This week’s tasty tidbits from the business and technology front, as well as other recommended links:

• Tough Talk for Tough Times: What the CEO Should Be Saying Now — Guy Kawasaki offers tips for demonstrating that you, as a small business owner, are clueful and on top of things.
• USB Stress Ball Allows You To Virtually Strangle Your Enemies — A fun new toy for all-important stress relief!
• America’s Most Wired Cities — Forbes surveyed the nation and compiled a list of the most wired cities. #1: Seattle!
• What Plato Can Teach Us About Social Media — “Plato’s dialogues and approach to conversation are practically a blueprint for online engagement. Here’s five quick point about why that might be…”
• 10 Brilliant Multi Level Navigation Menu Techniques — “Brilliant” is a bit of an oversell, but there are some good ideas here for web designers looking to organize their site’s content in a clean, coherent way.
• List Your Business on Google Maps, Yahoo Local & More — GetListed.org helps your business take advantage of free local listings in the major search engines.
• Communicating with code — FriendFeed (and former Google) programmer Paul Buchheit explains why fast prototyping and constant iteration is the key to successful development.
• Hacking Road Signs Is Frightningly Easy and Funny — Not to mention illegal, of course, but this example is still quite funny.

This week’s tasty tidbits from the business and technology front, as well as other recommended links:

• The 10 Natural Marketing Advantages of Small Business — A short and sweet list to help entrepreneurs keep their chins up. Even in a down economy, we have advantages!
• 5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year — Presenting information in a graphically pleasing and easy to understand way is an under-appreciated art; here are five amazing examples of the form (the BBC videos at #1 are especially jaw-dropping).
• MicroMentor — Find a mentor or become a mentor through this non-profit, humanitarian agency.
• The 7 Best States to Start a Business — US News ranks the states based on how friendly they are to entrepreneurs (#1: Washington!).
• Reclinable Gaming Chair w/Monitor Stands — Check otu this "adjustable, semi-automatic table complete with electronic reclining seating area, slide up/down keyboard tray, foot pedals, multiple configurations, and more." I want!
• The Renegades at the New York ‘Times’ — With newspapers are dying off left and right, the Gray Lady is attempting to reinvent itself by investing heavily in new media.
• Why Text Remains King of the Web — Web video is where a lot of the exciting action is these days, but Micro Persuasion’s Steve Rubel explains why, even in the age of fancy video and Web 2.0 gadgets, text remains king.
• Nine Web sites IT pros should master in 2009 — The New York Times: "This list is not for geeks. It’s for IT professionals of a certain age, who don’t spend every waking hour online but need to keep up with the latest innovations on the Internet."
• Can Pepsi afford to spend $1 billion on a butt crack? — Have you seen Pepsi’s new logo? Take a look, and try not to laugh…

Closing time! Circuit City has begun to liquidate all of its assets. As of last weekend, the savings to be had were still rather anemic: as little as 10% off, in some areas, with long lines at the checkout.

We can expect those prices to plunge as the weeks pass, though, and diligent small business owners should be able to land some great deals on computer hardware and software. The launch of my first business¹ was greatly aided, in a similar scenario, by some amazing deals at a liquidating Egghead Software, where a relatively minor investment ended up paying off for years.

While the Circuit City website has been taken offline, a complete list of store locations (PDF) is still available. Happy hunting!

1. Over ten years ago, now! Where oh where has the time gone? [↩]