YouTube may have already picked the biggest videos to hit the web this year, but there’s a host of great videos that didn’t make the cut. From vigilante cyclists to deadpan taxidermists to obligatory cute kittens, the web was full of strange, funny, sad and infuriating events and characters.

We decided to cap off the year with a list of 10 viral videos we especially liked. While you’ve probably seen at least half of these, there’s a good chance you haven’t seen them all. In trying to define “viral,” we’ve decided not to count any stunningly made professional videos. No music videos starring the notorious Rebecca Black or mega-popular Katy Perry, no crazy views of Earth from space and no stunning visions of the future are in the mix here.

Watching an entrepreneur fail is sad, but watching them fail from a lack of nerve is tragic.

Excitement

At the beginning of this year Bob, one of my ex-students was in entrepreneurial heaven. He had an idea for a new class of enterprise software insight-as-a-service based on big data web analytics as a Cloud and SaaS (Software As a Service) application.

Bob had taken to heart the business model canvas and Customer Development lessons. After graduating he put together a prototype and had quickly marched through Customer Discovery, iterating his product with the help of CIOs and Fortune 1000 IT departments.

If you’re asking which startup to build, not whether to build, you probably have several half-baked ideas and don’t know which one to devote yourself to. Or you have no idea at all.

Max Levchin and Peter Thiel would tell you innovation is dead and that you should go work on real, world-changing, notable problems. They say too many young companies are solving small problems and creating features. TechCrunch writer Rip Empson would ask you to not build a copycat app. Paul Graham of Y Combinator would tell you to check out instead his list of 30 startup ideas he’s looking to fund.

Not everyone is cut out to work for a startup. It involves a lot of hustling, a lot of nail-biting, pizza-eating, sleeping at your desk, tears, failure, confusion, and on and on. And wearing your startup’s t-shirt. All the time. That being said, it can also be extremely rewarding and, with all the cash flying around Silicon Valley (and beyond), aspiring entrepreneurs are flocking to startups.

So, say you’re one of those people who is champing at the bit to go work for a startup, what do you do next? Well, you can try this, or in the event you’re not quite ready to grow a mustache, you can check out things startups should know when looking for top talent, and, hey, Justin Kan has written about how to get a job at a startup even if you don’t have a lot of experience. But what about the programmers and developers out there looking to work at startup? Is no one thinking about them?!?

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One of the best things any investor can do is to pull back from the day to day of getting pitches and think about high level trends.  What areas are going to change?  What areas need to be disrupted?  What types of things might happen in 2012, as opposed to needing another 3-5 years to come to fruition.

The thing you need to be careful of, however, is only paying attention to big trends, because you never know when you're thinking big data and you miss the awesome direct sales jewelry company.

That aside, here are ten areas I think you'll see some interesting things happening in 2012...

Healthbox, an innovative new program aimed at accelerating the growth of healthcare startups, announced today its inaugural class of 10 entrepreneurial teams. The 3-month program, which launches January 9th, will provide each of the 10 companies with critical resources that promote rapid development, including access to an extensive mentor network, structured forums led by business experts, a collaborative workspace, and $50,000 in seed capital. The program culminates in an organized Investor Day where participants will present their businesses to a targeted group of investors.

"We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work with 10 passionate teams that represent some of the best entrepreneurial talent in healthcare. Their business ideas are spurring new ways of thinking and collaborating in the industry. Healthbox is committed to advancing their development and helping to bring sustainable innovation into the marketplace," says founder Nina Nashif.

The founders of an ASU student startup, called G3Box, have been named "College Entrepreneurs of the Year for 2011" by Entrepreneur Magazine.

"The College Entrepreneur of the Year" award is one of three awards bestowed by the magazine on the nation’s top entrepreneurs of the last year. The magazine received thousands of entries for the competition and then selected the top five entries in each award category as finalists. The finalists were then announced to the general public who voted for their top picks for each award. G3Box received votes from all over the world, including Ireland and Russia. A judging panel made the final decision.

SBA Gems, a new software application for smartphones and tablets that lets small-business owners and entrepreneurs quickly and efficiently find loans, grants and other useful resources, took first-place honors in a nationwide app-development competition sponsored by the Small Business Administration.  The Android app also won developer Somesh Kumar a $5,000 first-place prize.

The SBA's "Apps for Entrepreneurs Challenge," was a competition for software developers to build new and useful free tools for small businesses that entrepreneurs can access through their smartphones or tablets to search federal, state and local databases for vital information. Seven winners were named.

It’s early October in New York City and Roy Pereira is standing in the NHL Powered by Reebok store on 6th Avenue at 47th Street, just below a fairly low-tech sign scrolling updated preseason news about the Winnipeg Jets. On this night, the store is closed for a private party sponsored by the Maple Leaf Digital Lounge, an industry-led initiative founded last year and dedicated to helping Canadian entrepreneurs promote their businesses outside of Canada.

The event is part of New York’s sprawling Advertising Week conference, billed by its organizers as “the world’s premier annual gathering of marketing and communications leaders.” So it’s the perfect place, really, for digital start-ups and their founders to rub shoulders with potential clients, and perhaps even potential investors, here among pricey NHL jerseys, hats and other merchandise. Imagine a gathering of the world’s best salespeople, marketers and idea generators in a single place, each one aggressively pitching his or her best idea, and you can get a sense of the atmosphere. At one point, a very pleasant but slightly overenthusiastic pitchman nearly bodychecks me into a rack of Sidney Crosby jerseys. For a novice salesperson – a reporter, say – it can be intimidating.

Growing up, we Gen Y’ers ate tie-dyed bread and purple ketchup. We shopped exclusively at Wal-Mart. Gas was cheap, and the economy was good. We never bought organic food; much less, organic clothing. As kids, “things” came in and out of our lives quickly — purchased, used up, and thrown out.

Put simply, our parents’ generation did not collectively ask questions. Like where products came from, how they were made, and what the human and environmental repercussions were.

And so, entrepreneurs in the 90’s had it easy. No one flinched at cheap production in China. Free trade was a hot topic, but fair trade was rarely discussed. America at large was feeding kids, like us, purple ketchup — and making billions from the consumption of poorly-made, unhealthy, and even toxic products.

What stories dominated the green GigaOM clicks in 2011? This year was filled with smart thermostats, a dream of Apple getting into solar, the bankruptcy of Solyndra, the efficiency of cloud computing, Google’s green data centers and Tesla’s Model S.

So starting with #10 and running through to #1, here’s our top 10 green GigaOM stories of the year:

10). 25 battery breakthroughs for gadgets, electric cars & the grid: Innovation for batteries is struggling when compared to the progress of innovation in IT. Which is a big bummer because batteries are the pain point for mobile devices, wireless computing, and electric cars. These are 25 researchers and startups that are trying – hard!

Inevitably, year-end lists invite plenty of debate and criticism, and Scientific American's is no exception. Certainly, we could have included the discovery of new worlds beyond our solar system, including Kepler 22 b, an exoplanet in the "Goldilocks" zone of habitability, as well as the first known Earth-size exoplanets. Or noted the accumulating evidence suggesting that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to retrieve natural gas is likely to contaminate water supplies. (Final New York State regulations, expected in mid-2012, could determine the future of fracking in the U.S.)

Other candidates included the report of a new target against HIV, in which a doorway to infection (the so-called CCR5 receptor on immune cells) is blocked; the demonstration (using diamonds) that quantum entanglement can occur in everyday objects; and the MESSENGER spacecraft's photos of the planet Mercury, the first ever taken from orbit.

As the recent flurry of articles about why portable electronic devices are restricted during air travel makes clear, the conclusion to be drawn from the information available is a very complicated: “We just don’t know.” For this reason alone airlines err on the side of caution, asking people nicely (and sometimes not so nicely) to turn off their gadgets during takeoff and landing.

Here’s what we do know, or at least here’s what makes sense and comes from reputable sources, including the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA):

1.    Radio-frequency emissions from cell phones, laptops and other electronics can occur at the same frequencies used by aircraft communication, navigation and surveillance radio receivers. These emissions could cause fluctuations in navigation readouts, problems with other flight displays, and interference with air traffic communications.

Nikon’s 2011 Small World Competition For the past 37 years, Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography Competition has showcased some of the most breathtaking images ever captured under a microscope, and this year was no exception. The top three winners of this year’s competition were photographs of a turquoise-hued green lacewing, a blade of grass magnified 200 times, and the marine phytoplankton Melosira moniliformis, which was imaged while still alive.

Wellcome Image awards 2011 Each year, Wellcome Images—a freely available online repository of historical and contemporary images from biology and medicine—recognize the most memorable images acquired into the collection that year. This year’s picks included a confocal micrograph of a mouse retina, a confocal micrograph of wheat infected with ergot fungus, and a stunning scanning electron micrograph of a honeybee.

Today professional network LinkedIn released its top most shared stories. There are currently 130 million professionals on LinkedIn, and the most popular shared articles are about how to be a better worker. The number two and number three most shared stories were about Steve Jobs. The number nine most shared article was about how people look at your Facebook profile, and the number one article was written by digital marketer Ilya Pozin for Inc. magazine; it is called "9 Things That Motivate Employees More Than Money." So who are these LinkedIn users, anyhow?

An infographic from AdAge gives additional breakdown of LinkedIn by age, sex and location. It shows that the majority of LinkedIn users are U.S.-based men and women ages 35-54. There are no users ages 13-17.

It's that time of year again. We're about to embark on a new year, we're in the thick of the holiday season, and we're reflecting upon the past 12 months -- the same "woulda, coulda, shoulda" thoughts that pop into every inbound marketer's mind. With 2012 staring us in the face, let's take a fun look at some interesting infographics that will give you a boost of holiday cheer and make you smile.

The Value of Social Media in Gift Selection

Next time you say, "We don't need social media," take a look at this infographic from MrYouth.com. Two-thirds of respondents said they made a purchase based on an interaction via social media with recommendations leading to a purchase.

If you're contemplating a career change, you might want to consider one of these paths (via Utne).

Whether you prefer interacting with people, independence in the workplace, or a comfortable salary, there's something for you on this list of the jobs that keep employees most satisfied at work, compiled by University of Chicago researchers.

You'll find some sure bets — we've all had great teachers, for example, who insist no better occupation exists — and some surprises, too.

Tom Kinnear has been involved as an investor, board member, or founder in starting 11 companies -- five of them with a combined exit value around $700 million.

For 12 years, Kinnear has headed up the Samuel Zell and Ross H. Lurie Institute of Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan. There, he oversees three venture funds, in addition to serving as chairman of the $450 million Venture Michigan Fund.

We caught up with Kinnear to discuss what entrepreneurs should do to land big money from big investors. Here's his advice:

What should entrepreneurs be doing they're searching for funding?

The success of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a networking group set up over two decades ago by Indian technologists in the Valley, has done much to boost the growing profile of Indians as angel investors in the US startup ecosystem.

Veteran investors such as Kanwal Rekhi who founded early-stage venture fund Inventus Capital Partners said the rising graph of Indian origin investors is a result of early gains recorded by TiE. "The US State Department brings delegations from across the world to us (TiE) and uses us as a role-model," he said.

Much of this attention is also due to the rise of India as a market for cutting edge technology. In 2009, when Nexus Venture Partners funded US-based start-up Cloud.com, founded by Sheng Liang, it provided the fledgling firm with access to the Indian market.