| Must-Have Apps For Entrepreneurs Posted: 15 Apr 2012 11:30 PM PDT 
Many entrepreneurs find themselves running a business from their iPad or iPhone on the go. Here are some must-have apps from The Washington Post to help you along the way. TripIt (free, $3.99 for upgraded features): "All entrepreneurs need to download TripIt. This is a must-have app to help you organize all of your business trips, including where you are staying, what airline you are flying, what company you are renting a car from, etc." — Glen Hellman, Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship Board of Advisors and principal, Driven Forward, a firm that supports entrepreneurs and venture investors. GroupMe (free): "This app is a quick and easy way to start a group chat on any phone. It's a conference call without any of the hassle."— Ken White, executive communication coach and assistant dean of marketing communications. Evernote (free): "Keep your notes in the cloud and be able to access them from any device or platform. As long you have an Internet connection, you'll have access to your files – which could come in handy for that chance meeting with a potential investor."— Elana Fine, associate director, Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship.
Photo by Yutaka Tsutano 
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| Niche Biz: Bacon Freak Posted: 15 Apr 2012 11:00 PM PDT 
Love bacon? Then you’ll really love Bacon Freak, reports The Street. BaconFreak.com actually has roots in the wine business. Founder James “Rocco” Loosbrock also has a subscription service selling wine. After attending many chefs’ dinners where he would be pitched the latest and greatest sophisticated wine, he realized that customers for the most part are not that sophisticated. He wanted to bring the subscription business model to a simpler dish. He came up with bacon. “We like the subscription model because being a small business, it’s great for cash flow,” Loosbrock says. “People pre-pay you for an item. In the first few years we would have never survived. I needed the cash.” Loosbrock emphasizes that his bacon is no ordinary supermarket bacon. “We don’t add water to our product,” he says, which many manufacturers do to up the weight count of the meat. “We hand cut, we hand cure, we rub spices instead of a machine.” “We’re taking the time to make an artisan product,” he adds.
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| Get On The Shelf Finalists: Mr. Spritz Mysterious Shirts Posted: 15 Apr 2012 10:30 PM PDT The Palm Beach Post: Mr. Spritz Mysterious Shirts, as Drago calls the shirts that reveal images when wet, is one of the 10 finalists in Walmart’s “Get on the Shelf” contest, a spokeswoman for the company said . An architect and general contractor in Boca Raton since 1983, Drago said he knows how to work with materials and spent the past several years developing his idea. The concept was inspired by The Colbert Report segments that featured images of God in ordinary objects, he said. Mr. Spritz shirts still exist only as samples. Drago hopes Walmart will connect him with its manufacturers so he can find someone who wants to produce the shirts. “It was difficult coming up with right combination of fabrics,” he said. “The first one worked, but it didn’t work well.”
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