A five-year-old boy is thought to be the UK’s youngest person to patent an idea after inventing a labour-saving broom to help his father sweep leaves.

Sam Houghton, of Buxton, Derbyshire, was just three when he came up with a double-headed broom to collect large debris and fine dust simultaneously.

Sam, who was inspired by animated inventors Wallace and Gromit and Archie the Inventor from TV series Balamory, said: “I saw my Daddy brushing up and made it. There are two brushes because one gets the big bits and one gets the little bits left behind.

“I don’t know if I want to be an inventor when I grow up but this was fun.”

Sam had been watching his father at work in the back yard, swapping between a large broom, for leaves and twigs, and a small one, for finer particles, when he came up with his idea.

BBC UK

After numerous prototypes and years of tinkering, Rick Chambers and Larry Kost believe they’ve invented the perfect apparatus to accomplish just that: The Bataround.

It doesn’t sound like much: an elongated stainless steel frame, connected to an aviation cable with a batting practice ball bolted to the end. But with one person swinging the device in a circular motion, a little wrist action and the resulting centrifugal force can provide a whole lot of practice cuts for a batter in a short period of time.

In the summer of 2006, five years and some $70,000 in research and development later, Chambers and Kost, the engineer behind the bataround, finally put their invention on the market.

Lodi News-Sentinel

Trade shows offer inventors and entrepreneurs the opportunity to reach a large number of potential buyers and retailers.

The most important thing you can do before attending a trade show is to make sure you choose the right one. Be sure to make your choice based on the potential returns.

To choose appropriate trade shows, consider the following:

• Ask your best customers (or target customers) which trade shows they attend.
• Consider cost.
• Examine the nature of the attendees.

To find potential trade shows in your industry, visit tsnn.com, where you can search by industry, show name, date or state. You should also visit the website of the industry association related to your product; most sponsor trade shows for members and buyers to come together.

msnbc.com

America loves a good mug shot. The more frizzed, frazzled and frantic, the better. An Orlando entrepreneur has seized on that fascination, recently starting “JAIL,” a weekly newspaper filled with nothing but the unflattering thumbnails. Page after page, with only a few ads in between.

“A mug shot is a couple notches below your driver’s license picture,” said Devin James, 41, dressed casually in sweat pants, sneakers and a ball cap. “And everyone takes a messed up driver’s license picture.”

In JAIL, the stars are the readers’ neighbors, charged with everything from drug possession to prostitution to murder. Thousands of arrests each week in the paper’s three-county distribution area provide plenty of material, all obtained free from police and sheriff’s departments.

James carefully chooses the mug shots on the front page — issues with attractive women on the front move fastest.

“Sex sells,” James said.

James said he got the idea nearly a decade ago after a three-month stint in the Orange County Jail after he says he got into a loud fight with a girlfriend and the police sided with her. He denies hitting her.

Using $600 he earned moving furniture, James started the newspaper in December.

“The timing is right for this paper now,” he said. “America is in the midst of a crime wave.”

Associated Press

If you want to be an entrepreneur, you’re in good company. An average of 464,000 adults a month create new businesses, according to the most recent statistics available from the Kauffman Foundation, which tracks and promotes entrepreneurship. Technorati Profile

But starting a business is a complicated, risky, all-consuming effort. Indeed, just two-thirds of new small businesses survive at least two years, and only 44 percent survive at least four years, according to a study by the U.S. Small Business Association.

1. Determine if you’re an entrepreneur or just a wannabe.
2. Pinpoint an opportunity.
3. Make sure there’s a market for your idea.
4. Write a business plan.
5. Determine your business structure.
6. Look for funding.

Fortune

When July hit Miami in 1998, everyone seemed to be enjoying the dog days of summer–except the dogs. As owners took giant swigs from their 32-ounce water bottles, their dogs ran to and fro, wearily retrieving makeshift toys in the afternoon heat. It was on one sunny afternoon in July that Carlotta Lennox rolled by a park on a pair of rollerblades, noticed that the dogs looked tired and hungry, and realized how she could give the day back to the dogs.

Seven years later, the first Hey Buddy pet vending machine was established in Bark Park Central, an off-leash dog park in Dallas. Lennox, 36, stocked the machine with dog treats, tennis balls, dog shirts, dog glasses–basically everything a dog might need for a walk in the park. And with its shingled roof and slated facade, the doghouse-inspired vending machine was hard to miss–which meant pets and their owners weren’t the only ones begging Lennox for more.

I see my machines at the Plaza in New York City, maybe gold-plated, carrying Louis Vuitton dog collars and Chanel pearls and everything else a celebrity would want for their dog,” says Lennox. She also lists apartment complexes, RV parks and veterinary offices as just a few more places she hopes to have Hey Buddy Machines in the future. “That’s really what we’re all about,” she says. “We just want to make it convenient for the customers who are out there with their dogs.”

Unusual Business Ideas That Work

You hear a lot about companies routing their customer-service calls to workers overseas, but a less-noticed trend is the growth in home-based call-center workers. The number of such workers in North America has tripled since 2000, according to an estimate by research firm Yankee Group, with more than 670,000 phone agents in the United States and Canada now working at home.

Thanks to the Internet and better call-routing technology, more companies are finding they can outsource their order-taking, sales and problem-solving calls to home-based workers, said LiveOps Chairman Bill Trenchard. LiveOps not only runs an outsource operation, Trenchard said, but it provides technology for companies that want to set up their own home-based call centers.

Home-based workers tend to be better educated and more loyal than their counterparts at traditional call centers, Trenchard said. Most of LiveOps’ workers have college degrees — Opara has a master’s — and turnover is low.

Call centers usually have no tolerance for audible distractions, so a crying baby, barking dog or ringing doorbell could get you fired. (Some companies require their workers have dedicated offices with doors to minimize potential distractions.) An operator also needs a dedicated phone line, a computer and high-speed Internet access.

Some call centers that say they are currently hiring include:

• Alpine Access
• LiveOps
• Arise
• West at Home

MSN Money

It took a few years before Martine Rothblatt got used to describing her daughter’s chronic lung disease as a lucrative market opportunity. “I choked every time I said it - it sounded so immoral,” says Rothblatt, 52. But when she realized that the fastest track to a cure was to launch a biotech firm and then take it public, Rothblatt started United Therapeutics.

The company, based in Silver Spring, Md.,makes and sells Remodulin, a drug that treats pulmonary hypertension (PPH), abnormally high blood pressure in the arteries that supply the lungs. The rare, incurable, and often fatal ailment causes shortness of breath, fainting spells and fatigue. Most treatment options, ranging from daily pills to intravenous medicines, are fully reimbursable by insurance companies.

Rothblatt describes watching her daughter, Jenesis, battle PPH when she was diagnosed as a little girl. Jenesis survived on a mix of pills, but doctors warned that if her condition worsened, she would have to take Flolan, a GlaxoSmithKline (Charts) drug that stays in the bloodstream for only three minutes. It must be continually administered via a catheter threaded directly into the groin or neck. Unstable at room temperature, Flolan requires patients to carry an ice pack 24 hours a day to ensure that it stays cool.

“The treatment seemed worse than the disease,” recalls Rothblatt, stroking one of the three mohawked Labradoodles that roam her offices. “My vision became an inhaled version of the medicine.” Her first step was to develop a drug that lasted longer than Flolan.

FSB Magazine

Top five expressions people use when they are talking about networking that can make you cringe:

1. Schmoozing — this word makes networking seem so slimy and insincere. Networking is about teaching your contacts to believe in your character and competence so they want to work with you, send business your way or hire you
2. 30 Second Commercial — while you want to “sell yourself” you don’t want to appear as too much of a hard sell
3. Pick Your Brains — this expression makes the authors think of vultures coming in for the kill; and wish that people would instead say “I’d like to get your thoughts about something.”
4. Work a Room — this phrase sounds as if you intend to work people over and take all you can. Instead, focus on listening and showing others what they can count on you for and what kinds of opportunities to send your way.
5. Information Interview — You can make networking a way of life — at professional meetings, backyard barbeques and all kinds of professional and social venues.

All 10 expressions by Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon.

powerhomebiz.com

Barbara Kavovit — better known to the world as Barbara K — has turned what began as a niche home-improvement business into a mini-empire that now includes a line of fashionable, female-friendly tools available through retailers like Target, two best-selling books and, most recently, an online show. Barbara K admits that while her career has rarely traveled in a straight path, and that she has made her fair share of mistakes, her business is stronger because of what she’s learned along the way.

“My first job I took after college was as a financial analyst. I was living at home in New Rochelle, N.Y., at the time, and it was actually kind of boring. Then one day I heard my mom talking to some of her friends about how hard it was to get things done around the house without a man around, like hanging picture, fixing a leaky faucet, and tightening a doorknob. That’s when a lightbulb went on for me.

“I realized that women are tired of having to rely on men to help with home improvements. I thought women might like to deal with another woman instead. So I went to a local printer to have some business cards and fliers made up. Then I went to the mall and started talking to women about how I had just started a home-improvement business and asked whether there was anything I could help them with.

“After I lined up a job, like putting up Sheetrock, I would go to the phonebook, find the contractors that could do the work, and check out their references. I would then drive the contractor to the job and talk with the customer as he did the work. I made my money by charging the homeowner more than the contractor was charging me. My first year, I made $25,000.

Yahoo! Finance

Some words used in business names just bring certain connotations to mind, and, it can be enough to make me not go inside and shop.

1. “Today’s”
2. “Modern”
3. “Classy”
4. “Savvy”
5. “Swanky”
6. “Lady”
7. “Tidy”
8. “Charming”
9. “N’ Things”
10. Anything with a “K” where a “C” belongs - If you own “Kountry Klutter Kakes”, I will Kut you.

BusyMom.net

Just over a year ago, we covered Ether, which makes it easy for (budding) entrepreneurs to sell spoken advice and support by providing them with a dedicated 1-888 number for customers to call, and taking care of billing and payments. Now, a massive player has joined the arena. Skype’s latest software release includes a beta version of Skype Prime. The service is very similar to Ether: sellers set a price, fixed or per minute, find buyers for their service, and Skype handles the rest. Of course, instead of using phone lines, both sellers and buyers use Skype’s voice over IP platform.

While Skype charges ‘call providers’ more than Ether does—30% commission versus 15%—Skype’s obvious benefit is its existing global user base. Skype has over 171 million registered users, is available in 28 languages and is used in almost every country around the world. Which means a very large reach for minipreneurs who’d like to sell their services, whether they’re offering Spanish lessons, tax advice or something saucier. (Note that Skype’s guidelines state that call providers cannot offer any content or service that is adult, sexual, pornographic or paedophiliac.)

Other alternatives include BitWine and Wengo.

springwise.com

People have a harder time coming up with alternative solutions to a problem when they are part of a group, new research suggests.

Scientists exposed study participants to one brand of soft drink then asked them to think of alternative brands. Alone, they came up with significantly more products than when they were grouped with two others.

The researchers speculate that when a group of people receives information, the inclination is to discuss it. The more times one option is said aloud, the harder it is for individuals to recall other options, explained Krishnan.

Another contributing factor is variation in learning and memory styles. People store and retrieve information in myriad ways, so in a group situation, the conversation could cause individuals to think about the cues differently than they would if they were alone.

Krishnan said individuals, whether students, executives or football fans, should take time to consider the facts on their own before coming to a consensus.

msnbc.com

Don’t think the Second Life land rush is over. Now a huge real estate firm is entering the 3D virtual world, as the service’s headlong growth continues.

Real estate deals may be slowing in the real world, but in the three-dimensional online one of Second Life the market remains hot. Now Coldwell Banker, one of the nation’s largest real estate brokerage firms, is entering Second Life, aiming to help bring order to the chaotic world of virtual real estate.

Coldwell Banker will open a virtual sales office and start selling virtual land at 9 a.m. on Friday. The company released the information exclusively to Fortune.

It’s more evidence that the Second Life naysayers are on the defensive. Despite skepticism, software and system troubles, and extraordinary hype, the three-dimensional virtual world juggernaut continues.

Coldwell Banker has bought extensive tracts of property on the central “mainland” of Second Life. (Most companies own “islands” scattered all over.) It subdivided this digital land into 520 individual houses and living units, half of which it will sell and half it will rent.

Read more here.