Matt Reeder

Out-of-work Americans pining for a bright spot amid the still-bleak unemployment landscape should welcome news that the federal government is in need of new recruits. A lot of them.

The feds need to hire close to 273,000 people over the next three years to fill so-called "mission-critical" jobs across the U.S. and abroad, in part because more federal workers are inching closer to retirement age, a new survey of 35 federal agencies by think-tank Partnership for Public Service shows.

Perhaps not surprisingly, agencies in the public health and medical fields are in need of the most new bodies. A total of 54,114 people are in demand to fill positions in areas ranging from radiology to consumer safety, according to the study.

Job seekers should also look to the security, law enforcement, legal and administrative fields, all of which are projected to boom over the next few years.

Of course, as the Washington Post notes, the projections are just that - projections. Hiring campaigns could be slowed if more federal workers choose to put retirement off or if Congress refuses to put up the money to meet all the hiring needs. The government could also decide to outsource some of the jobs to contractors.

Still, the potential surge in full-time, government jobs should have many Americans dusting off their resumes in a hurry.

(An armed forces recruiting poster is shown outside the U.S. Armed Forces Career Center in New York's Times Square in this March 6, 2008 file photo. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)

peHub's Dan Primack spoke with Reuters about a new kind of startup that's designed to develop an idea and then be snapped up by a larger company.

As Primack explains, these startups differ from the traditional sort in that they tend to be interested in creating targeted web services or applications rather than conventional companies with longer-term growth ambitions.

"The hope for these companies isn't to create the next Google or the next Cisco, the goal is to create a little application that Google or Cisco or Facebook or Twitter wants and then will purchase," he explains.

Primack says startups of this new variety are often cheaper to start and run, and tend to realize revenues very quickly because they are designed to create a one-off service.

Many have been reared by Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley-based venture outfit that invests in young startups and helps them fine tune their applications or services.

Watch the interview with Primack below.

As lawmakers grapple with the intricacies of a national healthcare overhaul, many small-business owners are facing a healthcare struggle of their own: determining a suitable health insurance plan for their company.

A new survey reveals that many executives at small firms in the U.S. lack the confidence and know-how to pick a health insurance policy that will meet the needs of their employees and their company's bottom line.

Of the 500 executives surveyed by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), 64 percent said they don't feel confident choosing a plan, and 60 percent said they're unsure of how their taxes would be affected if they shell out to cover a portion of their employees' health insurance.

More discouraging still, one-third of small business execs who responded said they can't afford to provide health coverage for their workers.

With employer-sponsored insurance premiums up 119 percent over the past decade, according to another recent study, the odds are certainly stacked against small businesses and their employees.

But financial ignorance about employee health policy seems like bad business, even when none of the options out there seem particularly favorable.

The NAIC suggests boosting your health insurance "IQ" in the following ways:

• Before purchasing any insurance policy, interview several licensed insurance agents specializing in the health insurance needs of small businesses.

• Before selecting a health plan, survey your employees to find out what coverage they consider particularly important.

• Understand the factors that influence the cost of the small group coverage in your state. States vary with respect to the methods they permit for calculating premiums.

• Take advantage of the tax benefits available to your company. Businesses can generally deduct 100 percent of the premiums they pay to qualifying health plans for their employees. Be sure to discuss this matter with your accountant or tax adviser.

• Know your rights with health insurers by checking with your state insurance department. Typically, small group health plans must treat equally all of your eligible employees (generally full- or part-time employees who work at least 30 hours a week).

• Determine if your state has a special program to assist small business owners with providing employees and their dependents with health insurance.

How confident are you about choosing an employee health insurance plan for your business? What suggestions do you have for other small-business owners stuck in limbo?

(Photo: Medical equipment is shown in a paediatrician's office in Encinitas, California in this July 30, 2009 file photo. REUTERS/Mike Blake)

It's not every day that a privately-owned company's internal financial laundry is scattered across the Web for all to see.

But that's the unfortunate scenario microblogging startup Twitter found itself in on Wednesday after technology news site TechCrunch published a slew of the company's confidential business documents.

The files, sent to the site by a hacker who managed to gain access to some of the company's servers, included everything from plans to launch a Twitter reality television show to notes from its executive meetings to a detailed financial outlook from February.

Reuters tech columnist Eric Auchard provides a bit-by-bit breakdown of the financial forecast here. The outlook reveals that Twitter projected to grow to 1 billion users and rake in a $1.1 billion net profit on $1.54 billion in revenues by the end of 2013.

While Twitter co-founder Biz Stone seemed to take the news in stride, saying the financial projections are now out of date, you can bet the startup's competitors are poring over the documents with some pleasure.

TechCrunch only published a handful of the 130 files it was sent, but the whole episode should serve as a wake-up call to startups and small businesses everywhere that there's no such thing as too much security.

Will your business be taking any new security precautions in light of the Twitter case? Please leave your stories in the comments section.

(Photo: A padlock is seen at a closed shop in the Westminster Mall in Westminster, Colorado in this February 26, 2009 file photo. REUTERS/Rick Wilkin)

Let the lending begin. Prosper, a popular Web portal that facilitates peer-to-peer loans, announced on Tuesday that it has been given the go-ahead by federal regulators to resume its lending platform in several U.S. states after wrapping up a detailed registration process with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The SEC's approval ends a nine-month enforced hiatus for the company and should come as welcome news to small businesses and entrepreneurs, many of whom are still struggling to find loans amid tight credit markets.

Prosper is now cleared to let lenders in 14 states and borrowers in all but a few use their online auction platform to buy loans and request to borrow money. The approval allows lenders in California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New York, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming to use Prosper, and more states will gain access soon, the company said in a press release.

Launched in 2006, Prosper was the first online lending and borrowing platform of its kind in the United States and signaled an innovative new way for small business owners to raise funds. But last fall, the startup came under pressure from U.S. regulators concerned about the lack of oversight in the industry and was told to halt all operations until registering with the SEC.

Under the new regulatory parameters, Prosper has introduced a credit grading system for its loan listings, changed some of its bidding requirements, added transparency measures and amended its auction platform to help lenders "appropriately price for risk while investing online".

For more details, see the full release.

(An earlier version of this post contained incorrect information about Lending Club, an online financial community that facilitates peer-to-peer loans. The company completed its SEC registration in October, 2008.)

As any small business owner knows, getting a new company off the ground requires a lot of work. And for those entrepreneurs not enamored with the idea of running their company as a one-person show, hiring employees is among the first steps along the way to actually making it happen.

Unfortunately, many of the same startups burdened with so much work also suffer from a limited supply of funds in their early days, meaning they can find it tough to afford the number of employees they need.

But with the ranks of unemployed in the United States hovering at its highest rate in more than two decades, some small firms have found a rather unusual solution to this dilemma  - people willing to work for free. Employment agencies such as Jobnob.com and PeopleConnect have done their part in connecting unemployed individuals willing to work without payment to small firms in need of a helping hand.

But hiring individuals to work for free, even for a few hours a week, could land your firm in legal hot water.

According to FindLaw, an online provider of legal information, the Fair Labor Standards Act states that minimum wage must be paid to employees at all businesses that have $500,000 or more in annual sales. While that seems to rule out some smaller companies, here are a few further guidelines from FindLaw on the finer points of the law to consider:

• Even if your firm's sales fall short of the above threshold, your employees may still be covered if they work in commerce between states, which has been interpreted by courts to include sending or receiving mail from out of state, making interstate phone calls, or handling goods that have moved interstate
• Even those businesses that are small and local enough so as to fall outside of the sales parameters may be subject to their home state's minimum wage law
• Some cities and counties also impose minimum wage requirements on businesses within their borders

Other common violations of the law related to employee wages cited by FindLaw include: paying the lower "training wage" or "youth minimum wage" to workers who should be paid more, not paying overtime, making employees work "off-the-clock" and not paying them for it, deducting too much for tips and deducting for wages paid in goods (such as meals or food).

So, while it might be tempting to jump at the opportunity to have people work for free or clock extra hours without compensation, it would be wise to do a bit of legal homework first.

Visit FindLaw's wages and benefits page for more information.

(Photo: A job seeker looks at job postings and other information at Work Place, which provides comprehensive employment and career services in Boston, Massachusetts June 5, 2009. REUTERS/Brian Snyder)

After years of adulation over the hilarity of their genre-spawning rockumentary This is Spinal Tap, screenwriter Christopher Guest and the other actors of the much-loved spoof band Spinal Tap decided it was time to pay a visit to the prehistoric monument behind one of the hit movie's funniest scenes - Stonehenge.

News of the visit comes courtesy of Canadian indie rock outfit Metric, who, like Spinal Tap, were fresh off a performance at Britain's Glastonbury music festival when they made a pit stop to check out the landmark.

Upon arriving at the monument, Metric frontwoman Emily Haines and her bandmates were disappointed to find the entrance closed. But as she recounts on her band's blog, their sightseeing detour was about to get a lot more exciting.

"We were staring at the stones through the fence and halfheartedly watching various generic families wander toward their cars when Joules said the words we will remember forever: 'Um, guys, that's . . . Spinal Tap!"

The irony drenched Rob Reiner-directed "This is Spinal Tap," which apes a documentary film style, follows a fictionalized heavy metal band as it blunders its way through one career misstep after another. Most notably, in one scene the band unveils a stage prop modeled on Stonehenge during a concert, only to find out at that moment their set designer had made the model a mere 18 inches tall.

At the real Stonehenge, Haines and her bandmates approached the actors and managed to catch up with their favorite, Harry Shearer, as he and the others were on their way to a nearby parking lot. Shearer even posed for a picture with the group, which you can see on the blog.

"The best part is, it was Spinal Tap's first trip to Stonehenge as well," Haines enthuses. "According to Shearer, they were just making their way back to London when they spotted the source of their most memorable joke in the distance and decided, 'this would be the time to see the full-scale version.'"

Since its original release in 1984, "This is Spinal Tap" has developed a sizeable cult following and influenced other filmmakers looking to document the ups and downs of life in a rock band.

Watch the Stonehenge scene from the film below.

Cola rivals Coke and Pepsi gave their long-standing feud a rest last week after a user-provoked experiment on Twitter prompted the two pop makers to trade friendly greetings on the popular social networking service.

Coca-Cola responded first to a clever user's message suggesting that the two make nice on Twitter, offering "A gracious (yet competitive) hello" to Pepsi. In return, Pepsi extended a Twitter-style olive branch of sorts to its competitor: "Can rivals and tweeps coexist? We're willing to find out. :)" Tweeps, for those unversed in the lingo, is a cutesy term for Twitter users.

The whole episode began with the single Twitter message sent by a digital media consultant from a web marketing firm called Amnesia Razorfish based in Sydney, Australia, but quickly grew as other users got in on the fun and repeated (or "retweeted") the message to their own friends and followers across the social network.

Within three hours of the original message being sent, Coke had fired off its friendly response and even decided to add Pepsi to its Twitter network. Pepsi took a bit longer to respond but wasn't far behind in returning the virtual handshake.

Considering both companies' long-standing commitment to the whole cola-war marketing scheme, such a quick decision to take part in the digital truce may come as a bit of a surprise. But what's probably more illuminating about the viral affair is that it shows two companies with deeply established brands adapting their marketing strategies to the world of social networking.

Whether the whole incident actually compelled anyone on Twitter to go out and buy a bottle of Coke or Pepsi is less important than the essential message it sends to consumers - namely, that their brands are still fun and youthful.

Moreover, as people increasingly turn to the Internet for information and entertainment, companies are being forced to accept that they have less control over what information gets to consumers. In such an organic environment, top-down brand management no longer seems to be a sustainable strategy.

Of course, as marketing news site Ad Age opines, the whole incident may simply have reminded the cola competitors of an age-old adage: "You know what they say about keeping your friends close and enemies closer."

It’s been more than 15 years since grunge-rock pioneer Kurt Cobain took his own life, but the late Nirvana frontman’s legacy appears to be alive and well.

A Sears-model bass guitar owned by Cobain as a teenager sold for $43,750 at a Christie’s auction in New York on Tuesday.

According to the auction house, Cobain used the instrument on two early demo recordings he made at his aunt Mari Earl's house near Seattle during his pre-Nirvana days.

The demos, one recorded under the moniker Organized Confusion in 1982 and another in 1985 under the name Fecal Matter, are rare to all but the most die-hard Cobain fans.

But one song entitled "Spank Thru" from the 1985 recordings went on to become a staple of Nirvana's live set and was featured on several of the band's releases. The tune also became Nirvana's first official song, according to former Cobain bandmate Krist Novoselic.

The auctioned-off bass is accompanied by a picture of a young Cobain playing the instrument and a letter of authenticity from Mari Earl.

Cobain was catapulted into international stardom after Nirvana's major-label debut Nevermind became a huge success on mainstream music charts. The department-store bass stands as a humble contrast to the stable of Fender-brand guitars Cobain came to swear by as the frontman for Nirvana.

(Photo: REUTERS/Lee Celano)