Experts foresee the job market being more competitive than ever in 2014. With 10.9 million Americans unemployed, it is important to take a fresh look at your job search strategy. Now is the perfect time to develop an effective plan for success.

How can you set yourself apart from the competition and position yourself for finding the best next step in your career?

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The startup Oculus VR has raised $75 million ($83.8 million) to market its virtual-reality headset for video games, hoping to attract consumers who have shied away from such products in the past. California-based Oculus raised the sum in a round led by Silicon Valley investor Mark Andreessen of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Oculus plans to use its new capital to produce commercial versions of its virtual reality glasses for video games called Oculus Rift, which users mount on their heads with a strap. It also hopes to take its technology beyond gaming. “We believe Oculus will not only alter the gaming landscape but will redefine fundamental human experiences in areas like film, education, architecture, and design,” Andreessen said in a statement.

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Remember a time when you thought drones only existed in sci-fi movies and could never imagine something like 3D printing? In 2013, that tech is commonplace — but it wasn't always.

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Becoming an entrepreneur is not the right fit for everyone. Unfortunately, there are many people who find this out when they start a business, and then end up with a ringside seat as it falters and fails. Experienced entrepreneurs who serve as mentors to aspiring business-owners cite one repeated issue as the cause. In short, the excitement of a new business idea and imagining oneself as an independent, successful entrepreneur frequently overshadows the reality of all the day-to-day work required for success. Because small businesses are so integral to shoring up a flagging national economy, more efforts are being made to connect aspiring entrepreneurs with the practical tools that can refine their dreams and prepare them for success.

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You’re either one of those people who will change the world or you’re insane, and as a result you’ve decided you want to work for an entrepreneur. Perhaps the reason is because you want to be an entrepreneur yourself, but you want to observe an entrepreneur in action and learn from his or her mistakes before you venture out on your own. Or perhaps you’re not inclined to start your own business, but you believe working for an entrepreneur will be educational, fun, financially remunerative, or rewarding in other ways. Here’s how to land your dream job.

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About half of Americans dream of opening their own businesses, according to a recent survey by the UPS Store, but with 50% of small businesses failing within the first five years, how do you know if you're an entrepreneur ... or a "wanna-preneur"?

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On the flat lava plain of Reykjanesbaer, Iceland, near the Arctic Circle, you can find the mines of Bitcoin.

To get there, you pass through a fortified gate and enter a featureless yellow building. After checking in with a guard behind bulletproof glass, you face four more security checkpoints, including a so-called man trap that allows passage only after the door behind you has shut. This brings you to the center of the operation, a fluorescent-lit room with more than 100 whirring silver computers, each in a locked cabinet and each cooled by blasts of Arctic air shot up from vents in the floor.

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The flurry of activity in Colorado’s small venture capital world continues, with news emerging that local VC firm Boulder Ventures is raising a new $100 million fund.

Boulder Ventures is a Boulder-based firm that specializes in investing in companies in the Boulder-Denver area. The firm invests in software, hardware, IT, and biotech companies. Its list of investments includes Rally Software Development (NYSE: RALY), which went public in April, and LineRate Systems, a startup that F5 Networks bought this year for more than $120 million.

When college student Shai Schechter didn't have access to an affordable 3D printer on his SUNY Purchase campus in New York, he set out to build his own model — one that would still crank out 3D-printed objects, but at a much lower cost.

"We have a laser- and powder-based 3D printer at school, but it costs about $500 for a bucket of powder and that only lasts for about one or two prints," Schechter said. "It's never used because it is so expensive and classes weren’t offered that much in the curriculum."

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When tech companies and government agencies make mistakes, whole teams and departments mobilize in some massive effort to sweep them under the carpet. But sometimes, the gaffes are just too glaring, public and spectacular to overlook.

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Some within Michigan political circles were predicting that an intrastate crowdfunding exemption in the state of Michigan could be signed into law by the end of the year. It seems that prediction may come to fruition, as the bill has now been vetted by both chambers of Michigan’s state congress. The bill is now awaiting a signature from Michigan Governor Rick Snyder.

Startups are usually so focused on selling more of their branded product or service to their own customer base (organic growth) that they don’t consider the more indirect methods (non-organic growth) of increasing revenue and market share. Non-organic growth would include OEM relationships, finding strategic partners, “coopetition,” as well as acquisitions.

A "perfect storm" is an expression that describes an event where a rare combination of circumstances aggravate an environment drastically. In the entrepreneur world, I feel we are in such a situation now for new startups, with the confluence of business recovery, the explosion of new digital technologies, and the political turmoil around the world.

Not sure what to get your friends who constantly have the world at their fingertips (or need to enroll in tech rehab)? Here are our top picks…

1) Palomino Blackwing Pencils ‘Tis the season of anguish and confusion for the tech addict. Why? Greeting cards. The thing about writing holiday cards is that it requires writing… by hand. To ease your friend back to the mystical realm of paper, pen(cil) and no delete buttons in 2014, present them with the choice writing instrument of esteemed authors such as John Steinbeck and Leonard Bernstein. $19.95 at Pencils.com

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Often, an idea is best expressed through an infographic. Here at Entrepreneur, it's been a rich year for the medium.

From the habits of self-made billionaires and the world's smartest people, to hot startup scenes and the crazy number of times you sometimes need to try (and fail) before succeeding, these infographics clearly and succinctly walked us through fascinating and often complex topics. Here's a countdown of Entrepreneur.com's most-viewed infographics of 2013.

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David Cohen, the co-founder of Boulder accelerator TechStars, and venture capitalist Mark Solon have kicked off an effort to raise a new, $150M venture capital fund called Bullet Time Ventures, according to a regulatory filing by the two Thursday

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Turns out Great Uncle Phil was right all along: Concocting the perfect whiskey ginger nightcap really is an art form.

A website called BevShots captures photographs of alcohol taken through the lens of a microscope. The rainbow-like patterns it produces are then converted into metallic prints, bar accessories and even clothing, meaning you can (almost literally) say you're wearing what you drink.

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Entrepreneurship in outliers like Raleigh and Durham will “dwarf” Silicon Valley. That’s according to “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban. "I think the growth outside of the valley will dwarf what happens inside the valley," he writes via email Thursday, pointing to Austin, Dallas, Boston and the Triangle as “better” for his portfolio than Silicon Valley.

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The greatest enemy of innovation may be an ill-advised reverence for the status quo.  And nothing fuels organizational status quo more insipidly than entrenched, unchallenged, long-standing incentive systems.  If you are on a path to improve innovative thinking and behavior in your organization, and you find yourself running into trouble, the very first place you might want to look is:  your incentive system.

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The attached report is derived from a speech given last spring in Singapore at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. The notion here is to lay out a new, more humanistic urban future, not one shaped primarily by large developers, speculators and transient global workers. Singapore was a particularly difficult case to look at since it has no room to spread out, something we still have in much of the rest of the world. Yet the city has been very innovative in the development of open space, and its public housing agency, the Housing Development Board, has worked hard to accommodate the needs of families. I have been struck by how people in different countries want the same things: safety, space, privacy, convenience, and affordable housing. The speech is a call to reconsider our urban priorities and make the city responsive to its denizens.