Are smartphones making us dumb?

It seems churlish to rain on Apple’s parade following its much-hyped iPhone 5 launch, but it’s worth pondering the question – are smartphones making us dumb?

The instinctive answer is probably “no” – smartphones connect us to a wealth of information and allow us to solve business problems in ways that simply weren’t possible just a decade ago.

But recent research suggests that toggling between vast amounts of data increases stress and could even turn our memories into mush.

But is any of it true?

This Forbes piece explores the arguments for and against.

Over in the US, presidential hopefuls and their families have been parading their life stories on camera in order to win votes.

It may all seem a little sentimental, but these speeches provide some great lessons to entrepreneurs on how to tell the story of their businesses, as this article contends.

Earlier this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the social network’s stock market foray has been “disappointing” to date.

Is the company’s public listing struggle a symptom of a wider problem – the IPO is just not working for businesses anymore?

The figures seem to back it up – in 2011, there were only 125 initial public offerings, compared with 213 in 2007, according to Renaissance Capital. Inc explores the downside of going public.

Finally, lesson number one when delivering a product to a customer – don’t include a live snake in the packaging. Lesson number two – don’t fail to help the customer out when they inevitably call you up.