As you may know, this week is the SBA’s 55th annual Small Business Week, an event designed to put America’s small businesses in the spotlight.

But, considering that the week consists of celebrations and awards held almost exclusively in Washington, D.C. and New York City — should you even care?

Fortune Small Business Magazine’s Brandi Stewart runs down the reasons why you might want to pay attention:

[A]fter more than 50 years, the annual Small Business Administration-run event still remains off the radar of many small business owners. …

Started in 1963 to spotlight small-business contributions to America’s economy, National Small Business Week features a mix of awards ceremonies, networking events, discussion forums and educational talks by politicians and business executives. Held in Washington, D.C., and New York City, the events will be webcast for the first time this year, so that entrepreneurs around the country can tune in.

“What they’ll get is the chance to hear from key leaders on some of the critical issues impacting small business, such as doing business with the government and going global,” said Susan Walthall, chairwoman of National Small Business Week and the SBA’s acting deputy associate administrator for entrepreneurial development. “We’re going to cover those two areas, as well as health care and the energy challenge.”

Most speakers on the roster this week are government officials, such as President Bush, United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab, and Michael Leavitt, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Small-business voices will surface primarily in panel discussions and during awards ceremonies.

Some business owners who make the effort to attend National Small Business Week events say they provide valuable information and networking opportunities.

Serial entrepreneur Peter Justen first learned of the week three years ago as he started his most recent venture, MyBizHomepage.com, a software company that offers dashboards to help business owners navigate Intuit Inc.’s (INTU) QuickBooks and manage their financials. Justen attended for the first time last year, and came away impressed. At one lunch, he met Brian Moran of the Moran Media Group, a publishing house that produces magazines for trade groups and many of the SBA’s partner organizations. Justen worked out a deal to advertise in Small Business Success, a biannual magazine sent out to SBA, SCORE, and small-business development center offices.

“Our paths probably would have never crossed otherwise,” Justen said. “Typically, I would have had to do a blind call to the editorial staff and worked my way up from there.”

… Small Business Week permeates Washington, D.C., at the highest levels: President Bush, who will meet with some award winners Wednesday at the White House, opened the week with a formal proclamation calling on Americans “to observe this week with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs that celebrate the achievements of small business owners and their employees and encourage the development of new small businesses.”

But little action is tied to the lofty rhetoric. The week’s organizers at the SBA acknowledge that they are focused more on raising general awareness of small businesses’ hefty contributions to the American economy than they are on pushing forward direct policy advances to help business owners.

That needs to change, especially as the ailing economy takes its toll on entrepreneurs.

“Washington hasn’t been stepping up to the plate nearly enough,” Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, wrote in an e-mail to FSB. “National Small Business Week is a time to insist on actions not just words to help the small businesses which created more than nine out of 10 new jobs over the past 15 years. These small business owners are out there everyday in today’s tough economic climate where it’s harder and harder to afford the energy bills, pay for health care for their employees, and expand their payrolls.”

For more information on National Small Business Week, click here.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran in interesting article detailing some of the changes the world of Internet advertising is undergoing thanks to the current economic slowdown.

Granted, Internet advertising is already a very dynamic force, something that evolves and adjusts on an almost daily basis. But, at the same time, as it becomes a larger and larger part of the American economy, it tends to stabilize into something predictable (and therefore, reliable). In other words, as more and more money is put into it, the less dynamic it tends to be; investors want results, not uncertainty.

So even though the Internet advertising industry is thriving like never before (it was a $21 billion industry in 2007, according to the article), there are some big changes underfoot. Anyone in the online business game should be aware of the current evolution the industry is facing.

Last year, [Tyler] Townsend, [a digital media manager] said, many clients were happy to spend money just to raise awareness. Since January, however, “everyone’s retail-oriented. They want as many clicks for the dollar as possible,” he said.

So far, the threat of a recession has not slowed the migration of ad dollars to the Internet — as Google’s strong results showed on Thursday, when it reported a 30 percent jump in net income for its first quarter. But as Mr. Townsend’s campaign suggests, the slowing economy might be changing where those ad dollars are being spent.

Increasingly, marketers are looking to ad networks, which sell display advertising across groups of Web sites. Some networks offer targeted advertising; others, called vertical ad networks, include sites that focus on one subject, like travel or sports.

Their growth could mean a lower share of advertising for portals like AOL and particularly for Yahoo, which is particularly strong in traditional display advertising. (Yahoo will report its quarterly earnings on Tuesday.)

In 2007, United States revenue growth slowed at three of the four major portals (Yahoo, AOL and Google) according to an analysis by eMarketer. The fourth is MSN. Any downturn could also be bad news for media sites that attract a lot of display advertising, like CNN.com or nytimes.com, at premium rates.

In the United States, $21.1 billion was spent on online advertising last year, up from $16.9 billion in 2006, according to eMarketer. Search advertising — Google’s stronghold — is the majority of that spending, according to Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein.

… The reasons ad networks are thriving are price and improved technology. Ad networks charge much lower cost per thousand ads served (known as CPMs), as low as $4 on an ad network with some targeting, compared with $40 and up for some ads on premium sites like MSN or Yahoo.

“While the home pages are still very effective media buys, the price tags on them have become a little outrageous for many advertisers. For all the growth that has gone on from a site standpoint, there are other ways to amass that type of audience fairly quickly that are more efficient,” said Margaret Clerkin, the chief executive of Mindshare Interaction, a media-buying firm.

Click here to read “A Web Shift in the Way Advertisers Seek Clicks” by Stephanie Clifford.

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[T]he interest of the Mac world this week swung from 3G iPhone rumor-mongering to South Florida, where a company called Psystar has put up a Web site selling a product called an Open Computer. The product is essentially a white-box Mac with Mac OS X Leopard preinstalled, and a violation of Apple’s licensing agreement for Mac OS X.

CNET News’ Tom Krazit today nicely summed up the latest controversy in the consumer tech world: The Psystar “Open Computer,” which is being called a (possibly unethical) clone of the Mac.

In digging into the background of Psystar, the company behind the new computer, Mr. Krazit claims that the company has been repeatedly changing its address to evade investigation. From the article:

I tried to call Psystar executives Wednesday morning and was directed to submit any questions to an e-mail address at Psystar. The company doesn’t appear to have been prepared for the onslaught of attention following the discovery of the Open Computer on its Web site, as its online store was briefly down Wednesday morning. It’s now back up and taking orders.

Perhaps foolishly, once the Web store came back online I placed an order for an Open Computer with Leopard preinstalled. I got the basic model for $554.99, although they kill you on shipping with a $93.41 shipping and handling fee for UPS Three-Day Select.

A gentleman who answered the “sales” extension at Psystar’s toll-free number told me there is a 7- to 8-day build time right now for the Open Computer. When I asked him what accounted for the delay, he said the company had received many orders in the past few days. He also said he had only started at the company a few days ago.

In other Psystar news, the developer who created the firmware emulator that allows the Open Computer to bypass Apple’s restrictions on Mac OS X is peeved that the company is using his technology without his permission.

Netkas, who created the EFI v8 emulator, says he released the software under a strict noncommercial license. For a while, Psystar had not even acknowledged his contribution, but the company has added an “open source” section to its site noting his authorship of the EFI v8 emulator and saying, “Psystar will promote Open Source projects in every way possible.”

Computerworld adds to the story:

PsyStar also tried today to explain its shifting mailing address in the Web site statement. The company now lists its location as 10475 NW 28th St., Doral, Fla.; that address is the fourth used on the site since Monday.

“We’re in the process of moving to a new location,” said the company. “The first new address posted (10481) was in error and our correct address is 10475 NW 28th Street.”

PsyStar has listed, in chronological order, a residential address, 10645 SW 112 St., and two commercial addresses, 10481 NW 28th St. and 10471 NW 28th St., so far this week.

According to a reverse look-up using WhitePages.com, two businesses are at PsyStar’s newest address: Vipal Rubber Corp. and a firm called Stop Mold Dry. When contacted, Vipal said it had moved to another location — an additional search found it at a new locale — but the phone number for Stop Mold Dry gave only a rapid-busy signal.

For its part, PsyStar claimed it has simply been overwhelmed. “[We were] not ready to handle the enormous production capacity demanded by the online community,” the company said on its site. “Due to the incredible response, we have now expanded to a larger commercial unit to handle the supplies and assembly of Open Computers.”

PsyStar’s toll number, which was disconnected Wednesday, was back in operation today.