PRIME business club

A host of small software companies and some Internet giants like Google are offering inexpensive or free online alternatives to Microsoft’s widely used desktop software. These hosted applications are much simpler to set up and run. But are there drawbacks too? The Wall Street Journal’s Starup Journal looks into the pros and cons.

Practical and written from a UK perspective, Business Link’s guide also includes helpful links, business plan templates and other resources.

This quick quiz from Fortune helps spot your strengths and weaknesses as an entrepreneur.

The creator of the A-Z road maps is to be honoured with the unveiling of a Blue Plaque on the house in London where she was born. Phyllis Pearsall walked 3,000 miles to create the atlas of London, which first went on sale in 1936. Phyllis kept working (as Chairman and joint MD) until weeks before her death in 1996, just short of her 90th birthday.

Intel has launched a new competition aimed at people running or starting businesses after the age of 50. The overall winner will receive £8,000 as well as mentoring from Simon Woodroffe of TV’s Dragon’s Den. The winner and two runners up will also receive top-of-the-range Intel laptops.

The competition is called ProfIT@50, and is open to both new business proposals and established businesses wishing develop. Either way, your plan will need to have an IT or Internet component to stand a chance of winning. The judging panel is led by Simon Woodroffe, and includes representatves from Intel and PRIME - the business charity behind the Olderpreneur web site.

“Older entrepreneurs should look at their age as one of their biggest advantages”, says Simon. “When I set up YO! Sushi a few years ago, banks said my age made me far more ‘investable’, as older people have valuable life experience and are often more highly motivated to succeed.

“With Intel’s ProfIT@50 competition, I want to encourage other potential ‘late starters’ to go out there and turn their business dreams into reality.”

Intel makes the chips at the heart of most of the world’s computers. Tristan Wilkinson, Intel’s Director for Public Sector, says “There is a wealth of potential amongst the UK’s over 50s, a huge number of whom are currently out of work but wish to remain economically active. For too long emphasis has been placed on nurturing entrepreneurship amongst the young. This is why Intel has teamed up with Simon Woodroffe, to encourage seniors to get back into business.”

Endorsing ProfIT@50, Laurie South, Chief Executive of the PRIME Initiative, says “This competition is a great way of encouraging anyone with an entrepreneurial dream to unlock their experience, talent and potential.”

Commenting on the competition’s technological element, Simon Woodroffe says that computers and the Internet have a crucial role to play. “Businesses can’t survive without them, whilst they make it easier for retirees to remain mentally stimulated and financially independent, by working for themselves at home.”

For further information or to request an application form please call the competition helpline at 0870 990 5491 or visit www.profitat50.co.uk, where you can fill the form in online or download it.

In a major overhaul of the UK welfare system Incapacity Benefit (IB) is due to be replaced by 2008 and an extra one million people over 50 eventually got back into employment. That’s the government plan anyway - but will it work?

At the moment 2.7 million people claim IB - about half over the age of 50. “After two years on the benefit, someone is more likely to die or retire than to ever find a new job. That is just not good enough,” welfare secretary John Hutton said recently.

Frustration with the low prospects of ever finding a job with a regular employer is a major factor driving many workless people to set up their own businesses. There is some state help to ease the transition in some regions under existing schemes. But it’s not yet clear whether the new plans will do much to improve the route off welfare into self-employment.

“Many sole traders don’t keep their work and personal spending separate,” said head of Tesco Business Card Colin Roberson. “But it can be tricky trying to untangle them when the tax return is due.” The new card also gives you “fuel points” redeemable at the supermarket’s UK petrol stations.

BBC 2’s Apprentice programme had better watch out once new age and employment rules come into effect in the UK in October 2006. Sir Alan Sugar and his team could fall fall foul of several age discrimination rules, according to consultants Water for Fish, if the top-rated show is showing a real recruitment process rather than a TV stunt.

In the last series out of 14,000 applicants, all 14 finalists were under 40 - indeed all but one of them was aged under 35. And the application form for the new series (applications close this week) asks for things such as your age and number of children - which many HR professionals consider unwise on a real job application form even now. http://www.theapprenticeuk.com/application/application.php