We are at a unique place in business history. The recent recession forced many people to get creative about how they make money, and technology has provided the means for many entrepreneurs to start businesses from home. The good news is that today’s online economy is providing plenty of opportunities for almost anyone to work from home — starting businesses in their homes without worry about a dress code. I know this first hand; my first couple of hours of work take place in my pajamas. The only reason I get dressed as early as I do is because I need to leave the house to take my son to school.

If you are interested in starting a business out of your home, here are a few things you can try, no matter how you dress.

Source/Read More: Free From Broke

Representatives from over 40 small biotech and medical device firms nationwide will convene on Capitol Hill Tuesday, May 10 to voice their firm opposition to legislation that would eviscerate their primary source of R&D funding. H.R. 1425, scheduled for markup in the House Small Business Committee on Wednesday, would permit nearly half of the NIH’s Small Business Innovative Research Program (SBIR) to go to companies that have raised tens of millions in investments from pension funds and large private equity firms. Moreover, despite the documented success of the SBIR program as a source of innovation and job creation the House, unlike the Senate, is maintaining the SBIR
allocation at less than 3% of federal R&D grants.

Source/Read More: BusinessWire

Spark & Hustle is a series of eight conferences across the country that started in February and will end this summer. It’s intended to give participants the tools they need to start — or develop — a business. The events are specifically geared toward helping women get ahead, though men can sign up, too.

Source/Read More: The Boston Herald

The highlight of the celebration will be the announcement of the National Small Business Person of the Year, selected from local winners from 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Guam.

Source/Read More: Business News Daily

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a blurb on the tool (we’ll get to the free in a moment):

Trackur is an online reputation & social media monitoring tool designed to assist you in tracking what is said about you on the internet. Trackur scans hundreds of millions of web pages–including news, blogs, video, images, and forums–and lets you know if it discovers anything that matches the keywords that interest you.

Using sophisticated social media monitoring and filtering technology, Trackur is your online reputation guardian. It does the heavy-lifting for you–scanning the web for any mention of your name, brands, and products–so you don’t have to.

Now, they do have a number of different pay-structures, the principle difference between them being that you can track an increasing number of searches the more you pay. With the free version you can track just one search, but it’s a great way to keep up-to-date on your most important query (ex. your business name) with 30-minute updating and a variety of delivery options (RSS, email, Trackur dashboard, etc.).

You can sign up for the free version here.

The Search Engine Guide Blog has a list of 10 tips for creating a stand-out small business blog, including the “timely” tip:

6 – Create a posting schedule.  Shoot for getting up a minimum of 2 new posts every week.  3-4 is better, but you need at least a couple of new posts every week.  And try to post them on different days, don’t post two new posts on Monday, then fail to post another new post until Friday.  Spread your posts out, and when in doubt, post them in the middle of the week, on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  This is when blog traffic is usually the highest.

Source: Search Engine Guide Blog

When you’re pulling in 100+ e-mails a day (not counting the “enlarge your _______” or “help your local African dictator launder _____” missives), you can quickly lose your e-mail edge, which can have disastrous consequences for your business. To many perspective customers or clients, e-mail is the first real contact they have with your company after seeing your Website/storefront, and leaving them hanging for the better part of a week waiting for a response is not the impression you want to leave them with.

Lifehacker has a list of ten e-mail tips up that is well worth the read. We’ll give you a taste with #7: