Looks like a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080221/094928313.shtml"cops/a aren't the only ones looking online for evidence of crime. Just in the past week, we've seen two stories of small businesses using the web to do some detective work of their own. Canadian retailers in Cape Breton are hiring loss preventional specialists who are a href="http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2008/11/27/ns-facebook-shoplifters.html"making use of social networking tools/a to track down shoplifters, finding dumb criminals bragging about items they've stolen on YouTube and then using Facebook to help identify the thieves. When a shoplifter has been identified, that information is shared with other members in the retail association who may choose to block that person from their stores. One of the mall owners interviewed also notes in the a href="http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2008/11/27/ns-facebook-shoplifters.html#socialcomments"comments/a that Facebook is especially useful in checking for potential accomplices (friends who were there at the time of the theft). Despite the effectiveness of using the internet as a crime fighting tool, politicians a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080521/1350411194.shtml"elsewhere/a have been trying to get evidence of crime removed from YouTube even though it helps police -- and now retailers -- to catch dumb criminals. br /br / The second story involves an Australian restaurant owner who a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081127.wgtrestaurant1127/BNStory/Technology/?page=rss#038;id=RTGAM.20081127.wgtrestaurant1127"tracked down bill dodgers using Facebook/a. The group of five diners stepped outside for a smoke and never returned after racking up a bill of $340 USD. Restaurant staff recalled that one of the diners had inquired about a former waitress when the group arrived. They contacted the waitress, searched a few names on Facebook and came across a profile belonging to one of the diners, who was pictured with his girlfriend (also in the group). Facebook showed that they worked at a restaurant down the street. They contacted the manager and, within hours, the diner returned to pay the bill (along with a generous tip and an apology). Later, the restaurant was notified that the man and his girlfriend had both been fired. No criminal charges were filed. br /br / Whether it's dumb criminals who can't resist bragging or sloppy criminals giving away clues to their identity, the web makes it a lot easier for law enforcement emand/em victims to track them down.p style="border-top: 1px #aaaaaa dashed;padding-top: 5px;margin-top: 10px;"emBlaise Alleyne is an expert at the a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"Insight Community/a. To get insight and analysis from Blaise Alleyne and other experts on challenges your company faces, a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"click here/a./em/p br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081127/1206322969.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081127/1206322969.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081127/1206322969op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=f74b9ee31645577366e0e2c6bf4b397dp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=f74b9ee31645577366e0e2c6bf4b397dp=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=f74b9ee31645577366e0e2c6bf4b397d" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=QPpeo"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=QPpeo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/473862605" height="1" width="1"/

Reply.com, a San Ramon-based online marketing company, has launched a new product called Click Marketplace that it hopes will give small businesses that don’t typically have large ad budgets access to highly targeted advertising. Reply.com CMO Brian Bowman says that while other ad platforms offer geo-targeted ads, they tend to be more expensive than normal ad campaigns, and are also prone to incorrectly assessing a web user’s location. Conversely, he says that Reply is offering smaller, more targeted campaigns that rely on user input to ensure that the ads are relevant and the users are engaged.

The system primarily relies on inserting a ‘middle-page’ between each ad and the ultimate destination. After clicking on an ad, users are prompted to enter basic information depending on what industry the ad is associated with. Browsers clicking on an automobile ad might be asked their zip code and the the make and model of the car. Depending on the user input, Reply will send the user to one of the advertisers from its pool of participants in the Click Marketplace.

While using this system of inserting a ‘middle page’ to gather information will likely see many users leave without ever visiting an advertiser, advertisers on the platform will know that visitors who do wind up clicking through are genuinely interested in their product.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Britain's banks will face potentially huge fines if they refuse to lend fairly to small businesses and individuals under legislation to be announced this afternoon pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/9HF5dQOy2GIpFhkMCs4B1mLofNg/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/9HF5dQOy2GIpFhkMCs4B1mLofNg/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

The Society for New Communications Research announces its call for Fellows and 2009 research and education roadmap. In 2009 the SNCR Fellows will focus on social media metrics and measurement, adoption of Web 2.0 tools and technologies by small businesses, large enterprises, and the higher education sector; new developments in mobile media; new business models for news organizations and the growing impact of social media and connective technologies on business and the economy. The SNCR Fellows will collaborate on a volunteer basis on original research and educational programs. The application deadline is December 29th, 2008. (PRWeb Dec 2, 2008)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/12/prweb1691764.htm

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/96014?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+Government+puts+RBS+lending+policy+under+scrutinych=Businessc3=The+Guardianc4=Royal+Bank+of+Scotland+%28Business%29%2CBanking+sector+%28Business%29%2CRegulators%2CBusiness%2CMortgages+%28Money%29%2CBanks+and+building+societies%2CMoney%2CEconomic+policy%2CPoliticsc5=Personal+Finance%2CInvestments%2CCredit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CProperty+Mortgages+and+Interest+Ratesc6=Jill+Treanor%2CRupert+Jonesc7=2008_12_02c8=1127185c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Royal+Bank+of+Scotlandc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FRoyal+Bank+of+Scotland" width="1" height="1" //divpRoyal Bank of Scotland was put on notice yesterday that its lending policy, boardroom appointments and business strategy were being reviewed by the government as it took control of 58% of the Edinburgh-based bank./ppThe body set up to oversee the government's stake said it was in "active discussions" about the bank's strategy. UK Financial Investments said that John Crompton, hired from Merrill Lynch, would manage the stake that came under government control yesterday after shareholders shunned a pound;15bn cash call. It has presented the taxpayer with a paper loss of about pound;2.5bn. The UKFI said it was "putting in place arrangements to secure a robust assurance" that commitments to maintain lending to homeowners and small businesses at 2007 levels for the next three years were fulfilled./ppMeanwhile RBS's new chief executive, Stephen Hester, yesterday promised to grant a six-month moratorium to home owners struggling to keep up with mortgage payments. RBS pre-empted any government crackdown on repossessions by asserting that it would give customers falling into arrears six months rather than three months before beginning any repossession proceedings./ppThe move was welcomed by the Treasury and is expected to become a benchmark for the industry. Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said it was "welcome news" for RBS customers. But, he added: "It will be a mere drop in the ocean unless it is followed by the whole industry. The government must now insist that all the nationalised and part-nationalised banks follow suit."/ppNorthern Rock, the nationalised bank responsible for a tenth of all repossessions, insisted it actually took 15 months for homes to be repossessed./ppHBOS, which owns the country's largest mortgage lender Halifax, which is accepting a pound;12bn government rescue package, said it would look at the RBS announcement but felt it already had a package in place to deal with customers in difficulty./ppLloyds TSB, which will take over HBOS next year and is likely to be 40% owned by the taxpayer, said borrowers were usually at least six months in arrears before it began repossession steps./ppThe Council of Mortgage Lenders will use its annual conference today to urge "an honest assessment of the challenges facing the lending industry". It appealed against the imposition of strict criteria on repossessions for each lender./pp"In a large number of cases, borrowers are already able to remain in their home for six months or longer while they work with the lender on implementing a plan to pay off their arrears," it said. "But in cases where there is little or no equity in the property - and no chance of the borrower getting back on his feet in a short period - it may be in the best interests of the home-owner to move towards selling the property rather than allowing arrears to continue to build up over a long period."/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/royalbankofscotlandgroup"Royal Bank of Scotland/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/banking"UK banking sector/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/regulators"Regulators/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/mortgages"Mortgages/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/banks"Banks and building societies/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/economy"Economic policy/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/vb3TVPgl9pQWbnvPOkAIHCmTSCU/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/vb3TVPgl9pQWbnvPOkAIHCmTSCU/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

pemimg align="left" src="http://www.techdirt.com/images/ic-bauble.png" alt="ic" / This is a case from the Insight Community, a powerful new marketplace that connects companies with intelligent communities like Techdirt. a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"Click here/a to learn more./em/p Once again, we're asking small business owners for their insight into how to deal with the financial crisis. If you're not a member of the a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"Insight Community/a sign up today to earn money for your insights.pAs you probably know from our a href="https://www.insightcommunity.com/case.php?iid=1259"earlier/a cases, American Express is sponsoring a conversation here in the Insight Community concerning how small businesses are dealing with the financial crisis. Already, a bunch of the insights generated by those earlier discussions have made their way to American Express' a href="http://blogs.openforum.com/"OPEN Forum blog/a. Some great examples of the type of content include Zack Miller's post on a href="http://blogs.openforum.com/2008/10/15/its-time-for-some-black-swan-contingency-planning/"Black Swan Contingency Planning/a and Dennis Howlett's a href="http://blogs.openforum.com/2008/10/10/some-quick-tips-for-small-businesses-in-this-financial-crisis/"Quick Tips for Small Businesses/a. If you decide to participate in this case, we suggest those two posts are great examples of the level of quality to strive for./p pThis time, we're looking for more insight from small business owners on issues as we approach the end of the year.nbsp; How are you approaching your strategy for the end of this year, as many are worried that holiday spending won't be what it's been in the past?nbsp; Alternatively, how are you gearing up for this financial climate as we head into 2009 and how would you recommend others do so.nbsp; We're also curious how the changing political environment, and the various efforts to create various stimulus packages (or bailouts) might impact the way you do business./p pTo enter, please submit a post around these concepts. Please try to emavoid/em just listing out the questions here and answering each one separately. The description is just a conversation starter, from which we hope you'll craft an interesting, insightful, compelling, and relevant blog post that will be helpful to small business owners, such as yourself. The goal here is to go beyond what everyone else is talking about, and dig a little deeper./p pemThis case uses the "claiming" system. You can claim a slot and reserve that spot for yourself, guaranteeing payment if the response actually does meet the guidelines laid out in the case description. Any insight that is selected to then be placed on the American Express OpenForum blog, also will be designated a "top insight" and the authors will be granted the additional bonus on top of the guaranteed claim amount. Please be aware that claiming a spot but failing to submit an insight will lead to a poor rating and an inability to participate in future cases./em/pul liEarn up to b$200/b for Insights on this case./li liInsights Due: b10 Dec 2008, 11:59PMPT/li/p /ul pa href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/case.php?iid=1290"View Case Details at InsightCommunity.com/a/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=3ed99ade9762e65fe8f992e9b9d72912p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=3ed99ade9762e65fe8f992e9b9d72912p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=3ed99ade9762e65fe8f992e9b9d72912" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=gKhwo"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=gKhwo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/471723415" height="1" width="1"/