weekend, you might want to raise a glass to a pair of Gloucester, Massachusetts entrepreneurs making a bid to become the next Absolut Vodka. The Boston Globe has the story of 56-year-old Bob Ryan and his 37-year-old nephew Dave Wood, who left more stable occupations to open their upstart distillery Ryan & Wood. The pair’s premium, handcrafted Beauport Vodka and Knockabout Gin have already begun to hit liquor store shelves and bars. For a closer look at the ins-and-outs of the liquor business, as well as a glimpse into the life of a true American original, check out this How I Did It on the late Sidney Frank, the man who brought Jagermeister and Grey Goose to the states. Have a safe and happy Fourth of July weekend, the Inc. staff will be back to work on Monday.

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Battle of the web browsers After its debut in 2004, non-profit run, open-source Web browser Firefox captured almost a quarter of the market with its speed, stability, and customizability. But lately users had been complaining that Firefox had gotten slow and prone to crashing, says Slate’s Farhad Manjoo. In the meantime, Apple and Google came out with Safari and Chrome. And in March, Microsoft debuted Internet Explorer 8, which Manjoo calls “a pleasure to use.” This week, Mozilla finally released Firefox 3.5 and it was worth the wait, boasting new features and a boost in speed. Better yet, argues Manjoo, it “gives us a peek at the Internet of tomorrow.” It offers the best implementation of HTML 5, an update to the standard coding language that the World Wide Web Consortium has been trying to promote since 2007. The new release, adds Manjoo, “could prompt a re-engineering of the Web itself.” For more on how a free products and a volunteer workforce made Mozilla the hottest tech company in America, check out David H. Freedman’s feature on The Firefox Paradox from our archives.

The worst tech commercial ever? It’s been a bad week for Internet Explorer. Just as techies are heaping praise on Firefox’s latest release, 29-year tech writing veteran Harry McCracken declares Microsoft's new IE commercial, featuring a woman projectile vomiting (repeatedly) after seeing a site her husband had been viewing, the worst commercial he’s seen. Ever. Valleywag concurs, adding that other spots in the series are just as grating. Even AdAge calls the series, hosted by ex-Superman star Dean Cain, “nothing if not odd.”

Third time a charm? For the third time in three years, the web TV provider Joost has a new business plan. It's also laying off 70 of 90 employees, Advertising Age reports. As one of the first web TV start-ups, Joost had the backing of CBS and Viacom, and high-profile founders in Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, of Skype and Kazaa fame. Soon, though, users became disenchanted with its mandatory software download, so last year the start-up switched to a browser-based, ad-supported service. But that maneuver didn't help Joost gain much market share from popular sites like Hulu. Now it will start licensing its technology to other media companies to use on their own sites. The future doesn't look bright, Om Malik writes over at GigaOM. "When I read about all the planned changes...the first thought that crossed my mind was: Stick a fork in it; Joost is done," he says. Malik goes on to compare their new strategy to "a leaky lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean." Ouch. Their missteps, he continues, include growing too big, too fast; attracting too much publicity, too soon; and waiting too long to move to a browser-based service.

Big Apple food fight. A good old-fashioned New York City street fight is brewing in Manhattan between the city's established food-cart vendors and a new wave of culinary entrepreneurs with high-end food trucks serving everything from vegan tacos to chicken-Thai dumplings. The New York Times reports that the traditional hot dog and gyros vendors have been less than welcoming to this new breed of mobile food purveyors, who they claim are encroaching on their turf and stealing their business. The feud has begun to turn ugly, with some of the new vendors claiming they have to deal with threats, harassment, and in one case, slashed tires. As Grant Di Mille, owner of the Street Sweets food truck, explains, "I should not have to carry a baseball bat on my truck in order to sell cupcakes."

Small businesses fall behind on loan payments. Small and medium-sized companies are reporting the highest rate of delinquent loans since the recession began, according to PayNet, a commercial lending analysis group. Reuters reports that the latest numbers show a moderate delinquency (accounts that are behind by at least 30 days) rate of 4.43 percent, .35 percentage points higher than the monthly average over the last nine years. PayNet's founder and president, Bill Phelan, predicts that despite some promising April statistics, the business cycle has not yet come full circle. "We're still in the thick of it," he says. The rates of severely delinquent accounts (90 or more days behind) and accounts in default (180 or more days behind) also rose, although by smaller margins.

Taking one for the team. Chrysler filed for federal bankruptcy on Thursday, General Motors is on the fence, and a third of Detroiters live below the poverty line. To Bing Group founder and ex-NBA hall-of-famer Dave Bing, it sounds like a good time to throw his hat in the ring for Mayor of Detroit. Bing has no political experience, but ESPN thinks he’s got he the determination to turn the city around. If elected, Bing says he will turn the company over to his two daughters, and donate his salary to the police department. With "one shot" to turn the city around, says Bing, it had best begin with this election.

Been there, done that. One T-shirt designed by small business owner, Mike Draper, expressed his sentiment about the growing health care problem: "America: Only the Insured Survive." Draper, whose screen-printing company pays all health insurance premiums for its seven full-time employees, testified in Washington last week in favor of a government-run public insurance option, touting it as the only viable alternative for the future. Draper believes the flat rate levied by a proposed Congressional bill would bring consistency to his year-to-year budgeting. "[Our employees] are all unmarried 20-somethings," Draper said. "But in five years, when everyone needs family policies, we might be in a little bit of trouble."

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Top 10 places to spend your golden years. As U.S. News and World Report puts it, entrepreneurs never really retire, they just move on to their next project. In fact, according to a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation, people between the ages of 55 and 64 had the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity over the past decade. With that in mind, the magazine recently put together their list of the Top 10 Places for Entrepreneurs to Retire. So what makes a good retirement locale for entrepreneurs? US News searched for places with strong job growth, low unemployment rate, low business tax rate, reasonable home prices, and an affordable cost of living, among other factors. They also looked for places close to college campuses, which often share their incubators and research labs with local entrepreneurs. Topping the list is Arlington, Virginia, whose proximity to Washington, D.C. (and its lucrative government contracts) makes it a prime place for entrepreneurs who aren’t quite ready to take up shuffleboard full-time.

Twitter users give British company a scolding. In a cautionary tale about the etiquette of using social media for business purposes, British furniture company Habitat was lambasted by Twitter users last week after it tried to link a gift-card promotion to the ongoing conversations about the violence in Iraq. The company tagged their gift-card posts with the marking “#mousavi”, which normally indicates that it was part of the larger discussion related to Iranian opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi. Needless to say, Twitter users were vocal in expressing their outrage. Habitat quickly posted an apology, saying, “We’ve been listening and we know 140 characters aren’t enough for a full apology.” (Via NY Times.)

Entrepreneurial missteps of college basketball stars. The story of athletes turning to the business world after their careers end is not uncommon. But a detailed look at their entrepreneurial missteps is. To that end, the The News & Observer digs into the business ventures of Christian Laettner and Brian Davis, former teammates on Duke University's basketball team who also played in the NBA (Laettner for 13 years; Davis for one.) In the mid-1990s, the duo, along with a third partner, launched Blue Devil Ventures and set out to convert abandoned tobacco factories in Durham to apartment buildings. The initial project was a success, inspiring grad students and others to move downtown. But troubles soon crept up. "Buoyed by initial success in Durham and an increasingly fluid lending environment, Laettner and Davis shifted their gaze to restoring crumbling buildings in the blighted parts of other inner cities, rather than focusing on finishing in Durham first," the paper writes. The company went on to buy properties in Baltimore and Philadelphia. But now, their expansion plans for the Durham property--which includes planned office space, retail shops, and more apartments--are delayed and the city of Durham isn't happy. It's refusing to release more than $1 million in promised tax incentives until deadlines are met. Worse, the Blue Devil Ventures are at the center of at least five lawsuits, with former associates and friends (including Pro Bowl linebacker Shawne Merriman) seeking more than $6 million in unpaid loans. (Hat tip to peHUB.)

Howcast steps out from Google's shadow. If you've ever wondered how to grow grass in someone's keyboard, you're in luck thanks to Howcast.com, a new DIY video-sharing site. That topic and others of equal uselessness grace the startup founded by three former Google colleagues. Howcast was intended to be a more humorous take on "how-to" than its predecessors, such as About, eHow, Expert Village, Videojug and 5min. "Coming from Google where you automatically have millions of eyeballs on your product to where you start something from scratch has been extremely challenging," said Sanjay Raman, Howcast cofounder. Nevertheless, he must have known what he was doing. Despite the current economic situation, the startup has garnered $10 million in funding, 80 percent from a VC investment.

A greener end for retired office electronics. New laws across 18 states require electronics manufacturers to recycle consumers' outdated equipment rather than allowing its hazardous chemicals to seep through landfills and into the groundwater. While residents in states like Washington, where The New York Times reports more than 15 million pounds of electronic waste have been collected, have responded enthusiastically, manufacturers are less than giddy. "We think it is unreasonable that an individual industry be designated as trash collector," one Panasonic executive says. Many manufacturers would rather adhere to a national statute than try to keep up with wide-ranging laws that differ between municipalities. Environmental specialists, however, suggest the potentially poisonous problem could be dealt with earlier on in the process. "Maybe since they have some responsibility for the cleanup, it will motivate them to think about how you design for the environment and the commodity value at the end of the life," says one manager of the electronic waste program in Maine.

How to avoid the next Bernie Madoff. Bernie Madoff's 150-year prison sentence, which ranks fourth on the list of longest white-collar prison sentences, closes the book on one of the uglier business stories to emerge in recent history. The Chicago Tribune takes the lessons learned from Madoff and lists some tell-tale signs to help ensure you are not placing your funds in the hands of a Madoff financial doppelganger. In her blog, Gail MarksJarvis details nine tips every business owner, entrepreneur and investor can and should do to avoid similar schemes.

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Pecora Hearings: the redux. Like the famous hearings led by Ferdinand Pecora in the early 1930s to investigate the cause of the Wall Street crash of 1929, Congress is developing the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, an investigative body that will examine the causes behind our current economic woes. The Pecora Commission produced the information and impetus for many of the financial reforms of the New Deal. According to the Huffington Post, the nominees for the commission, which will have six Democrats and four Republicans, will be finalized over the next few days. Of the names leaked by Reuters, the only one with the expertise to get the job done, says the HuffPo, is Brooksley Born, who chaired the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the late 1990s. As for the Republican names leaked--like Sen. Jake Garn, a proponent of deregulation who sponsored a law that led to the S&L collapse--all but one, says the article, “could be an alumni society of the people whose policies helped cause the collapse.”

The world loses yet another icon. The advertising community lost its own superstar yesterday with the death of TV pitchman, Billy Mays. The cause of death of the 50-year-old Mays is still being investigated, but Mays did report not feeling well after bumping his head during a rough landing of the U.S. Airways flight he was on Saturday. Mays sold over a billion dollars worth of the products he hawked, from Orange-Glo cleaner to OxiClean stain remover. The Chicago Tribune has a nice photo slideshow of TV's most famous advertising icons, of which Mays certainly has a place among the pantheon. For a closer look at how Ron Popeil, the godfather of all TV pitchmen made his start, click here.

Will camp for tax credits. What would draw company executives to camp sleeping-bag style in a Baltimore auditorium? Friday, execs lined up five days early to apply for tax credits for angel investors who have helped fund their businesses. The applications can't be formally accepted until 9 a.m. Wednesday, but that didn't deter more than 10 company reps from getting there on Friday since the credits are distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis. Luckily the entrepreneurs were offered "lodging" inside University of Maryland's BioPark facility; last year they weren't so lucky and spent 12 hours parked on a downtown sidewalk. "[The turnout] shows how important this program is to biotech start-up companies and how important it is for Maryland to increase funding for the program," said BioMarker Strategies president Scott Allocco, the first exec in line this year. The program encourages investments in biotech start-ups by cutting taxes for 50 percent of an angel investor's investment.

Colorado’s coming up green collar. While corporate America downsizes, Ascent Solar, a green energy cell manufacturer based in Thornton, Colorado, is hiring three or four people a week. The company, which was spun out of a technology incubator in 2005, is part of a trial run in Denver over the past few years to test out whether investments in renewable energy, infrastructure, and public transit may be a solution to the economic crisis. It’s the same strategy Washington wants to employ nationally. The results in Denver, says Slate’s Daniel Gross, show both promise and limitations. Governor Bill Ritter talks about spawning a “new energy economy” fueled by the state’s research universities, anticipated stimulus funds, and institutes like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is located in the state. Companies like Abound Solar--which spun out of Colorado State University in the 80s, received $15 million in DOE funds in the 90s, and recently picked up $150 million in private investments--give hope. Still, says Gross, “There's a gulf between what the politicians promise and what the engineers think is feasible.”

Hitting the links on the down-low. Once a crowning symbol of achievement and deserved relaxation, the golf course has become an incriminating place that some CEOs would rather avoid. USA Today reports that many CEOs have elected to either play golf more discreetly or stop playing altogether. Almost 22 percent of respondent CEOs in a 2006 USA Today poll belonged to three or more country clubs simultaneously, the story says, though many of them have cut their rounds now, in an effort to dodge allegations of executive excess. A June survey by Vistage International, an executive leadership organization, showed that 29 percent of CEOs are playing less golf and that 11 percent have dropped the game completely. One business development consultant said that charities are the ones who really suffer in this arrangement. Instead of playing in a public tournament that could raise much-needed charitable contributions, would-be philanthropists are playing privately. And while a start-up CEO faces a very different set of challenges than, say, AIG CEO Edward M. Liddy, the title itself is not well-received by the public. According to this month's Rasmussen survey, CEOs garnered the lowest favorable opinion of any profession.

Back to the future? As the recession continues to strain businesses, their owners have reinvented the system of bartering. It used to be that in order to attain goods and services neighbors would trade a chicken for some milk, corn for candlesticks. Today, business owners are employing online services such as BizXchange, a Bellevue, Washington-based company that employs a system of trade dollars that business owners can use to trade products or services with other companies on the network, reports CNN Money. Others, like an organic eatery owner named Tina Ames, choose a more informal approach. Her trade with a local contractor? A new roof for an old truck. Typically, barter activity spikes during economic downturns. And as the recession lengthens, it seems that making purchases without cash may turn into more then a trend.

In search of ethanol. Add the giant chemical and plastics maker Dow Chemical to the growing list of large corporations trying to successfully harvest hydrocarbons for fuel and chemicals. Dow is set to announce today that it is partnering with a Bonita Springs, Florida-based start-up called Algenol Biofuels to use algae to convert carbon dioxide into ethanol, The New York Times reports. While the companies hope to sell the ethanol as fuel, Dow's long-term goal is to also use it to replace natural gas in making its plastics. Algenol, Dow Chemical, and other partners on the project, including the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, aim to construct a plant that will produce 100,000 gallons a year.

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A dozen cleantech IPOs That’s what we’ll see over the next year, according to the fervently bullish Steve Westly, former eBay marketing director and California comptroller, now head of the Silicon Valley VC, the Westly Group. It’s an incredibly optimistic outlook considering that there have been only 13 U.S. IPOs (and only 12 new filings) this year in any industry, says peHUB. VCs want to see a Netscape-esque IPO to kickstart an era of cleantech riches. Westly pegs Silver Spring Network’s smartgrid technology and Solyndra’s photovoltaic systems for commercial rooftops as possible contenders. Westly’s comments come just as the House is slated today to vote on Waxman-Markey, a bill to tackle climate change. Its goal is to limit pollution by capping greenhouse gas emissions and putting a price on carbon. The Washington Post calls it better than nothing, but far from effective in turning back the tides on eight years of inaction on global warming.

Life after the Great Recession. As the United States and its businesses look to recover from the biggest blow to their bottom lines since the 1930s, hopefully knowing the road ahead will make the voyage a little easier. CBS Money Watch expects the new America will be marked by milder extravagence, increased taxes, higher unemployment, and costlier gas. Before you start packing your bags, though, be sure to take a look at the advice that follows each prediction. Veteran financial journalist Cait Murphy says globalizing your portfolio and paying to go green now will save you money later. Of course, practicing moderation and general diligence couldn't hurt either.

The struggles of India’s entrepreneurs. Today’s Wall Street Journal takes an interesting look at the difference between entrepreneurs in China and those in India, both of which are attracting an increasing amount of venture capital. A recent study by the National Venture Capital Association showed that half of the VC’s surveyed plan to increase their investments in China and other Asian countries, while 43% of those surveyed plan to increase their investments in India. As opposed to China, where the government tends to assist enterprises, the article contends that India’s entrepreneurs have to compete against both an unhelpful government and other businesses. Surprisingly, that might not be a bad thing. According to the article, “Some of India’s self-created barriers to entrepreneurship have made Indian entrepreneurs that much more hardy and competitive.”

Michael Jackson news creates web-traffic logjam. When one of the biggest pop icons passes away, the news is bound to attract attention. So much attention, in fact, that several of the web sites that helped to break the story of Michael Jackson's death -- TMZ, the Los Angeles Times, and Twitter -- crashed at various points yesterday, writes MG Siegler of TechCrunch. At one point, nine out of 10 of Twitter's trending topics were Michael Jackson-related. During that time, the search function on Twitter users' homepages went down for a few hours. "We saw more than double the normal tweets per second the moment the news broke--the biggest increase since the US presidential election (and Twitter has grown tremendously since then)," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote to The New York Times.

The 'Bucks is good for business.Throw out your long-held belief that Starbucks crushes competition. A new book, "Everything But the Coffee," theorizes that, instead, the mega-chain "created a desire and a taste for specialty coffee," which in turn sparked a quality contest between mom-and-pop shops. The author, Bryant Simon, points out a glaring irony: now Starbucks is closing stores while smaller chains and independent coffee shops are faring better. Columnist Jonathan Weber, however, asserts that lost jobs from Starbucks' closures will ultimately hurt local businesses.

Will Google’s thirst for power bury San Francisco in rubble? Google’s servers devour electricity and with search queries growing by 50 percent, the need for power is only growing. In addition to hydroelectric projects around the country to produce the electricity it needs, says Valleywag, Google has tapped AltaRock to drill a 2-mile deep hole in the Earth to extract geothermal energy. And possibly destroy San Francisco by triggering an earthquake. Swiss government seismologists told the New York Times that a similar geothermal project in Basel, Switzerland, "set off an earthquake, shaking and damaging buildings and terrifying many.” According to Valleywag, politicians who’ve convinced themselves that’s what’s good for Google is good for their communities may have to reconsider.

Black and white and read all over. Finally, as we enter the weekend, we might pause to wish a happy 35th birthday to the bar code; an invention both revolutionary and yet remarkably simple, that has transformed the way we do business and the way we live our lives. 35 years ago today, the first bar-coded product (a 10-pack of Juicy Fruit gum) was scanned at the checkout of a Ohio supermarket. The New York Times has an interesting article all about the history of those famous black and white stripes, including the public’s initial concern that it might be an Orwellian tool for government oversight. “The vision of the bar code as some sort of surveillance device with ominous social implications was quite resonant,” said one Rutgers University historian. For a closer look at some other products that keep your local grocery store humming, check out this Behind the Scenes of a Hannaford supermarket. Have a good weekend.

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Facebook’s creation myth through the Hollywood lens. The fact that former fiction writer Ben Mezrich sold his upcoming Facebook expose, The Accidental Billionaires, to film producers before it was even penned should have been the first clue. From advance copies, it seems like sordid details and lustful encounters win out over narrative about how the site was developed or the company’s growth. Valleywag is skeptical about whether some of those stories--like Mark Zuckerberg getting picked up by a Victoria’s Secret model at a party in San Francisco or the co-founders in flagrante with co-eds in adjacent bathroom stalls--may be fabricated. Mezrich was said to have played fast and loose with the facts in Burning Down the House, his book about MIT students counting cards that was made into the movie 21. As for the Facebook biopic, Fight Club’s David Fincher is rumored be in advanced talks to direct.

SBA is feast or famine. Last Monday kicked off the SBA's America's Recovery Capital program, which provides interest-free loans up to $35,000 to small businesses. So far the SBA considers it a success, but try telling that to the business owners who are still waiting for funding - and have been for months. Adding to the air of gloom is the prediction that funding will dry up before the previously estimated 10,000 businesses will see a cent. More realistic expectations are now tallied at 5,000, but the SBA somehow retains a sense of optimism. "We rolled out this program differently than other loan programs because of the urgency," said Jonathan Swain, SBA spokesperson. "But we always knew there would be a ramp-up period."

It's a dog-eat-dog world. A battle is brewing between Superdawg, Chicago's well-known hot-dog eatery, and an upstart New York weiner stand that goes by the all-too-similar name, Superdog. The Chicago Tribune reports that Superdawg's owners have sued their East Coast rival in U.S. District Court, claiming trademark infringement and unfair and deceptive businesses practices. The Chicago landmark has been in business since 1948 and is famous for a pair of 12-foot frankfurters that grace its rooftop and bear the likeness of the store's owners, Maurie and Flaurie Berman. Scott Berman, son of the original owners, said the restaurant has had to defend their brand dozens of times and they have always emerged as top dog.

Hoffman out as LinkedIn CEO...again. For the second time in two years, Reid Hoffman has handed over the CEO reigns at LinkedIn, the Wall Street Journal reports. Jeff Weiner, formerly the company's president, will now move into the top spot. Weiner was hired as president in December and TechCrunch hypothesized at the time that he was likely being groomed as the next CEO. With the move, Hoffman now becomes executive chairman, "a full time exec role...not just a board of directors seat," TechCrunch says. Both Weiner and Hoffman have suggested to Michael Arrington that an IPO could be on the horizon. For a look at how Hoffman built LinkedIn into a company with a $1 billion valuation, check out his recent How I Did It.

“The Past Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes.” That’s the title of a talk by Tokyo University professor Kiyohiko Nishimura at the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago comparing the post-bust experience the U.S. is facing now to Japan in the ‘90s, the country’s “lost decade”. Nishimuru talked with Slate’s Daniel Gross who found his theories surprisingly optimistic. Japan’s crisis started in q4 of 1990 when commercial land prices started to fall. The policies put into place to counteract that--rate cuts, stimulus, expanding bank insurance, injection of public funds into banks, and zero-interest rate policies--were doled out over the next 8 years, but it wasn’t until 2005 that its economy fully recovered. But the U.S.’s recovery is moving 7 times as fast. In our case, the damage has been more devastating, but real-time information has quickened the reaction time for first responders. Check out the full transcript of Nishimura’s talk, including four lessons learned.

Why buy the paper when you can get the news for free? With 25 percent of print ad revenue down in the newspaper industry -- the chief source of revenue for most publishers -- many outlets have been weighing the feasibility of charging for a product that consumers have long-enjoyed for free. Journalism Online, The Associated Press reports, plans to kickstart this transition to paid content, and expects 10 percent of readers to opt for the specialized-vendor program it will offer. Bloomberg says that The New York Times is considering charging readers for mobile content, where advertising space is less abundant, before putting a price tag on the Web.

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Trade relations between the US and China sour. After nearly two years of negotiations, China has rejected claims made by the United States and European Union that its export quotas on raw materials violated WTO rules. According to the US and EU, export duties on raw materials like coking coal distorted the global market, hurting manufacturers of steel and other products. China says it put those quotas in place as an environmental safeguard. China’s response comes in the middle of already tense relations, reports the Financial Times. China wants the US to lift its ban on Chinese poultry imports (the EU lifted a six-year ban last year). The US wants China to drop its requirement that computers sold in the country contain an internet filtering software called Green Dam, in large part because it blocks US computer makers from the Chinese market. Brandeis professor Chad Brown tells the Times, “Obviously a continued escalation of these cases against China’s exports increases protectionist sentiment. In the current climate of the global economic crisis, this raises the concern of a global spiral of protectionism.”

Intro to analytics. You wouldn't write a letter to someone knowing they would use it to play garbage-can basketball before reading it, so why blast out e-mails knowing they'll be relegated to the trash folder? Web analytics tools can be cheap and they are almost always helpful in identifying how to make the most of your online presence. CNN Money reviews a handful of these analytics services and tells the story of one small business owner who more than doubled the amount of time readers spent on his newsletter. Our own Max Chafkin had online-marketing experts review Bonobos.com's analytics reports to find out how the Web site achieved its early success, and where to go from there -- here are their findings.

A frachisee's revolt. If you've visited a casual sit-down restaurant chain in the past few months, chances are you've come across deals like two-for-ones, half-off entrees, and other incentives trying to get you in the door. While the deals have helped chains like Applebee's, Chili's, T.G.I. Fridays stay afloat in a touch climate, some franchisees who operate the individual restaurants have protested the price reductions, The New York Times reports this morning. One such franchisee, Ross Farro, who has seven T.G.I. Friday's in Ohio and Pennsylvania, admitted to removing discount menu inserts after lunch and before dinner because of the effect it was having on his margins. "We're giving the food away," he says. Though some of these casual restaurant chains are struggling, the fast-casual restaurant industry, with more informal restaurants such as Chipotle and Panera that do not provide table service, is one of our Best Industries for Starting a Business. And for more on the dangers of relying on discounts in your restaurants, make sure you check out our forthcoming July/August cover feature, which includes advice from a successful restaurateur with 18 locations in the Denver area.

Networking for the shy CEO. If the thought of mingling at a business conference makes your skin crawl, you might have networking-itis, otherwise known as shyness. But the Times advises that networking doesn't have to start with strangers. You can begin by seeking out familiar faces. "Starting with someone you know makes it easier to get your networking career under way," says Meredith Levinson of CIO.com. It's even suggested that having introverted tendencies can make an entrepreneur more intuitive and analytical, skills that can really help in, say, running a business.

Netbooks in, PCs out. The first-quarter numbers for PC shipments are in and they aren't good: down 8.1 percent from last year and down 14 percent from the previous quarter, according to analysts at Morgan Stanley. And they don’t expect those numbers to rise until the last quarter of 2009. As Time.com reported, while the recession continues to impact the technology industry, there is a bright spot amidst the storm: netbooks. They are smaller, faster and cheaper than larger laptops and provide the simple but essential things for every on-the-go business owner. But even while the unit volume of netbooks sales are aiding tech companies, the companies' revenues continues to decline. For more information on netbooks check out this blog post from The Goods.

The new D.C. area resort. The New York Times takes a look today at National Harbor, the new 300-acre resort area along the Potomac River in Maryland that is starting to attract business travelers, condo residents, and tourists. While the area is soon to be the home of a new Disney resort, it is already the home of the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, host of last year's and this year's Inc. 500|5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony. All leaders of the entrepreneurial community are welcome, so if you don't want to miss speakers such as Jim Collins, Norm Brodsky, and Tony Hsieh, register now.

Budding entrepreneur among D.C. crash victims. On a somber note this morning, the Washington Post reports that among the victims of the D.C. Metro train crash was 23-year-old LaVonda King, an aspiring entrepreneur. Just last Friday, King signed the paperwork on her D.C.-area salon space, which she dubbed LaVonda's House of Beauty. Prior to boarding the train, King had been talking with her mother on her cell phone about their plans to make fliers to promote the new business. Officials are still looking into the cause of the crash, although overdue brake work is being cited as a possibility.

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Airport screening company gets grounded. Monday night marked the end of Clear, the leading Registered Traveler program that allowed jet setters to jump to the front of security lines to the tune of $200 per year. Those who had bought into the service were left with no guidance, merely this message on the company's Web site, "Clear's parent company, Verified Identity Pass, Inc. has been unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to continue operations." Unfortunately, for avid business travelers, it looks like back to the end of the line for you.

Understanding viral culture. Six Apart VP and culture blogger Anil Dash joined a roundtable on memes and viral culture over at New York magazine and has the highlights on his blog. The folks at Blendtec (the company behind Will It Blend?) can speak to the power of an internet meme to boost sales. Ever thought your product might do well on YouTube? Take a look at roundtable participant Sam Anderson’s theory of meme-making, including a graph that maps breakthrough viral videos in terms of where it lies of the spectrum of spontaneous to calculated and ironic to straight. Says Anderson, “We like pure attitudes: either total calculated mastery of the nature of viral media or total cluelessness—maximum media mind or the media-mind void. We want to be either very impressed with virtuoso performances (Susan Boyle) or we want to die laughing at clueless bungling (“Star Wars Kid”).

Spring showers bring soggy profits. Wordsworth wrote, “Into each life, a little rain must fall.” But this is getting ridiculous. Business owners in the Northeast have seen their profits get drenched from the seemingly endless barrage of rain that has fallen in the month of June. The weather not only played havoc upon the U.S Open golf championship in Long Island, New York, but it has been doing likewise with area businesses. The Boston Globe reports on businesses that have been hurt by the constant drizzle and how they are doing their best to fight back against Mother Nature. One café owner hired delivery boys to bring lunch orders to rain-shy workers while others have had to institute big sales to lure customers into their shops. Of course, there are companies who are cashing in on the silver lining of these storm clouds. Said the general manager of one Boston-area party tent rental company that has seen a 23 percent jump in orders, “I hope it rains every weekend for the next couple of months.”

Microsoft will subsidize your iPhone. In a delicious turn of irony, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, online shoppers can get 35 percent off an Apple iPhone by purchasing it through Microsoft's Bing rebate system. Of course, the rebate will work with any phone sponsored by the system, but the added satisfaction of playing one company off the other makes the now-$65 (after rebate) iPhone 3G a noteworthy option. Bing director Whitney Burk told the P-I, "There are no restrictions on Bing cashback related to products that may compete with Microsoft products."

Lessons in crowd-sourcing. By the time the UK newspaper The Guardian got its hands on 2 million pages of documents about the country’s biggest political scandal of the decade, its rival, the Telegraph, had already been on the trail for a month, churning out a string of riveting stories. The Guardian’s strategy for catching up? Dump the public records on their site with a simple feedback interface, and then enlist more than 20,000 volunteers to mark which pages should be investigated. 170,000 pages were reviewed in the first 80 hours. The developer involved, Simon Willison, gives Harvard’s Neiman Lab four pointers on crowdsourcing, starting with “your workers are unpaid, so make it fun.” Willison made it feel like game. He put a progress bar with the number of pages reviewed and the number of pages to go on the project homepage, and a mugshot of each MP on their pages in the database. Says Willison, “You’ve got this big smiling face looking at you while you’re digging through their expenses.” For other tips, like “participation will come in one big burst, so have servers ready,” read on.

The Paul Allen e-mail fix. What do you do when you're a billionaire software entrepreneur frustrated with your cluttered inbox? If you are Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, you use your investment company to launch a start-up charged with developing a fix. As the Seattle Times reports, Allen's new company, Xiant, is now offering a beta version of a Microsoft Outlook add-in called Filer at Xiant.com. The company says Xiant "can instantly help you more efficiently manage your e-mail." Filer will begin selling for $39 in about 60 days, according to the paper.

Intel and Nokia in cahoots. Intel is set to announce today the nature of its contract with Nokia. Bloomberg rumors the technology giant will be supplying chips for the company's mobile phones. Back in February, Intel buddied up with LG to develop another smartphone. Our office is already seeing a gentle rivalry between advocates of Pre and 3GS. Could Intel be adding to the mix with Nokia?

Is Steve Jobs’ health a public matter? In a news release last Friday, the Apple co-founder and CEO touted the sales of the new iPhone but neglected to address the real question on everyone’s mind: his health. Apple declined to comment on The Wall Street Journal’s report of a liver transplant two months ago. Although securities regulations do not require updates on executives’ health, some corporate-governance experts believe that Jobs’ identity and importance in the company should place a greater responsibility on the company to maintain a transparency on Jobs’ condition, so says the Chicago Tribune.

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Insurers revoke policies to avoid paying high costs. A few days before a scheduled mastectomy, Robin Beaton’s insurance company cancelled her policy for not informing them of her history of acne and a rapid heartbeat, which she assumed were irrelevant to her current state of health, in a questionnaire that she filled out when she applied for the policy. The act of retroactively canceling policies is called rescission. It can happen to individuals who may not be insured through their employer and apply for a policy on their own. When policyholders are diagnosed with illnesses that require expensive procedures, like cancer, the insurer looks back at the original questionnaire. If any pre-existing conditions aren’t mentioned, says NPR, even ones the applicant may not be aware of, the policy may be revoked. A new report by congressional investigators found a total of 19,776 rescissions from three large insurers over five years, which saved the insurers $300 million.

How to profit from your customers’ gratitude. If you’re staying at the Hyatt in the coming days, you might be the beneficiary of the hotel chain’s new policy of “random acts of generosity,” Rob Walker reports in his latest column. Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian thinks unexpected gifts--like picking your hotel bar tab--will leave customers pleased, but more importantly grateful, which is a potentially profitable emotion. An upcoming paper in the Journal Marketing argues that “customers that are made to feel grateful become enduringly loyal as a result,” says Walker. That loyalty can translate to increasing purchase intentions and grow a company’s sales. Loyalty or rewards programs, however rarely inspire gratitude. Miles or points racked up are seen more as something consumers earn. So what’s the psychology behind it? Humans feel pleased from reciprocating out of gratitude, and guilt when they don’t--an emotion that businesses can leverage.

The Jack Welch online degree. It's been an interesting few months for online universities. Two online college operators, Grand Canyon Education and Bridgepoint Education, have gone public recently. And management guru Ken Blanchard, the author of The One Minute Manager and The One Minute Entrepreneur (see our Q&A with him here, has attached his name to a business program at Grand Canyon University. Now, Jack Welch, the former General Electric CEO, has invested $2 million in Cleveland-based Chancellor University System, earning him a 12 percent stake in the online college operator and his name on a new Master of Business Administration program called the Jack Welch Institute, The Wall Street Journal reports. Though the partnership is a way for Welch to keep his name in the public consciousness, it's a curious move for a man who has taught at MIT's Sloan School of Management. Chancellor, formerly Myers University, is currently on probation for student turnover, resource allocation, and reputation; MBA applicants will not need to take the GMATs to be accepted.

Fighting fire with fire. The latest sector to open up to entrepreneurs? Fighting forest fires. Backed by stimulus cash from the Recovery Act, the state of Oregon has recruited small businesses like PatRick Environmental to torch some of Oregon's wooded areas. This controlled-burning project is one of many across the country utilizing stimulus money to both shore up infrastructure and generate local business dollars. PatRick scored the federal contract by keeping a close eye on FedBizOpps.gov and started bidding as soon as listings for local forestry opportunities appeared.

Fido goes first-class. Business travelers may be tightening their belts and downgrading their hotel rooms, but many are surprisingly unwilling to ask the family pet to make similar sacrifices. The Chicago Tribune has the unlikely story of an entrepreneur who opened a luxury pet hotel in the heart of the recession and somehow has managed to thrive. Dubbed Paradise 4 Paws, the 25,000 square-foot pet-hotel has a splashing pool, indoor grassy play area, private rooms, and even Webcam access in case the owner wants to check in on their favorite pooch. It may sound crazy, but spending on pets hit an astounding $43.2 billion in 2008 and is expected to increase about five percent to $45.4 billion this year.

Can big brother play the innovation game?. Although innovation policy--the study of how innovation happens and how to foster it--has been a much more popular field outside of the United States, the Obama administration has shown signs of interest by advancing research on the role of innovation in the economy. At a recent invitation-only, international innovation conference earlier this month in northern California, attendees were all in support of government participation in an arena historically dominated by start-ups and small companies, The New York Times reports. One foreign official says the goal is not to "pick winners and losers," but instead that "government can create the conditions so that new industries can rise more easily."

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Taking apart the new financial regulations. New York Times' columnist Joe Nocera takes several shots at President Obama's financial regulatory plan in today's paper. The gist of his argument is that while the plan includes an impressive number of proposals, few if any of them would prevent a similar meltdown from happening. The main failings: no mention of regulating so-called "customized derivatives"; the perpetuation of the belief that there are banks that are too big to fail; and placing too much trust in the Federal Reserve, an institution which Nocera contends let us down during the creation of the dot-com and housing bubbles. Nocera had hoped that Obama's plan would take bold steps similar to those of FDR during the Great Depression, when "Wall Street hated the reforms...but Roosevelt didn't care." Instead, Nocera writes, "...the Obama plan is little more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam rather than rebuild the dam itself. Without question, the latter would be more difficult, more contentious and probably more expensive. But it would also have more lasting value."

Is Louisiana the new Detroit? Look out Tesla Motors, there’s a new player in the eco-friendly car industry. V-Vehicles, founded in 2006 by former Oracle exec Frank Varasano and backed by activist billionaire T. Boone Pickens, announced plans to open its first factory in a former headlight plant in tiny Monroe, Louisiana. But that’s about all they announced. The company has been surprisingly tight-lipped about their business model, even declining to give details about the kind of car they intend to produce at the new factory.

The trials and tribulations of a New York City street vendors. Street vendors in New York are regulated by a Kafkaesque system of seven different city agencies, with each type of vendor subject to different rules. Break any one of them--like how many inches the cart can be from the curb--and vendors can be fined a week’s wages. But the real problem is the black market for licenses, reports Sarah DiGregorio in the Village Voice. In 1979, the City Council limited the number of food cart licenses, which can go for $10,000 for two years, to 3,100 citywide. The waiting list is thousands of names deep. With that demand, vendors can often earn as much renting out their licenses illegally.

Secrets of a nimble giant from Google’s Sergey Brin. How does a 20,000-person company manages to stay innovative? For one, Brin tells the Guardian, Google is committed to freeing up staff with a track record for successful innovation. Which is why when Lars and Jens Rasmussen, the brothers behind Google Maps, came to him with the proposal for a revolutionary idea they couldn’t disclose, Brin was on board and sent them off with a dedicated staff. Two years later, the result was Google Wave, a real-time communication and collaboration tool. "It's important not to overstate the benefits of ideas," says Brin. "Quite frankly, I know it's kind of a romantic notion that you're just going to have this one brilliant idea and then everything is going to be great. But the fact is that coming up with an idea is the least important part of creating something great. It has to be the right idea and have good taste, but the execution and delivery are what's key."

Boom times on the border? Despite the news about swine flue and drug-related violence, a new economy on our southern border is emerging and -- dare we say -- prospering, due to the expanding Mexican-American market in the United States. Exports and imports between the two nations have increased to $400 billion in revenue in the past decade.

Which iPhone should you buy. Apple starts selling its new iPhone tomorrow. The current iPhone is also being offered with a new operating system (I downloaded it yesterday and it's good) and a new, impressively low price of $99. The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg breaks down what's new with each. He says that the newer phone represents an upgrade that is "more evolutionary than revolutionary" and says that many new iPhone users will be happy enough with the cheaper version. Meanwhile, Inc.'s Hannah Clark Steinman gets her hands on the most serious challenger to the iPhone yet, the Palm Pre.

Don't worry so much about inflation. That's the advice of investment manager Van Hoisington. Fortune documents this one-man battle against what many economists believe is an ever-present and unavoidable problem. Because spending has slowed, Hoisington argues, the expected inflationary effect of the government's cash injection will be muted. He also says that today's economy will roughly equal that of 2012, which, if you believe him, means businesses won't see their costs climb much over the next few years.

Friday reading. Your entrepreneurial news team is off tomorrow. In the meantime, check out Bill Donahue's profile of NatureBake, which was a pretty normal bakery until the founder's ex-con brother came home from prison and wanted a job. The story, from our June issue, tells how the family business (and the family itself) struggled, adapted, and thrived as Dave Dahl tried to build a life for himself on the outside. Happy Father's Day. We'll see you on Monday.

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Becoming a great leader in 101 easy steps. Vincent Van Gogh once said, “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” Along those lines, Digg links to the business site, Focus.com, which has compiled a list of 101 Common-Sense Rules for Leaders. The list covers all aspects of a good manager’s toolbox, including tips for getting along with employees, boosting productivity, and managing finances and resources. Also included are pointers on maintaining body language that’s appropriate for a leader: sit up straight, face the person you’re talking to, and take your hands out of your pockets. To be fair, those last few tips have been in use for decades by mothers of pesky third-graders everywhere.

Obama delineates his plan to overhaul the financial regulatory system. The Washington Post got a hold of Obama’s 85-page white paper which details proposals to inject the government more deeply in private markets. Rather than abandoning a failed system, the paper offers “an architect’s blueprint for modernizing a creaky old building.” It’s structured around five key points: increasing the power of the Federal Reserve; asking Congress for authority to dismantle troubled large firms; increasing federal oversight into the recesses of the financial markets like trading in complex derivatives and securities built from mortgage loans; the creation of a new agency to protect consumers with mortgages, credit cards and other financial products; and increased coordination with other nations. The blog, peHUB, says the regulations are aimed more at hedge funds than private equity and VCs, but advisers to hedge funds, PE funds, and VC funds whose assets exceed a certain threshold could be required to register with the SEC and required to report information on the funds that pose a threat to financial stability. Obama is scheduled to announce his full plan today.

MySpace cuts deep. When it comes to social media start-ups, it's amazing how quickly fortunes can change. Last fall, things were still looking pretty good for MySpace. The social network was struggling compared to Facebook, but it's traffic was massive and it was working on an ambitious project to unseat iTunes for dominance in online music sales. Fast forward eight months, and cofounders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolf are out, and new CEO Owen Van Natta--formerly COO of Facebook--is laying off 30 percent of the staff. Techcrunch guesses that the 480 employees that were dismissed yesterday could be joined by another 300 or so. In the press release Van Natta was downbeat, calling current staffing levels "bloated" and adding that the company needed "to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product."

Does Open Source not get small business, or vice-versa? Last week Dell announced that it would be offering open source application bundles--so-called “SMB-in-a-box”--to small-to-mid-sized business looking for a cheaper alternative to commercial software. CNET questions whether open source is getting the SMB market right, based on how many SMBs still think of open source as not secure and too complex. But OStatic thinks the problem stems from the fact that many small business owners aren’t aware of open source versions of proprietary software. According to OStatic’s Sam Dean, smaller businesses without IT managers might not know how far open source platforms have advanced recently or that there is cheap commercial support for open source software. Dean thinks bundled features like Dell’s or groups like the Open Source Channel Alliance can change that, as could better ways to evangelize open source. What do you think? Are small businesses really that out of the loop when it comes to open source? What would it take for you to get your company to adopt?

Some metro areas still thriving. Chances are if you're in one of Texas's biggest metro areas, such as San Antonio, Austin, Houston, or Dallas, you're not feeling the recession as much as the rest of the country, a new study from the Brookings Institution has found. In an interview with The Huffington Post, Brookings Instution's Alan Berube said, "This is not one national recession. It's felt barely at all in some parts of the country, and it's felt deeply and significantly in others." The four Texas metropolises, plus Oklahoma City, are the five strongest performing large metro areas in the country, according to the six economic indicators evaluated in the study. The worst performing metro areas out of the country's 100 largest include four in Florida: Jacksonville, Lakeland, Tampa, and Bradenton. And the absolute worst? Detroit.

Attack on QuickBooks by free service. San Francisco start-up, NetBooks, is rereleasing its on-demand suite, renamed WorkingPoint. Although the service includes all the functionality of QuickBooks -- invoicing and accounts receivable, expenses and accounts payable, etc. -- NetBooks’ CEO Tate Holt promises the company is not trying to replace its predecessor. Instead, he says, with its free price tag it’s merely trying to steal away cash-starved young companies. “We believe that if we focus on companies that are just starting out, that is when a business is at its most cash-critical stage,” Holt said. “Why not be free? Why have a barrier to entry?” Holt acknowledges that even with the free service's revamped features, it's going to take some work to carve out a niche in the already over-run small business market. “There are many, many people that have gone after the small-business market, and there’s a big graveyard there,” he said.

You’re the Boss. This new blog from The New York Times focuses on small business owners. Operating under the notion that many entrepreneurs lack formal training in running a business, at least one of the bloggers, Jay Goltz, says he hopes readers will find the blog to be the mentor he never had. Inaugural topics include swelling foreign stocks and how President Obama’s stimulus package might actually deter small businesses from hiring new employees.

Twittering in Tehran. No one really knows what's been happening in Iran over the past few days as protests and violence flare up in the wake of a disputed presidential election. That's because there has been an extreme government crackdown on communications. Journalists have been banned from reporting on the opposition, phone lines have been cut, text messages have been restricted, and Internet bandwidth has been severely limited. One of the only communications tools that has survived--so far--has been Twitter, which protestors have used to broadcast news. The micro-blogging startup, which has long been dogged by technical snafus, had scheduled a service outage last night, but then announced in a blog post that they were delaying the outage until today (the middle of the night in Iran) because of "the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran," according to cofounder Biz Stone.

Supporting small businesses never tasted so good. With the 4th of July holiday approaching, why not plan a road trip to sample some good old-fashioned, All-American roadside food? The Wall Street Journal has a cool, interactive map of America’s top 15 food stops, traversing everywhere from Maine to Oregon. Taken from, “500 Things to Eat Before It’s Too Late,” the book chronicles some of the country’s best local haunts that are hanging tough against the spread of the ubiquitous chain restaurants. There’s the green-chile cheeseburger from Bobcat Bite in Santa Fe, New Mexico or the whole-hog barbecued pork from the Skylight Inn in Ayden, North Carolina. Do your part--your stomach and your local businesses will thank you.

States giving assist with work-sharing. The New York Times takes a look today at underutilized state programs that are helping companies supplement pay to employees whose weekly hours have been cut in work-sharing programs. Seventeen states have instituted programs in which they make up some of employees' lost wages by dipping into their state unemployment funds. These programs should make work-sharing a more viable alternative to layoffs in companies and industries that are expecting to bounce back as the economy rebounds. But only a fraction of eligible companies are taking advantage of the program, the Times reports. "Many companies are unaware of the program's existence, and few states advertise it," writes Steven Greenhouse. Connecticut, New York, Oregon, and Washington are some of the states that are helping out. Check with your state labor department for more details.

Corner drugstores an endangered species? “I’m a dinosaur in the industry,” said Ken Villani, the owner of a Woodbury, N.Y., corner drugstore. Although his business has kept its doors open for more than 30 years, filling 300 to 400 prescriptions daily, Cottage Pharmacy is struggling to compete with the popularity of mail-order companies. When these large distributors sell direct, they are able to negotiate much lower prices than the retail pharmacies can. Last year’s figures from the National Association of Chain Drug Stores show that sales at independent pharmacies fell $3 billion in two years, while mail order sales jumped up almost $5 billion. It’s no coincidence that Obama called for an overhaul of the nation’s health system yesterday at the American Medical Association.

Proof that it pays to go green. GreenChoice Bankin Chicago and e3bank in Malvern, Pa. are one step closer to opening their LEED certified doors, the Chicago Tribune reports. The two received regulatory approval at the beginning of the month. With incentives like lower interest rates to green builders and fuel-efficient car owners, these green banks hope to further demonstrate how “sustainability has entered the mainstream as evidenced by the ubiquity of green messaging and reporting in the media," said GreenChoice's application with the Office of Thrift Supervision. While other more traditional banks like Chase, Citibank and Bank of America offer earth-friendly products, GreenChoice and e3bank, (the three e’s in its namesake represent environment, economy and social equity), have rooted their overall business models on the green movement.

Is YouTube doomed to fail? Benjamin Wayne, CEO of Fliqz and the man who says, “YouTube is soaring towards the future like a pigeon towards a plate-glass window,” would argue yes. Advertising Age asked him to expand. Citing an expected $470-million revenue shortfall in 2009, Wayne says YouTube has plenty of consumer emotional support, but not enough income for Google to continue supporting it. Even if YouTube isn’t making the money it needs, he says, many other businesses are using embedded video on their own Web sites to increase both traffic and bottom-line profit.

Shakeup at HuffPo. Arianna Huffington's startup news empire, Huffington Post has a new CEO, Eric Hippeau, formerly of the venture capital firm SoftBank. Paid Content caught up with the Huffington who explained that the ouster of former CEO Betsy Morgan was not about traffic growth--Huffington Post has had plenty of that, thanks largely to the excitement of the 2008 election--but about money. "We need to keep monetizing our traffic at a higher level‚ and we need to keep expanding," Huffington said. Her cofounder Ken Lerer told Paid Content that the company has spent $11 million of the $37 million they've raised from VCs and has been profitable "some months."

Swap ‘em if you got ‘em. Today’s Chicago Tribune has an interesting look at two competing software-development companies who decided to try a bold, if somewhat crazy, experiment in which they swapped employees for a week. Chicago-based 8th Light and Obtiva, also based in the Windy City, traded developers, worked on each other’s projects, and even had access to each other’s client lists. “This is mutually agreeable espionage,” said one consultant at a management psychology firm. All in all, both companies said the experience was a positive one, enhancing the skills of their developers and giving each a fresh new perspective on their businesses.

Words from the wise, or at least the rich. University commencement speeches offer advice that ranges from learning how to fail to learning how to love, most of it trite. But The Business Insider has weeded through the platitudes to find the top ten most insightful commencement addresses in its “Advice From Rich People” feature from speakers like Bill Gates, Larry Page, and Jeff Bezos.

Financial rollercoaster downhill for Six Flags. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Six Flags officially filed for bankruptcy early Saturday. The world’s largest amusement-parks chain will soon be owned primarily by its lenders -- a 90 percent stake -- if a bankruptcy judge approves the pre-negotiated deal. Daniel Snyder, owner of Six Flags and the Washington Redskins, took a cue from the government when explaining that “the harsh realities of today’s credit markets, and the onerous debt we inherited from previous management, have brought us to this place.” But this “place” is a little less expansive after the company sold 10 parks and laid off about 300 workers. Looks like there will be fewer team building exercises for the office this summer.

Silver screen dreams still crushed by YouTube. Shane Felux, an independent Web video producer in northern Virginia, was plucked up by Disney in 2006 to be part of the company’s attempt to enter the Internet video market, Stage 9 Digital. After officially launching in early 2008, the company completed more than 20 projects, none of which have seen the light of day. The LA Times says it’s only one of the Hollywood-backed online video businesses to tank. YouTube is to blame -- the site attracts 60 percent of the U.S. audience watching video on the Internet -- proving that even major media companies struggle to compete with the Google machine.

The latest cost-saving strategy? Raising your own chickens. Herbert Hoover promised citizens a chicken in every pot, but in the great recession, urban and suburban dwellers are raising their own chickens, the Los Angeles Times reports. Across the nation, community gardens are no longer enough. Instead, families are looking to chickens, and specifically their eggs to cut costs. Typically a hen lays on average one egg a day, which for large families, can save on the cost of ingredients. Environmental organizations and city leaders are fighting this recent trend, stating a foul smell, as well as sanitation and public health concerns. "When you live with your food, you have issues," said Paul Kowalski, head of New Haven's environmental health program.

Who should get money from AIG shares--taxpayers or charities? Former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg is attempting to be nice to the judge hoping that will secure him the hundreds of millions of AIG shares, Time reports. As part of the ongoing argument, those shares, combined with the $4 billion in profits are the property of AIG and Greenberg, or so he claims. But instead of qublling over the merits of the case, Greenberg and AIG are fighting over which application of the money is more deserving. If AIG wins, they want to use to money to pay back taxpayers. Greenberg has suggested donating a large portion of the money to charity. Either way, the stakes are ever increasing considering that AIG’s fortunes have plummeted throughout the financial crisis.

The U.S. declares victory in the transition to DTV. The U.S. became the first “large country” to switch from analog to digital-only programming. The process started in mid-February, with the last 971 TV stations in 195 markets changing over on Friday, reports Ars Technica. A friend of ours who watched the signal go out on her old-school, no-cable set described the feeling as watching the air going out of the room. The FCC reported more than 300,000 calls to the agency’s help-line on Friday, and 700,000 in the last previous week. Some consumers lost stations due to changes in the contours of the new digital signals. But it went off pretty much without a hitch. Unlike in Japan, where the pop star featured in the DTV alert commercials was arrested for scampering around a park drunk and naked.

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If you’re going to make a mess, make it a big one. That’s the lesson Seattle entrepreneur and angel investor Andy Sack gives to his portfolio companies in regards to innovation. Specifically, rather than tinkering around with existing business models, Sack suggests that if you really want to create something new, then you must break with the traditional ways of doing things and make a full push to innovate. Or as he puts it, “If you’re going to break the model, don’t just break it a little.” He cites the iPhone as an example of such a game-changer. Coincidentally, CNN’s offbeat story of a yellow lobster found by fishermen in Massachusetts also manages to illustrate Sack’s point, albeit in a weird kind of way. Thousands and thousands of lobsters are caught everyday, but not many of them make the front page of CNN’s Web site. By being completely different, this lucky, yellow-tinged crustacean not only managed to make front-page news but he also found a way to avoid the lobster pot. Moral of the story: It pays to be different.

Scribd lands a big fish. In the race to be the leading e-book dealer, Scribd, would seem to be a significant disadvantage to e-commerce giant Amazon. It only has a few dozen employees, it was founded in 2007, and it's CEO is in his twenties. And yet, Scribd just struck a deal with publishing heavy Simon & Schuster, according to the New York Times. The website will sell 5,000 titles for the publisher, including books by Stephen King, Dan Brown, and Mary Higgens Clark. Scribd has been one of the standouts in the portfolio of Y Combinator, the investment fund cum business school that Inc. profiles in this month's cover story. Check it out, if you still haven't.

Another way to sell private company stock. The Wall Street Journal reports on SharesPost, "a kind of Craigslist for private company stock." The company allows owners of shares in private companies to offer their stock for sale in classified ads. The site has offers for shares of Facebook and Tesla motors. SharesPost is one of a handful of startups playing in this space. As Inc.'s Ryan McCarthy notes in a profile of another startup, SecondMarket, in this month's issue, "The IPO market has all but disappeared, and lofty merger and acquisition deals are unthinkable. So entrepreneurs, as well as their employees and investors, are left with few opportunities for unloading their stock."

Consumer confidence rates highest in nine months. For three months in a row, buyers have been feeling increasingly better about the state of the economy, Reuters reports. A Reuters survey pegs consumer confidence at the highest since the Lehman Brothers implosion last September, but that's not saying a whole lot. According to one analyst, “It’s good news but not great news.”

You’ve Got Acquisitions AOL is buying two startup media companies: Patch, which aims to create local news sites for small communities, and Going, a company that collects information on events for young people. AOL's new CEO Tim Armstrong told employees in a memo that the move is about adding "strength and talent to our local efforts." All Things D pegs the price at $10 million per company. Armstrong was the main backer of Patch and says in the memo that while the deal would have made him money, he is forgoing that profit and simply getting his money back in AOL shares.

New rules for toy makers Remember the Mattel toy recalls of 2007? Last year, Congress passed a law to guarantee that children’s toys are free of lead and toxic chemicals. Sounds good, but as CNN Money reports small manufactures are crying foul about a provision that requires toys to carry a label detailing the manufacturing processes. Toy makers that don't manufacture their products in a single factory but instead assemble them from multiple sources are confused about how to comply with the new rules, which go into effect August 14.

Claim your Facebook identity! Or, you know, don't. Either way, we feel compelled to inform you that on Saturday at 12:00 am (that's just 12 short hours from now!) Facebook will let users sign up for customized addresses. So instead of having a web address that includes a long series of numbers, you can direct your friends to something like facebook.com/yourname. The Facebook blog has more. Valleywag points out that, given the widespread availability (since the mid-90s) of customized domain names, this is all kind of pointless.

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