Getting a business education doesn't have to be expensive. An increasing number of colleges, universities and even nonprofit organizations offer free business courses online. Find out how you can sign up for these courses and what you can get from them.

Are you an entrepreneur who has been seduced by social media tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook? If so, you may realize the benefits of displaying your resume, finding and staying in touch with business partners, employers and customers, and learning new information through these basic tools.

If you don’t use a variety of basic social media tools for networking, then you’ll learn a few below. Then, we offer a variety of social media sites designed just for entrepreneurs. Through these sites, you can network, build a Web presence, place ads, find funding and more – all needs required by the entrepreneurial soul.

Free textbooks are a great way to get a free education. This article tells you where you can get all sorts of free textbooks online, including free accounting textbooks, economics textbooks, computer science and technology textbooks, English textbooks, history textbooks and science textbooks.

Companies concerned about their social and environmental impacts have a new tool for measuring and monitoring their activities.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has released its new Measuring Impact Framework, a guide for how to look at and assess impacts. The group worked its framework into an Excel-based guide, giving companies an outline for identifying, measuring and monitoring impacts.

The Framework includes four broad steps: Set boundaries, measure direct and indirect impacts, assess contributions to development and prioritize responses.

The guide takes users through each step in detail, helping them think about all parts of society they impact, make plans, provide rationalizations for actions and consider stakeholder opinions.

The WBCSD developed the Framework over the past two years with the help of more then 25 companies. It was designed for any company in any industry to use at any stage in their business operations.

The Framework includes an analysis of why companies should measure and understand how they impact societies and how they can benefit from that knowledge. Anticipating societal changes, finding new business opportunities, improving relationships with communities and managing risks are just some of the benefits outlined by the WBCSD. [Hat Tip to GreenBuzz.com]

Some of the top colleges and universities in the world provide free business administration courses online. Here is a list of the best sources.

Spreadsheet optimization is a great way to improve your decision making on a practical basis without having to use difficult or expensive software. Here we use the example of selecting a capital project to show how an optimization model built in Excel can arrive at the best decision using the Solver tool. This tutorial spreadsheet includes an annotated working model, as well as a customizable template to get you started building your own. After reviewing this instructional spreadsheet, you'll have a good sense of the Solver tool, and you'll have all the information you need to start building a model with real-world complexity.

Swivel is a place where curious people explore all kinds of data. In particular, we're talking about those three things:
* The use of farms of powerful computers and algorithms at the Swivel data centers to transform a lonely grid of numbers and letters into hundreds - sometimes thousands - of graphs that can be explored and compared with any other public data in Swivel
* Ratings and comments and publishing shortcuts for bloggers, so folks can share ideas, talk about insights and understand data together
* Transforming the sometimes tedious task of reading someone else's spreadsheet into a fun experience of clicking through a Web site full of images, graphs and color.

Use Swivel to work with your own data or check out some of the interesting data posted publicly by other Swivel users.

Editor's Note: Swivel is free if you make your data public but there is a fee for private usage.

Structured performance reviews allow managers to help employees recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and to provide direction in improving skills and performance. This evaluation form is designed to make it easier for managers to deliver the constructive feedback employees need. It provides a framework for developing an evaluation system, built on an assessment of five categories of performance: communication, interaction, productivity, quality concerns, and job knowledge and skill.

The National Venture Capital Association offers a set of model legal documents for venture capital investments put together by a group of leading venture capital attorneys. The model venture capital financing documents consist of:
* Term Sheet
* Stock Purchase Agreement
* Certificate of Incorporation
* Investor Rights Agreement
* Voting Agreement
* Right of First Refusal and Co-Sale Agreement
* Management Rights Letter
* Indemnification Agreement

Evidence suggests that small firms benefit from business planning as new ventures are assessed and started. Yet relatively few make use of business planning, or go about such planning in an inconsistent way that invites errors and omissions. This paper presents a systemized web-based venture planning model that provides opportunities for entrepreneurs to collect the appropriate information and assess their ventures. This model is based on the stage gate theory of new venture management and provides self-motivated feedback progressively over a series of stages. Each stage represents a unique level of analysis crucial to accepting or rejecting proposed ventures. In the process of completing the model, a business plan is created.

The Marketing Plan is a highly detailed, heavily researched and, hopefully, well written report that many inside and possibly outside the organization will evaluate. It is an essential document for both large corporate marketing departments and for startup companies. Essentially the Marketing Plan:
* forces the marketing personnel to look internally in order to fully understand the results of past marketing decisions.
* forces the marketing personnel to look externally in order to fully understand the market in which they operate.
* sets future goals and provides direction for future marketing efforts that everyone within the organization should understand and support.
* is a key component in obtaining funding to pursue new initiatives.

KnowThis offers a 6-Part template to develop and format a marketing plan.

After nearly 18 months of work by dozens of CIOs, the IT Value Matrix illustrates the principles and practices essential to creating, identifying and communicating IT's value to the enterprise. One reader's praise: "In my daily job which is communicating what technology does for our business partners, our wins, project release status information and creating presentations for executives that mean something to our business partners, I utilize this matrix each and every day. It is one of the best tools I have ever been given."

User surveys offer an excellent way to determine the level of satisfaction among employees who rely on IT support services. But to get accurate and useful results, it's important to develop a clear and simple assessment form. This revamped version of our sample survey offers a mix of easily answered check box questions designed to gauge user satisfaction with regard to both equipment and support. It also includes a number of open-ended questions to solicit feedback, specific concerns, and suggestions for improvement.

Inc.com has more than 100 free tools that are available to Inc.com members. From sample policies and agreements to worksheets and checklists, Inc.com has tools to help you in every area of your business.

Choose from the following categories:
* Doing Business Online
* Financial Management
* Finding Capital
* Hiring and Recruiting
* Managing Employees
* Marketing
* Performance Management
* Personnel Administration
* Termination
* Workplace Safety

WDFM did a special focus issue on Google tools and tips for marketers which highlighted the following useful sites:
- TouchGraph GoogleBrowser
http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html
- GoogleDuel
http://www.googleduel.com/original.php
- GooFresh
http://www.researchbuzz.org/archives/001405.shtml
- Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Sandbox
https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox
- AdSense Charts
http://www.adsensecharts.com
- AdSense Ad Predictor
http://www.about-adsense.com/adsense-web-tool.html
- Poodle Predictor
http://www.gritechnologies.com/tools/spider.go
- Google Link Tools
http://www.monstersmallbusiness.com/website_promotion_tool4.asp
- GoogleRankings
http://www.googlerankings.com
- Google Back Link Tracker Tool
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/backlinks/
- Page Rank Calculator
http://www.markhorrell.com/seo/pagerank.asp
- Google Zeitgeist
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
- Copyscape
http://www.copyscape.com/
- Google Rankings Ultimate SEO Tool
http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php
- Google Sponsored Links
http://www.google.com/sponsoredlinks
- McDar Keyword Analysis Tool
http://www.mcdar.net/KeywordTool/keywordtool.asp
- SEO Tools Future PageRank
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/future-pagerank/
- Google Alerts
http://www.google.com/alerts
- Google Link Popularity Analysis Tool
http://www.rustybrick.com/link_analysis.php
- Google Smackdown
http://www.onfocus.com/googlesmack/down.asp

Marketleap offers a free link popularity tool that can be used both to help you find out who is linking to your site, and to generate a benchmarking report that shows where you stand in comparison to your competitors.

Also of interest at this site is their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 101 tutorial, found at:
http://www.marketleap.com/help/seo101/default.htm

Article discusses a new generation of browsing tools lets you kill ads, change fonts, adjust backgrounds, and generally teach a web page who's boss.

MS Word document with a thorough and useful checklist of things to take care of when incorporating your new business.

Tech support is expensive. Your CEOs and CIOs want you to show them the ROI. How do you provide the tech support your organization needs and stay within budget? Download TechRepublic's white paper to find out.

Templates from morebusiness.com covering things such as NDA, lease agreement, etc.

includes templates for contract award, new employees, new services/products, seminar announcement, etc.

a discussion of new portals targeted at small businesses; discusses 3 types: (1) free e-commerce providers, (2) 'how to' and 'where to' sites, (3) purchasing sites