Super Bowl ads: The verdict. "Beer solves a lot of problems, women hold men back from their dream, and this year, pants are optional." That's what NewTeeVee took away from last night's ads. AdAge, on the other hand, thinks most of the marketers should have stayed home. And Slate says, Google wins, talking babies lose. If you missed any of the good ones switching over to the Puppy Bowl, Hulu and The Wall Street Journal will let you watch--and vote on--all the ads, including spots from two Inc. 500 alums: flat-screen TV maker Vizio and domain name registrar Go Daddy, which built its brand name around risque Super Bowl stunts. Currently, The Journal has Audi's "Green Car" ad as tied for both best and worst ad, which sounds about right to us. If you didn't have millions to spend on a halftime ad for your company, take a page from Pepsi and go the community investment route instead.

You've sold your business. Now what? That's the question posed by a commenter on Reddit, who explains that he or she sold their start-up for $20 million and now is wondering what to do with all that money in the bank? A problem most people would like to have. The readers' responses range from practical ("Leave it there and live off the interest") to the more fanciful ("Hop on Amazon.com and just randomly one-click buy stuff that looks cool.") More than a few people suggested that the person become a VC with all that spare cash. What would you do with $20 million in the bank?

Giant small-business lender gets new big-name chief. Just a few months after it filed for bankruptcy protection and its CEO said he was stepping down, the prominent small- and mid-sized business lender CIT Group has a new CEO, The New York Times reports. His name is a familiar one on Wall Street, and it just might shock you.

Inside a controversial business. Is Demand Media the future of online journalism or is it a "content farm" that pays writers pennies and makes its money by gaming search engines? David Carr of The New York Times takes on the company's controversial practice of paying its writers below market rates--$15 for a how-to article; $30 for a video--and concludes that there is definitely a demand for what Demand is doing. Demand has raised more than $300 million in private equity funding and is booking an estimated $200 million a year in revenue. Meanwhile, similar business models are being employed at a host of start-ups and at AOL. For more on the company, check out this profile from Wired.

Business advice, short and sweet. Perhaps taking his cue from Thoreau who told us all to "Simplify, simplify," tech entrepreneur Neil Patel has put together a list of 54 business tips and pointers, all summed up nicely in three words. Here are just a few examples: Don't waste money, Listen to customers, Never stop networking, Coolness is overrated, Hire hungry employees, and Failure is acceptable. Who says advice has to be complicated to be worth following? As Patel explains, "I have found that the best advice is typically the simplest."

B-school competition rewards medical technology start-ups. The Olin School of Business at Washington University hosts the Olin Cup each year, awarding start-up companies up to $50,000 in seed investments. This year's cup was won by a company called Quartz, which manages lab inventory for the academic life-sciences community. "It's like eBay for researches, where the items are peptides or antibodies instead of used clothing or DVDs," explained one judge to The New York Times. Runner-up IV Diagnostics sells cancer-diagnostic technology that measures cancer cells and drugs in blood noninvasively. Other finalists included a company that manufactures a track-and-trace system to help manufacturers combat counterfeiting of prescription drugs; a social media website that aggregates information about campus events and communities; and an open-source video game development site.

For a new type of company, mission trumps money. CNN Money has a story about an emerging but controversial type of business entity called an L3C, which enables companies with a social purpose to receive funding from charities. So far, at least five states, including Vermont and Illinois, have signed legislation allowing companies to incorporate as an L3C, while several others have similar legislation pending. "We're trying to create an LLC whose very DNA insists that it has to put its beneficial activities in front of making money," says Robert Lang, a former cosmetics business owner and one of the original creators of the concept. But the fact that L3Cs are still for-profit establishments, and therefore still eligible to receive regular investments, is raising a few eyebrows. According to the article, last year, a government group called the National Associations of State Charity Officials sent a letter to Senator Max Baucus, wanting to know "how L3Cs will be monitored to make sure that the profit purpose remains secondary to the charitable purpose." Do you think it's wise to mix for-profit business with non-profit goals?

Newspapers may acquiesce to pay-per-inquiry advertising. Television, radio, and websites long-ago agreed to be paid for advertisements based on how many people respond to the ads. Now, some newspapers have also started to give this strategy a shot. Advertising Age reports that the Christian Science Monitor's print weekly, as well papers owned by Heartland Publications, are running pay-per-inquiry ads supplied by an online marketplace called MediaBids.com. "My feeling was we as a newspaper company needed to offer an option to the appropriate businesses that would emulate what they're getting from an electronic source," says the president and publisher of one of the newspapers.

Finding success in an increasingly solo business world. From consulting, to freelancing, to contracting, many businesspeople - which includes up to 23 percent of the current U.S. workforce - are now testing out their occupational expertise by going solo, reports The Wall Street Journal. And now, because of the current economic climate, there are plenty of consultants and the like who are enjoying successful, well-paid careers, rather than temporary stints throughout various industries. The WSJ offers five suggestions for turning your freelancing gig into a profession. First and foremost, they advise thinking of your freelance job as long-term, rather than passing. They also recommend continually attending workshops or training courses to help you stay fresh on your game, and joining a network to keep in touch with clients and competition. Finding your own work space is also crucial for success, and thinking like an entrepreneur - for instance, by coming up with a business plan or mission statement - will help you develop your business or career goals for the future.

Business plans for creative types. If you're anything like Karen Leland, you put off tackling your business plan each year until the absolute last moment. So the president of Sterling Marketing and Consulting Group, a firm specializing in working with entrepreneurs and SMBs on PR and social media, sought out Christy Strauch, the author of "Passion, Plan, Profit: 12 Simple Steps to Convert Your Passion into a Solid Business." You can see their whole exchange over at Web Worker Daily but Strauch has bad news for all you procrastinators: even if you slog through that annual review, it's not enough. "Do a monthly and quarterly review process. Because things begin to change right after you remove your pen from the paper," she says. Check out Inc.com for the skinny on how to write a business plan or the best books for business owners.

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Last week, Inc. magazine went virtual, as part of a month-long experiment to understand why some companies are ditching their offices and letting employees work from home. Here are seven lessons we've learned from our first seven days of office exile. Use the comments below to let us know what we forgot.

1. Remember to eat. "For the first day or two, I found myself starving and couldn't understand why I was so irritable," says our deputy art director Jason Mischka. "I realized it was 4 o’clock, and I had only eaten a banana." Not everyone missed lunch. Another staffer discovered that dining while watching the Family Feud can be "surprisingly enjoyable."

2. Prepare for e-mail overload. Being virtual means replacing face-to-face encounters with electronic correspondence--emails, IMs, phone calls, status updates, video chats, and more--which can quickly become overwhelming. If you want to bear down, try turning everything off for an hour or two.

3. Get out of the house. For some people, staying focused at home can seem impossible. To compensate, many of us found ourselves camped out in coffee shops, where, despite the noise, it was easier not to get distracted by chores, kids, and telemarketers. The downside: Having to wear a Skype headset in public.

4. Get a comfortable chair. We're only a week into our experiment and there are already lots of sore backs. That wobbly stool might seem comfortable enough for checking email on the weekend, but it won't cut it for an eight hour workday.

5. Video chat is your friend. "It's really illuminating to see people you work with in their own environment," says deputy photo editor Monique Perreault. "It's like seeing your high school teacher in the supermarket--like crossing over into the 4th dimension." Related lesson: Get dressed before you answer a video chat call.

6. Don't forget to stop. As with maintaining blood sugar levels, remembering to knock off for the day can be a lot harder at home than in an office, where a sea of empty cubes is a powerful hint that it's time to head home. Set a time and stick to it.

7. You can actually get stuff done. At 6pm on a Wednesday night, we decided to make a last minute change to our March cover. That sort of thing normally means printing out dozens of pages, which are then passed around the office until the wee hours of the morning. But this week, the page proofs were sent electronically--between laptops and smart phones--and our cover made it to the printer by midnight. Success! So far...

(Photo: Inc. assistant managing editor, Kalina Mazur.)

Obama shifts funding for space exploration toward small business. Perhaps it has been the success of programs like the X Prize and Elon Musk's aerospace start-up SpaceX, but President Obama is making a push to shift funding for space exploration away from big contractors like Boeing and Northrop to smaller, privately-held start-ups. As the Los Angeles Times reports, if the president's plan makes it through Congress, it could drastically divert funding for spacecraft development to privately-funded space start-ups. Already this week, NASA awarded $50 million in research funds to five private companies to design a prototype for a vehicle that could carry crew members to the International Space Station. Up, up, and away.

TechCrunch on other side of a scandal. Since its launch almost five years ago, TechCrunch has made a name for itself as the go-to blog for news about tech start-ups, tech products, and well-established tech companies doing innovating things. Many times, TechCrunch's scoops are accompanied by a scandal or two. But this is one of the few times that the influential blog has had to turn the microscope on itself. Founder Michael Arrington revealed last night that one of TechCrunch's interns has on at least one occasion asked for a Macbook Air from a company in exchange for a post on the blog. And that "on at least one other occasion this intern was almost certainly given a computer in exchange for a post." Initially, TechCrunch didn't reveal the intern's name, citing his young age. But the intern, Daniel Brusilovsky, decided to out himself on his own blog. "At this time, I do not want to go into details," he wrote, "but I will publicly say that I am truly sorry to my family, friends, TechCrunch, and especially the tech community."

FriendFinder to stay privately-held for now. Friend Finder Networks, which ranked 210 on the this past year's Inc. 500 | 5000 has been mulling an IPO for some time now. The company, which operates a number of sexually-oriented social networks, as well as publishing Penthouse, was saddled with an unmanageable amount of debt, which they hoped that going public would ameliorate, writes . See how Markus Frind makes $10 million a year from his online dating site Plenty of Fish, plus check out our guide to planning your own IPO.

The trouble with unemployment insurance. Writing in the New York Times's Your the Boss blog, Jay Goltz complains about the eligibility rules for unemployment insurance. Namely, Goltz thinks it's unfair that in Illinois employees are eligible after only 30 days. "As Congress, the Obama administration and the states consider ways to encourage hiring, they should look at incentives, but they should also consider the disincentives," he writes. "In today’s economy, I have to consider the cost of a potentially expensive unemployment tax increase if I hire someone and it doesn’t work out. If I knew I could get a chance to try out the person for, say, three months without 'buying the farm,' it would be a lot more tempting to make the hire."

Silicon Alley's innovation explosion. Last October, we told you about how New York City's tech scene was emerging from the wreckage of the financial sector. This week investor and Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon shares his insights into why the scene is suddenly white hot on the Silicon Alley Insider and a lot of it has to do with the presence of investors. There are the big VCs (like Bessemer and Venrock) and mid-sized funds like Union Square Ventures, along with newly-minted seed funds like IA Capital. Even West Coast angel investors like Ron Conway, are taking note of the pace innovation. All that capital is encouraging diversification within the tech sector away from media and toward more Valley-style ventures like Foursquare and Boxee. Now all New York needs, says Dixon, is a couple of runaway successes.

The coming decade's fastest-growing markets for small business. Market research company IBISWorld analyzed 708 industries to predict which six represent the fastest-growing markets for small business over the next decade, reports TheStreet. Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) providers will likely be the fastest-growing market, with nearly 150% growth predicted over the next ten years. Retirement and pension plans, biotechnology, e-commerce and online auctions, environmental consulting, and video games were also highlighted as top industries for small business growth.

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On Monday, Inc. went virtual, beginning a month-long experiment during which our entire editorial staff will work remotely. I explained our rationale for doing this in a blog post yesterday. Virtual companies can be cheaper, more productive, and kinder to the environment. So we decided to test it out rather than simply write about it.

The experiment has generated lots of great comments from entrepreneurs and some nice press. And then there was this from the Columbia Journalism Review.

The CJR, for those of you not in the media business, is a serious, scholarly publication that takes as its mission the defense of the American press. It's an admirable cause these days, when newspapers and magazines are struggling to stay afloat. Unfortunately, the CJR can also be paranoid and uptight:

"If I were a staff member at Inc.," writes Alexandra Fenwick. "I'm not sure if I would be approaching this experiment [as] a clever bit of participatory journalism, an innovative, cost-cutting measure that could help save the future of the ailing magazine industry, or just be really freaked out that it sounds eerily like what happens when a title in said industry goes to that virtual workplace in the sky and shuts down for good."

Now, I doubt that our little virtual work experiment holds the key to the future of print media, but I do think that the CJR's reaction to it highlights one of the main problems in the beleaguered publishing industry and, perhaps, in businesses of all kinds. Namely, we love technological innovations, but we're suspicious of process innovations. Inc. tries something new--dare I say, innovative--and the CJR cynically suggests that working virtually is one step away from not working at all.

At the same time, the press has been head over heels about Apple's iPad and a host of new tablets, e-readers, and smart phones. The hope is basically that some new gadget will cause readers to magically start paying for articles that they currently get for free. It may yet happen, but it seems silly to pin the hopes of an industry on technology alone. Every industry needs iPads, but we also need innovations in the way we work.

Is working virtually a process innovation? I think it is. Will it work for magazines? Over the next few weeks, we should get an inkling.

Let me know what you think (through email or the comments below) and stay tuned.

Why doesn't the SBA lend directly to small businesses? It's a reasonable question, according to a recent blog post by the New York Times, which details Obama's explanation to an entrepreneur during a Tampa, Florida town hall meeting last week. Steve Gordon, owner of local environmental company, detailed his frustration with not being able to get a bank loan -- despite his business' potential to create 500 jobs. "Lending [money] to the banks to lend to us is not the answer," said Gordon of the President's recent $30 million pledge to small businesses. "Why can't you use the S.B.A. just like you lent directly to Wall Street?" Obama's answer? There's simply not enough infrastructure to analyze the business plans, financial projects, etc., of applicants across the country. "Now, if the S.B.A. were to suddenly take over that entire function, we'd have to stand up a massive bureaucracy," he explained. "And we'd have to train all those people, and it would take too long, and you'd be frustrated." Do you think this is a function the government should take in-house?

Steve Jobs, pre-sound bite. Apple's CEO didn't always speak in carefully managed quotes designed to boost stock prices. Before the iPod or the iPhone, Jobs, then the head of the short-lived NeXT Computer, sat down with Rolling Stone's Jeff Goodell. It was 1985, Jobs had recently been booted from Apple, the internet was still the province of geeks and academics, and the personal computer revolution looked like it might be over. But even at one of the low points in his career, Jobs still had sublime confidence in the limitlessness of personal computing. Read on to get Jobs' prescient take on PDAs, object-oriented software, as well as his relationship with Bill Gates and why he wanted the internet in his den, but not living room.

Forget the e-store--sell within your ad. Advertising on social media sites like Facebook can be a great way to target specific audiences, but ads on these sites have a notoriously low click-through rate. New start-up Alvenda lets companies sell their products without the daunting task of enticing customers away from profile pages. "We literally pack up an e-commerce store into a banner ad," says CEO Wade Gerten. Reuters reports that the company recently raised $5 million in funding to expand the new advertising format.

Sun Microsystems CEO Resigns by Haiku. "Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more." That was the message Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz posted on his Twitter page last night, adding--in prose--"Today's my last day at Sun. I'll miss it." TechCrunch flags the Tweet and notes that Schwartz's resignation was something of a fait accompli after the EU's approval of Oracle's acquisition of his company. In any case, we think Schwartz deserves credit for making the quitting-by-Twitter look classy.

Small businesses hoping the proposed tax credit for new hires comes through. January was another bad month for job losses with businesses that have fewer than 50 employees losing 12,000 workers. However, during that same time period, companies in the 50 to 499 employee range added a net of 9,000 jobs writes CNN Money. Many businesses feel Obama's recent proposals, including a $5,000 per worker hiring tax credit would make just enough of a difference. "We needed more people, but we simply put it off. We all worked longer hours to hit our revenue goals and profit goals, and we just can't keep doing that," says Steven Cox, the owner of the music instruction provider TakeLessons.com.

Monster buys Hotjobs. For a cool quarter billion. HotJobs was founded during the tech boom and then sold to Yahoo in 2002 for $436 million. Yahoo then went on a buying spree, picking up startups like Flickr, Delicious, and Right Media. Now times are tough and the company has been unloading some of these companies in an effort to raise cash and refocus its efforts.

Marketing to affluent African Americans. Luxury marketers can often be ridiculously inept at catering to or even acknowledging the affluent African American market. AdWeek reviews an
upcoming book titled "Black is the New Green: Marketing to Affluent African Americans," which puts the disposable income numbers for that demographic in the vicinity of $87 billion. So why do the ad men bomb so miserably? The article notes that, "one problem is that marketers often seem to adopt adopt a hip-hop approach as their default mode in addressing black consumers, irrespective of the age or social class of the audience they're hoping to reach." Learn more about why demographics are crucial to your business and how one pizzeria revamped their brand to reflect that.

How to succeed in social media in 4 easy steps. Whether you're looking to use social networking sites to grow business or take advantage of online review and answer sites for customer feedback, there are plenty of ways to become a social media success story. Mashable highlights four essential tips, including developing authentic relationships in your online communities, learning to be a digital trendsetter, taking risks by recognizing opportunities, and giving back, for example, by raising money for charity through social media platforms. Check out Inc.'s list of 30 business-centric tips to using social media.

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Earlier this week, we at Inc. magazine announced that we were abandoning our beautiful offices and going virtual for the month. Since then, we've received lots of great suggestions from readers on how to get the most out of our experiment. Starting today, we'll be spotlighting some of these comments.

Clay Schossow, founded New Media Campaigns, a Web development company in Carrborro, North Carolina in 2006 and, for the first few years, had a central office where everyone came every day. But a year and a half ago, Schossow began letting employees work remotely. “It's really kind of baptism by fire when they leave the office,” he told Inc. researcher Josh Spiro, who called up Schossow yesterday and asked him to expand on his advice. Here are Schossow's four tips on how best to manage virtual workers.

1. Have common areas where people can gather, virtually or otherwise. For local employees who want to meet up in person, Schossow keeps an open tab at a local coffee shop. For virtual gatherings, he uses 37Signals’s Campfire as a group chat room.

2. Trust your employees but maintain accountability. Schossow eschews a mandatory check in time, but uses another 37Signals application called Basecamp, a project management tool that keeps track of what everyone is working on.

3. There’s no such thing as too much communication. Early on, Schossow found that despite all the communication systems the company set up, sometimes an employee would be left without anything to do. To compensate for that blindspot, Schossow began using the Google Talk instant messaging program to get one-on-one updates from his team, a sort of virtual version of poking his head in their office door.

4. Maintain a sense of community. In Campfire, Schossow encourages a lighthearted atmosphere, with staff members posting jokes or links that might appeal to the whole company. Allowing fun to intermingle with work helps keep things collegial.

Over the coming weeks we'll be publishing more reader comments and our own observations from the trenches. So keep the advice coming. What approaches and technologies do you use at your company?

Twitter to users: Change your passwords! Yesterday brought the latest hack attempt on Twitter, which led administrators to lock many users out of their accounts, without much explanation, until they changed their passwords. According to TechCrunch, officials are now revealing the source of the hack to be hidden backdoors on torrent sites. Apparently, many users have the same email/password combo on these sites for their Twitter accounts, which is a common vulnerability hackers pounce on, says Del Harvey, Twitter's Director of Trust and Safety, in a blog post titled "Reason #4132 for Changing Your Password." "The takeaway from this is that people are continuing to use the same email address and password on multiple sites," he says. "We strongly suggest that you use different passwords for each service you sign up for."

12 signs you might be suffering from "Founderitis". According to Om Malick, every great startup founder should be equal parts The Rock, Woody Allen, Winston Churchill, and Harry Potter. "In other words, a fearless, neurotic creative, and a stubborn visionary--one that believes in the power of magic." But that doesn't always keep them immune from founderitis. Malick has a check list for possible sufferers to identify their condition. A few of our favorites: "When people ask how your day went, you tell them it's only half over;" "You're constantly checking Twitter/Facebook/Google Reader and have set up Google Alerts to monitor what people are saying about you and your company--when you should be actually working;" "You mistake half a dozen T-shirts with company logos for your wardrobe;" and "In great moments of great weakness, you regret not just starting a virtual farm application and selling virtual goods via cellphones."

Yammering its way to $10 million. Yammer, Twitter's business friendly cousin, has just landed $10 million in venture capital, according to Kara Swisher at AllThingsDigital. The software company had previously raised $5 million. Yammer makes it easy for companies to set up private social networks, where employees are free to post short, Twitter-like messages about what they're doing without sharing them with the outside world. It's a cool service, especially for virtual companies, where spontaneous, casual conversation is impossible. (We've been trying it out for our virtual company experiment, and we like it.)

Obama looks to give small businesses repaid bailout money. President Obama spoke at a town hall yesterday in Nashua, New Hampshire in an effort to raise support for his plan to take the $30 billion repaid by the large banks that received bailout funds and use it to fund community banks for loans to small businesses. The plan echoes the remarks he made in the State of the Union address when he said, "This will help small banks do even more of what our economy needs--ensure that small businesses are once again the engine of job growth in America." For Inc.'s coverage of the President's plan, click here.

Shopify: A start-up with its own business competition? Ottowa-based start-up Shopify has already established itself as a successful Web-based company that allows businesses to create their own online stores. And now, the e-commerce enhancer has established its own business competition, called Build a Business , reports The New York Times' You're the Boss blog. Though it is virtually unheard of for a start-up to hold its own competition to promote other start-ups, Shopify is giving it a go, offering $100,000 to whichever of their subscribers exhibits the highest revenue in its best two months from the time period of January to June. Prizes of $5,000 will also go to the overall runner-up and top-selling stores of consumer goods. Entries are permitted until April 30.

10 States endangered by the impending Chinese import slowdown. Experts are calling for an import slowdown from China as the result of massive overcapacity. In the U.S., where exports to China grew by 341 percent from 2000 to 2008, China's bubble popping, could destroy Obama's goal to double imports in the next ten years. Business Insider put together a list of the 10 most vulnerable states in the face of China's bubble bursting. Is your state on it?

iPads in classrooms? Several major textbook publishers recently made deals with ScrollMotion Inc., a software company that will adapt their textbooks for e-readers. The hope is that readers like the iPad will beat out netbooks for an electronic presence in the classroom. The new books will allow students to play video, highlight text, record lectures, take printed notes, search text, and take quizes on what they're reading. The Wall Street Journal reports that in 2008, schools spent $47.6 billion on technology, a number that could increase to $61.9 billion by 2013.

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Google to sell business software. Your business may already use Google's free offerings for search and email, but Google hopes you'll eventually use it for all sorts of business software. Taking a page from Apple, which has built a billion dollar business selling apps--tiny software applications for its iPhone--Google will soon launch an online store for business software apps, reports the Wall Street Journal. "Google is turning to developers to help fill the holes and develop features its online software lacks, such as specialized editing software or tools to access online files offline," according to the article. "The new store represents its latest attempt to get customers to switch to its online offerings and away from Microsoft programs."

Factoring on the rise. Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have had stories in the past few days about small companies finding cash from sources other than banks and credit cards, which have restricted capital to entrepreneurs since the recession began in 2008. The Times piece covers purchase order financing, which it describes as a twist on traditional factoring. Purchase-order financing, says the Times, involves written guarantees from a buyer who commits to purchasing a product.The Journal's story focuses on asset-based lending, a collateral-based form of financing where borrowers put up equipment, inventory, accounts receivable, or other liquid assets. We told you about the rise of this kind of financing, in some cases known as merchant cash advances, which can have annual interest rates as high as 100 percent, back in 2008. Check out our profile of On Deck Capital, one of the asset-based lenders included in the Journal piece, which has doled out around $50 million to 2,000 businesses.

Social networks a threat to your business? We know there are some business owners who have pulled the plug on Facebook in the office, citing lost productivity Now, there is something else to consider: the risk social networking sites pose to your office's computer network. As Inc.com's Courtney Rubin explains, a new report from the IT security company Sophos shows that 36 percent of executives surveyed said their office has received software worms, viruses, or other malware from social networking sites in 2009, a 70 percent jump from the previous year.

Marketing to affluent African Americans. Luxury marketers can often be ridiculously inept at catering to or even acknowledging the affluent African American market. AdWeek reviews an upcoming book titled "Black is the New Green: Marketing to Affluent African Americans." So why do the ad men bomb so miserably? The article notes that, "one problem is that marketers often seem to adopt a hip-hop approach as their default mode in addressing black consumers, irrespective of the age or social class of the audience they're hoping to reach." Learn more about why demographics are crucial to your business and how one pizzeria revamped its brand to reflect that.

5 Ways to Protect Your Assets. The loss of your home, car, or savings account isn't something to risk just because your business is in debt. Yet in 2005, small business owners dished out $98 billion in tort liability costs. BusinessWeek has some smart suggestions that will help protect yourself: Inventory everything on a regular basis; research laws that protect your assets; avoid personal guarantees if you can; provide liability protection in your contracts; and, of course, buy insurance.

What you have in common with Microsoft's CEO. Sure, he may run a company with 91,000 employees and $58 billion in revenue, but Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer surprisingly deals with many of the same issues that small-business owners face each day. In an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ballmer discusses Microsoft's outlook for the future, but he also shares his thoughts on his management style. For example, Ballmer says his most important job as CEO is to "pick and shape the right ideas," figuring out which projects are worthy of the company's attention. Another challenge Ballmer says he faces is figuring out how to attract the best employees and hold them accountable for their performance. Both issues probably sound familiar to anyone who's ever run a business.

2010 resolutions for a better business and a better life. Small Biz Trends offers up 10 resolutions for the small business owner in 2010. Their advice includes business-centric suggestions, such as making sure to back up your files and meeting regularly with trusted advisors, and also family-centric ones, such as scheduling vacations.

Inc. is going virtual. Yes, you read right. For the next month, we're abandoning our gorgeous offices and working from homes, coffee shops, airport terminals, and wherever else there is reliable broadband. It's an experiment in virtual work and part of a story that will appear in the April issue of Inc. If you work remotely, or manage a virtual company, we'd love to hear from you.

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Everyone knows the workforce is becoming more virtual. Free online technologies offered by the likes of Skype and Google have made it possible for start-ups to be launched by teams of people who live in different cities or, for that matter, on different continents. As for established businesses, a compelling argument can be made that, between high rents and long commutes, virtual work is more desirable, too. And individual workers have found that telecommuting opens up possibilities for integrating work and life (in ways both good and bad) as never before.

So how does being a virtual workplace affect a company’s culture—and the quality and efficiency of its output? To find out, we’ve decided to conduct a little experiment: Starting right now, Inc. magazine will cease to exist as a physical place. We, the members of the magazine’s editorial staff, are packing up our things, turning off the lights, and leaving our offices (which happen to be really, really nice). The idea: If virtual companies are so good, why not give it a try ourselves?

For the next month, anyway.

To prepare, we’ve talked to experts in the field of organizational behavior and entrepreneurs who believe in virtual work, such as WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and 4-Hour Workweek guru Timothy Ferriss. The reporters and editors have taken surveys on our work habits, downloaded new applications onto our computers and smartphones, and created checklists to help us collaborate even when we won’t see each other face to face as we normally do. Most of us will be working from home offices for the month of February. The rest will be scattered among hotels, co-working spaces, and the occasional laptop-friendly café.

As the experiment progresses, we’ll be blogging about our experiences here on a regular basis. We also plan to post video interviews with experts and consultants who study virtual work. Then in the April issue of the magazine, we’ll publish a definitive piece on virtual work—a look at pros and cons of running a highly-dispersed team (namely, ours), plus, tips on how to work virtually that any start-up or small business can use.

As much as this is an experiment in remote work, it’s also an experiment in open-source journalism. Working remotely is never easy, and we may face particular challenges coming from an industry where it is still common for an editor, a designer, a photo editor, and a writer to gather around a table to look at a page proof.

Therefore, we need your help. Use the Disqus comments section below to post your thoughts, send us a tweet, or send me an e-mail. I'll be posting a series of the most interesting comments and the best tips in this blog, and compiling it all in the magazine story in April. If you work from home, or manage employees who do, we want to know your favorite tips, tools, and techniques for making it all work. Bonus points if you have specific ideas about how to work with colleagues in different zip codes (or different countries). Should we use IM or Skype or both? Do we need set check-in times to make sure everyone is on the same page? Let us know.

And help us to understand the bigger picture as well. What were your your reasons for building a company virtually? What are the pros and cons of working from home? When is a traditional office necessary?

Send us your thoughts. And stay tuned to Inc.com as this story develops.

What you can learn from James Cameron and Avatar. With Avatar recently becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time, Hollywood is looking to learn what it can from the mystical blue people of the Na'vi. Entrepreneurs, however, might want to look at the film's director, James Cameron, for some business advice. Finance blog, BloggingStocks, has an interesting post about the business lessons entrepreneurs can learn from James Cameron. In their words, "Cameron is a New Age entrepreneur--that is, combining creativity, unconventional wisdom, over-the-top optimism and good business sense." They advise entrepreneurs to find a way to charge a premium. By making a 3D film, Cameron was able to charge 30 percent more than a regular movie ticket. It also took Cameron 10 years to make the film, which BloggingStocks says proves that "while some entrepreneurs can make a quick fortune, this is rare. Instead, building real value takes time."

Will an IPO make Tesla a household name? Electric carmaker Tesla filed documents with the SEC yesterday in the hope of securing a $100 million IPO. PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, who runs the company, is hardly alone in terms of clean-tech ventures hoping for an infusion of capital by going public. Solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, which like Tesla picked up a sizable stimulus grant from the Department of Energy, went public in January and biofuels company Codexis filed last December. But analysts are calling Tesla a bellweather for the health of the IPO market. Check out Max Chafkin's cover story on Musk, who we named our Entrepreneur of the Year in 2007.

Augmenting the human boday. With biotechnology expected to be one of the best performing industries of the coming decade, it's no surprise that entrepreneurs are eagerly improving upon technologies like prostheses. Fast Company has the story on how improving technology is taking prostheses from a source of stigma to one of super human possibilities. Companies such as Touch Bionics with their iLimb allowing for human augmentation more akin to Steve Jobs remixing Darth Vader than to Dr. Frankenstein with an erector set. But prostheses goes far beyond new and improved limbs. Here are ten innovations that will impact the future of the human body.

How to plan an awesome elevator pitch. Have that first investor meeting coming up? Today, Business Insider breaks down the do's and don'ts of a killer pitch. Here's a boxing gym's pitch from our February issue.

Employing new social media features to boost sales. Several social media sites are expanding efforts to help small businesses manage customer relationships, reports TheStreet. Twitter, for example, allows entrepreneurs to create a series of lists that will allow you to follow specific Twitter handles, such as your competition or potential new clients. Likewise, Facebook has enabled new privacy policies that make it possible to create private Facebook pages that can target sales staff. LinkedIn is also offering new features, but its services - like lead generation - start at $25 per month. LinkedIn's premium offers could set you back $300 each year, and the investment may not justify this spending.

How to hire your first employees. Before you make an offer, make sure you've done your research. The Wall Street Journal suggests checking with your trade association about competitive salaries, asking competitors what they pay, or checking the local paper to see what other companies are offering for your job category. Find 19 strategies for hiring the best, a hiring checklist, a sample offer letter and other hiring tools at Inc.com.

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The wrong way to calculate ROI. Union Square Ventures's Fred Wilson says he often notices a lack of sophistication in the numbers he gets from entrepreneurs in calculating the potential return for an investor, not realizing that their projections assume a business will have an infinite life (when most don't). What entrepreneurs should be using, says Wilson, is the "cash flow method." Wilson outlines the steps and gives a sample Google Doc spreadsheet for you to play around with here. (Hat tip, Business Insider.

The start-up that can save your unborn child. The New York Times has the amazing story of Counsyl, the Silicon Valley start-up that says its test ($698 for a couple) can alert parents-to-be that they have the carrier genes for more than 100 rare genetic diseases.

Should you fire a co-founder? Venture Hacks has a nice guest post by Simeon Simeonov, a consultant to start-up companies, on when to part ways with a co-founder. "If you are behind the 8-ball and see your team as a key constraint, you should do something about it," he writes. "Don't wait for an investor or someone else to do it for you. The non-CEO co-founders can fire their CEO co-founder, too (or change their role and level of responsibility)." Of course, having to fire a co-founder means that you probably made a mistake when you hired your co-founder. Simeonov recommends trying to hire smart generalists and being honest with your self and your co-founders about what is in the best interest of the business.

11 tips for creating great content. Few people doubt that having fresh and interesting content about your business up on the Web is a great way to attract new customers and improve relationships with existing ones. However, running a business is time consuming enough, who has the spare time to post new blog posts or launch a new YouTube video? To that end, the American Express OPEN Forum has a list of 11 easy ways to create great content. Their main advice is for companies to think small. Rather than trying to post a blog entry the length of War and Peace, instead try writing a series of shorter blog posts that will be both easier to produce and more digestible for readers. Another great tip is to create content from things that your business is already doing. For example, the next time you or your team are giving a presentation at an industry event, why not film it and post it on YouTube?

Post iPad: a whole new category of smart phones. As risky moves go, entering the smart phone space right now ranks pretty high up there. But a start-up called QderoPateo is going a step further by making a phone for a market that doesn't exist yet (via GigaOM). The device is dedicated exclusively to augmented reality, a field that so far has garnered a lot of buzz but has shown few signs of rapid innovation. The company hopes to have a demo of the phone by spring and a launch in the fall. In the meantime, to get their foot in the door, the company is releasing an iPhone app called WorldLenns. So why isn't an AR iPhone app enough? Why build an entirely separate device? The new phone "uses triangulation between accelerometers, gyrometers, and GPS to calculate its user's location 10 times more accurately than GPS alone," according to the company."

Companies that have never had a layoff - do they exist? According to Fortune, they do. Even in a downturn, Fortune has found six of this year's best companies that claim to have never laid off an employee, or at least haven't had layoffs for more than 10 years. North Carolina-based business analytics software company SAS, family-owned supermarket chain Wegmans, and Mercedes-Benz USA top this year's list. Their secret to bucking the trend? Instituting hiring freezes, cross-training employees for different jobs, and accepting pay cuts at the executive level, respectively.

Who has more opportunities for advancement? A survey of almost 2,000 business professionals around the world conducted by the consulting firm Bain & Co. found a huge gap in perceptions among the sexes of whether men or women had an easier way to the top. Eighty-one percent of men thought opportunities to move into middle management didn't have anything to do with gender. Only 52 percent of women agreed. According to the Wall Street Journal, the study found similar perception gaps about whether promotions to the C-level were gender-neutral (66 percent of men, 30 percent of women). So who's right? In actuality, women leaders are harder to find in business. Research firm Catalyst Inc. found only 3 percent of Fortune 500 companies had women CEOs and 13.5 percent had female executives. The Journal offers a number of explanations: women aren't perceived as leaders by their colleagues (and sometimes themselves); women are assigned riskier roles (like cleaning up corporate messes); and men are better at developing career advocates. Orit Gadiesh, Bain's chairman, advises organizations that want to change those numbers to start quantifying what derails women. "You need to tailor it to the company--how many women you have, where they drop off, and what happens with promotions."

Next on Zuckerberg's list: Face-square? Business Insider is reporting that the goliath of social networking sites, Facebook, is toiling away on a feature that will allow its mobile users to "check-in" using GPS to broadcast their locations -- the key function of New York-based start-up, Foursquare. While Facebook has already "borrowed" a few components from other sites like Twitter (check out the recent "@" and "via" functions added to status updates), Foursquare is arguably still a fledgling network that might not be able to withstand a major player siphoning members from its userbase. Despite the looming competition, however, co-founder Dennis Crowley is putting on his brave face. "I think we're doing this better than anyone else and I think we'll continue to do so," he tells Insider. "We have so much stuff on the whiteboard that we haven't even touched yet."

How Pepsi got social media marketing right. Instead of spending money on Super Bowl television ads this year, PepsiCo is spending $20 million on social media marketing. According to Mashable, two of these campaigns--the DEWmocracy campaign and new Pepsi Refresh Project--are part of the company's larger plan to better engage customers with the brand through crowdsourcing. The DEWmocracy campaign will let consumers choose Mountain Dew's new flavor, and the Pepsi Refresh Project allows consumers to submit ideas for social good and vote for which projects should get a grant. "It's been great for us to have this really unique dialogue that we normally wouldn't have," says Brett O'Brien, Mountain Dew's marketing director. "It really has opened our eyes up." For a plethora of social media tips, check out Inc.com's guide on how to use social media to build your business.

AT&T to shell out $2 billion for network improvements ... Mashable reports — and a collective cheer is heard across the nation. Whether the impetus was Verizon's string of commercials featuring that notoriously speckled map of AT&T's coverage, or the announcement that the company somehow wound up as the wireless data provider for the much-sought-after iPad, one thing's for sure: this is likely the best news all day for many an iPhone user.

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What Obama's speech means for businesses. President Obama spent most of his State of the Union address last night focusing on how the country can hasten its economic recovery. The Wall Street Journal recaps the speech and says it was mostly about creating jobs. The President proposed tax cuts to "promote small business hiring," and "a plan to devote $30 billion in Wall Street bailout funds for small-business lending through community banks," according to the Journal. With other issues that have been controversial, including climate change legislation and health care, Obama appealed to the need to keep the United States competitive with the rest of the world. On climate change, he said that even those who "disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change" should care about going green because, "the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy." After mentioning that the cost of health care had reach a record high, Obama said, "You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China is not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting. These nations -- they're not standing still." For more on State of the Union's small-business impact, check out this piece from Inc.com's Courtney Rubin.

Yay, the iPad is here! Now the hard part. One of the iPad's promises, being touted by Apple and iGeeks alike, is that the device will revitalize (and possibly revolutionize) the publishing industry, from magazines and newspapers, to textbooks and novels. But, according to TechCrunch, a challenge lies ahead: how do publishers make their products interactive enough so that the content doesn't end up looking like a crude, scanned page? Thankfully, the post says, there's a new crop of start-ups racing to their rescue. One of them is Inkling, which has raised $1 million from angel investors, and plans to help companies integrate interactive figures, maps, quizzes, and cloud connectivity within the iPad's digitized textbooks. "Imagine if you had a question about a particular diagram in your text," the post says, "you could send it to your professor, and they could leave an annotation in the book that would be visible to all other students." Another start-up itching to join the fray is PixelMags, which already helps companies put magazines on the iPhone, but is now working with publishers to help include both text and streaming video in their soon-to-come iPad versions. In case you were hibernating in a cave somewhere yesterday, click here for all the details on Apple's new beauty.

Is the iPad a Kindle killer? Om Malik is convinced that Amazon's e-reader is dead in the water but Paul Grimm, a VC with SunBridge Partners begs to differ. He believes that the iPad will create a duopoly with consumers choosing between "the leading, lower-cost, elegant e-ink book platform" and "the leading, higher-cost, aesthetically gorgeous, multifunction tablet platform." TechCrunch also has a video of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (whose snazzy business card can be seen here) pitching in his two cents about how consumers will use the iPad and how it will affect the publishing industry. Grimm examines a much broader field of possibilities including, "healthcare, education, design, architecture, basically any field in which someone carries around a clipboard or simply has to move around a lot while working."

How to start a company in a recession. SpeakerText's Matt Mireles founded his company in October, 2008, in the midst of the economic apocalypse and launched it this month, spending only $4,000 (a loan from his pops). Business Insider has his tips for other founders. For one, dispense with stealth mode altogether. Instead pitch your idea to every smart person you know. "Think of it as crowdsourcing. The masses have much to teach you, if you let them." Second, finding good advisors is easier than you think. Don't be afraid to embarrass yourself. Mireles pitched the CEO of Pandora after a talk and got his card. "I never wasted his time, but I was persistent and, most importantly, I listened and kept him updated on my progress." He also advises getting a co-founder and not just a CTO (aka "engineering bitch"). His other tips? Recruit at job fairs ("you'll be the only startup there") and fake it 'til you make it. "Starting is a declarative act. Just go for it. People won't follow unless you lead."

Answers to all your geek-related health questions. Worried about what all those long hours in front of a computer might be doing to your eyesight? Want an alternative to Red Bull to help you stay awake during those late nights in the office? Digg founder Kevin Rose has the answer to those questions and more. On his blog, Rose sits down with alternative health guru Dr. Andrew Weil for some advice on the health concerns specifically related to computer geeks and entrepreneurs. For you tea drinkers out there, Dr. Weil also gives a rundown of the health benefits of drinking various types of quality teas.

Yelp says, "Who needs Google?" In the wake of its failed $500 million deal with Google, and after a couple of weeks of rumors that it was closing in on a big round of funding, it seems Yelp has finally closed a $100 million deal with the private equity firm Elevation Partners, The New York Times reports. Elevation Partners will invest $25 million to help "Yelp to expand into more American and foreign cities, develop mobile applications and hire ad salespeople," the paper writes. Another $75 million will be used to buy shares from existing shareholders, likely meaning a nice little payday for early employees, including co-founders Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman. Interested in how Yelp can make or break your small business? Check out our Max Chafkin's feature from our February issue.

Swiping out profits. Larger businesses like Wal-Mart are able to negotiate with credit card companies to reduce the percentage of credit card purchases that are re-routed to their banks, the cardholder's bank, and the network that processes the transaction. For small businesses, however, accepting credit cards can cut profits more significantly. The Wall Street Journal reports that these fees are increasing: merchant-paid swipe fees increased 3 percent in 2008 as compared to the previous year, and major card companies like Visa and MasterCard raised rates. Some small businesses are dealing with the fees by instituting a surcharge on purchases (a practice expressly prohibited by both Visa and MasterCard). Others are attempting to negotiate with their banks for a lower rate.

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Did Calacanis spill the beans on the Apple tablet? On Tuesday evening, serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis seemingly upstaged today's Apple tablet announcement with a series of tweets that started with this: "Yes, it's true... I've been beta testing the Apple tablet for the past two weeks and it's amazing." Since then, Calacanis has gone on to describe some of the tablet's supposed features and specs including: "wireless charging via optional base station," "facial recognition...[that] recognizes you + pulls your desktop/apps," and a price of "599, 699 and 799 depending on size and memory." In summary, he calls it the "best gadget ever made and NOT overhyped." It seems shocking that Steve Jobs, a lover of theatrical build-up, would sign off on Calacanis stealing his (virtual) thunder less than 24 hours before the big announcment. At the same time, this would be one elaborate hoax, even for Calacanis who's known to be comfortable ruffling a feather or two. Either way, on a publicity level Calacanis wins.

More tablet madness. Calacanis wasn't the only tablet leaker. Yesterday evening, Terry McGraw, CEO of the McGraw Hill Companies, seemed to inadvertently let some details slip. ("Get thee to media training!" proclaimed Inc.com's Courtney Rubin.) Meanwhile, in advance of the big press conference, we've got the odds on all the rumors (chance of video projections: 80 to 1). And the Wall Street Journal rounds up the long, troubled history of tablet computers. Here's hoping Steve Jobs's latest creation bests the Momenta, a six-pound, $5,000, machine that was created in 1991. Stay tuned to Inc.com for the full story.

Government special offer: tax cuts for new hires? It's an ongoing quandary that seems to have stumped the now one-year-old Obama administration. Despite several major economic initiatives -- including that $787 billion dollar one -- the country's unemployment rate is still hovering above a dismal 10 percent. One idea recently floated by senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is a tax break for any private company that hires a worker who had previously been unemployed for at least 60 days. In the New York Times op-ed, the congressmen make the case that the proposal, which would nix employers' Social Security payroll tax for the remainder of 2010, would be immediately (and widely) adopted by businesses, since the benefit starts on the date of hiring and "no business wants to wait until 2011 to receive a tax credit for someone it hires today." But Times blogger Jay Goltz has one simple objection: businesses don't hire people if they don't need them. "As a small business owner, I see one problem -- it won't work," he says. "If companies don't have work for new hires to do, they aren't going to hire them even if they're on sale for 6.2 percent off, or even 20 percent off." Would you hire new workers -- or create new work -- for a tax break?

The one BIG mistake you need to avoid. Part of the fun of being an entrepreneur is handling new ideas as they come at you fast and furious. However, tech entrepreneur Neil Patel has a warning for all those business owners out there who are always on the lookout for the next big thing: "If you don't focus on one business, you're bound to fail." Patel explains that, mathematically, there are barely enough hours in the day for an entrepreneur to focus on one business, let alone two. As he demonstrates, between the time spent eating, sleeping, and other life's necessities, the typical entrepreneur can't possibly give proper attention to more than one business. That's a lesson Patel learned firsthand, to the tune of almost $1 million.

A lost generation of entrepreneurs? After Doug Leone of Sequoia Capital told MIT Sloan students that people over 30 aren't innovative Jeff Bussgang, another VC with Flybridge in Boston started fretting about whether there was a lost generation of entrepreneurs. "During the period of 2001-2009, there have been very few substantial start-ups built to allow that generation's 20-somethings to learn and develop company-building skills," he says. However many of the entrepreneurs on our 30 Under 30 list would likely dispute that claim.

A-list investors line up for new credit card device. By plugging a tiny, square-shaped device into the headphones jack of your iPhone, Square makes taking credit card payments mobile. Once the card's been swiped through the device and the payment's authorized (a matter of seconds), the credit card user is automatically sent a receipt that shows the GPS location of the phone at the time the charge was made. It's easy to see how this could revolutionize small businesses. The company also just disclosed its full list of investors and TechCrunch has the list (as well as a video of Digg's Kevin Rose demo-ing the product): Rose, Biz Stone from Twitter, Shawn Fanning from Napster, first-time investors Google's Marisa Mayer, FourSquare's Dennis Crowley, and many more.

The newest source for search: your friends As it stands now, Google gives everyone the same results based on information gathered from the Internet at large. But the latest trend in search gives you the best personalized result based on information gathered from your online social networks. Bing recently announced agreements with Facebook and Twitter, and Google has revealed "Social Search," which allows users to add their social media accounts to one Google profile that allows Google to search their social network data. Advertising Age's Eric Swayne says the new search strategy has several implications for businesses: it's more important than ever to track what people are saying about you online, to assign someone responsibility for social media marketing, and to involve each discipline within your company in social media projects.

Austin entrepreneur tackles environmental planning debacles. For Kristin Carney, what began as a frustrating environmental consulting project turned into a Web-based startup that focuses on ready-to-use environmental data for governmental engineering projects. Reuters reports that the concept for Carney's business, Cubit Planning, was envisioned after she saw the need for a single platform that allows engineers to view the environmental data - for example, relevant endangered species, hazardous materials and demographics - of an area that is being considered for a federal construction project. By setting up a one-stop-shop for the engineers who build these environmental projects, Cubit enables efficient building time, coupled with budget-friendly costs for clients.

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Matt Mullenweg shares his public speaking secrets. You already know how he works. Now, the founder of Wordpress and Automattic posts a video blog about how to be a better public speaker. Mullenweg, who has spoken at numerous Wordpress conferences and performed as an amateur saxophone player, recommends taking a deep breath and remembering that your audience is rooting for you to do well. "[T]he best way to relax is to know your material down cold," he writes. "I think practicing and knowing your material well comes across most in your body language which probably affects how people perceive your presentation more than what you say."

When is the best time to sell your business? It might make sense to bid adieu to your company when times are toughest, but that's one mistake made by many business owners, according to a post by the New York Times. Though you may be experiencing psychological burnout or declining sales--the top two reasons most people sell, the article says--you are probably leaving money on the table if you decide to sell now. "More often than not, business owners miss this critical opportunity," the post says. "It's difficult to think of your business as an investment, but one of the cardinal rules of investing can hold true for owning a business as well." Check out this quiz for more advice on timing the sale of your business.

A spending freeze. Entrepreneurs fretting over rising deficits--and the eventual need to cover those deficits with taxes--will likely be happy to hear the latest news coming from the White House. During tomorrow's State of the Union address, President Obama will propose a freeze on discretionary spending that would save $250 billion over the next 10 years. The Wall Street Journal has the news.

Twitter's first-ever developer conference. Modeled after Yahoo's "Hack Day" events, Chirp, Twitter's upcoming developer conference, will include a 24-hour programming marathon, reports Valleywag. To register, you have to demonstrate some low-level technical expertise to figure out the password, and fork over $470. Not bad considering Microsoft charges at least $2,000. Yahoo, Microsoft, Izea, and HootSuite have already signed up. "It looks like there will be plenty of booze to lubricate the proceedings; Twitter engineers to help with topics like 'Streaming;' and a big bacchanal at the end," says Valleywag. "The vaguely erotic undertones are just a bonus."

Bill Gates gets some laughs on The Daily Show. A surprisingly charming and un-geeky Bill Gates made an appearance on Comedy Central's Daily Show last night and even managed to get in a few playful jabs at the show's host, Jon Stewart. In the interview, Gates discussed his work at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, his diminished role at Microsoft, and his recent Twitter habit. When asked by Stewart how he enjoyed Twittering, Gates explained, "We'll see it it works. I'm new to it, but so far so good." After Gates explained that he now considers his role as chairman of his foundation to be his full-time job, Stewart asked if that meant that he could finally get an iPhone "like the rest of us." With a sheepish grin, Gates responded, "I'm a very loyal Microsoft user."

Create a prize to spark innovation. Crafting a challenge, like the ones proposed by the X Prize Foundation, not only helps you keep employees motivated but often pays for itself, says an article on Read Write Web. Prizes can catalyze internal employees or outside developers as in the case of the Netflix prize. "Prizes are an efficient way to get 10 or 50 times your money and you only pay the winner," says Peter Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation.

Community lenders playing a larger role. With banks cutting back on small-business loans, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) are finding a niche in financing small businesses. CDFIs generally lend money to businesses that banks consider too risky. BusinessWeek reports that the federal government allocated $247 million in 2010 for the Treasury fund that supports community lenders and that the CDFI fund received $100 million in stimulus money last year. Banks are also increasing support for CDFIs in order to comply with the Community Reinvestment Act, which many depository institutions became subject to when they accepted bailout money. The 1977 law encourages banks to serve disadvantaged areas.

How to spot trends. Anita Campbell of Small Biz Trends recently held a webinar to answer questions about current small business trends. A few of her ideas: The rise of personal branding, the growing importance of government contracts, and an increased focus on going green.

The downside of the reality TV spotlight. Yes, getting your small business on a reality show can prove successful in getting your name out. (Just ask the College Hunks Hauling Junk founders, who have appeared on ABC's Shark Tank and Bravo's The Millionaire Matchmaker.) But as The Wall Street Journal reports today, with free publicity often comes unexpected drama.

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