The MicroTrain Blog

Inc. Magazine recently named MicroTrain on its  Inc. 500/5000 list, which honors the 5000 fastest growing private companies in America.  Inc. has published the list for more than 30 years, with past honorees including Microsoft, Timberland, Visa, Intuit, Jamba Juice, Oracle, and Zappos.com.  

MicroTrain was ranked at number 4416 on the list of the fastest growing companies overall, with a 21% increase in revenue from 2006 through 2009.  Breaking down the list even further, MicroTrain was the 69th fastest growing company in the country in the education industry, and the 187th fastest growing company in the state of Illinois, which itself was the 5th fastest growing state on the list.

"This is a true honor to be recognized as one of America's fastest growing companies," said Stan Van Nice, CEO and co-founder.  "I view this honor as recognition of the hard work and vision of our entire team and MicroTrain's commitment to excellence, and I look forward to our continued growth and success in the future."

"As many companies struggle to survive in the recession, it is a true blessing to be with an organization that is actually growing," said Dennis Muller, President and co-founder. "I attribute this success to our great team and their hard work which paves the way for MicroTrain's continued growth and success."

The 2010 Inc. 5000 list measures revenue growth from 2006 through 2009. To qualify, companies must be U.S. based and privately held, independent - not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies, and have had at least $100,000 in revenue in 2006, and $2 million in 2009.  The magazine surveys private America’s independent businesses to take a comprehensive look at a critical part of the economy.  The companies vary in what they do, including digital media companies, retailers, food and beverage companies, and software and telecommunications businesses. More information on the Inc. 5000 list can be found on their website.

Using Accelerators in IE8.

For those of you that use Internet Explorer 8, you might have noticed the appearance of a blue arrow icon occasionally in web pages you visit. If you select any text in a web page, the blue arrow icon will appear.

This is a new feature in IE8. If you select any text in a web page, the blue arrow will appear, if you click on this arrow, you will be given a list of what are called "Accelerators". An example of an Accelerator would be to search the selected text on your favorite search engine, which saves you the trouble of copying the selected text, go to your search engine and paste in the text.

A variety of other Accelerators are available and are customizable. If you click the blue arrow icon you will see a menu item call All Accelerators, which will then let you go to options to either find more Accelerators or manage the ones you already use.

This feature is particularly useful for those who like to do lots of research and shopping on the Web. Enjoy!