Meetings may seem like the ultimate hold-out against the digitization of working life: after all, what’s more analog than talking directly with another person? Even though the core work of a meeting — listening to and connecting with other people — hasn’t changed, there are lots of ways technology can make that work easier and more effective. Given how much of our working lives we spend in meetings, building a digital meeting toolkit is one of the smartest investments you can make in tech-savvy productivity. Here are the tools you need:

It’s not exactly news that the San Francisco Bay Area is a hot spot for tech startups, but let’s say you’re ambitious, talented and armed with a great idea but you don’t want to move there. What other places should you consider?

Or let’s say you’re ambitious, talented and looking to land a job at a tech startup. Where, outside San Francisco and Silicon Valley, are prospective tech employers?

21 months and counting

What is development? To many conventional economists it has been China, though not without irony. Its export-led development model and advantage in all economic sectors created its superpower status, and left it accounting for the vast majority of those lifted out of extreme poverty globally.

Image: China’s export-led growth is harming the environment and benefiting the rich, not the poor. Above, pedestrians wear masks to protect against air pollution as they cross a bridge over a busy highway in Beijing. Photograph: Ng Han Guan/AP

These are some of the questions Michael Tomczyk asked himself when starting researching for his new book, NanoInnovation: What Every Manager Needs to Know. To help focus the book, he defined nanoinnovation as the implementation of nanoscale ideas, discoveries and inventions. For example, an invention is not really an innovation until it’s actually implemented by being proven in a lab or test environment, or commercialized in the marketplace. This, to him, is what we all really need to know about nanoinnovation.

Start a business, surf on your lunch break, buy your dream home — here are 10 cities and towns where life is good. For our list of the 50 best places to live in the U.S., pick up the April issue of Men's Journal, on newsstands now.

Image: Photograph by Anais & Dax

The Founding Fathers of the United States considered intellectual property so important that they gave it a special place in the Constitution: “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology is teaming up with the Department of Homeland Security to create a new business accelerator program for creating wearable technology for first responders.

The EMERGE! program is designed to help business accelerators find entrepreneurs with ideas for wearable technology useful to first responders, whether federal law enforcement or local police, EMTs and firefighters. Putting advanced sensors, communication and other electronics into equipment that they can wear on the job could be a major boon for them.

Image: Image via CIT

A bill to legalize equity crowdfunding in Florida is gaining traction in the state Legislature, thanks in part to three Orlando businessmen.

A similar effort failed to launch in Tallahassee last year, partly because of concerns raised by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation. But the new bill just passed out of the House Banking and Insurance Committee.

Carlos Carbonell, founder of Orlando-based Echo Interaction, is a big promoter of this year’s effort. He said he and two Orlando attorneys drafted much of the language for this year’s bill, House Bill 275. State Rep. David Santiago, R-Deltona, is one of the bill’s first sponsors.

(CNN)As a writer at The Idea Village in New Orleans, I've interviewed dozens of entrepreneurs, ranging from new founders of fledgling companies to seasoned leaders who have launched several successful businesses.

On occasion, I walk out of an interview believing that entrepreneur will change the world. Other times, not so much.

Image: http://edition.cnn.com

"Effective leaders ask questions instead of giving orders," wrote Dale Carnegie nearly 80 years ago in his iconic book How to Win Friends and Influence People, but too few of today’s bosses are following his advice.

"Leaders are expected to be decisive, bold, charismatic and visionary—they’re expected to know all the answers before others have thought of the questions," writes Michael J. Marquardt in his book Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask .

 

My wife and I had an old computer connected to the Internet. We paid $16 for two domain names, $40 for software, and $25 for a month of website hosting. With a total of $81 we had started an Internet publishing business. We created websites and monetized them with pay-per-click ads to start. Revenue started trickling in by the second week.

The NCAA “March Madness” college basketball tournament is one of the highlights of the year for sports fans, with 68 teams battling to advance in a win-or-go-home sudden death tournament that captivates the nation and keeps millions of office workers procrastinating at work.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com

Dave McClure, one of Silicon Valley's top small or "angel" investors, just chimed in via Twitter on the debate whether we're in a tech bubble. His verdict?

"It might not be a bubble, but sure as hell the rent is too high."

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

It's never totally new in the sense that it combines earlier ideas, but nonetheless that is how small and big advances happen. My brain keeps spinning, sometimes alone (when I wake up, usually), sometimes in group (brainstorming, discussion), and it looks for new ways to put together the pieces of the puzzle. It all happens behind the veil of consciousness. Just asking yourself a question starts your brain spinning, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for days and months. The puzzle pieces are the pieces of evidence we observe, and the picture is one allowing us to understand the world around us. Sometimes, a new idea combines many pieces and we feel the intense pleasure of Eureka, epiphany, as so many pieces finally seem to fit perfectly together.

In partnership with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T), the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) announced today the creation of EMERGE! Accelerating Wearable Tech for First Responders to speed the delivery of the latest innovative wearable technologies for responders. EMERGE! is part of a larger DHS S&T initiative to engage entrepreneurs in finding innovative ideas that address the unique needs of the Homeland Security community. CIT is piloting the use of business accelerators to discover and foster innovative individuals and companies whose commercial wearable technology could be adapted for first responder operations.

On Monday, the MIT Innovation Initiative convened representatives from all of the Institute’s innovation-focused programs, labs, and centers to showcase and gather feedback on ongoing and pilot projects. The Innovation Initiative is an Institute-wide effort, launched in 2013 by President L. Rafael Reif, intended to accelerate the moving of research from the lab the marketplace by strengthening MIT’s capacity for innovation.

Image: Innovation Initiative staffer Catherine Fazio during a roundtable discussion about the Laboratory for Innovation Science and Policy. Photo: Dominick Reuter

Smartphone camera apps could soon do more than just capture images. Software integrated with a new line of smartphone chips will be capable of recognizing, say, a cat or city skyline in a photo, and tagging pictures of your friends with their names.+

DURHAM Duke University has created two investment vehicles that, if all goes according to plan, will be capable of investing a total of up to $3 million in startups created by Duke students, alumni, faculty and staff.

The new Duke Angel Network announced Wednesday will consist of university alumni interested in providing seed capital for such startups and, ultimately, making a profit on those investments.

An overwhelming 93pc of entrepreneurs are seeking “drastic change” from the Government as we enter election season, a survey has found, as they struggle to cope with late payments, irregular pay cheques and shattered social lives. According to a poll of 255 small business owners by energy comparison site SwitchmyBusiness.com, 35pc plan to shut down their companies if the situation does not improve and, based on current bank balances, 24pc can survive for only another one to six months.

Canada’s dynamic technology sector is like a constellation of opportunity, with diverse and exciting startups dotting the country. And like the stars above, these bright lights of Canada’s new economy are being fuelled by something powerful and unseen: angel investment.

From Vancouver to St. John’s, angels are filling an important gap between friends-and-family financing, venture capital and other sources of funding. They’re investing in emerging innovative companies, fostering the next generation of entrepreneurs and supporting technologies across a wide range of industries and sectors.