Kris Chinosorn is addicted to online learning. But the frustration of having too many windows open while trying to source good information took its toll. His answer was to create MentorMob, a site that allows users to curate online content into step-by-step lessons on any topic.

MentorMob calls these lessons learning playlists. The playlist topics range from the New Hampshire GOP primary to how to bake sourdough bread at home.

According to Kevin Allen, we pitch business ideas every day. But how do we ensure our pitches will be successful? Allen’s forthcoming book, The Hidden Agenda, teaches readers how to connect to their audience on an emotional level in order to win pitches. Entrepreneurial spoke with Allen about how to find and connect to what he calls the hidden agenda.

You write in your book that each of us makes a pitch every day. What do you mean by that?

Small businesses can innocently expose themselves to cybercrime when an employee opens an email that appears to be from the CEO, not updating the anti-virus program or having a laptop lost or stolen.

Eduard Goodman, Chief Privacy Officer for Identity Theft 911 has seen an increase in small businesses being targeted for cybercrime within the last five to seven years. Highly desirable data include customer information lists and personally identifiable information such as social security numbers, dates of birth and account numbers.

The average worker spends about 100,000 hours of his/her life working. In Rich Horwath’s experience most people work at jobs they don’t like. Making a plan though can help one have the “greatest days of their lives” according to Horwath, a business strategist.

In his book Strategy for You: Building a bridge to the life you want (to be published in January 2012) Horwath outlines a five-step plan for building a bridge to the life you want. Entrepreneurial spoke with Horwath about how one can create a successful life for themselves.

Doug and Polly White have seen small businesses use all kinds of questionable hiring practices. There was the entrepreneur who hired anyone looking for work. Then there was the woman who hired and fired her sister twice. The list goes on.

In their book, Let Go to GROW: why some businesses thrive and others fail to reach their potential , the Whites found from their business consulting that entrepreneurs often don’t know how to hire employees.

Many small business owners in the United States are reluctant to hire more employees in the near term as economic uncertainty and sagging sales continue to put pressure on company balance sheets, the latest index on small business optimism from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) shows.

Of the 2,077 small businesses in NFIB’s membership surveyed, the number of companies planning to increase staff is down two percentage points to just nine percent, while 12 percent plan to reduce their workforce over the next three months. The report also shows employment has been reduced for the fifth month in a row with an average reduction of 0.1 workers per company.

Dr. Mary Jo Gorman decided to help patients in intensive care units five years ago when she saw a problem brewing in hospitals.

“There’s a crisis in the intensive care units today based on the shortage of specialists taking care of patients in ICU combined with the aging population,” says the founder of Advanced ICU Care.

Shares of one-time Wall Street darling Netflix Inc plunged 34 percent in heavy trading, a day after the battered movie rental company warned of more subscriber defections and mounting costs.

Target Corp’s website crashed for the second time in six weeks, interrupting online shopping for the discount chain. The website also crashed on September 13, after an overwhelming rush to the site from shoppers interested in a new line of Missoni apparel and other goods.

When Casey McConnell started text messaging marketing company Qittle he took the traditional route of hiring onsite employees. But he soon realized it was more advantageous to hire workers online.

“We found it was easy to find these specialists or people that we could hire for a certain amount,” said McConnell, the CEO of Qittle. “We didn’t have the extra overhead and we just got the project done. It’s really easy for us to ramp up our needs or pull back using contractors. If we had an internal staff it’s pretty hard to fluctuate like that.”

Disruptions to BlackBerry services spread to Latin America on Tuesday, more than a day after users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India suffered extended outages. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd, which is losing share of the corporate email market it once took for granted, said it was working on the problem but gave no details of the cause.

Adding to RIM’s woes, a growing mass of its investors backs calls for a sale or break-up of the company and wants a new, “transformational leader” at its helm, according to a shareholder leading the drive for change.