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Senator Claire McCaskill, business solutions company Intuit, and search giant Google are in St. Louis Friday, and they are all here to help area small businesses.

The Internet can be a great launching pad for businesses, but Google's Rebecca Ginsberg tells me it is vastly underutilized by business owners, "We (Google) did some research last year that while 97% of Internet users go online to look for local products and services, 64% of small businesses in Missouri still do not have a website.'

Attendees at the Get Your Business Online workshop on Friday will get a free website and hosting for one year. The event starts at 8:30 at the Third Degree Glass Factory on Delmar just north of Forest Park.

If you can't make the event, the same offer is available at MissouriGetOnline.com, or by clicking here.

 

URBANA, Ill. (AP) - Students applying to get into the University of Illinois' Urbana-Champaign campus will be able to apply online next year. But they won't be using an online process that allows students to apply to many colleges with one application.

The News-Gazette in Champaign reports that the university is developing its own online application for the Urbana-Champaign and Springfield campuses. Students applying to the Chicago campus can already use the Common Application Consortium that also covers more than 450 schools.

A university committee has decided that the $500,000 annual cost of the Common Application Consortium to the university's flagship campus outweighed its benefits. The university says an in-house system will cost about $50,000 a year.

The Springfield campus has an online application system. It also doesn't use the Common Application Consortium.