Business

Contrary to the buy now messaging of the season, kids aren’t looking only for instant gratification. Take Lego.  In 2005, Lego Corporation came back from the brink by capitalizing on research showing  that kids are inspired by the difficulty and process of mastering a complicated model. So, rather than dumbing down to compete with the plug-in immediacy of video games, Lego ramped up the sophistication of its models.

The Upper Valley Business & Education Partnership makes connections between schools and their wider communities. Tyler Mansfield and Jim Madden met through the Partnership’s “Everybody Wins!” reading mentoring program.

JIM: I’ve always loved to read so it was really just sort of a natural fit to share my love of reading with the students. I guess we both discovered we kind of liked mysteries.

H-1B visas help employers find skilled workers they can’t find in the US workforce.

Something else that’s hard to come by these days for some businesses is credit.

Turns out there’s a visa program for that too. Foreigners can apply for an EB-5 visa, as long as they agree to invest a half million dollars or more in capital investment project for an American company.

Independent producer John Lynch explores the increasing role of big-budget advertising in seducing the 30-something gamer generation to support the industry's Hollywood level profits. 

You've seen bumper stickers: shop local, eat local... now, a grassroots call to invest local.  And like any good movement, it utilizes a catchy word-combo. Joining us to talk about it is Amy Cortese, author of Locavesting: The Revolution in Local Investing and How to Profit it.

LINKS Amy's Blog about Locavesting NH Community Loan Fund site  

From Twitter:

DADDY'S JUNKY MUSIC CLOSING? that's where I got my first guitar

wishing to have given in to the recent compulsion to visit

after 39 years......I'm shocked!

Remember to tip your guitarist for delivering that pizza.

And so it went.

An iconic store of New England’s music scene has shut its doors.  Daddy’s Junky Music was forced by creditors to close its operations after 39 years. 

Last week Berlin got the news that a new company – which officials declined to name - could be bringing at least 150 manufacturing jobs to the city. NHPR’s Chris Jensen has talked to the chief executive officer of that company.

The North Country could be getting into the high-tech end of the aircraft industry.

Kestrel Aircraft Company of Brunswick Maine is seriously considering setting up a plant in Berlin.

“Well, Berlin is one of the locations we have been looking at and there are a number of very interesting attributes there.”

The Northern Pass hydropower project from Quebec, which includes transmission lines through New Hampshire, has divided our state with passionate disagreement on the amount of energy it will bring, how badly that energy’s needed, and the economics of the project, including its affect on property values. We’ll talk to those on both sides of this debate.

Guests

This month’s installment of our 11 for '11 series of big picture conversations on the issues of our times. Today, it’s energy, specifially oil. Oil is trading at 112-dollars a barrel, up from 86-dollars a year ago. Michael Klare says the era of easy oil is behind us. He’s made news for his concept of “extreme energy” – the pursuit of fossil fuels in increasingly difficult environments using expensive and sometimes dangerous methods.

In October, the Northern Pass Project. comprised of Massachusetts-based utility NStar and Northeast Utilities, formally announced a partnership with Canadian energy giant Hydro-Quebec to bring hydroelectric power from Canada through New Hampshire. Promising new construction jobs, cheaper and greener energy sources, and additional tax revenues, the plan at first enjoyed broad support.

The Northern Pass project promises to be one of the biggest, most complex and controversial issues of the coming year.

When built it’s going to bring electric power to New England from massive dams in Quebec .

It’s renewable power and therefore very attractive to state officials and utilities looking to get away from fossil fuels.

But it’s going to cut a long swath through New Hampshire, much of it forest land.

The sound of the ice cream truck's jingle is certainly familiar during the summer, but a couple of young women in Deerfield have come up with another, less common way to peddle frozen treats.

All this week, New Hampshire Public Radio is bringing you some of the sights and sounds of bike week in Laconia.

Over the past year, New Hampshire Public Radio has been taking listeners to a variety of places across the state.