Last month, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staff issued a preliminary report designed to provide a framework within which policy makers, industry and consumer advocates can craft standard practices to protect consumer privacy in the face of rapidly evolving data handling and consumer outreach technology. That report, entitled Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid [...]

A few weeks ago, the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship held a hearing on the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) National Broadband Plan and its promise (or lack thereof) for small businesses. At the end of that hearing, Chairwoman Mary Landrieu (D-LA) announced that she intended to hold another hearing during which she wanted [...]

It seems as if it was broadband week on Capitol Hill, as both the House and Senate Small Business Committees played host to meetings to discuss high speed Internet access and its impact on small businesses. Over in the House, Committee Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez convened a hearing last Wednesday that was immediately striking because it [...]

As I listened, I realized that there was one thing that I was hearing and one other thing that I was not hearing.

What I heard was this: ladies and gentlemen, what we are describing is the future of doing business. Technology will change the way we operate, as we become able to accomplish more with our lean, über-efficient operations. We invite you to gaze upon the future of small business.

What I did not hear was this: oh, by the way, operating in this lean and efficient way will mean we will probably find it unnecessary to hire as many people to staff our firms as we used to.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, under the auspices of Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT), has been working on patent reform legislation for about a year now and, earlier this month, Chairman Leahy announced that a compromise had been reached with Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL). You might expect that to be big news for microbusinesses, nonemployer [...]

Late last month, the House Small Business Committee held yet another oversight hearing involving the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), this time focusing on the investments called for in the bill into nationwide broadband deployment. Broadband deployment is particularly important for microbusinesses, which tend to be heavily reliant on a variety of Internet-based technologies [...]

Now that the Bush Administration is a little over two months away from its swan song and objective science may once again become fashionable in the nation’s capital, a particularly timely report reminds us that, high on the list of nice-things-small-firms-do is to develop the technologies that often solve our problems, make us money and [...]

Do you remember when there were no cell phones? Back then, people went about their daily business without any thought of the phone calls they might be missing or the people they could be talking to if they had the technology to reach out and touch while walking the dog. Back then, people rode buses [...]

A hearing last week before the Subcommittee on Rural and Urban Entrepreneurship of the House Small Business Committee on cutting edge energy technologies that are currently in the pipeline offered a unexpectedly fascinating glimpse into where our energy future may be heading. The need for a next generation has become crystal clear as rising input [...]