Marcus Rothaar

Raddon’s most recent survey of 1,200 small businesses reveals an intersection of lending attitudes and needs, which alternative lenders are taking advantage of. One out of 10 small business owners feel credit has dried up and financial institutions have stopped lending to small businesses.

Of all the challenges facing small businesses today, the general health of the economy and the ability to continually attract new customers are the top two concerns, according to Raddon's Fall 2014 Small Business National Research survey.

One clear result of the data and card breach at Target has been greater awareness and more of a push to speed up the adoption of EMV chip cards in the United States. As retailers make efforts to restore customer confidence that “this won’t happen again”, the mag-stripe card has become target number one.

Google recently announced a second round of “spring cleaning”, shutting down a number of older features and services. As mentioned in their blog post on the subject, they have now closed 70 such products in the last two years. One of the more noteworthy items on the closure list is Google Reader, the once popular web feed aggregator which purportedly allows users to stay up to date with their favorite websites and blogs all in one place. While Google recognizes that there is a loyal group of Reader users, the devotion is apparently not enough to overcome the declining usage and they will officially retire the product on July 1, 2013.