| Best Banks For Small Biz Loans Posted: 24 May 2012 04:00 AM PDT 
The Huffington Post: When it comes to getting a loan for your small business, it may not come down to who you know, but where you go. Banking Grades, a new grading tool from Philadelphia-based MultiFunding, found that some of the nation’s biggest banks have the worst performances when it comes to small-business lending. Meanwhile, banks that recorded the best small-business lending performances are the ones most entrepreneurs have probably never heard of. The big banks (defined as those with deposits of more than $10 billion) that ranked the highest for small-business lending are: 1. Zions First National Bank, Salt Lake City. Grade: A (25.44 percent)
2. First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company, Raleigh, N.C. Grade: B (23.8 percent)
3. Synovus Bank, Columbus, Ga. Grade: B (19.25 percent)
4. Chase Bank Usa, National Association, Newark, Del. Grade: B (18.34 percent)
5. Bancorpsouth Bank, Tupelo, Ms. Grade: B (17.13 percent)
6. Wells Fargo Bank Northwest, National Association, Ogden, Utah. Grade: B (13.71 percent)
7. Arvest Bank, Fayetteville, Ark. Grade: B (12.82 percent)
8. Whitney Bank, New Orleans, La. Grade: B (12.02 percent)
9. Capital One Bank (Usa), Glen Allen, Va. Grade: B (11.85 percent)
10. Tcf National Bank, Sioux Falls, S.D. Grade: B (11.49 percent)
Photo by Billy Brown 
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| Vetting Job Candidates Using Social Media Posted: 24 May 2012 03:30 AM PDT 
The Washington Post: The online world has become awash with opportunities to both spread the word about job openings as well as investigate possible candidates before you meet them in the flesh. But how can small businesses avoid information overload? Here are some tips: ●LinkedIn: Every recruiter's friend and even better than you think. LinkedIn is a great first stop for recruiters. Beyond showing their professional growth in an easy-to-read format, smart candidates request (and get!) insightful recommendations from peers, clients and friends that give an outsider's view of their performance. These are sometimes more powerful than regular references, since they are publicly displayed. ●Love or hate Facebook, check it out. If an applicant has an open page, this can be a great way to see beyond the resume. You can learn where they volunteer, what kind of music they listen to, what activities they participate in outside of work or what TV shows they like. This information can provide powerful insight into whether a candidate is a good cultural fit. ●To tweet or not to tweet. Twitter can be an awesome way to find out more about candidates. You can determine if they are interested in your business and industry subject matter by the type of news and posts they share.
Photo by MoneyBlogNewz 
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| Forget the Potato: Jalapeno Chips! Posted: 23 May 2012 11:26 AM PDT 
After many years of trying to make potato chips taste like jalapenos, the creators of Deano’s Jalapenos decided to ditch the potato all together. Their chips are “non-potato chips” made out of thin slices of jalapeno. The peppers are deep-friend and flavored with sea salt, cheddar or ranch. We use the freshest jalapenos available, shipped dailey from Texas and New Mexico. Our cheddar coating has just the right flavor to enhance the flavor of the jalapeno, which gives it a nice finish to the chip. Once again there are no potatoes used in Deanos Jalapeno Cheddar Chips. The jalapeno chips are at what “we” call a medium heat level, although each batch is a little different depending on mother nature. 
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| Keeping the Ketchup Flowing Posted: 23 May 2012 11:05 AM PDT 
Co.Exsist: When it comes to those last globs of ketchup inevitably stuck to every bottle of Heinz, most people either violently shake the container in hopes of eking out another drop or two, or perform the “secret” trick: smacking the “57” logo on the bottle's neck. But not MIT PhD candidate Dave Smith. He and a team of mechanical engineers and nano-technologists at the Varanasi Research Group have been held up in an MIT lab for the last two months addressing this common dining problem. The result? LiquiGlide, a “super slippery” coating made up of nontoxic materials that can be applied to all sorts of food packaging—though ketchup and mayonnaise bottles might just be the substance's first targets. Condiments may sound like a narrow focus for a group of MIT engineers, but not when you consider the impact it could have on food waste and the packaging industry. “It's funny: Everyone is always like, ‘Why bottles? What's the big deal?’ But then you tell them the market for bottles—just the sauces alone is a $17 billion market,” Smith says. “And if all those bottles had our coating, we estimate that we could save about one million tons of food from being thrown out every year.” Photo by GorillaAttack/ShutterStock. 
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| Priceonomics: How Much Should You Sell That For? Posted: 23 May 2012 11:02 AM PDT 
US News: Have you ever tried to sell something on Craigslist but didn't really have an idea on how much to ask for it? Or have you tried to buy something online but weren't sure if you were getting the best deal? This is where Priceonomics comes in. Priceonomics is the price guide for everything. It takes the guesswork out of the process and tells you exactly how much you should be paying for any used item. When you search for an item, you can see how the site’s team came up with the price and view the data they used. If you're searching for an out-of-the-ordinary item, always double-check the data to make sure they are comparing prices from the actual product you're looking for. 
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| Serial Entrepreneur Opens Startup Hatchery Posted: 23 May 2012 10:00 AM PDT 
Mass High Tech Business News: Bob Caspe knows a thing or two about startup businesses. Caspe, a serial entrepreneur and professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College, has co-founded Wellesley-based IEC Partners LLC and launched the International Entrepreneurship Center. The company, co-founded by six partners, supports the center, which provides resources to businesses that have "clearly defined business customers and partners" at it 9,000-square-foot center in Newton. Located in a historic hemp mill on Nevada Street, the center includes more than 35 furnished workstations to be used by startup and emerging growth companies. Currently, the center managed by Caspe, who founded several high-tech businesses including Leaf Systems Inc. and Sound Vision Inc., hosts five startups and has room for another 20, according to IEC.
Photo by pleasantpointinn 
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| Inventor Behind Google Voice Moves On To Conference Calls Posted: 23 May 2012 09:30 AM PDT VentureBeat: UberConference allows teleconferencers to dial a number (no PIN required), see who is calling in, and determine who is currently talking. The organizer can instantly tell when one or more participants are causing feedback or noise, and mute them. The organizer can even cut select participants out of sections of the call (UberConference calls it "earmuffing") if needed for confidentiality reasons. A particularly helpful feature is the ability to click on a participant and see their social overview, taken from popular networks: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. That's a feature I've wanted often enough on calls with participants from multiple divisions or companies. Currently, UberConference is free, but in the future the company will "offer a premium version of the service with more features and different pricing options."
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| 10 Worst Named Restaurants Posted: 23 May 2012 09:26 AM PDT Smell Fast Food 
Little Drooling Bear Food 
Watery Coffee 
Herpes Pizza 
Smart Noshery Makes You Slobber 
OK Chinese Food 
Wet New Modern Age Dining Room 
Meat Patty Explode the Stomach 
Restoran Fatso 
Come & Wait Restaurant 
Via stupidest.com and BuzzFeed. 
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| Today in Entrepreneurial History: May 23 Posted: 23 May 2012 09:14 AM PDT 
On this day in 1829 a patent for the Accordion is granted to Cyrill Demian in Vienna. Demian’s instrument bore little resemblance to modern instruments. It only had a left hand buttonboard, with the right hand simply operating the bellows. One key feature for which Demian sought the patent was the sounding of an entire chord by depressing one key. His instrument also could sound two different chords with the same key; one for each bellows direction (a bisonoric action). The piano accordion was first played in German-speaking regions, and then spread over Europe. Some early portable instrument with piano keys had been invented in 1821, but it started to actually be played much later, and built its reputation from there. At that time in Vienna, mouth harmonicas with Kanzellen (chambers) had already been available for many years, along with bigger instruments driven by hand bellows. The diatonic key arrangement was also already in use on mouth-blown instruments. Demian’s patent thus covered an accompanying instrument: an accordion played with the left hand, opposite to the way that contemporary chromatic hand harmonicas were played, small and light enough for travelers to take with them and used to accompany singing. The patent also described instruments with both bass and treble sections, although Demian preferred the bass-only instrument owing to its cost and weight advantages. By 1831 at least the accordion had appeared in Britain. The instrument was noted in The Times of that year as one new to British audiences and not favorably reviewed, but nevertheless it soon became popular. It had also become popular with New Yorkers by the mid-1840s at the latest. 
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| Couch Potatoes Mourn Loss Of TV Remote Inventor Posted: 23 May 2012 09:08 AM PDT 
USA Today: Yes kids, back in the old days of the 20th century, people actually had to get up off the couch, walk to their TV, and turn a dial to select the channel they wanted to watch. I remember functioning as my father’s personal remote control as a kid, jumping up to change channels on our old Zenith. [Eugene] Polley changed TV forever by inventing the “Flash-Matic,” the first wireless TV remote, in 1955. The device looked like a ray gun. It’s given way to the sleeker, high-tech devices we use today.
Photo by espensorvik 
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