A family in Brooklin , Maine came up with a small business idea that evolved fro their love of ice cream. Nancy Veilleux, Chris Hurley and their 7 year old daughter run The Ice Cream Lady, a business they purchased this spring.

They make and market homemade ice cream, which means that their house is always filled with the sweet aromas of ice cream flavorings like toffee and espresso. The couple decided to pursue the ice cream business because they were seeking a major change in their lifestyle. The two had operated an organic farm for a number of years previously, but wanted a change that would allow them to spend more time at home with their daughter Isabelle, who is home-schooled. Isabelle is getting an education in ice cream along with her other studies, and she is learning about math, business and responsibility as she helps her parents.

Credit cards are an essential tool to manage finances for many people and for small business funding, and when used correctly they can make purchasing goods safer and easier, especially online. Also, taking advantage of the bonus points, rewards and cash back they offer can even provide greater spending power. However, many people also dread the arrival of their monthly credit card statements because they have overspent, or because they are paying too high of an interest rate.

In this case, you should try to boost your credit rating to lower the interest rate when you apply for new cards. If you've had a credit card for years and never missed a payment it can be worth shopping around for a card with a better interest rate. Another tip is to always pay back more than the minimum amount, because paying only the minimum means that it takes forever to pay off the balance and you end up spending much more in interest costs.

The software news that has developers everywhere talking is the benefit of doing business on Google's new Apps Marketplace. At Google's annual developer conference last year, three executives of software startups that build small business funding applications for the cloud gave speeches about how the Apps Marketplace has been hugely profitable for them.

Since that time the Google connection has continued to be golden for these companies, two of which have been sold to larger companies following the rapid growth in their customer base. The third, Atlassian, builds software tools that help companies streamline their product development. They recently won a $60 million funding round from Palo Alto-based Accel Partners. The two companies that were acquired, SlideRocket and Manymoon, are part of a wave of acquisitions of startups that sell popular apps on Google's online Web store for businesses.