In an office above a Bank of America Corp branch in Beverly Hills, California, home to some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, the pawnshop for the prosperous regularly lends to hedge-fund managers, bankers, lawyers, doctors – and occasionally to Oscar winners.
A Smart Way to Take Credit Card Payments | AllBusiness.com
Interchange fees. If you’re a small merchant, you know how irritating they are, because you have to hand the bank a piece of the transaction each time a customer pays with a credit card. The fees average around $2 on a $100 transaction, and they really pile up. Interchange fees are the second-highest expense for most small merchants, after labor costs.
But like a lot of other annoyances in life — mortality, taxes, etc. — exorbitant interchange fees (and the hidden charges that often go with them) are unavoidable. At least, they have been until now. Recently, a disruptive little device that plugs in to a smartphone or tablet has made it easy for merchants to swipe customer credit cards without paying through the nose for the privilege.
Too Much Focus is Dangerous | Motorcycle Safety Foundation
“Steady fixation favours disappearance, blinks or gaze shifts induce reappearance. All in all reminiscent of the Troxler effect, but stronger and more resistant to residual eye movements.”
Stop conflating microfinance and entrepreneurship | The Great Debate
Moreno says that it is a mistake to believe that everyone in the developing world is interested in running a small business. “Most people just want a job.” In a country like Colombia, where there are limited educational and employment options, that is hard. Everyone is forced, out of necessity, to create his or her own livelihood.
Online tool connects businesses with experts for one-off advice | Springwise.com
Connecting those with skills and those who need them is a perennial challenge in the labor marketplace, and there seem to be virtually infinite ways to make that happen. Just a few days ago we featured Beyond the School Run, which focuses on career opportunities during school hours, and since then we’ve come across KnowHowMart, an online tool now in beta that’s focused on helping skilled professionals sell their expertise to companies that need one-off advice.
Pentagon’s New Factory: Your DNA | Wired.com
The fields of bioengineering and synthetic biology have already produced some useful, scary and flat-out bizarre entities. Besides renewable petroleum or steel strong spider silk, there are all sorts of potential therapeutic, industrial and agricultural purposes for reorganized DNA.
But DARPA thinks progress is too slow. Previous projects (it calls them “primitive”) are ad hoc and labor intensive, chugging along by trial and error in secretive silos. Hence we are “limited to producing only a small fraction of the vast number of possible chemicals, materials and living systems that would be enabled by the ability to truly engineer biology.”
Free cash for your business? | money.cnn.com
When hunting for cash, desperate small business owners may find themselves sucked into buying books and software packages promising “Billions in Free Grants!” from Web sites with names like NeverPayItBack.com, or hiring consultants who promise to find them gads of money. All they’re likely to get, though, are empty promises.
Grants are rare, but the information you need to find and apply for legitimate ones is publicly available and free. For qualifying businesses, there really are opportunities to land free money from state, county and city governments, as well as private foundations and corporations.
Weekly Economic Update | LAEDC
THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES:
- U.S. Labor Market Report
- U.S. Light Vehicle Sales in March
- Consumer Credit Expanded by $8.7 Billion February
- Events of Interest
- April 11: West Coast Manufacturing Conference
- April 18: VITA Global Networking Breakfast
- April 19: L.A. NABE Monthly Meeting
- April 27: LABC Sustainability Summit
- May 16: 2012 LAEDC International Trade Outlook
The Boy Can’t Help It | Peter Mehit
He heads upslope with purpose. He’s so focused that he steps over the spread out blankets and coolers, around the playing children and conversing adults without looking at them. He’s worked out an audio problem with speakers that flank a giant 100 foot wide inflatable movie screen and now he’s trudging back to the make shift projection booth with a scant twenty minutes to make sure all is in order for a screening of ‘Kung Fu Panda’.
Even while double checking connectors and dialing in the projector, he is aware of what his team is doing. It’s almost as if he has radar. Every so often he’ll stand up and use hand signals to communicate with one of his team down by the screen. Even with the occasional miscommunication, it’s pretty impressive.
Eventually the sun sets and the movie begins. About 2,000 people fill the bowl shaped park, settling in for the show. Hollywood Outdoor Movies has yet another successful program under its belt. This event, one of a series of publicity events for Bank of America, represents one several corporate events the company has done. The client list sports marquee clients any company would be proud to have: Dreamworks, Walt Disney, NASA, MGM, American Film Institute, AMC Theaters, KIA Motors and Univision to name a few. The business has broken a million dollars in top line revenue for the first time in 2011 and is seeking capital to quadruple that in 2012.
2012 Green Car Vision Award Finalists All Electric Drive | GreenCar.com
Every year, the Green Car Vision Award™ recognizes the most important vehicle that best envisions the road ahead. To be considered for the Green Car Vision Award™, vehicles must be in demonstration on public highways today or on their way toward commercialization, but not yet widely available to consumers. They are a window to our driving future.
