Ever wanted to send someone a text from an email message? Those of us of a certain age that don’t want to do a lot of typing on our phones and are at our computers can use these simple gateways. Just enter the phone number and the rest of the email address here, and it will be sent to the appropriate phone.

ATT number@txt.att.net (no leading 1, just ten digits)
Sprint number@messaging.sprintpcs.com
T Mobile number@tmomail.net (start with the number 1 and then use all ten digits)
Verizon number@vtext.com

More gateways can be found here.

So the big news last week was the latest “occupation” for Barbie is a computer engineer, whatever that means (I guess let the perennial hardware versus software debates begin). Maybe it is time to retire that “math class is hard” speech chip once and for all and replace it with some often-used Linux shell commands. Or maybe this should be a lesson for our daughters: persevere past the polynomials, and you too can code. Or design circuits.

Personally, I am glad to seek Geek Barbie, with her hot pink netbook and matching Bluetooth headset. (And what is up with all the different Bluetooth headsets on 24, anyway? Didn’t anyone at CTU’s IT department get involved?) It is about time. We need role models wherever we can find them in the popular culture. And while you might have issues with Barbie’s unrealistic and unobtainable, ahem, dimensions, the fact remains that she has paved the way. Just take a look at the history books:

Barbie joined NASCAR twelve years ago, now we have that hot GoDaddy babe Danica Patrick racing at Daytona this past weekend. And as an astronaut in 1965, she was certainly ahead of Sally Ride nearly two decades later, who incidentally was at Stanford just before my time there. She has already run for President, twice. And last year she came with her own tramp stamp, what could be more hip than that? So she is a bit behind the times in the tattoo department.

Back when I went to college and grad school, in those dark pre-PC days of the 1970s, we didn’t have any girls, let alone ones that looked like Barbie, in the nerd classes. In my dorm at Stanford, it was 297 guys, 3 gals. This was the fabled Crothers Memorial engineering dorm – the dorm that played such a significant role in the early PC era that a Silicon Valley company was named after it (Cromemco Computers). I mean, how pathetic and nerdy can that be? But I digress.

I realize that the male/female engineering mix is changing – at the recent iPhone app dev class that I attended, there were two women out of a class of 20. This semester the breakdown is 4 out of a class of 45. Still not great. So how can we get more women into the computing field? Certainly not by offering hot pink computer cases, although there is something to be said for that.

I think it goes back to elementary school, where we need to encourage basic math and analytical thinking for girls early on. People that turn into great engineers love to take things apart and put them back together and have a natural curiosity about how the world works. I remember when my brother and I were growing up, we were constantly breaking stuff (the difference was my brother could actually fix things (who went on to become a EE) doing this all the time. Let’s destigmatize girls doing this. Barbie is a great first step.

Usually, I write about interesting trends and technologies but today my focus should have a lot wider appeal. I have a solution for our economic woes, and it doesn’t involve big taxpayer bailouts of fatcats, misguided tax cuts, or any really big effort to overhaul our financial systems requiring legislation too thick to comprehend by your average Congressperson. It is something that can appeal to Democrats and Republicans, Tea Partiers and Tree Huggers alike.

In fact, it is so simple that you can get it in a sound bite. Here goes:

Let’s ask all businesses to get rid of their payables, and go to net 15 days. Get rid of lengthy payment cycles, and we can stimulate the economy in a matter of a month or two.

When was the last time your company paid their bills quickly? I am thinking somewhere around 2007. We have turned our creditors into lending institutions, unregulated, unwilling and unwary ones at that.

One of the first things that In-Bev did when they took over Anheuser-Busch here in St. Louis back in 2008 was to institute 120-day payment cycles on all bills. They basically turned themselves into the In-Bev Bank, keeping their suppliers’ cash for an extra quarter. It was a neat accounting trick, but it was a dirty one. In one move, they took millions of dollars out of the economy and put it in their new “bank.” That money has disappeared forever. Until now.

By accelerating payment, we move money back into the economy at a time when it is needed. We eliminate our receivables and we can spend more to expand our businesses, or at least make payroll, or build more widgets and deliver more services.

We don’t have to rejigger the already too-complex tax code. We don’t need lots of lobbyists running around telling us what to think. There are no Senators from Midwestern states to hold us hostage for their pet programs or businesses. We don’t need new regulations to prohibit credit swaps and new securities that ten people on Wall Street can only understand. We just need the force of will and determination to make us all a great place to do business once again.

As someone who runs a small business, it hit me that I have no payables to speak of. Of course, receivables are another matter entirely and in the past year I have seen the average payment times get longer and longer, as my clients hold on to their cash. I pay my bills promptly, not that I have much choice when the rent is due or my cable bill arrives. My biggest payable each month for my business is my credit card, and I choose to pay it off when it arrives. Call me a dinosaur, but that’s the way I want to do business. I just wish others would follow.

Call this my hopey-changey kind of stimulus. It might just work.