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Scammers and the SBA. Surinder Multani shepherded businesses like gas stations and convenience stores through the SBA loan process by putting together loan applications for lenders to approve through his loan-brokerage firm Abacus Finance. But while Multani collected more than $500,000 in commissions, his clients defaulted or liquidated on about half the loans–the result of his fraudulent and inflated claims of their net worth and capabilities. Multani brokered almost 50 loans worth $44.3 million and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. But he’s not alone. Scam artists have always plagued the SBA, but as sources of capital have constricted, the Wall Street Journal reports that a new crop of con artists have come to light. In some cases they demand exorbitant fees by claiming they can guarantee loan approval. They also solicit loans bigger than the business owner can repay, leaving borrowers tangled up in fraud allegations (whether or not it was intentional) and financial trouble. The SBA says its SBA Express Loans are a big target for loan-agent fraud. An App Store for Your Browser. The biggest news to come out of Google’s I/O conference yesterday was the announcement of the Chrome Web Store, reports TechCrunch . It’s just like the iPhone or Android app store, but for your Google Browser. The store will highlight web apps and offer developers a way to monetize them (if they choose to charge). For now, it’s Chrome only, but the apps are written for the web, so TechCrunch says they should work on any browser. In terms of revenue sharing, developers can expect the standard 70/30 split (developer/Google). Nothing to fear but fear itself. At yesterday’s Google I/O conference , a panel of VC’s was asked, “What are the biggest no-no’s in a start-up?” Tech VC Brad Feld replied that ” fear is the biggest no-no ” That answer struck a chord with Fred Wilson, who recalled that, “If I look back over 20+ years of entrepreneurs I’ve backed, the ones who were anxious and afraid of failure most certainly had worse outcomes than the ones who were agressive and confident. You simply can’t be tentative in a start-up. You have to go for it at every chance you get.” Wilson explains that fear has a way of trickling down in an organization, so an anxious leader will result in an anxious company. Therefore, “A person who is quietly confident makes the best leader. So if you are starting a company or building one, face your fears and move past them. It’s critically important to your company.” Can Groupon survive all the copycats? Slate’s The Big Money says “Yes,” noting that the business is profitable, easily scalable, and that “deals from similar social-coupon sites rarely compete with one another on a daily basis.” But as we explained in our piece on the pros and cons of partnering with Groupon , the Chicago-based company usually takes about 50 percent of the revenue from the coupon sales. Surely, some of its competitors take less than that to acquire a competitive advantage. And if that trend continues, what’s to say there won’t be a race to the bottom? Helping gay entrepreneurs succeed . StartOut , a new network for LGBT entrepreneurs, helps tackle the challenges of being openly gay in the working world. Founder Darren Spedale tells The New York Times the idea behind StartOut was “a no-brainer” because there were already a number of networks like Astia or TiE that catered to specific demographics of entrepreneurs. So far, the year-old company has attracted 1,000 participants to its events in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. StartOut hopes to educate gay teens about opportunities in entrepreneurship and help the men and women within StartOut to find contacts and funding. Though it has no official membership, aside from Facebook fans, StartOut has plenty of room for growth. As the article reports there are 1.2 million gay-owned businesses in the United States alone. Could your pants soon power up your iPod? Researchers at UC Berkeley on working on microscopic fibers that can produce electricity from simple body movements like bending and stretching, the LA Times reports. The researchers say that the fibers (which look like tiny fishing lines) could be woven into clothing and plugged in to charge electronic devices. The technology is still a few years away from the market, but the potential is there for these portable generators to be a breakthrough technology, the Times says. More from Inc. Magazine: Get this delivered to your inbox. Or get it on the Kindle Follow us on Twitter or Tumblr . Friend us on Facebook. Apply now for the 2010 Inc. 500|5000 .

Google has been working to harden Google Apps for its arrival into the enterprise. The tools bring browser based productivity into another dimension. And, where people are productive, security is to be questioned. In this short review, we look at the new feature Google offers admins and look a bit closer at security in a browser-based world. Sponsor To further enable Google Apps administrators, the company has released a new cookie based reset tool for managing security between the client and the enterprise cloud. This functionality of Google Apps allows an administrator to flag a user for re-authentication on their next HTTP request to Google’s cloud apps. This new feature is targeted at environments where a user of the the Google Apps cloud loses an IT asset and the company wants to remove access to any current for future page requests. This feature shows how mobile and personal computer are again creeping together in security needs for cloud data service use. This feature reminds us of the “remote wipe” in MobileMe that is offered for the iPhone. The iPhone versiion targets removing data from the physical device but for practical purposes is nearly akin to “cookie invalidated” by Google Apps, which forces log-out any active sessions of a cloud based application. Both features target keeping sensitive information safe and can be activated at any time, killing an active user of the device. Google shares the goal of the tool here: “Combined with the existing ability for administrators to reset user passwords, this new feature to reset users’ sign-in cookies improves security in the cloud in case of device theft or loss.” Google goes into a bit more detail in the help file for the cookie reset feature , which describes how to find the feature to reset the cookie (in Users and groups: Passwords) and as an admin remove authorization from any current or future authenticated user or browser client: “To prevent unauthorized access to an account, you can reset the sign-in cookies for that user, which has the effect of logging out that user from all current HTTP sessions, and requiring new authentication the next time that user tries to initiate an HTTP session to log in to Google Apps.” The help file also describes how to find the feature, which shows up in the Users and but in our version of Google Apps (non premium) it didn’t show up in the password section as described. So far, it looks like this security feature is getting a good response from the administrators that have responded to Google’s blog. We see it as a welcome effort on Google’s part towards preparing their cloud for the enterprise, but also it raises questions of the use of cookies and tying down access to machines (IP) vs. browser cookie. Securing the browser for the cloud causes us to think of this question: Are mobile phones (iPhone for example) inherently more secure than computer based browsers? Discuss

And on the 28th day, Apple sold its one millionth iPad. Not bad for a month’s work. It took 18 months for Apple to sell its first one million iPods and 70 plus days to sell its first one million iPhones. Does this mean the iPad is better than the iPod or iPhone? Is the iPhone better than the iPod? Nope, this is a lesson in how successful products begat more successful products. iPod sales fueled an ever better launch of the iPhone. The iPod and iPhone fueled an even better launch of the iPad. At this point, Apple could sell anything with the letter “i” in front of it and hit one million in a month. In other Apple news… The New York Post is reporting today that the Dept of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are looking into investigating Apple for anti-trust violations. The problem: Apple’s recent change in its user agreement with app developers. The new agreement forbids developers from using anything but Apple tools to build apps. “Naughty” as a friend of mine would say. We’ll see what happens.

The new version of Tweetie, the iPhone Twitter application acquired this month by Twitter Inc. , says it contains a surprise. What’s the surprise? When you pull down the stream of Tweets to refresh, a slot machine appears. The slot machine’s wheels spin, then stop. Some percentage of the time you’re rewarded with a little graphic telling you that Tweetie will soon be known as Twitter for iPhone (congrats to you!). This sure looks like the future home of advertising on Twitter for iPhone, doesn’t it? Twitter’s Sean Garrett says that’s not the case, “The slot machine thing is just a fun way to get the word out about the upcoming change from Tweetie to Twitter.” It sure looks like prime real estate, though. Sponsor Now, there may not be ads up there in the future, but offers, promotions, paid inspirational haiku – something? That placement just seems too valuable for the company to let it sit there empty. Just as ads are coming to Twitter (relatively unobtrusive sponsored Tweets at the top of search results) so too can we imagine the free iPhone app will have ads. This seems like as good a place as any to put them. It’s an easy assumption to make: tech investor Dave McClure freaked out on Twitter today calling them ad units, and the thought certainly crossed our minds when we saw them yesterday. Time will tell… Storm trooper image from MotivatedPhotos.com . Discuss

Apple plans to shut down Lala , the cloud-based streaming music service it bought in December 2009. Lala stopped accepting new users today and will close on May 31. Thanks to its unlimited music locker and innovative pricing scheme, Lala had long been a favorite of ours. Rumor is that Apple will revive the service is some form under the iTunes.com label, but as with all things Apple, this is just a rumor until Steve Jobs walks on stage and announces it. Sponsor Given the date of the shutdown, we assume that Apple will make an announcement about its plans for Lala/iTunes.com at it’s annual WWDC developer conference, which is set to begin just a week after Lala shuts down. Until then, here are 5 online music services that either allow you to stream your own music collection or give you access to large libraries of streaming music. Some of these even allow mobile streaming, which is something Lala never offered. Streaming Music Locker MP3tunes If you don’t want to be limited to playing the music that the music industry made available for on-demand streaming and you don’t mind paying a monthly fee, MP3tunes is also worth a look. Just like Lala, MP3tunes allows you to upload all your music to an online music locker and then stream it. MP3tunes offers a web interface, mobile apps and support for a range of other devices like the Chumby, Wii and Logitech Squeezebox. As we noted earlier this week , MP3tunes now offers up to 10GB of free storage. Streaming Music Services MOG For $5 a month, MOG’s users get access to more than 5 million songs on demand. At this year’s SXSW festival in Austin, MOG also announced that it will offer mobile apps for the iPhone and Android platforms in the next few months. The service also offers artist-based radio stations that are similar to Pandora’s and Slacker’s offerings. Napster and Rhapsody While the name harks back to the early days of illegal MP3 downloads, Napster is now a pretty standard MP3 store that also allows you to stream any of the 9 million songs in its library. For $7 per month, you can stream all the songs in Napster’s library and download an additional 5 DRM-free MP3 files (more if you sign up for an annual plan). Rhapsody also offers 9 million songs for on-demand streaming ($10/month), but unlike Napster, it also offers mobile apps (iPhone and Android). Do-It-Yourself Sockso You can, of course, also use your own computer at home to stream music over the Internet. Simplify Music used to be our favorite service for doing this, but the company shut down last month. A good alternative to Simplify Media is Sockso , an open source program, that can be installed on any Windows, OSX and Linux machine with very little effort (though you will need to set up the port forwarding on your router). The application gives you total control over your music experience and you can even share your music with anybody else on the Internet if you feel like doing so (and, of course, you have the legal rights to do so). For a simplified version of this, also have a look at Opera Unite , which offers a built-in streaming music server for all Opera users. Discuss