Land of Opportunity

This weeks Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Beyond the Brand. The CotC is a weekly roundup of some of the best business and economics blogging during the past week or so. (more…)

Computer World has a breaking story on the launch of a new wave of Bagle trojan-virus attacks that started early this morning.

Some highlights:

” Unlike earlier forms of Bagle, the new variant sends out e-mails with Trojan horse programs attached to them, as opposed to copies of the virus file.”

“The Trojan targets computers running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system and hides within (more…)

Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Coyote Blog. If you don’t read the Carnival of the Capitalists regularly, you should. The Carnival of the Capitalists is a weekly post of some of the best blog posts on business blogging, finance, economics, government and related capitalistic topics.

You don’t need to read all the posts, although most of the bloggers would welcome the your visit. You should, however; scan the list of topics and choose 3-4 that leap out at you. Click through to those selected posts, read the entire post and add your comments and thoughts.

Think of the Carnival of the Capitalists as a mental buffet. If you don’t like financial topics, then skip that course and load up on business blogging, perhaps with a side of economics.

Three morsels appealed to me this week: (more…)

Zogger at Technorat.com has found a 5-page list of the 100 Greatest Gadgets of All Time. The list was assembled by and published in Mobile PC magazine.

I own several of the top 100, including #89 (more…)

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act was enacted to eliminate abusive debt collection practices by debt collectors, to insure that those debt collectors who refrain from using abusive debt collection practices are not competitively disadvantaged, and to promote consistent State action to protect consumers against debt collection abuses.

Anyone who has operated a small business for any length of time has had the problem of collecting on bad debts at least once.

Attorney Shane Jimson at the Virginia Law Blog has a great post on How to Minimize your Uncollected Bills.

One preventative tip that Shane shares is to (more…)

Arkansas Business has released their reknown Book of Lists. This year’s edition is packed with lists ranking the largest law firms, accounting firms, hotels, employers, banks, and the largest in just about every industry in Arkansas. Especially helpful is the inclusion of web addresses for most of the listees.

Of particular note were the Largest SBA Lenders: Arkansas Capital Corporation (29 loans, 15.9M), Arkansas Certified development Corporation (25 loans, 14.8M), Arkansas National Bank (27 loans, 7.8M) and Metropolitan National Bank (22 loans, 4.9M)

There are 25 employers listed under Largest Arkansas Employers. (more…)

Nick Infusino at Law & Entrepreneurship News pointed us to a new study by American City Business Journals which lists several Arkansas communities among their rankings for market areas with the best small business climate.

ACBJ calculates vitality scores for 931 market areas, based on a 100-point scale. The higher its score, the better an area’s economic climate is for small businesses. The ACBJ formula places extra emphasis on (more…)

Just received this late notice from the Arkansas Venture Forum:

“The Arkansas Venture Forum is currently soliciting applications from companies seeking capital for consideration to present at the Arkansas Venture Conference May 17-18.

The deadline to submit an executive summary for consideration to present at the conference is February 28. The Guidelines for executive summaries are online at http://www.arkansasventureforum.com/special_events_and_conferences/. (more…)

Yesterday was FBLA Day at the College of Business at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Dozens of yellow school buses lined up to discharge several hundred business suited and skirted members of the Future Business Leaders of America vocational club from area high schools.

This isn’t your usual high school social club… (more…)

The Land of Opportunity is one of four nominees in the category "Best Blog About Small Business" at the 2005 Business Blogging Awards site. You, the blog reader get to vote for your favorite business blogs in many categories. You may vote daily until February 16th. So as they say up north; "Vote early and vote often." Email your friends

UPDATE

As of Monday evening, Feb. 7th, , Land of Opportunity is in a two-way horse race for second place. Our share of the vote is at 21%, just narrowly behind of second place at 26%. The leader, while still ahead by over 29%, has dropped to 50%. Did I mention that you may vote daily until February 16th? My thanks to those of you voting daily. We would love to read comments on why you’re voting for Land of Opportunity. Comments might encourage someone else to join your vote.

Jim Hopkins in a recent USA Today article reports that American senior citizens over 50 are the new entrepreneurs.

“Call them grandma-and-grandpop businesses. New research shows 5.6 million workers age 50 and older are now self-employed, a 23% jump from 1990. The numbers are expected to rise further as baby boomers seek more job security, Americans get older and cheaper technology drives down start-up costs.” (more…)

Arkansas Business, which sponsors the annual Arkansas Business of the Year competition, recently announced the finalists for the 2004 Arkansas Business of the Year awards competition: (more…)

This weeks Carnival of the Capitalists is being hosted by Small Business Trends. Anita arranged the posts in alpahbetical order by blog name and laid everything out in a very nice and easy to follow format.

Articles of note include:

Wayne Hurlbert’s post on viral marketing of email newsletters. I plan to implement that idea this week at work qith the two ASBDC newsletters. (more…)

The January 2005 Expansion Management, a monthly business magazine for executives of companies actively looking for a place to expand or relocate their facilities within the next one to three years, lists our beloved Little Rock as “America’s 48th Hottest City”. (more…)

By Nick Infusino, Small Businesses editor, at Law & Entrepreneurship News :

“Recently written rules for the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) will require every employer that employs one or more employees to shred any and all documents that contain information derived from a credit report. (Reported by USA Today, 1/14/05). These provisions will go into effect on June 1, 2005. Penalties for failing to obey the shredding provisions could be severe. (more…)