Small Business Technology News Round-Up - 18/04/2008

Here is this week’s round-up of technology news small business owners may find informative, useful or entertaining:

• The Business of Startups Is Business - Many successful new web startups are focusing on providing services for other companies
• Microsoft Increases Small Business Financing - In an attempt to combat the economic slump, Microsoft are increasing their number of small business loans by 60%
• Economic Woes Not an Issue For Google - The search giant reveals impressive first-quarter figures and appear unaffected by the slowing economy
• SaaS: more effort required - An article examining the uptake of Software-as-a-Service in India
• UK ISPs Could Face Government Broadband TV Tax ISPs Could Face Government Broadband TV Tax - The cost is likely to be passed on to consumers
• How Social Networking Could Kill Web Search as We Know It - An article about how social networking may change the way we search in the future
• Google experimenting with accessing ‘deep web’ - This could allow searchers to skip past registration forms on websites
• New spam site found every three seconds - Figures suggest that 92% of e-mail sent so far in 2008 was spam
• 12% of consumers ‘borrow’ unsecured Wi-Fi - You can make sure no-one is stealing your wireless connection by making it secure
• Watch the sunset from Google Earth 4.3 - A fun new feature in Google Earth allows you to simulate sunrise or sunset anywhere in the world
• Concerns raised as government demands universal wiretapping - Potentially alarming news from Australia about legislation that would allow the Government to intercept the communications of their citizens, following on from the news earlier this week that Australian bosses could be allowed to access the e-mails of employees without consent
• It Takes a Cyber Village to Catch an Auto Thief - An interesting story about how the joint collaboration of various on-line communities and social networks led to the capture of a car thief in just 48 hours

One Response to “Small Business Technology News Round-Up - 18/04/2008”

1. Chris Burgoyne
   http://www.loan-machine.co.uk
   
   Said on April 21st, 2008 at 7:36 pm

   Very interesting to read that Google don’t predict any downturn in income due to the economic slump.

   I can only speak for the loan industry on PPC in the UK for Google but the cost for adding a PPC site simply must go down. There isn’t the money in the industry anymore to justify the spend that it once took to achieve position #1 on the sponsored listings for keywords such as “secured loans.”

   The argument is always that there are still customers who want loans. I won’t disagree with this comment - if anything the demand has increased. However, when you are trying to fit so many round pegs into square holes it does prove difficult. There simply are not the lenders in the UK to fund the finance to the consumer.

   Chris Burgoyne
   www.loan-machine.co.uk
   www.iva-machine.co.uk

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