Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker is better than anybody at summarizing the state of the technology business through slideshow presentations.

She's about to do it again at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco.

Google Ventures, the search giant’s venture capital arm, will invest more than $200 million in more than 100 companies over the next year.

Bill Maris and Graham Spencer of Google Ventures discussed the VC firm’s investment philosophy at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco Tuesday. Maris explained that Google Ventures combines quantitative analysis of each startup along with traditional venture capital signals and gut instincts.

For those who know me, I'm an Apple evangelist. I am a victim of Steve Jobs' famous reality distortion field: standing in line to buy each new mystical gadget. I owned the first iPod and the first iPhone. I wrote my last book entirely on an iPad. I've used Macs for years and have been a shareholder of Apple for quite a while. Needless to say, Steve Jobs has made my life better.

And whether you own any Apple products, he has made your life better too. His passion, vision and execution have made all of our lives simpler, more productive and, honestly, more enjoyable. As one pundit remarked on TV after Jobs' passing, "he closed the gap between technology and humanity." As technology becomes more integrated into our lives, Steve Jobs showed how that relationship should work. The technology should serve us, not the other way around.

Miguel Yeoman—known as the artist BeloZro and, now, as cofounder of the startup company BeloZro Visual Energy—was born and raised on Detroit’s hardscrabble east side. As he tried to stay out of trouble in 1980s Detroit—an extraordinarily violent period in the city’s history—he found his way to boxing, and then to art.

He spent a decade working on the line in local factories until he finally mustered the courage to try to make a living off his craft. He moved to Los Angeles and found limited success—a fairly big gallery show, but also an attorney who swindled him out of a quarter-million dollars. So, in 2008, back to Detroit he came.

Venture capital firms invested $6.95 billion in 876 deals throughout the United States during the three months that ended Sept. 30, according to the MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.

The numbers marked a slowdown from the preceding quarter, when venture capitalists put $7.9 billion in 1,015 deals.

But look at what’s happened since June: Fresh worries about Europe’s debt crisis, U.S. market volatility, and waning economic confidence all followed a protracted political stalemate over raising the federal debt ceiling and adopting a new federal budget. Are we better off than we were six months ago?

The Piedmont Triad Research Park (PTRP) is the largest urban life science research park in North Carolina, and among the largest in the U.S. at approximately 230 acres of which 55 acres are open green space. Administered by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, the research park is a science and technology-based economic development project with a particular concentration in the Life Sciences sector. Companies and the Wake Forest School of Medicine faculty in PTRP focus on pioneering breakthroughs in biotechnology and advanced medicine, and create innovative solutions to improve our lives, our future and the world around us. Piedmont Triad Research Park represents the Medical Center’s vision for the future of innovation in healthcare. It is a hub of scientific discovery where the treatments of tomorrow are discovered today.

The park’s mission is to expand to an urban, mixed-use biotechnology and related technology research park providing a formula for economic recovery for the city, the community, North Carolina’s Piedmont region, and the state while assuring the presence of a landmass for the long-term growth of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and its School of Medicine.

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Ben Horowitz, a co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, says he and his famous partner Marc Andreessen hope to carve out a different path in creating a new kind of venture capital firm.

They hope to capitalize on their fame going back to the days of the founding of Netscape, their startup successes, and their love for technical CEOs to beat other venture capital firms to the best new startups. Horowitz also said he hoped to be more transparent about his firm’s approach by telling entrepreneurs what his company is doing.

Horowitz reflected on what it was like to start Netscape, which went public in 1994, just 15 months after its founding by Andreessen. He said that kind of accelerated growth, which is not so uncommon anymore, is tough on founders who have to learn how to run a big operation under the public limelight. Back in the old days, it was common for venture capital firms to bring in professional CEOs to run a company after the founders got it off the ground.

What is there to cheer in these grim days of public debt, political mismanagement and boundless, bureaucratic mediocrity, when opportunity taps at the doors of vacant homes and offices before it moves on to other, more promising pastures?

Still, if New Brunswick, whose population barely surpasses Mississauga's, authors its own misfortune with depressing reliability, it also manages to occasionally and pleasantly surprise, as it did yesterday when UNB unveiled its plans for a new innovation and entrepreneurship facility.

The Pond-Deshpande Centre (named for businessmen Gerry Pond and Gururaj Deshpande, whose gift makes the scheme possible) is modeled on a program Mr. Deshpande, a UNB alumnus, financed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002. It has reportedly supported more than 90 technology projects and helped start 26 businesses that employ more than 400 people.

How do we make scientists better entrepreneurs? Make it worthwhile, get crazy and think young.

Those were some of the ideas at an “innovation town hall” at Philadelphia’s University City Science Center. The panel discussion is part of a nationwide series of talks to develop policy ideas to bolster the American life science sector’s competitiveness in the world and reverse the trend of jobs moving overseas. Stephen Tang, the CEO of the Science Center, is part of a 15-member innovation advisory board working with the federal government to recommend suggestions as part of the re-authorization of the America Competes Act.

SINGAPORE--While many Asian countries are placing more emphasis on fostering innovation and entrepreneurship, inhibitions still exist in the form of culture, cost of living and the ability to get funds at the right time.

Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, said people tend to focus too much on the downsides when evaluating whether to start a business or not, particularly in Asia. The California-born entrepreneur, who now resides here, added that considerations include whether it is wise to forego a well-paying job for the insecurity and potential loss of capital should the venture fail.

Sivers, a panel speaker at the annual Global Entrepolis @ Singapore (GES) Summit held here Wednesday, said his observations were corroborated during a conversation he had with a Singapore entrepreneur recently. According to him, Lee Min Xuan, co-founder of PlayMoolah, an online service that allows parents to teach their children how to manage their finances from young, shared the need to venture out to the United States--in her instance, Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area--in order to start her online business.

The Mexican economy was in ruins in 1982. Oil prices had fallen, the peso was devalued, interest rates were high, and some banks were nationalized. Yet a young entrepreneur saw opportunities and invested heavily during that downturn. He acquired clusters of companies, across industries, from foreign and native investors, who were fleeing the collapsing nation. His father had told him that nations never go bust forever. Good times always return. That entrepreneur is Carlos Slim, now the richest person in the world.

John Templeton, in the early stage of his career, bought 100 shares of selected companies, trading at less than $1, in 1939, the onset of World War II. By 1943, he had made many times the money he invested. He later became a billionaire.

As anybody who lives in or near a major city knows, parking tickets can be a massive and seemingly unavoidable headache. However diligent one is, it seems there's always a confusingly-worded sign or aggressive meter maid waiting to spoil your day. Even if a ticket is unjustified, fighting it can turn into a whole new ordeal.

It's with this bitter pain point in mind that a handful of startups are building mobile apps to help drivers combat parking tickets and the city parking enforcement agencies that dole them out. Eff the PPA is one such app, which took home the top prize recently at Philly Startup Weekend, a hackathon during which small teams launch a startup in 54 hours.

Eff the PPA, whose name refers to the notoriously aggressive Philadelphia Parking Authority, first helps users avoid getting parking tickets and then, failing that, gives them the tools necessary to fight them.

NYC-based Blueprint Health, a health-focused member of the TechStars Network, has just opened applications for its inaugural program starting on January 9th, 2012. This accelerator program is the only TechStars member to exclusively concentrate on healthcare.

The program plans to offer access to a large network of healthcare entrepreneurs, VCs and innovators. Its current mentors include those who have founded and helped lead companies like Amicas, Eliza, Everyday Health, Generation Health, Healthination, HelloHealth, Keas, Kryuus, Livestrong, MedCommons, Medivo, PatientsLikeMe, Phreesia, ShapeUp and ZocDoc.

If you are an entrepreneur involved in providing services to your clients, in most cases, I think your biggest goal should be to become a trusted business advisor.  What is a “trusted business advisor”?  It is an advisor who adds value consistently over a period of time.  In so doing, the advisor develops a relationship of trust and respect with the client and the client becomes more willing to rely on the advisor regarding important issues and decisions.  The advisor’s consistently high-level and high-value-added work gives the client peace of mind and allows them to focus on running their business, rather than constantly worrying about the performance of the advisor.  The advisor becomes like a member of their trusted internal team.

I have written elsewhere that sustainable success in business is based on trust.  There I discussed ten things you should keep in mind as you develop those trusting relationships.  Here I will expand on those in the context of the trusted business advisor concept.

Entrepreneurs contribute significantly to the region’s economy. According to a recent Cleveland State University report, 90 technology-based companies created and grown in Northeast Ohio generated approximately $155 million in economic benefits for the 21-county region in 2010. They also created and retained 546 direct jobs paying an average salary of $62,850 and more than 1,000 total jobs in the region.

The companies in the report were supported early in their development by JumpStart and our partners either through significant investment dollars and/or intensive technical assistance. While the businesses participating in the survey represent less than a quarter of JumpStart’s total client and portfolio companies, the fact that this relatively small pool of young companies has created such an impact confirms that the growth of entrepreneurial ventures is important to the economic growth of Northeast Ohio.

WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Alejandro Mayorkas joined the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in Pittsburgh to announce “Entrepreneurs in Residence.”  This new innovative initiative will utilize industry expertise to strengthen USCIS policies and practices surrounding immigrant investors, entrepreneurs and workers with specialized skills, knowledge, or abilities. Mayorkas announced the initiative at the Jobs Council’s High Growth Entrepreneurship Listening and Action Session at AlphaLab in Pittsburgh before the Council’s quarterly meeting with President Obama.

“This initiative creates additional opportunities for USCIS to gain insights in areas critical to economic growth,” said Director Mayorkas. “The introduction of expert views from the private and public sector will help us to ensure that our policies and processes fully realize the immigration law’s potential to create and protect American jobs.”

In an opinion article published in the Washington Post, Vivek Wadhwa, director of research at Duke University’s Center for Entrepreneurship, decried the current relationship between universities and research centers, industry, and markets, stating “the university commercialization system is broken…If university research (were) a business, it would be bankrupt.”

There is danger in equating commercialization with technology transfer, in eliminating public good from the equation, and Wadhwa seems to agree, “it is not fair to judge the success of university research by the licensing revenue produced,” yet the basis of the article is the vast difference between investment and commercial returns.

Dexetra, a mobile start-up, impressed us all last night with their Siri clone, an Android app called Iris. The folks there were so thankful that their project hit the front page that they sent us a kind thank you as well as a picture of a cake that the founders gave the team in celebration of getting TechCruched (sic). It’s heartwarming to see people who worked hard get rewarded for their excellent work, especially when the reward is in the form of cake.

The founders would also like to thank you, the community:

The world’s largest city classification and ranking with 331 benchmark cities classified, and top 125 cities ranked in 2011, of which the top 100 are listed below. Based on 2thinknow analysis of cities in what our analysts term the ‘global innovation economy’. Annual since 2007.

Just because you are an entrepreneur, or work in a startup, you can’t ignore the rules of building and maintaining relationships. Many despise these experiences in corporate environments, and leave for a startup, only to find that they have to be able to navigate a similar minefield there of workplace and business relationships to be successful.

Jan Yager, Ph.D., an author and speaker on this and related subjects, outlines in her latest book “Productive Relationships: 57 Strategies for Building Stronger Business Connections.” From my experience and hers, here are ten top relationship strategies for people in startups:

Create a favorable first impression. You only get one chance for a first impression. Don’t miss an opportunity for face-to-face communication, where you can use body language that welcomes relating, estimated at over 50% of all communication. Limit the use of e-mail and texting for early interactions, where you miss the body language.