Where to Find the Elusive Small Business Start-up Money for Women

If you are a woman small business owner looking for money to start up your business, I bet you've probably noticed how hard it is to find. Haven't you?

If you've been having difficulty finding all those mythical millions—nay billions—of funding opportunities for women, join the crowd. Thousands upon thousands of women search the Internet each month looking for small business start-up money, and tens of thousands of women give up, feeling frustrated, disheartened, and baffled by money-promising scam sites which lead nowhere.

The fact is that the start-up money is not there. At least, not the way it used to be. However, don't give up hope!

Funding opportunities for women starting up small businesses do exist. You just need to know where to look.

Three Places to Find Small Business Start-up Money

1. Visit www.grants.gov to find out if your business purpose fits within federal grant guidelines.

On this site you can find and apply for a number of federal grants. For small business start-up loans, grants.gov redirects you to SBA.gov. That's because the federal government works through agencies like the SBA when funding money for small business start-ups.

2. Search for information on the Small Business Administration's website, www.SBA.gov.

This is an excellent site for all your small business needs. Plus, as a bonus, there are many local SBA offices around the country where you can go and talk with a real live person.

a. Finance Start-up page: http://www.sba.gov/services/financialassistance/grants/index.html

This page gives a list of grant and loan programs, though not the grants or loans themselves.

b. Local Resources: http://www.sba.gov/localresources/index.html

On this page, you can search for your nearest SBA.

3. Contact the Rural Development Administration (USDA RDA) if your business is in a rural area: http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/

The RDA provides assistance to businesses starting up in rural areas. Assistance usually comes in grant-loan combos, or just low interest loans.

Five Strategies for Finding Small Business Start-up Money

1. Take advantage of any assistance or information offered to small business owners by your state, county, or city government.

2. Ask owners of similar businesses how they funded their start-ups.

3. Look for larger companies, organizations and foundations that share your purpose.

4. Consider a loan-grant combo.

5. Google: "small business start-up grant", + "your type of business".

If you are a woman small business owner looking for money to start up your business, you've probably noticed how hard it is to find any. Money for starting up businesses is hard to come by, especially if you don't know where to look. If you've been searching to no avail for small business start-up money or have thrown up your hands in frustration because of all the scam sites that lead nowhere, hang on. Don't give up yet! Funding opportunities for women small business owners do exist. Follow the information and links in this article to discover how and where you can get funding for your small business start-up.
(By. Susan L Reid)

BlackBerry Bold or iPhone 3G: Which fits your corporate attire?

Smartphones are the best gadget for any corporate user. However, to select the one, fit for their corporate personality, is hard to choose from the crowd.

The article is a feature by feature comparison between BlackBerry Bold & 3G iPhone that are label as best Smartphone available in the market.
Apple iPhone 3G

The iPhone is an internet-connected multimedia Smartphone designed and marketed by Apple Inc, which lacks a physical keyboard, but the multi-touch screen renders a virtual keyboard when necessary. It functions as a camera phone, a portable media player and an Internet client. The Apple iPhone 3G is known as the Smartphone that is best in multimedia.


BlackBerry Bold
The BlackBerry Bold aka 9000, the first 3G BlackBerry, launched in the U.S. in November of 2008, is a mobile phone data device, which is considered as one of the best in BlackBerry series.

Comparison of features:

Microprocessor: BlackBerry has 624MHz Intel PXA270/Marvell Tavor PXA930 processor, up from 312MHz, whereas iPhone has Samsung ARM 1176JZ(F)-S v1.0 620 MHz under-clocked to 412 MHz, 32-bit RISC processor.

Operating System: Bold runs BlackBerry OS 4.6, whereas iPhone 3G has iPhone OS 2.2.1.

WLAN: BlackBerry has 802.11a/b/g plus good GPS, typically a tradeoff with BBs, while iPhone supports Wi-Fi 802.11b/g.

Resolution: BlackBerry has 480 x 320 resolution screen with 65,000 colors, whereas iPhone sports 480×320 px, 3.5 in (89 mm), 3:2 aspect ratio, 262,144-color LCD touch-screen.

SMS/MMS: In the Apple iPhone 3G Smartphone, you can only send SMS. Where-as in the BlackBerry, you can send both SMS and MMS.

Memory: The memory that is installed in the Apple is 16 GB where as in the BlackBerry it is 64MB only. In BlackBerry, MicroSD expansion is available where as in Apple it is absent.

Applications: RIM has made a lot of noise about its BlackBerry App World store, whereas Apple recently celebrated its 1 billionth App Store download.

Screen: The Apple has a touch screen and whatever information you are inputting has to be done through that, where as a BlackBerry comes fully equipped with a QWERTY keypad. In the Apple phone the size of the screen is 3.5 inches where as it is 2.5 inches in the BlackBerry.

Camera: In both devices, the resolution of the digital camera is 2 megapixels.

Speakers: The Apple comes in with speakers that are built in. The BlackBerry also comes with inbuilt speakers, but they also come with a 3.5mm stereo jack.

Battery Life: The life of the battery of the BlackBerry is higher than the Apple phones battery life as there is no touch screen and resolution of screen is less.

Location support: BlackBerry has Gokivo Navigator and iPhone provides Google Maps.

Discussion
As usual, you cannot get all the features in one gadget, for e.g. in the BlackBerry the features like the alarm clock; calendar, digital zoom is available where as such features are not available in the Apple. Also, you can do cut and paste text between apps in BlackBerry, while iPhone lacks it. One more thing you miss in the iPhone is opening a zipped attachment, which is present in the BlackBerry Bold.


But, the 16GB memory, rotational ability, touch screen, use of accelerometer for motion detection, Safari browser's support, larger screen and easy apps downloads from the application store makes it better Smartphone than any other.

The most important function for a corporate executive is E-mailing. BlackBerry has become the Lotus Notes of the mobile world for providing secure e-mail anywhere on the move.

Also, the iPhone works directly with Exchange, so you can e-mail, e-mail folders, calendars, and contacts all flowed effortlessly among the iPhone, laptop, and server . The configuration was trivial.

It is important to note that BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) supports Novell GroupWise and Lotus Notes, while both of those servers support the iPhone only through Web clients, limiting their integration with other iPhone apps such as Contacts and Calendar. Thus, BlackBerry supports more e-mail systems, even though you have to add a dedicated server to get that support.


In the security front, organizations running BlackBerrys can trust as if a BlackBerry is lost, IT can wipe all of its data and render it useless over the air. Apple also provides more iPhone security capabilities than most people realize, but it still does not have the depth of messaging and device security that the BlackBerry does.
(By. Surender)

Nokia Ovi vs Apple App Store

Mobile carriers and handset makers are facing stiffer competition and ever-thinner margins as new technologies, new concerns and new economic surroundings take their toll.


To cope with it, they are coming with innovations and call of the hour, as it seems is App Store.

Apple Store

Apple began its App store as a step of innovation and on the requests of the developers who wanted to create applications for iPhone. The innovation was and is a big hit with developers bringing in the applications and users downloading them. App Store is so popular with the users that within a year of its launch, it has touched 1 billion downloads.

Apple, the brand name is synonym for innovation and trend setter. It’s all devices sets the expectation bar high and raise the level of competition. Until now, Apple was the only vendor having App store for its iTunes and iPhone. But now, Nokia has forayed in this segment to yield a tough competition to the earlier one.

Nokia Ovi Store

Nokia, on the leagues of Apple announced its Ovi Store at the Mobile World Congress this year. The N97 will be the first phone integrated into the service, with the remaining phones following. The Ovi Store fuses Nokia’s existing content services into a one-stop-shop for free and paid content. It pushes Nokia's vision one step ahead for its larger array of mobile services, Ovi.

The article is a deep insight of what lies beneath: What is in stores for end users and developers and how could is redefine the software battle between two giants.

Comparison between the two Stores

Both vendor, Mac maker and Finnish leader in mobile making will offer a 70% revenue share to developers.

Despite of this similarity, the basic difference lies in factors that pushed the vendors in bringing these App stores. Apple, at one hand initiated application store on public and developers request to develop products for the iPhone while Nokia’s initiative is purely its own decision. The proposal originated totally from business prospective and idea behind it is to stream revenue into the company with a share of app sale prices, and to potentially push the sales of cellphones and Smartphones.

Apple brought its App store for iPhone whereas Nokia has plans to bring applications for dozens of different handsets with two different Symbian OS’s aboard.

The Ovi Store would offer services which include Ovi Music Store, N-Gage Gaming Service, Ovi App Store, Mashable Widgets and Nokia Maps. Nokia’s initiative can be contemplated as mixture of iTunes, App Store and Google Maps combined with a couple more services. Further to these applications, Nokia’s “comes with music” service is one another attempt to lure users.


Being more or less similar in their mottos, both the stores differ in the way they help the users to find the relevant applications for themselves. With Apple, users often get confused as they have to spot the relevant ones from the sea of junk. Contrary to this, Nokia seems to work hardly on its Ovi store and has deployed a higher degree of relevancy in its search options. Most relevant applications gets pushed “to the surface”.

Apart from the relevancy engine, Nokia has also customized its Ovi store. The Store is not meant only for Smartphone but also suggests things you might like and adds social location dynamics to show you relevant applications. It only presents you the content and apps that are actually compatible with your device.

Apple has already set milestone and Nokia still has to prove its worth in this filed. Both are big brand names but appeal and strategy are different. Although Ovi and iTunes services are aiming at different markets: Apple to its smaller but brand-loyal hoard of Smartphone users, and Nokia at countless millions of its own users. Ovi with big name launch partners already signed including Facebook, MySpace, EA, Qik etc is eager to take on Apple. On the other hand, Apple has plans to allow developers to add in-app payments to applications sold through its iPhone App Store to move ahead in the market.

Through in-app commerce, Apple will allow its customers to complete transactions within the applications. With this it seems, Apple will redefine the economics of mobile application market and will leave its competitors clueless.

From here onwards, how the market scenario changes and what will be the impact of Ovi stores on Nokia’s financial positions will be under scrutiny globally.

Apart from Nokia, many others like RIM, Google, Microsoft and now Sony Ericsson have announced to come up with their app stores. However, the success ratio will be defined with the novelty and approach.

(by. Surender)