| Presenting Like Steve Jobs Posted: 16 May 2012 03:30 AM PDT 
If you need a lesson on presenting, there is no better man to emulate than Steve Jobs. Entrepreneur has pulled together a list of his qualities you should consider. 1. Know the one critical point in your presentation — then make it clear. 2. Acknowledge why people are listening to you. 3. Make an immediate, personal connection. 4. Keep the audience focused on you the speaker, not your presentation. 5. Know your story.
Photo by segagman 
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| How They Almost Deleted Toy Story 2 Posted: 15 May 2012 03:20 PM PDT Ever forgot to back something up? If so, you’ll appreciate this video from Pixar, about how they almost erased Toy Story 2. I use Dropbox for my backups. What do you recommend? 
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| Smarter Parking Meters Posted: 15 May 2012 03:16 PM PDT 
Photo by Ian Sane. The Atlantic Cities: “This week, the on-street parking meters in Santa Monica, California, have evolved to the next state of sentient existence. Now, whenever a car leaves a spot, the meter will reset itself, even if there’s still time left on the meter. The tiny, measured-in-minutes lottery prize of the urban driver is no more.” 
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| How to Make Money Online Posted: 15 May 2012 03:10 PM PDT 
Author Seth Godin has listed his 21 rules for making money online. The first two are golden: - The first step is to stop Googling things like, “how to make money online.” Not because you shouldn’t want to make money online, but because the stuff you’re going to find by doing that is going to help you lose money online. Sort of like asking a casino owner how to make money in Vegas…
- Don’t pay anyone for simple and proven instructions on how to achieve this goal. In particular, don’t pay anyone to teach you how to write or sell manuals or ebooks about how to make money online.
Be sure to read the rest. 
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| Pancake Art Posted: 15 May 2012 03:05 PM PDT 
Like Nathan Shields I like to make pancakes for my kids on Saturday mornings. While I can barely recreate my children’s first initials, my pancake design skills have nothing on this American math teacher in Saipan. Shields can make just about anything! Take a look at his website, Saipancakes, for more of his creations. Although he’s not selling them, someone should open a pancake restaurant with his designs on their menu. 
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| Niche Biz: Raffle Tickets to Space Posted: 15 May 2012 12:17 PM PDT 
Wired: A new startup company’s $10 space posters come with a chance to win a ride on a suborbital space vehicle. Called “I Dream of Space,” the company is selling 25,000 posters at $10 apiece, the proceeds of which should cover a $200,000 ride on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo or a $95,000 seat on XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx, plus some profit for the company’s founders. No spaceflight company has yet made a commercial flight, and it could be years before they do, but that day is approaching. Photo by AlphaTangoBravo / Adam Baker. 
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| Start a Video Contest to Promote Your Biz Posted: 15 May 2012 11:59 AM PDT 
Lisa O’Masta wanted to use Youtube to market her business Interwrite. She knew though 60 hours of video uploaded to Youtube every minute, that her marketing efforts would just get lost in the crowd. So, Ms. O’Masta and her marketing team came up with the idea of a song-parody video contest. Teachers and students were invited to send in videos of themselves performing their favorite songs, rewritten with new lyrics expressing the importance of technology in their classrooms. Interwrite spread the word through the local and trade press, and partnered with other educational companies. The six-week competition, called Interwrite Makeover, generated more than 200 videos — about four times the company’s expectations — and hundreds of teachers and students learned about Interwrite’s products. The company estimates that it collected contact information for 27,000 leads, including teachers, parents and other members of local school communities. The contest cost about $40,000, including the prizes. 
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| Forget Gold, There’s a Sand Rush On Posted: 15 May 2012 11:53 AM PDT 
Get ready to mine the sand off the floorboards of your SUV after last summers trip to the beach, because there’s a sand rush in the midwest. Scouts armed with geological maps and elevations from Google Earth are knocking on doors in the upper Midwest in search of what seems too common to mine: sand. The sedimentary material is in high demand among U.S. oil and natural-gas producers, setting off a sand rush in Wisconsin, Minnesota and other Midwestern states. While adding jobs, the mining boom is prompting pushback from some local residents, who are surprised by the frenzy and leery of its impact on their communities. Photo by davida3. 
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| ShopFlix Helps Monitor Merchandising Posted: 15 May 2012 11:49 AM PDT 
Phil Storage’s company, ShopFlix, allows manufacturers, brokers, and retailers to monitor visual merchandising plans. SoapBox Cincinnati has more: Shoppers who file purposefully down store aisles may think they're on a personal mission: bread, juice, tissues, bananas. In fact, retailers design their spaces to remind patrons that while they only need one thing, it wouldn't hurt to grab a few extras along the way. So, visual merchandisers and store designers lay out grocery stores with essentials like produce and dairy along the perimeter; convenience stores line checkout lines with candy and gum; and clothing stores use mannequins to display the latest trends. The problem is, after a store is laid out – particularly stores with multiple brands available – it can be hard to monitor product presentation. The bright pyramid of oranges that was so enticing last week all too quickly becomes a haphazard pile. 
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| Today in Entrepreneurial History: May 15 Posted: 15 May 2012 11:02 AM PDT 
- 1718 – James Puckle, a London lawyer, patents the world’s first machine gun.
- 1793 – Diego Marín Aguilera flies a glider for “about 360 meters”, at a height of 5-6 meters, during one of the first attempted manned flights.
- 1905 – Las Vegas, Nevada, is founded when 110 acres (0.45 km2), in what later would become downtown, are auctioned off.
- 1928 – Mickey Mouse premieres in his first cartoon, Plane Crazy
- 1940 – McDonald’s opens its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California.
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