Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a few convergent trends emerge. First, people are more interested in what’s going on in their specific city, town, or neighborhood. So-called “hyperlocal” blogs are proliferating even as national media struggle. Second, more folks are using their mobile phones to connect to the Internet and find local businesses and service providers. As a small business owner, you’ve got to make yourself visible to anybody searching in your area – whether they’re on a fully equipped desktop computer with a 20-inch flat screen display or whether they’re peering at a 2.4-inch BlackBerry screen.

If you take five minutes to set up a Place Page through Google Local Business Center, you can raise the visibility of your company to anybody searching for relevant businesses in your area. You can even create coupons that can either be printed on paper or displayed on mobile phones.

1. Go to http://google.com/lbc.

2. Either create a Google account or use your existing sign-in.

3. You’ll be taken to the Dashboard. Under Locations, click Add new listing.

4. You’ll be taken to a page where you fill out preliminary information such as address, email, website address, and description. As you fill out the information, you’ll see your listing appear in the map to the right. Here’s an example for the fictitious business “Ray’s Pies” in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

5. When you’re finished filling out that information, click Next. You’ll then be taken to a page that asks for more detailed info, such as hours and payment methods. You can even post a picture of your products or storefront. When you’re finished, click Submit.

6. And it’s that easy! Google will contact you to verify your information, and then your full profile will be publicly available on what’s called a “Place Page.” A Place Page includes not only all the information you just supplied, but also ratings for your business, reviews, related maps, nearby transit options, and the Street View preview of your location. You can get to your Place Page by searching on your business in Google and then clicking on “more info” in your Google Maps search results or “more info” in the info bubble on the map.

In a statement, Ms. Nasr said that she’d exercised poor judgment as a representative of CNN when she tweeted that Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah was “one of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

Last month, veteran reporter Helen Thomas was pressured to retire after she made a comment at Jewish American Heritage Month celebration that was later posted online by the rabbi’s son that many considered to be anti-Semitic.

Of course, these stories were prominent because they took place in the media by media folks, who have to present an objective face to the world.

But we’ve also heard about flight attendants who have lost their jobs because of inappropriate pictures posted on their personal Facebook accounts. In a country that allows companies to fire employees at will for any reason other gender or race, it’s kind of a time bomb waiting to go off.

So where do we draw the line? As an employer, it wouldn’t be pleasant to read something negative one of your employees had to say about your company. The impulse is to let that person go because there are other people out there who need a job, right? But do you want your workforce to be mindless automatons? Is it right to try to control what an employee says on his personal Facebook account even though it could be exposed publicly?

I don’t know the answer, but I’m sure it’s going to be playing out in the court system for years to come and decided on a case-by-case basis. Do I personally think a flight attendant should be fired for posting sexy pictures on her Facebook account? Not really. I wasn’t aware that flight attendants had some kind of moral reputation to uphold. But if that person was a schoolteacher, yeah, I’d probably feel like posting sexy pictures was inappropriate.

Either way, posting online can be a slippery slope for the employed and those hoping to be employed. Exercise good judgment and only say things online that you would say in person in a company board meeting.

According to the TSA, increased checkpoint security may make lines longer for flights headed into the US from other countries. If you hold a passport issued by, or are traveling from or through what the TSA describes as “nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest,” you may have to go through “enhanced screening.” However, the rules around what you can and can’t pack in your carry-on haven’t changed.

If you’re traveling domestically, you really won’t notice much of a difference. One new development could signal easier traveling in the future: the TSA says that you do not have to take your laptop out of its case if it offers a clear and unobstructed view of your computer when it runs through the scanner. Some laptop-only sleeves can do this if they’re packed correctly, but most laptop bags won’t meet the standard. However, the TSA has encouraged laptop bag manufacturers to develop “checkpoint friendly” designs. You can read more about the TSA’s “checkpoint friendly” laptop bag procedures here.

Until the day arrives when you can just toss your briefcase onto the scanner and be done with it, here are a few tips for traveling with expensive, easy-to-lose electronics:

1. Make sure you’ve run a full backup before you leave. You might consider keeping all your important documents on your corporate file server instead of on your hard drive, in case your laptop gets lost. If you do opt to keep your files on your hard drive, make sure it’s password-protected and all your files are encrypted.

2. Invest in a biometric USB flash drive that requires an authenticated fingerprint to access files.

3. Remember that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The best way to ensure that you don’t lose your laptop at the airport is to give yourself plenty of time at the airport and keep an eye on your computer at all times — a recent study showed that people most frequently lose their laptops at security checkpoints and at departure gates. Check out the full study here.

What’s the deal? The Dante commercial (in common with many video game trailers) was put together from pre-rendered cut-scene footage, not actual gameplay. The ad acknowledges that with a small disclaimer on the closing screen, but one Techland blogger obviously doesn’t think that’s good enough.

“The majority of the the eyeballs glued to the Super Bowl and its preening commercials belong to non-gamers,” Techland’s Gary Eng Walk said. “I’m sure there are going to be some people who buy Dante’s Inferno, take it home, and wonder where…the game they saw in the commercial went.”

Here’s the ad:

On stage revealing the new product was Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice president for product management. While introducing the product, Mr. Horowitz focused on the human penchant for sharing experiences and the social media phenomenon of wanting to share it in real time. These two key themes were core philosophies behind Google Buzz.

“It’s becoming harder and harder to find signal in the noise,” Bradley stated before introducing the product manager for Google Buzz, Todd Jackson.

Here are the details:

According to a report Tuesday in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald, a man has agreed to pay Nintendo 1.5 million Australian dollars (or $1.3 million) for loss of sales revenue after he allegedly illegally copied and uploaded to the Web the New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii prior to the game’s Australian release last year.

Australia’s Copyright Act outlaws copying and distributing video games without prior approval. Nintendo cited the Copyright Act when it took James Burt to court over the alleged incident. After being granted a search order by Australia’s Federal Court, Nintendo was able to access Burt’s hard drives, e-mail, and any sites for which he had password, according to the Herald.

As part of an out-of-court settlement, Burt, who is 24, agreed to pay the $1.3 million. He will also reimburse the video game company $87,000 for legal costs, the newspaper reported.

“Nintendo will pursue those who attempt to jeopardize our industry by using all means available to it under the law,” the company said in a statement.

The video game industry’s fight against piracy has been a long and hard battle. Numerous games are available online illegally. And with a single download, people can play them without paying a dime. Still, I’m not convinced that a $1.3 million settlement is fair.

That was until I found tethering my iPhone was going to cost me an additional $55 US per month. That’s on top of the existing $30 US data charge from AT&T. Heck, the pricing isn’t any different from regular 3G data modem plans. Not the kind of expenses I’m willing to pay for the next 24 months.

Broadband2Go

I resigned myself to wait until AT&T allowed tethering. At least that way, I didn’t have to buy another 3G data modem. Then a friend mentioned something about pay as you go mobile broadband plans. That sounded interesting.

I was surprised at the number of available plans. I managed to narrow the choices down to Verizon and Virgin Mobile. Finally deciding on Virgin Mobile’s Broadband2Go due to lower prices. I bought my Broadband2Go data modem for $99 US.

If you do the math, pay as you go plans are more expensive per MB when compared to contract plans. But, for people with other Internet access options and only the occasional need, services like Broadband2Go are a valuable option.

Virgin Mobile
Verizon

The company made an announcement on Tuesday announcement about lowering the listing fees for items–even though, in many cases, final value fees will be raised. The company’s discussion forums simmered with outrage over the executive decision, and frustration over the lack of other options for auction-style e-commerce.

“What a joke,” commented one person on the eBay Seller Central forum, asking for advice about transferring the items from an eBay “store” to another auction site. Another suggested putting together an April Fool’s Day protest.

eBay representatives say that these opinions come from the minority. “A lot of the sellers that we’re talking to are very, very happy with these changes,” said Todd Lutwak, eBay’s senior director of seller experience. He said it gives a better array of options for different kinds of sellers. “What we’ve done with these price changes is, we’ve segmented the seller population and then we’ve provided those segments with what we feel are better options to meet their needs.”

Here’s the math: Individual eBay items with a starting price of 99 cents or less no longer have a listing fee, and if they don’t sell, the seller pays nothing; but if they do sell, the final value fee is 9 percent with a maximum of $50. Previously, it had been 8.75 percent for the first $25, and 3.75 percent after that. For more serious eBay sellers who purchase subscriptions to run “stores,” final value fees have been altered so that they start at a lower threshold, but in some cases can ultimately get higher. eBay piloted these changes in some European markets starting in 2008 (with success, representatives say), and later added some U.S.-based beta testers whom it’s showcased in a new promotional site explaining it all, called “The Best Place To Sell.”

“People who have store subscriptions, who sell thousands of items a month, are being advantaged,” explained Alan Lewis, who worked at eBay as a product manager for five years and now serves as the platform manager for Auctiva, a site that makes tools for eBay sellers. “(This) continues the direction that they’ve been going for the past couple years, which is catering more and more to large sellers…It’s something that makes sense for eBay. They just have to deal with the consequences. If they are bringing on larger sellers, there will be consequences for smaller sellers.”

An eBay pundit who goes by the handle “AuctionWally” wrote a blog post in which he speculated that the fee changes “will benefit the savvy consumer of collectibles, antique and unique items as this plan brings a lot more product to the marketplace with low starting bids,” and that “this stuff can be more like reading tea leaves than a flow chart, but it looks pretty good from an auction seller’s perspective, and just as nice for most store sellers.” Still, many of Wally’s own commenters disagreed with him–some with extremely strong language.

Granted, when a company makes a product change announcement, it’s the ticked-off ones who are the most vocal. But those dissatisfied sellers sure want to be heard.

“The lower announced listing fee decreases are absurdly trivial to the extreme, and will cause eBay to become more cluttered than ever with overpriced, worthless stuff that people will put purely on speculation that some fool will bite,” an Alexandria, Virginia-based antiques dealer related to CNET in an e-mail. “I have been selling on eBay since 1997 and I know eBay like the back of my hand. It is a true love-hate relationship.”

Any community site–particularly one where members may be making a profit by participating in that community–is sure to experience some dissent when changes are made. For eBay, however, the uproar from some sellers about this week’s fee changes was more vociferous than usual. It amounted to Orwellian doublespeak, some claimed; and the “Best Place To Sell” microsite was little more than propaganda.

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