The oddsmakers and forecasters are already at work calculating how much we'll spend on Black Friday--the day after Thanksgiving--and Cyber Monday, the Monday following the holiday weekend. In our internet age, these two days form the official opening the Christmas shopping season and usually are a strong predictor of how much shoppers will buy for the holidays generally. This season there's a few new wrinkles--aside from the economy--so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.  read more...

I'm always fascinated by companies that present potentially disruptive new ways of communicating that could transform how we reach out to customers and find clients. This week, I've collected three interesting startups that are combining existing communication forms to create new modes for reaching out. They may not all be quite ready to use yet, but consider these concepts brain food to expand your idea of what is possible.

The U.S. Postal Service may want to watch out for Zumbox--it's providing a way for companies (and everybody, ultimately) to send formatted PDF mail direct to customers' computers, saving the postage stamps. The company's technology enables them to create a computer inbox--or Zumbox--for every street address in America. So companies don't need to know customers' e-mail addresses--with a street address (and the customer's permission) the company can electronically deliver their mail. Besides saving on postage, this will also allow companies to send interactive, multimedia mail with clickable links, videos, you name it. read more...

Ordinarily, I blog for Entrepreneur about news of interest to small business owners--that is, news other sources have reported. But today I want to report some news I've found on my own, over many years of reporting on this sector. If you've ever wanted to get your company noticed by the media, this news should be of interest.

Small business, your website sucks. And I'll give you five reasons why. read more...

Time was, business owners just wondered nervously what customers were saying to their friends about the company once they left the premises. In the Twitter era, of course, that anxiety has been resolved--their musings are online for all to see.

The question is, are you listening to what customers are saying on the internet? And if so, what's your response?

If you're still doing an ostrich about monitoring your online reputation, allow me to pluck your head from the sand. Social-media maven Mike Moran recently commented that in his experience, large corporations are all over online reputation monitoring and responding to grumpy customers, while small businesses aren't paying attention.

Which strikes me as kind of funny, because of all the newfangled social-media stuff out there, monitoring your reputation strikes me as about the easiest, cheapest thing you can do to make sure the Internet buzz on your business is positive. I mean, how hard is it to set up a Google Alert on your company name? read more...

Social media isn't just the massive sites that are discussed endlessly--Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn. In some industries, powerful industry-specific sites--known as industry verticals--are being created to help industry players connect with each other and with customers.

An example is LocalDirt.com, a new portal that connects farmers with customers nearby. The site debuted at the Fall 2009 DEMO technology conference in San Diego last week, pitching its concept to conference producers along with 70 other tech firms. Local Dirt won a DEMOgod award, given out at the event to exceptional companies, and was also picked by innovation and venture-capital newsmag VentureBeat as one of the 10 best companies at DEMO. read more...

If you're a business owner who sells to other businesses, a new study commissioned by Google of small-to-medium business owners' search habits should be eye-opening. To sum up: For many, the Web isn't a place to look for information, it's the only place.

Google's director of business-to-business and local markets, Sam Sebastian, shared some of the findings with me this morning. The study of more than 400 American purchase decisionmakers at SMBs conducted in March by Slack Barshinger asked business owners about their Internet habits. Among the findings: 93 percent of respondents said they use the Web to find work-related information, compared with 76 percent using trade publications and 69 percent using newspapers. More than half are online at least weekly, trying to solve a specific business problem. Twenty percent of SMBs use the Internet daily to try to resolve issues. read more...

If you've given up on getting a bank loan, there are a few offbeat funding options floating around the internet these days. I found three recently that don't offer huge sums, but might be able to give a new business a kick-start.

One of them is called exactly that: Kickstarter. The site began just a few months ago with a focus on helping artists fund their work, but has been developing into a possible small-business funding vehicle, the New York Times' blog recently reported. The site works a bit like the peer-lending sites such as Prosper.com and Zopa.com--the business owner posts about how much money they're looking for, site visitors pledge small amounts toward the funding needed, and then the loan only funds if the business gets that much in pledges. The big plus: It's a grant, not a loan, and the funds don't need to be repaid. read more...

Some entrepreneurs are workaholics. They envision themselves working to build their businesses for the rest of their lives. But that's not everybody. Some business owners think in terms of building their baby up for a few years, and then selling it off and sailing to Bimini. Or taking a break and then getting to work on their next business idea.

Probably fewer business owners are thinking about selling just now...but a couple of recent news announcements reminded me that though the IPO market may be slumbering, some small businesses are still cashing in by selling to bigger players in their space. Many big corporations still have money--or can borrow money--for acquisitions. read more...

There's something new at business.gov, the official online business link to the U.S. government: community. OK, starting a blog site isn't that new an idea generally. But the business.gov blog, which just got going in July, offers a unique opportunity for small business owners to learn how to do business with the feds.

The site includes a variety of independent experts in business topics, but the majority of the bloggers on the site to date are more than a half-dozen federal employees with the Business Gateway program, including program manager Nancy Sternberg. Business Gateway is a partnership of 22 federal agencies striving to make their information easier to access...and now you can blog with their managers? Sounds like a real time-saver. read more...

Chat boards are rumbling and grumbling with the news that Microsoft is going to make customers who signed up for free custom domains with Office Live Small Business start paying $14.95 a year as of Oct. 1. This despite the fact that its site still encourages small business owners to "Get a free web site and more." But few have bothered to ask Microsoft what's up. Turns out it's not quite as sweeping of a change as you might think. read more...