You may have heard last week that China-based Internet giant Alibaba Group filed to go public. Analysts believe Japan's SoftBank, which led a $20 million venture-capital investment back in 2000, now controls a stake that could be worth about $30 billion. Astronomical returns like that are out of the reach of most mortals, but the big scores from venture capital don't have to be. That is the thesis propounded by David Rose, a prominent New York VC investor behind such successes as ComiXology, a digital-comics retailer acquired last month by Amazon.com for an undisclosed sum, and Drop.io, which is now owned by Facebook.

The recently published "Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media", weighing in at over five hundred pages, claims to be the first "systematic and comprehensive" reference work on digital media. However, the reader need only scan the table of contents with entries ranging from the expected, such as "Blogs," to the obscure such as "Searle's Chinese Rooms," to appreciate that it is neither systematic nor comprehensive. And, this is not necessarily a bad thing. For, The Guide does indeed accomplish what it sets out to do: provide readers with " a GPS and a map of the territory of digital media, so that they will be able to design their own journey through this vast field of discovery."

Image: http://www.huffingtonpost.com 

A standing desk is the centerpiece in the workspace of the future. Scientific research has shown--in myriad ways--that sitting down all day is so bad for you that it can increase your risk of cancer.

Clearly, it’s time to ditch the office chair, but standing desks can get pricey, especially the adjustable kind, which let you mix sitting and standing throughout the day.

Image: StandDesk is a cheaper alternative to the adjustable standing desk. 

Pete Nelson has one of those careers you might have fantasized about at age eight but never realized is really possible: he’s the world’s best-known treehouse designer and builder.

Now, the star of Animal Planet’s reality show Treehouse Masters has compiled all his fort-building wisdom into a book, Be in a Treehouse: Design/Construction/Inspiration . If you've got fantasies of ditching your earth-bound home to move among the leaves, you'll find ample temptation and instruction here. The guide portion of the book details everything from how to secure a building permit, to tree selection, to designing platforms in accordance with the International Building Code.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

D.C. startup incubator and co-working campus 1776 filed paperwork with the SEC to create a $25 million seed investment fund according to a report in the Washington Business Journal. The filing, issued in the name of "1776 Seed Investors, LP," would be part of a longer term plan by 1776 to start funding startups while it continues to incubate them at its D.C. headquarters.

Image: http://inthecapital.streetwise.co 

Calling all Dallas-area accelerators, incubators and coworking spaces working with startups!

The U.S. Small Business Administration announced today that it is launching a $2.5 million competition to support accelerators and other entrepreneurial ecosystem models across the country.

Raising venture capital or angel financing are the sought-after ways of enabling your startup dream. The process of raising venture capital is time consuming, and at the end of the day, you’ll give up anywhere between 30-60 percent of your company in your first round. But if you are developing advanced technologies where there’s a considerable amount of technical risk, there’s an alternative to selling off huge chunks of your company.

Image: http://tech.co 

In a global marketplace where problems are increasingly complex, no one person will ever have all the answers. That’s why Google’s SVP of People Operations, Lazlo Bock, says humility is one of the traits he’s looking for in new hires. “Your end goal,” explained Bock, “is what can we do together to problem-solve. I’ve contributed my piece, and then I step back.” And it is not just humility in creating space for others to contribute, says Bock—it’s “intellectual humility. Without humility, you are unable to learn.”

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to issue new proposed rules this week on “network neutrality,” the principle that broadband Internet service providers can’t discriminate among the content that runs through their pipes. Early indications are that it will be an Animal Farm sort of net neutrality, with some nets more neutral than others. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler promised recently that his agency “will not allow some companies to force Internet users into a slow lane so that others with special privileges can have superior service.” But the rule seems likely to allow ISPs to cut deals with content companies to ensure that their packets get delivered smoothly — as Netflix reluctantly agreed to with Comcast in February and Verizon last week. Which by definition means they’re in a faster lane than others, doesn’t it?

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

The White House's newest report on climate change has a clear message: The globe is getting warmer; it's our fault; and the typhoons, floods, and superstorms we've experienced in recent years will only continue to get worse. NASA agrees.

WASHINGTON -- Arguments for the value of the humanities have been thick on the ground of late, as the ongoing economic stress felt by students, institutions, and governments has bolstered a cultural shift in emphasis toward more evidently practical science and technology disciplines.

Image: Photo by Ralph Alswang, courtesy of the NEH - http://www.insidehighered.com  

Fostering entrepreneurship has become a core component of economic development in cities and countries around the world. The predominant metaphor for fostering entrepreneurship as an economic development strategy is the “entrepreneurship ecosystem.” It should come as no surprise, however, that as any innovative idea spreads, so do the misconceptions and mythology. Here is a quick true-false test that will serve as a reality check on entrepreneurship ecosystems, and on the connection between entrepreneurship and development more generally. It’s important to get this right, because the emergence of entrepreneurship as a policy priority has paralleled (and is at least partly in response to) disappointment with dictated industrial policy, barren “cluster” strategies, and the failure of a limited focus on a set of macroeconomic framework conditions (the so-called “Washington Consensus”). If we’re to prevent the enthusiasm for entrepreneurial ecosystems from also fizzling out, we need to get a better grip on what the term really means.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Technology news is full of incremental developments, but few of them are true milestones. Here we’re citing 10 that are. These advances from the past year all solve thorny problems or create powerful new ways of using technology. They are breakthroughs that will matter for years to come.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Most entrepreneurs believe they are “different,” but they can’t quite understand how. They usually explain it by insisting that they are driven to follow their passion, need to be their own boss, want to get rich quick, or want to change the world. I now believe that the roots of the difference may go back more than 10,000 years, when hunting and farming became two different lifestyles.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com 

The majority of all crowdfunding campaigns fail to reach their monetary goals. Ouch!

Crowdfunding campaigns that hit their goals start with a comprehensive plan. While there are plenty of success stories in nonprofit crowdfunding, there are also many failures.

What are the most common reasons for why a campaign is unable to meet its goal?

Image: http://www.socialfish.org 

Entrepreneurs are all about firsts, and the most important is you making a great first impression – on investors, customers, new team members, and strategic partners. Poor first impressions can be avoided, but I’m amazed at the number of unnecessary mistakes I see at those critical first introductions, presentations, and meetings.

For entrepreneurs in America, it is the best of times, and it is the worst of times. It is "the age of the start-up," and "American entrepreneurship is plummeting." We are witnessing the Cambrian Explosion of apps and the mass extinction of apps. These are the glory days of risk, and we are taking fewer risks than ever. Tech valuations are soaring, and tech valuations are collapsing, and tech valuations are irrelevant. "A million users" has never been more attainable, and "a million users" has never been more meaningless. It is the spring of hope. It is the winter of despair.

Image: http://www.theatlantic.com/ 

Maybe the breaking point was when you were pushing and shoving your way onto a too-crowded train just to spend the next hour sandwiched between two hygiene-deficient fellow commuters; or maybe it was your micromanaging boss breathing down your neck as you began your workday (again) — in any case, you've decided that you’ve had enough of commuting. You’re not alone: currently one in five workers in the U.S. telecommutes, and you could soon join their ranks.

New studies released on Monday show that a large portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may have begun a slow but "unstoppable" collapse, with the demise of these glaciers taking place sometime during the next few centuries to as many as 1,000 years from now.

The findings do not significantly alter short-term sea level rise projections, but they mean that we may need to prepare for larger amounts of long-term sea level rise than previously thought.

Image: Iceberg floating on Pine Island Bay on Nov. 4, 2012. - NASA

You send in your resume. You include a hopefully eye-catching cover letter. You ask someone to put in a good word for you.

Then you wait. And wait. And don't get the job.

Why? You didn't put in the work.

There are many things you can't control about the job seeking process. Cumbersome application systems, automated filters that identify keywords instead of talent, lazy hiring managers content to simply find round pegs for round holes, people who make the biggest hiring mistake of all....

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