In one of the clearest signs yet of the renaissance that’s finally putting a close to The Dark Age of Personal Computing, Apple Inc. (AAPL) has overtaken Microsoft (MSFT) to become the second-most-valuable U.S. company.

What’s the difference between a company’s stock market capitalization and the value of its actual business (which is referred to as “enterprise value”)?

Apple stock market capitalization

Microsoft stock market capitalization

A company’s stock market capitalization includes the net value of the cash and debt on the company’s books.  To figure out the imputed value of the company’s actual business, therefore, you have to adjust for the value of those other things.

Business facts aside, today marks a psychological triumph for Apple Computer fans that has been over 30 years in the making. Cheers to a company that has become the poster child of American success, and one that has done so while inspiring creativity in millions of designers, programmers, artists, and consumers alike.

Thinking different, while not grammatically or politically correct, can sometimes lead to a moment that can change the course of our lives forever.

What do you think? Have you bought into the whole Mac experience? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Did you know that there are FREE ways to promote your small business? Wait, you DIDN’T know that? Well you are not alone. A new small business survey by Citibank found this to be quite the norm among small businesses.

Few small business owners and managers are joining the consumer trend towards increasingly using social networking websites and services, according to a new Citibank / GfK Roper survey.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…If you havn’t heard of these social media tools, then you REALLY net to get out more. Or get online more as it were. The buzz around social media is deafening, but a whopping 81 percent of respondents say they still haven’t tried it. Why not? Nearly half of respondents (47 percent) don’t believe that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn are of value to their business, another 21 percent think the sites are for personal use, and 18 percent say they don’t know enough how to use the sites.

According to the survey of 500 small business executives across the United States, 76 percent have not found social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to be helpful in generating business leads or for expanding their business during the last year, while 86 percent say they have not used social networking sites to get business advice or information.

The survey found that general search engine sites such as Google and Yahoo! trump small business-focused sites and the WSJ.com as destinations for small business owners to seek business advice or information. 61 percent of respondents say they rely on these search engine sites.

“Our survey suggests that small business owners are still feeling their way into social media, particularly when it comes to using these tools to grow their businesses,” said Maria Veltre, Executive Vice President of Citi’s Small Business Segment. “While social media can provide additional channels to network and help grow a business, many small businesses may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them.”

Other online tools that are going unused: Nearly 40 percent of small businesses surveyed don’t have a website, 62 percent don’t send marketing e-mails to promote their business, and 84 percent haven’t engaged in e-commerce. But among the companies that do have a website, 74 percent say it’s an effective way to bring in business.

What do you find to be the best online tool to promote your business?

The gurus at Inc.com have released a library of tools and templates for your business. With forms, job description templates, interactive worksheets, spreadsheets, and contracts, including 100 tools from DocStoc, you will find a business owner’s candy store of professional documents.

Business areas covered include: Start-up, Running a Business, Money and Finance, Leadership and Managing, Sales and Marketing, Managing Technology.

If image is everything, these tools will give your business a competitive edge.

Business Plan Checklist

The Business Plan Checklist is used by individuals or entities who are creating a business plan. The Business Plan Checklist provides an outline for all the information necessary in creating a successful business plan and should be used as a guide for completion.  View tool

Employee Handbook Sample

The Employee Handbook Sample is used by companies as a guide to create an employee handbook. The Employee Handbook Sample provides a comprehensive outline for employment policies, practices and procedures, standards of conduct, benefits, and company facilities. This sample is customizable for your company’s specific usage.  View tool

Business Presentation Template

The Business Presentation Template is used by individuals or entities to explain their business plan to viewers in a clear, effective manner. The Business Presentation Template provides a format for an overview of a company’s mission, staff, goals, and competition. The template is used when giving a business introduction to the company’s basic plan.  View tool

Go to Inc.com to begin supercharging your business!

By Meridith Levinson, CIO.com

Dale Carnegie literally wrote the book on networking in 1936. How to Win Friends and Influence People demystified the process of making friends out of strangers and inspired legions of business coaches to carry on Carnegie’s message. Peter Handal, the chairman, CEO and president of Dale Carnegie & Associates, shared some of Carnegie’s rules for meeting new people with CIO.com.

Smile: “This is such a simple, basic rule, yet people just don’t think about it,” says Handal. They’re so focused on needing to network at a conference that they don’t realize they’re walking around with a scowl on their face. Scowling, serious, expressions are forbidding, says Handal. People are more likely to warm up to someone who says good morning with a broad smile than they are to someone with a dour countenance.

Ask a question: Joining a group engaged in conversation can be awkward. The best way to do so is to pose a question to the group after getting the gist of the conversation, says Handal. “You build your credibility by asking a question, and for a shy person, that’s a much easier way to engage than by barging in with an opinion,” he says.

Listen: One of the most profound points Carnegie made in How to Win Friends was that people love to talk about themselves. If you can get people to discuss their experiences and opinions—and listen with sincere interest—you can have a great conversation with someone without having to say much at all.

Business cards: Always have them handy, says Handal. “They’re an effective way for you to leave your name behind so that people remember who you are.”

Say the person’s name: “People like to hear their own name,” says Handal, pointing to another one of Carnegie’s basic principles—that a person’s name is the sweetest sound to that person. So when you meet someone, use his name in conversation. Doing so makes the other person feel more comfortable, like you really know him and he knows you.

Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from CIO.com. Visit CIO’s Macs in the Enterprise page.

Does “I’m a Mac” mean “I’m less expensive to manage?” An Enterprise Desktop Alliance survey says Macs cost a lot less than PCs to manage — yet Macs come with special challenges for enterprise IT admins.

By Tom Kaneshige

Keep in mind that Enterprise Desktop Alliance is a group of software developers who’ve bandied together to deploy and manage Macs in the enterprise. The group surveyed 260 IT administrators in large U.S. companies with both Macs and PCs who are involved in some degree with IT cost calculations. Enterprise Desktop Alliance members include Centrify, Absolute Software, Group Logic, Web Help Desk, and most recently IBM.

[ Another Enterprise Desktop Alliance survey shows two out of three companies buying Macs this year, which will bring integration challenges for IT admins, CIO.com reports. ]

The survey found that Macs were cheaper in six of seven computer management categories: troubleshooting, help desk calls, system configuration, user training and supporting infrastructure (servers, networks and printer). Nearly half of the respondents cited software licensing fees as roughly the same for both platforms.

A whopping 65 percent of respondents said it costs less to troubleshoot Macs than PCs, 19 percent said they spent the same on both computers, and only 16 percent said they spent less to manage PCs than Macs.

Even more impressive, a majority of the respondents citing the low cost of Macs in nearly all categories said Macs were more than 20 percent cheaper to manage than PCs.

With Macs dominating in almost every cost category, why would 16 percent claim they spent less troubleshooting PCs? “It might be an [issue] of expertise of the IT staff,” says Tom Cromlin, spokesperson for the Enterprise Desktop Alliance. “They’re probably more comfortable troubleshooting PCs.”

Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Jon Oltsik has another reason. He says top execs often prefer Macs, and thus supporting those machines take on more importance. “It’s not about managing [Mac] systems, which may be easier than Windows” on a machine-by-machines basis, Oltsik explains. “It’s when the CEO wants IT to install software on his or her Mac, which will need immediate attention and take time away from other tasks.”

The cost of management appears to be a key driver for Macs in the enterprise. Nearly half of respondents said they brought in Macs mainly because of their low total cost of ownership and ease of technical support.

In fact, many small companies with limited IT resources told CIO.com that they moved to Macs after getting fed up with costly PC support issues. “Mac owners tend to do a lot of problem resolution themselves by communicating with other users,” Oltsik says.

One of the flaws of the survey is that it doesn’t factor in the cost of the PC or Mac itself, only the costs associated with managing the computers. Macs, of course, cost more than most PCs. However, many companies told CIO.com that the low cost of managing Macs more than makes up the cost difference between the computers.

Many, but not all. “You can buy a PC for $400, while the cheapest Mac is over a thousand,” Jon Graff, director of IT operations at A&E, told CIO.com last year.. “In the real world, you’re spending a lot more on a Mac.”

While managing Macs may be cheaper than managing PCs, Macs pose their own special challenges as companies get up to speed supporting a Mac-PC environment.

According to another recent Enterprise Desktop Alliance survey, chief among those hurdles are: security and file sharing between operating systems, client management, backup and data recovery of Mac files, Active Directory integration, application compatibility, configuration consistency, cross-platform help desk and knowledge base support, and standard management utilities for both Macs and PCs.

Ben Hanes, senior systems administrator at Children’s Hospital of Oakland Research Institute, has been working through these issues for years. On the troubleshooting front, Hanes only recently adopted a help desk system that lets his team troubleshoot Macs remotely from a PC.

There also might be hidden costs when managing Macs, warns Oltsik. “In the past, you generally needed specialized tools to manage Macs,” he says. “If this is the case, then you will have redundant tasks and management systems. Another issue is skills, as you may need to hire or train a PC administrator on the Mac platform. A Mac administrator may cost more than a PC administrator.”

Tom Kaneshige is a senior writer for CIO.com in Silicon Valley. Send him an email at tkaneshige@cio.com. Or follow him on Twitter @kaneshige. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline.

What is Apple’s secret?  They do one thing, better than everybody else.

Read on to see what Tim Cook, Apple Chief Operating Officer thinks about how Apple does it. Focus is critical in order to bring specific success to a specific enterprise.

Tim Cook (bio):

“Yeah, that is a great question. The executive team of the company spends a lot of time thinking and discussing how to retain and recruit the best talent in the world, because at the end of the day—I know it’s a cliche—but people are our most important asset by far, and it’s people that deliver innovation, which is key to us. And so what else do we do other than that? Well, we are the most focused company that I know of, or have read of, or have any knowledge of. We say no to good ideas every day; we say no to great ideas in order to keep the amount of things we focus on very small in number, so that we can put enormous energy behind the ones we do choose, so that we can deliver the best products in the world. In fact, the table that each of you are sitting at today, you could probably put every product on it that Apple makes, and yet Apple’s revenue last year was over $40bn. I think the only other company that could say that is an oil company.

And that is not from just saying “yes” to the right product which gets a lot of focus—it’s saying no to many products that are good ideas, but just not nearly as good as the other ones. I think that this is so ingrained in our company that this hubris that you talk about, that happens to companies that are successful but then decide that their sole role in life is to get bigger, and they start adding this and that and this and that, I can tell you the management team of Apple would never let that happen. That’s not what we’re about. So, focus on people, and ensuring that it’s a small list of things to work on and putting all of our wood behind those things, that’s the magic behind us.”