Members of Congress continue to toss around ideas to help small businesses dig out of the recession. The latest suggestion: appoint a special U.S. trade representative to focus on the needs of small companies.
The idea was floated by Senators Mary Landrieu, D-La., Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y, who wrote a letter to [...]

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Microsoft says high-school students will get free access to its software-development tools under an expansion of the company’s "DreamSpark" program, previously limited to college students. Products available include Microsoft’s Visual Studio, XNA Game Studio, Expression Studio, Robotics Developer Studio and others.
"I think we see now an opportunity for many high-school kids to use these better [...]

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Impinj, the Seattle maker of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, has laid off 23 employees, reduced its contract workers, and is making unspecified cuts in spending in response to the economic downturn. Impinj spokesman Jim Donaldson said the cuts were "in response to the deteriorating global economic conditions." He called them "preemptive actions to insure our [...]

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Small businesses’ health-insurance woes have been getting some attention the past couple weeks, and raising hopes that the Obama administration will soon do something about them.
A new Government Accountability Office report finds that the small group health-insurance market Â? generally defined as covering businesses with up to 50 employees Â? has become much more concentrated [...]

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After being accused by several people at this evening’s Industry Achievement Awards of possessing a "Sports-Illustrated-like-cover-curse," I redeemed myself with my predictions. I got half of my picks correct, making up for last year’s dismal performance when I missed every one.
The 14th annual awards ceremony had a fun vibe as it moved to the Paramount Theater, [...]

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, more  and The Apps Battle Heats Up  , more 

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Want to see a human brain sliced open? Wired magazine has the gory photos as well as an in-depth profile of Paul Allen’s Allen Institute for Brain Science, an ambitious scientific undertaking that’s attempting to map thousands of genes that make up the human brain.
"I first got interested in the brain through computers," Allen tells Wired. [...]

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Lawyers for consumers who bought Windows XP PCs in the months before Windows Vista’s release tried today to persuade a federal judge to reinstate class-action status in their lawsuit over Microsoft’s "Windows Vista Capable" marketing program.
After hearing arguments from Microsoft and the plaintiffs, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman indicated from the bench that a [...]

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