When you first start up your business, you need money to get you off the ground. Somewhere along the way, you may need another infusion of money to get you to the next level. That’s the reality of trying to grow a company. The question, then, is where you get this money.

You could tap into your personal savings, but oftentimes you’ll be left with one of two big options: get outside investment from a venture capitalist in exchange for a percentage share in your company or approach the bank to get a loan. Not surprisingly, there are pros and cons to both approaches.

Some companies may not qualify for the bank loans that they need and they may end up on television shows like Shark Tank and Dragons’ Den. Even outside the specter of television, the cutthroat environment of venture capitalist can be very intimidating. You are also giving out a portion of your business, either in a royalty or a percentage ownership. At the same time, though, you may be gaining access to contacts and expertise that you may not have otherwise.

A business loan from the bank necessarily results in interest being accrued, so this is an additional expense that you’ll need to consider. It also means that you are still on your own, without the outside guidance that a VC may be able to provide.

In the end, neither option is really “better” than the other; it’s just a matter of which is more suitable for your particular situation.

You might remember last week’s post where I talked about a computer mouse with a built-in scale. Having a digital scale seems interesting, but it may not be all that useful. This, on the other hand, could prove to be more appealing to the masses.

It’s a USB optical mouse with a digital photo frame. The mouse itself isn’t all that exceptional, giving you the usual scroll wheel and additional function buttons, but your palm rest area contains an embedded 1.5-inch LCD. That lets you always have your loved ones close at hand (no pun intended).

The photos themselves are stored directly on the 8MB of memory found within the mouse, rather than being fed through from your computer. In this way, you can connect the mouse to any computer and still have your pictures. Given the smaller resolution, you can store around 50 photos here and have them automatically cycle in slideshow fashion. It supports both BMP and JPG formats.

Yes, this is largely a novelty factor, but I don’t think it’s one that will wear off too quickly. After all, you can keep changing up those photos from time to time. The quick power off key helps too, when you don’t want the display to be active. Find this mouse on Brando for $32.

Looking for a relaxing way to get away from it all? A way to leave the BlackBerry behind and re-connect with nature? Ogoki Lake Outfitters in Ontario could be just the ticket.

Instead of simply providing you with a few hours out on the lake, you are offered a multi-day adventure at Ogoki Lake. In short, you get to fly in, fish and relax while enjoying the fantastic natural scenery and fresh air.

When you reserve your time with Ogoki Lake Outfitters, you are provided with a comfortable cabin for up to ten people, hot running water, solar lighting, hot showers, bunk beds, and other creature comforts, as well as the boat for your fishing trips. Check the price list for 4-day and 7-day excursions.

Do you use BlueFur to host your websites? Let us know and we can feature you in a future blog post. Send an email message to blogfeature@bluefur.com with your name, website URL, and a brief description of what you’d like to see highlighted.

WordPress is a remarkably versatile platform that can be used to power all sorts of different sites. Because the content is separate from the layout, you can apply a range of different themes without having to rewrite your actual content. That said, you might not be able to find exactly the theme that you want.

While you could certainly hire a designer and a coder to make a custom creation for you, you may also consider using the Toolbox theme as a starting point. That’s because this WordPress theme has been designed specifically to work as a basic template for your own customizations. This way, you’re not coding from scratch.

Toolbox could be used the way that it is, but you’ll likely be making many different changes to suit your particular needs and preferences. All along the way, you can rest assured that you are starting with super clean code with an ultra-minimalist origin. Where you take it from there is completely up to you.

You can find Toolbox in the Free Themes Directory as a free download.

We’ve reached the end of another week, so let’s see what’s going on in the blogosphere.

Damien Riley has come across quite the interesting threat from Anonymous, a group that has already attacked several major sites and services. Apparently, they’re planning to hack and destroy Facebook on November 5, 2011. That could leave you with a little less than three months if they really do hold up to that promise.

Problogger has a guest post from The ClickStarter, continuing the discussion on hacking and security. In the article, we learn how to make WordPress 10 times more secure in just five minutes. These include moving the wp-config.php file and deleting the default admin account.

Free Money Finance discusses an article from the Wall Street Journal that states you should put your passwords in your estate papers. We have so much of ourselves online these days, but we’re also told we need to change our passwords regularly. This would also mean we’d need to update our estate papers more often.

Amber Weinberg has a post up on Freelance Folder, providing reasons to fire your client. Yes, that really does put the shoe on the other foot, but there are definitely times when a relationship with a particular client may no longer be worth the trouble, headache, or heartache.

Jeff Cutler finishes off this week’s list by sharing a couple of experiences he had related to the world of publishing. The first has to do with issues related to copyright, while the second has to do with finding the right publisher for your book. If you’re a writer, you’ll want to read about this.

The brick and mortar business certainly still exists. From restaurants to clothing stores, people still go to physical locations to buy many things. However, more and more business are looking to cut away the overhead and work exclusively as online-only entities.

Without getting into the pros and cons of such an approach, we must also ask another question. If your business is online-only, do you still need to have physical business cards? If so, would you still put your mailing address on them or is just the web address sufficient?

Realistically, it really depends on the nature of your business. If it’s the type where you are still shipping and receiving physical products, then you will likely still want to put a physical mailing address on there. If you are a web consultant or a graphic designer, on the other hand, a conventional mailing address may not be as necessary and it becomes a matter of personal preference.

To all the web-only business owners in the audience, do you still have business cards printed? What information do you choose to include on these cards? Do you include or omit the physical mailing address?