While it is commonly referred to as Chinese New Year, it is probably more accurate to call it Lunar New Year as it is celebrated by many cultures outside of China! With that in mind, we’d like to welcome the year of the rabbit (or cat, if you’re Vietnamese). :)

Melody Fury kicks off the new year by offering us the ultimate Chinese New Year menu. From golden dungeness crab to baked durian pastry, there’s a little something for everyone. What do you like to eat?

Jeff Cutler moves us away from the CNY celebrations by approaching the subject of working from home. This isn’t necessarily to be equated with freelancing or entrepreneurship, per se, as telecommuting is becoming an increasingly viable solution for all kinds of different employees. Are you a free agent?

Joseph Planta is apparently getting an early start to his spring cleaning, as he’s starting to wonder what to do with his magazines. We’re not talking about one or two issues; we’re talking about several thousand magazines that he has “socked away over the last decade and a half.” What would you do?

Enkay Blog takes a look at a sensitive subject. While most people would agree that companies shouldn’t judge people based on their gender or ethnic background, age could be a much stickier situation. Does age impact business? Do you take a younger entrepreneur less seriously than a middle-aged one?

Ray Ebersole isn’t quite as excited about some other people about the upcoming Verizon iPhone and he tells us why. For example, the Verizon version can’t do voice and data at the same time, quite unlike the GSM model sold through AT&T. It’s also not world-friendly. For the Americans in the audience, are you buying a Verizon iPhone?

When it comes to certain types of businesses and services, a big part of your promotional push might not have to do with “selling” yourself over your competition: it might have to do a lot more with simply educating the public.

One of the biggest examples of this is the realm of mortgage brokers. While most mortgages in the United States are done through brokers, that is not the case in Canada. And so, companies like Dominion Lending Centres work much more on educating the public about the value of using a broker.

Instead of saying that they do it “better” than other brokers, they simply educate the public on why they would want to use a mortgage broker in the first place. They educate the public on what they do for them, as well as firmly remind them that they don’t actually pay the brokers at all: the banks and other financial institutions do.

The same concept can apply to any emerging trend or other product line that the public may not know too much about. If you find you’re having difficulty attracting new clients, consider shifting your marketing campaign toward sales-geared education.

More and more people are accessing the Internet on their mobile phones, but not all of these phones provide the best environments for viewing the “full” Internet. Mobile websites need to be more efficient and load more quickly. They also need to be more easily navigated on the smaller screens of a mobile phone.

Addressing this growing phenomenon is the WP Mobile Detector WordPress plugin. There are other plugins that seemingly offer similar functionality, but this is one of the first to differentiate between a standard mobile phone and a smartphone. Users on these platforms come with a different set of needs, so the website displayed should address these different needs.

WP Mobile Detector can detect over 5000+ mobile phone models, loading an appropriate mobile theme for each. The plugin comes bundled with seven advanced mobile themes, including Jester Mobile, Casper Mobile, and Viper Mobile. Features include collapsable menus, cross-platform compatibility, and touch-optimized layouts. You also get image resizing and advanced mobile statistics.

The free version of WP Mobile Detector can be downloaded at WordPress.org. Alternatively, you can build your own custom mobile theme if you purchase WP Mobile Detector premium.

When you decide to open a brick-and-mortar business in a major city, there are many different considerations that will quickly enter your mind. You will have to think about getting the appropriate licenses and permits. You will need to think about the logistics, accounting, and management. And then you have to think about customer parking.

Depending on the nature of the business and the building that you select for it, the concern of customer parking will carry varying weight. For example, if you have an office in a high-rise building in the middle of the downtown core, it’s very unlikely that your office will “come” with free parking. For some businesses, this is an accepted expense and you may opt to simply reimburse your customers for pay parking in public lots.

In many other buildings, you may have the opportunity to lease a set number of parking spots within a lot for the entire building. These spots can be designed for your business alone and this is really the path that you would want to take for something like a restaurant. However, it may not be cost-effective to provide free customer parking in an expensive downtown core.

There are many different expenses that will come into play when you think about opening a new business. You may have to think about renovations, equipment, staffing, and all sorts of other concerns. Be sure to give customer parking more than a few moments of your time too. It’s more important than many early entrepreneurs may recognize.