Wal-Mart, the National Women’s Business Council, and the Center for Women’s Business Research just released a study of U.S. women business owners. The study was created to get a handle on women’s economic impact. And (wo)man, is there ever an impact! According to the study, U.S. women-owned businesses have an economic impact of nearly $3 trillion and employ about 23 million people (that’s 16% of all U.S. jobs).

In normal times numbers like these would inspire a collective pat on the back for womanhood. But these aren’t normal times. In Sunday’s New York Times, Lisa Belkin, tells it like it is: Women are doing better because men are doing worse. Seventy-eight percent of jobs that were lost during this recession were lost by men!

Women are doing well because they’ll settle for less. (They’ve always settled for less.) Right now, less is what employers want. Women, for all their triumphs, still make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. They’re willing to work cheaper. They tend to work in fields like health and education — lower paying, but not as hard hit as finance and construction in this recession.

So, congrats to women for their impact on business. And think about this: Maybe our willingness to take less and do more is the right recipe for changing the culture of the workplace.

Goo is back, reincarnated as an iPhone/iTouch app called Making Faces. It’s a hoot. Load in any image and, using your fingers, you can pinch, bulge, spike, twirl, wave, ripple, nudge, smear, and otherwise whack-out your images. Then turn them into a time-lapse movie. The true power of this $2.99 app won’t be fully realized until you can email your creation to friends, but in the meantime you can definitely have a load of fun making faces.

The top categories where moms are advice mavens: Parenting/Family, Non-food Household Products, and Beauty/Cosmetics. The study was conducted by Nielsen Online. Just remember that Nielsen is looking at the frequency of giving advice and not the accuracy of that advice.

But what technology does mom really want or need? Here’s my list as written for Discover Card Edge.

It turns out that moms have quite a bit to talk about, whether they’re about to give birth to their first or send one off to kindergarten or to college. In this modern age, where there’s no Dr. Spock and often no extended family to share the trials and tribulations of motherhood, the Internet gives blogging moms a place to share information, meet compatriots, and swap war stories.

Some of the most popular sites for mom bloggers are the collective ones. At bloggingmommies.com, 500 moms and 100 dads all blog under one banner. Some keep daily diaries about life in general, others focus on specific topics: home schooling, gardening, cooking, even girl tech gear. The best bloggers provide a glimpse into their lives as mothers, sharing their wisdom (or lack thereof) and inviting you to chime in.

Some popular mom blogs are personality driven. A busy 42-year-old mom writes Busymom.net on Blogher (one the largest collectives of women bloggers). At Blogher you’ll find Korean moms discussing the Virginia Tech shootings from their point of view, moms of twins, city moms, and rural moms.

Humor has big blog appeal. Comedienne bloggers like Sherry Davey on iVillage edge towards humor with a bite, but a bite that other moms can relate to. Recently she explored what it’s like when kids discover their “privates.”

Blogs give us information about the mundane (what really works for a colicky baby?) to the sublime (how a busy family can stay spiritual) to the idiotic (lots of self-deprecating stories of foolish foibles). Blogs help cement networks of like-minded individuals who may share religious, political, or educational views. The rainbow spectrum of moms–gay moms, divorced moms, remarried moms, and all other special cases of mommydom–are well represented, too.

Some mom blogs stir up quite a ruckus. Recently, one of the most contentious discussions in the blogosphere was about the new book, The Feminine Mistake, which told women who stay at home with their kids that they were setting themselves up for failure. Mommy bloggers played a bit part.

Why do bloggers blog? It runs the gamut of those waiting for their writing to be discovered, to wanting to be a part of the collective whole, to wanting to have some adult moments in their lives, to wanting to preserve a record of their thoughts. And there’s treasure in blogging, too. On more than one occasion a blogger has gone from rags to riches by cultivating a voice and a following.

A few blogs worth looking at:

• MotherLoad: The Mom Advice Blog: Tips for cleaning and organizing.
• Mommybuzz: MySpace for moms. Put up your profile and start blogging.
• Blogher.com: A collection of women bloggers on every topic imaginable.
• Meredith Viera’s new blog.
• The Parenting Post: Parenting magazine features a handful of interesting bloggers.

A Blog’s Many Faces

A traditional blog is a series of diary-like entries, dated and titled. Comments and talkbacks from readers are invited. Entries tend to be short. Personal insight is desired. You’ve got to keep your blog up on a regular basis. But there are other forms of blogs for those who don’t want the commitment of a full time blog. A few examples are places like Our Story that encourage women to document their family’s lives using photos, video, and short blog entries. MomSpace also combines a blogging space for mom as well as repository for local recommendations for services like a plumber or a kid’s doctor.

Following the Bloggers

You can follow a favorite blogger by subscribing to their feed (often referred to as an RSS or Real Simple Syndication feed). This means that every time they create a new entry on their blogspace, the content will be pushed out to you. You can sign up for feeds to be delivered via Yahoo!, Google, or sites like Bloglines.

Need a reliable plumber? Looking for the best gardener in town? Want to know what’s going on in your town for kids this weekend? Designed as a tool for what its founders call “the CEO of the household,” MomSpace lets you network with others in your area and search for top-recommended local resources. In addition, a cadre of salesmoms commissioned by MomSpace, offer enhanced listing and ad space to local businesses.

When you join the site you adopt an avatar that’s your cyber-persona. You can establish local groups–the soccer moms or ride-shares, for example. You’ll find resources about local happenings, local craftpersons and services, and kid-friendly events in your area. In addition there’s plenty of localized content like weather, gift ideas, school and camp listings, and more.

The founders, two moms from Pennsylvania, say that they want MomSpace to be a place where moms can find utility and fast answers to pesky problems (like where to find that instrument rental place) quickly. While they built social networking into the site so that moms can keep personal journals and post their profiles, they expect most moms to come to the site for utilitarian reasons.

The site is relatively new, so some of the categories like travel, garden, food, employment, education, finance, fashion, and beauty might not be as filled with information as you’d like, but they’re growing quickly. I love mom-created businesses that take time-proven concepts like grassroots business and meld them to today’s powerful technology.