Via KurzweilAI.net –  I guess this idea was inevitable. It could be looked at as the latest upgrade to the original ARPANET ideal.

Researcher creates ‘Facebook for Scientists’

VentureBeat, Feb. 18, 2010 ResearchGate has built a social network of more than 250,000 researchers from 196 countries. Over 1,000 subgroups have been formed for specific disciplines, and 60,000 research documents have been uploaded for sharing with others on the site Read Original Article>>

All those web 2.0 tools — blogging, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (well, maybe not anymore), LinkedIn, Google Buzz (the new kid on the block), et.al. — are fun and somewhat addictive, but there are serious privacy dangers lurking in all that sharing.

Dangers as obvious as putting plenty of data out there for cybercriminals to harvest for phishing attempts and identity theft, not quite as obvious danger in putting discrete bits of corporate information out there in multiple locations that put together become useful to competitors, and even dangers as vanilla as broadcasting when you are home and not for local criminals seriously casing your home for a break-in.

That ought to be food for social networking thought.

From the link:

Pervasive social networking may herald the future’s most critical insider threat: cyber-chattiness.Individuals are simply revealing too much about their professional lives online. It might be possible, for example, to cross reference a Facebook post about a “big project that isn’t looking good” with other posts and piece together sensitive corporate information. And while a LinkedIn request for a job recommendation reveals a job seeker, two or more seekers in the same division could reveal company upheaval.

The threat from chatty insiders isn’t new, but a perfect storm might be brewing. Consider the following:

– People are broadcasting more of their lives online than ever before. More than 55 million status updates are posted every day on Facebook alone.

– A new batch of “Open Source Intelligence” tools now exist to help map out people’s lives and relationships.

– Lots of personal and business data online makes it easy for a hacker to personalize phishing attacks and in some cases, automate the personalization process. Tools and frameworks now exist to gather enough information about you online to custom craft emails that are very credible.

– Setting policies to stop employees from using these social networking sites at work doesn’t stop them from talking about work when online at home.

We are now starting to see some privacy stretch marks on the social networking bubble. Consider the case of Robert Morgan. Earlier this year Robert, a researcher at Microsoft (MSFT), updated his LinkedIn profile with details about his work on Windows 8 and its new 128-bit architecture. The problem was that Microsoft had never disclosed it was working on a 128-bit version of Windows (let alone working on Windows 8 or 9). This was a direct disclosure snafu made worse by the fact that anyone with an Internet connection could see it.

This time it’s going after radio with a new performance tax proposal. Okay, the industry is foundering on the rocks, has alienated the bulk of its customer base under the age of twenty five and due to technological developments has forever lost its stifling stranglehold over the creative process and product distribution. That’s not to say the music industry doesn’t have a real and necessary role to play in today’s marketplace, but the old ways are gone and are not coming back. It’s time to face the future and meet the challenges of today or shut down and get out of the way for a new paradigm that can.

What is the response from the industry? More ill advised lawsuits against consumers and now an attempt to force a “performance tax” bill through Congress to punish radio, the one-time bread and butter of the music business.

From the link:

The recording industry wants to impose a performance tax that would financially hurt local radio stations, stifle new artists and harm the listening public who rely on free local radio.

Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-Arkansas) and John Barrasso (R-Wyoming), along with RepresentativesGene Green (D-Texas) and Michael Conaway (R-Texas), and many other members of Congress have sponsored legislation and efforts against the performance tax.  Others still need to hear your voice.

Here’s more detail from the NoPerformanceTax.org website:

For more than 80 years, radio and the recording industry have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship: free play for free promotion. And it works. It’s a relationship that has sustained businesses on both sides.

In fact, radio’s free promotion of artists translates to as much as $2.4 billion annually in music sales for record labels and artists. And this doesn’t even include the enormous revenues they receive from concerts and merchandising.

But the labels–like many businesses–are struggling in this economy. They have failed to adapt to the digital age, and find their business model is broken. And now they want to impose a fee called a performance tax on local radio stations to subsidize their losses.

A performance tax would threaten the local radio stations that communities depend on. It would financially hamstring stations, stifle new artists and harm the listening public who rely on free local radio.

WHERE DOES THE MONEY GO?

In short, the money generated from the performance tax would flow out of your community and into the pockets of the major record labels – and three out of the four are foreign-owned. The record labels would like for you to think this is all about compensating the artists, but in truth the record labels would get at least 50 percent of the proceeds from a tax on local radio.

And:

Congress has continually recognized that local radio is different from other musical platforms and should not be subject to a performance tax. Local radio is free, so everyone, regardless of income, can have access to it. Local radio also has to fulfill certain public service obligations that other platforms do not. And importantly, the free music that radio plays provides free promotion to the record labels and artists – up to $2.4 billion annually.

TELL CONGRESS TO SUPPORT LOCAL RADIO – TAKE ACTION NOW

There are currently two bills pending in Congress that would levy a performance tax on local radio – H.R.848, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (MI-14) and S.379, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (VT). Your members of Congress need to hear that you strongly oppose these bills.

Additionally, anti-performance tax resolutions have been introduced in the House and Senate in support of local radio. In the Senate, Sens. Blanche Lincoln (AR) and John Barrasso (WY) introduced S. Con. Res. 14, and in the House, Reps. Gene Green (TX-29) and Mike Conaway (TX-11) introduced H. Con. Res. 49. Both are known as the Local Radio Freedom Act. Many members of Congressalready support local radio and resolutions against the performance tax. Others still need to hear your voice.

I suggest you hit the site and check all the information out for yourself, but if not, here’s a shortcut to taking some action against this ridiculous tax – Take action now!

Seems like I’ve been doing a whole lot of solar blogging lately, and here’s the latest breakthrough courtesy of Broadband Solar. This sounds more like an incremental improvement that will possibly lead to commercially viable thin-film solar cells rather than a game-changer ready for market. Even if this announcement doesn’t make it immediately easier or cheaper to put a bank of thin-film cells on the roof of your house, it is one more step toward that goal

From the second link:

Inexpensive thin-film solar cells aren’t as efficient as conventional solar cells, but a new coating that incorporates nanoscale metallic particles could help close the gap. Broadband Solar, a startup spun out of Stanford University late last year, is developing coatings that increase the amount of light these solar cells absorb.

Based on computer models and initial experiments, an amorphous silicon cell could jump from converting about 8 percent of the energy in light into electricity to converting around 12 percent. That would make such cells competitive with the leading thin-film solar cells produced today, such as those made by First Solar, headquartered in Tempe, AZ, says Cyrus Wadia, codirector of the Cleantech to Market Program in the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Amorphous silicon has the advantage of being much more abundant than the materials used by First Solar. The coatings could also be applied to other types of thin-film solar cells, including First Solar’s, to increase their efficiency.

Solar antenna: The square at the center is an array of test solar cells being used to evaluate a coating that contains metallic nanoantennas tuned to the solar spectrum.
Credit: Brongersma lab, Stanford

Not quite yet, but headway is being made in making graphene the successor to silicon as the semiconductor for electronics. I first blogged about graphene replacing silicon back in late March 2008 (this blog wasn’t even three months old at the time — hit the link and dig the crazy layout I was using for KurzweilAI posts).

From the first link, the latest news — both good and bad — in making graphene the semiconductor of choice:

“Graphene has been the subject of intense focus and research for a few years now,” Philip Kim tells PhysOrg.com. “There are researchers that feel that it is possible that graphene could replace silicon as a semiconductor in electronics.”

Kim is a scientist at Columbia University in New York City. He has been working with Melinda Han and Juliana Brant to try and come up with a way to make graphene a feasible replacement for silicon. Toward that end, they have been looking at ways to overcome some of the problems associated with using graphene as a semiconductor in electronic devices. They set forth some ideas for electron transport for graphene in Physical Review Letters: “Electron Transport in Disordered Graphene Nanoribbons.”

“Graphene has high mobility, and less scattering than silicon. Theoretically, it is possible to make smaller structures that are more stable at the nanolevel than those made from silicon,” Kim says. He points out that as electronics continue to shrink in size, the interest in finding viable alternatives to silicon is likely to increase. Graphene is a good candidate because of the high electron mobility it offers, its stability on such a small scale, and the possibility that one could come up with different device concepts for electronics.

And here’s a bonus fun graphene graphic from the link:

Graphene is an atomic-scale honeycomb lattice made of carbon atoms. By Dr. Thomas Szkopek, via Wikipedia

I’ve done a lot of blogging about the ongoing credit crunch, and last week exposed an article at Forbes that attempted some linguistic sleight-of-hand to argue — quick look at my waving hand over here — there is no credit crunch.

Here’s an article on the same topic from CNN Money that actually cites some real numbers on just how tough things remain for Main Street, and maybe just a little bit why small- to medium-sized business owners are still chafed over the bank bailouts from the fall of 2008.

And yes, small business and personal households are truly suffering under a crippling credit crunch that does not have an ending point in sight.

From the link in the second graf:

Small business loans continue to dry up at the nation’s biggest banks. Eleven top TARP recipients — including Wells Fargo, by far the nation’s largest lender to small companies — cut their collective small business loan balance by more than $2.3 billion in December, according to a Treasury report released late Tuesday.

The drop marked the eighth consecutive month of declines for the 11 banks. In that time, their total loan balance has fallen 7%, to $169.4 billion. Seven of the reporting banks have cut their small business loan balance every single month.

“Credit is still tight for many small businesses,” the Treasury acknowledged in a Feb. 10 report.

The 22 banks that got the most help from the Treasury’s bailout programs have been filing monthly lending reports to the government, and since April, they’ve been required to break out their small business lending. But as of this month’s report, the 10 banks that have completely repaid their bailout funds in June are no longer required to divulge their lending.

Via KurzweilAI.net –Increasing power storage efficiency is a very necessary element to upping the personal electronics ante. We truly are starting to get up against various roadblocks with different areas of tech, be it battery life, processing speed, memory or something else. I always enjoy reading and blogging about nanotechnology pushing the consumer electronics envelope.

Intel lab explores nanoscale power storage

EE Times, Feb. 17, 2010 Intel researchers are exploring nanoscale materials that could be used to create ultracapacitors with a greater energy density than today’s lithium ion batteries. If successful, the new materials could be mass-produced to power systems for applications including mobile devices,energy sensing, interconnects for plug-in electric vehicles, and smart grid storage units. Read Original Article>>

This link goes an article titled, “Cloud Computing’s Three Revolutions: Part 2,” and the whole piece is worth checking out (along with the first part) if you’re interesting in cloud computing. I have some serious concerns about cloud computing, particularly with privacy and the current state of legal precedent regarding the public/private status of data in the cloud (hint: right now people computing in the cloud are “not truly acting in private space at all” per U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mosman.)

Those concerns aside, this point from the first link details one place where a secure, private cloud can really help push innovation by removing a traditional roadblock to IT experimentation:

Low Cost Fosters Experimentation

An aspect of cloud computing that isn’t emphasized enough in most discussions about it is the fact that it is ideally suited for application experimentation. Just as the high-cost, capital-intensive IT of the past caused investment to focus on the safest, lowest-risk applications, the low-cost, capital-lite IT of cloud computing will motivate business organizations to experiment with new business initiatives. Business initiatives that, in the past, couldn’t have gotten enough support to justify sharing precious capital to take a flyer on them, will find a far friendlier environment in cloud computing.

A good example of this is the NASDAQ Market Replay application that leverages Amazon Web Services. Trying to buy enough equipment for this application would have been prohibitive, even though the application’s value seemed intuitive. Using AWS, the application could be developed for much less, which made launching it much lower risk. New applications can be tried out at a cost of hundreds or thousands of dollars, rather than the hundreds of thousands of dollars required heretofore. If you are a line of business executive with innovative ideas, cloud computing is going to make your prospects much brighter.

In the “low cost fosters experimentation” perspective, cloud computing is much like open source. In his book Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky noted that open source’s low cost encourages experimentation and making mistakes. When the stakes are low, trials that don’t work out are much more acceptable—and increasing the numbers of trials increases the odds for success.

Just enjoy …

The immense Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31 or simply M31, is captured in full in this new image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The mosaic covers an area equivalent to more than 100 full moons, or five degrees across the sky. WISE used all four of its infrared detectors to capture this picture (3.4- and 4.6-micron light is colored blue; 12-micron light is green; and 22-micron light is red). Blue highlights mature stars, while yellow and red show dust heated by newborn, massive stars.

Andromeda is the closest large galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy, and is located 2.5 million light-years from our sun. It is close enough for telescopes to spy the details of its ringed arms of new stars and hazy blue backbone of older stars. Also seen in the mosaic are two satellite galaxies, known as M32, located just a bit above Andromeda to the left of center, and the fuzzy blue M110, located below the center of the great spiral arms. These satellites are the largest of several that are gravitationally bound to Andromeda.

The Andromeda galaxy is larger than our Milky Way and contains more stars, but the Milky Way is thought to perhaps have more mass due to its larger proportion of a mysterious substance called dark matter. Both galaxies belong to our so-called Local Group, a collection of more than 50 galaxies, most of which are tiny dwarf systems. In its quest to map the whole sky, WISE will capture the entire Local Group.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Be sure to hit the link up there for a truly massive version of this image. Unbelievably beautiful.

Head below the fold for the release from yesterday’s inbox with links to this image.NASA’s WISE Mission Releases Medley of First Images

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A diverse cast of cosmic characters is showcased in the first survey images NASA released Wednesday from its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

(Logo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)

Since WISE began its scan of the entire sky in infrared light on Jan. 14, the space telescope has beamed back more than a quarter of a million raw, infrared images. Four new, processed pictures illustrate a sampling of the mission’s targets — a wispy comet, a bursting star-forming cloud, the grand Andromeda galaxy and a faraway cluster of hundreds of galaxies. The images are online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/images20100216.html

“WISE has worked superbly,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “These first images are proving the spacecraft’s secondary mission of helping to track asteroids, comets and other stellar objects will be just as critically important as its primary mission of surveying the entire sky in infrared.”

One image shows the beauty of a comet called Siding Spring. As the comet parades toward the sun, it sheds dust that glows in infrared light visible to WISE. The comet’s tail, which stretches about 10 million miles, looks like a streak of red paint. A bright star appears below it in blue.

“We’ve got a candy store of images coming down from space,” said Edward (Ned) Wright of UCLA, the principal investigator for WISE. “Everyone has their favorite flavors, and we’ve got them all.”

During its survey, the mission is expected to find perhaps dozens of comets, including some that ride along in orbits that take them somewhat close to Earth’s path around the sun. WISE will help unravel clues locked inside comets about how our solar system came to be.

Another image shows a bright and choppy star-forming region called NGC 3603, lying 20,000 light-years away in the Carina spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. This star-forming factory is churning out batches of new stars, some of which are monstrously massive and hotter than the sun. The hot stars warm the surrounding dust clouds, causing them to glow at infrared wavelengths.

WISE will see hundreds of similar star-making regions in our galaxy, helping astronomers piece together a picture of how stars are born. The observations also provide an important link to understanding violent episodes of star formation in distant galaxies. Because NGC 3603 is much closer, astronomers use it as a lab to probe the same type of action that is taking place billions of light-years away.

Traveling farther out from our Milky Way, the third new image shows our nearest large neighbor, the Andromeda spiral galaxy. Andromeda is a bit bigger than our Milky Way and about 2.5 million light-years away. The new picture highlights WISE’s wide field of view — it covers an area larger than 100 full moons and even shows other smaller galaxies near Andromeda, all belonging to our “local group” of more than about 50 galaxies. WISE will capture the entire local group.

The fourth WISE picture is even farther out, in a region of hundreds of galaxies all bound together into one family. Called the Fornax cluster, these galaxies are 60 million light-years from Earth. The mission’s infrared views reveal both stagnant and active galaxies, providing a census of data on an entire galactic community.

“All these pictures tell a story about our dusty origins and destiny,” said Peter Eisenhardt, the WISE project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “WISE sees dusty comets and rocky asteroids tracing the formation and evolution of our solar system. We can map thousands of forming and dying solar systems across our entire galaxy. We can see patterns of star formation across other galaxies, and waves of star-bursting galaxies in clusters millions of light years away.”

Other mission targets include comets, asteroids and cool stars called brown dwarfs. WISE discovered its first near-Earth asteroid on Jan. 12 and first comet on Jan. 22. The mission will scan the sky one-and-a-half times by October. At that point, the frozen coolant needed to chill its instruments will be depleted.

JPL manages WISE for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The mission was competitively selected under NASA’s Explorers Program, which NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument, and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., built the spacecraft. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information about WISE, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/wise

To read about the near-Earth asteroid WISE discovered Jan. 12, visit:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise/newsfeatures.cfm?release=2459

Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO
AP Archive:  http://photoarchive.ap.org/
PRN Photo Desk [email protected]
Source: NASA

Web Site:  http://www.nasa.gov/

… may not be all that far off. The release doesn’t get into any sort of time-to-market predictions, but if this becomes reality it will be one amazing medical breakthrough.

The release:

Small Liquid Sensor May Detect Cancer Instantly, Could Lead to Home Detection Kit

MU researcher developing a sensor to detect diseases, such as breast cancer, in bodily fluids

Feb. 17, 2010

COLUMBIA, Mo. – What if it were possible to go to the store and buy a kit to quickly and accurately diagnose cancer, similar to a pregnancy test? A University of Missouri researcher is developing a tiny sensor, known as an acoustic resonant sensor, that is smaller than a human hair and could test bodily fluids for a variety of diseases, including breast and prostate cancers.

“Many disease-related substances in liquids are not easily tracked,” said Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at MU. “In a liquid environment, most sensors experience a significant loss of signal quality, but by using highly sensitive, low-signal-loss acoustic resonant sensors in a liquid, these substances can be effectively and quickly detected — a brand-new concept that will result in a noninvasive approach for breast cancer detection.”

Kwon’s real-time, special acoustic resonant sensor uses micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS), which are tiny devices smaller than the diameter of a human hair, to directly detect diseases in body fluids. The sensor doesn’t require bulky data reading or analyzing equipment and can be integrated with equally small circuits, creating the potential for small stand-alone disease-screening systems. Kwon’s sensor also produces rapid, almost immediate results that could reduce patient anxiety often felt after waiting for other detection methods, such as biopsies, which can take several days or weeks before results are known.

“Our ultimate goal is to produce a device that will simply and quickly diagnose multiple specific diseases, and eventually be used to create ‘point of care’ systems, which are services provided to patients at their bedsides,” Kwon said. “The sensor has strong commercial potential to be manifested as simple home kits for easy, rapid and accurate diagnosis of various diseases, such as breast cancer and prostate cancer.”

Last January, Kwon was awarded a $400,000, five-year National Science Foundation CAREER Award to continue his effort on this sensor research. The CAREER award is the NSF’s most prestigious award in support of junior faculty members who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent teaching, and the integration of education and research. Kwon’s sensor research has been published in the IEEE International Conference on Solid-state, Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems and the IEEE Conference on Sensors.

–30–

Some very interesting results from the eighth survey by the IRS Oversight Board.

From the TaxProf Blog link:

• How much, if any, do you think is an acceptable amount to cheat on your income taxes? A little here and there, 9% (highest in 6 years)
• How important is it to you, as a taxpayer, that the IRS does each of the following to ensure that all taxpayers honestly pay what they owe — Ensures high-income taxpayers are reporting and paying their taxes honestly? Very important, 83% (all-time high)
• How important is it to you, as a taxpayer, that the IRS does each of the following to ensure that all taxpayers honestly pay what they owe — Ensures small businesses are reporting and paying their taxes honestly? Very important, 76% (all-time high)
• How much influence does each of the following factors have on whether you report and pay your taxes honestly — Fear of an audit? Great deal of influence, 39% (all-time high)
• How much influence does each of the following factors have on whether you report and pay your taxes honestly — Belief that your neighbors are reporting and paying honestly? Great deal of influence, 17% (all-time low)

Hopefully this group will be more than window dressing for a serious problem. I’m not too certain there are many decent short-term public debt fixes out there, but both the mid- and long-range fiscal outlooks need a basic road map at the very least.

Entitlement spending — Medicare, Social Security, etc. — combined with the ever growing black hole that it is the defense budget will bankrupt the United States before the middle of this century without an application of serious fiscal conservatism. This was the kicker from a link I blogged about yesterday, “At stake ultimately is the United States’ status as a first-class economy.” The subject in question there? The federal deficit.

From the first link:

President Obama will sign an executive order Thursday to set up a bipartisan fiscal commission to weigh proposals to rein in the soaring federal debt, according to a White House official.

The official, who requested anonymity because the President has not made the announcement yet, said the co-chairs of the commission will be Democrat Erskine Bowles, former White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton, and Alan Simpson, former Republican Senator from Wyoming. It’ll be officially titled the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

A nanotechnology design improves the efficiency of thin-film solar cells. An important breakthrough in working to commercially viable solar power because thin-film cells are cheaper than photovoltaics, but efficiency has been an issue. The two key elements  in making solar energy widespread and a credible challenger to petroleum-based energy are lower costs (both in installation and maintenance) and higher efficiencies. Anything that works to combine those two elements is a step in the right direction.

I just love blog posts that combine nanotechnology and solar power.

From the link:

Thin-film solar cells are less expensive than traditional photovoltaics sliced from wafers, but they’re not as efficient at converting the energy in sunlight into electricity. Now a Newton, MA-based startup is developing a nanostructured design that overcomes one of the main constraints on the performance of thin-film solar cells. Solasta fabricates on arrays of nanopillars, rather than flat areas, boosting the efficiency of amorphous silicon solar cells to about 10 percent–still less than crystalline silicon panels, but more than the thin-film amorphous silicon panels on the market today. The company says that the design won’t require new equipment or materials and that it will license its technology to amorphous-silicon manufacturers at the end of this year.

Pillar power: This microscope image shows the layers of a solar cell built on a nanopillar substrate. The core of each pillar is coated first with metal, then amorphous silicon, and then a transparent conductive oxide.

Credit: Solasta

Quite the scientific instrument from the hack writer and fantasist/creator of scientology.

From the link:

American science fiction writer and founder of the Church of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard uses his Hubbard Electrometer to determine whether tomatoes experience pain, 1968. His work led him to the conclusion that tomatoes “scream when sliced.”

In this photo: L. Ron Hubbard

Photo: Evening Standard/Getty Images

Jan 01, 1968

… deficits don’t matter, until they do.

From the link:

Now policymakers’ work is infinitely harder as they wake up to the realization that they must deal soon with the country’s long-term fiscal problems.

At stake ultimately is the United States’ status as a first-class economy.

One option for start-up capital for a new business is your 401(k). You can take a loan against your retirement savings with no penalty in order to start a business. You do have to repay the loan with interest, but since credit is still very, very tight and home equity is way down, tapping the retirement account is a viable way get a new business up and running.

From the link:

Entrepreneurs who have left their regular jobs to start a firm essentially have two options for using their 401(k)s as start-up capital. One is less complex than the other, but the more complex option can provide access to more money without fees.

The simple option is not all that different than a regular 401(k) loan.

Let’s say a lawyer or tax accountant plans a very small or single-person firm. He or she leaves a corporate job and takes the 401(k) savings from that company to the new business by establishing a 401(k) plan in that business’ name.

At that point, a traditional 401(k) loan can be taken from the new firm’s 401(k) plan. There are restrictions, though.

The entrepreneur can only borrow the lesser of 50% of savings, or $50,000. And the loan repayment plan typically lasts for five years and requires a fee of the prime interest rate plus 1% or 2%, says Robert Cheney, a financial planner at Westridge Wealth Strategies.

The small-business owner needs to have enough steady income to repay the loan. If payments can’t be made, the loan is considered in default, and taxes and an early-withdrawal penalty will apply if the 401(k) owner is not 591/2 or older.

The second, more complex option is often referred to as a ROBS loan — Rollovers as Business Start-ups, so-named by the IRS.

Entrepreneurs using this option typically need help from a firm specializing in such work.

For a fee, these firms help the new business create its own 401(k) plan and transfer funds from the owner’s existing 401(k). The retirement money is then used to purchase company stock that’s held in the new 401(k) plan. This provides the entrepreneur’s corporation with start-up capital.

Some experts believe that it is harder for a new small business to meet IRS guidelines for ROBS loans.

The wording is not clear-cut in IRS rules, but the agency seems to require an independent appraisal of a business value to ensure tax compliance. But a start-up often has trouble meeting that goal because it may have zero value, Hauptman says.

That may be one reason why ROBS are mostly used by franchisees who are buying into an existing business.

Here’s a handy list of ten new deductions and credits for this year’s taxes from Thomson Reuters.

From the link, numbers four and five — one for the employed and one for the unemployed:

4. Making work pay credit. Income tax withholding was reduced during 2009 to reflect the new making work pay credit, which slashes tax liabilities by up to $400 ($800 on a joint return). “Employers had to shoulder all the work of the withholding adjustment, but employees now need to claim the credit on their tax returns in order to hold on to that extra take-home pay,” Scharin explains. Tricky aspects of this credit arise from the eligibility rules; some folks whose withholding was reduced are not actually eligible for the credit. Ineligibility could arise because the credit phases out in the MAGI range of $75,000 to $95,000 ($150,000 to $190,000 for joint returns).

5. Unemployment compensation. Up to $2,400 of unemployment compensation benefits are completely tax-free in 2009. “These benefits are not included in your adjusted gross income, and that could help you to qualify for other tax benefits that have AGI restrictions,” Scharin points out.

Via KurzaweilAI.net – This idea goes a bit past simply hiring a ghostwriter …

FastPencil lets thought leaders publish books without the hassle of writing them

VentureBeat, Feb. 16, 2010 Self-publishing site FastPencil has launched a new program aimed at helping aspiring thought leaders publish the books in their heads: A personal book authoring team to manage the entire book writing process. You run your business, they co-write your book. Full print and eBook distribution services to Amazon and elsewhere. Social media promotion services. Read Original Article>>

Well not really on a postage stamp, but really that small. Let’s review: one terabyte solid state drive packed into around a square inch of real estate. This definitely fall into the “I’ll really believe it when I see it on store shelves and installed on motherboards,” but man this is one data storage breakthrough. For the record Toshiba thinks these will be on the market in two years.

From the link:

A team of Japanese researchers from Toshiba and the Keio University in Tokyo, led by Professor Tadahiro Kuroda, claims to have developed a technique that will reduce the size of SSDs by around 90 per cent. Not only that, but the technology also increases their energy efficiency by 70 per cent and makes them cheaper to manufacture.

Happy Fat Tuesday, everyone. Have fun and be safe while the good times roll for the Lombardi Gras celebration.