The people over at recommendations engine Hunch.com analyzed data from 700,000 users to break down the differences between Mac people and PC people.

52% of respondents were PC people, 25% Mac people, 23% were neither.

Like a good movie, the results are both surprising and reassuring of your expectations – all at the same time!

For example, if you know what show the girl pictured on the right is in, you're probably a Mac person.

Sixty percent (60%) of small business owners admit that they spend more time holding their mobile devices than the hand of their significant others. If that doesn’t tell us something about the pervasiveness of mobile communications, and our priorities, I’m not sure what does.

That finding comes to us from the Staples 5th Annual Small Business Survey (PDF), based on 300 U.S. small businesses having no more than 20 employees.

I was struck by several of the points made in the survey about mobile communications, suggesting how profoundly mobile devices have not only changed our business lives, but our personal lives, too. Depending on how you look at it, the results could be good, bad or a mix of both.

An iPhone app launching today provides a glimpse into the future of shopping. Created by Modiv Media, the app lets customers scan items while they shop, presents them with personalized offers as they go, and speeds up their checkout. One of the first companies to deploy the app is Stop & Shop, which operates more than 375 supermarkets in the eastern United States.

Stop & Shop's version of the app, called Scan It!, relies heavily on loyalty-card numbers for its smarts. Users install the app, load in their loyalty card by capturing it with the phone's camera, and then take the phone to the store. The phone's camera captures the bar codes of items the person puts in a shopping cart and adds their prices to a running total. The user bags items while shopping, thus avoiding having to unload and reload the cart at the register. A store might sometimes have employees perform checks to make sure users are paying for everything in their carts, but for the most part it's an honor system.

As the U.S. economy slowly moves out of the recession, it's a good bet that businesses started or led by immigrants will play a substantial role in creating jobs and driving growth. In high tech, for instance, 52 percent of startups launched between 1995 and 2005 were founded by immigrants, and foreign nationals have filed for a quarter of patents in recent years. So why are we so eager to send talented immigrants back to their home countries, instead of keeping them here so they can continue to innovate?

Our unwillingness to champion entrepreneurs, no matter where they come from, is part of a larger attitude problem around entrepreneurship: We don't celebrate their achievements as much as we should, and our government support of entrepreneurs is weak. The end result is that talent is attracted here to attend our finest educational institutions, but may not be so welcomed if it wants to stick around and start a business.

It started with the plate down the pews or the hat passed around by street performers. Speak to a crowd, impress them with your passion, convince them of your motives, persuade them of a likely windfall, and the money clinks into your piggybank. With technology multiplying the crowds ad infinitum, shouldn’t raising money from so many become easier? Welcome to the world of crowdfunding, which uses the time-tested principles of fund-raising, enhanced by the internet.

Filmmaker Onir most recently reaped the benefits of crowdfunding. He used social networking sites to raise a third of the money for his Rs 3-crore budget film I Am, releasing this Friday. He says, “As a filmmaker, you are told by studios that people aren’t interested in your themes. I hate to sulk that no one is helping to make my film. I can’t panic. I need to find ways.” This “Dreamseller” (as he calls himself on Facebook) put up a pitch on Twitter and Facebook explaining the movie in May 2009, and within a month and a half he’d raised enough money, from 400 individuals in 35 cities — from Mumbai to Boston, Chennai to Nigeria — to start shooting. The amount varied from Rs 1,000 to more than Rs 1 lakh. The list of co-producers and co-owners of I Am scrolls long, as every contributor is recognised. People also donated their talent and time — from cooking lunches to driving cars to setting up shots. Onir says, “For many, it was the first time on the sets, it wasn’t always easy for us, but their energy brought something to the film.”

There I stood, having just been given permission to see an area of a building that few were allowed to enter. As I opened the door to the first room, the unmistakable smell of freshly cut grass pervaded my senses. The air was misty, the colors were light green, and the Mandarin name of the room I'd just entered, translated, meant "The people from the Nordic countries." With my Danish background, it was comfortably familiar--the colors seemed lifted directly from the designer Arne Jacobsen's catalogue, the smell took me right back to my parents' garden, and the air was full of spring sounds Scandinavian birds make at dusk.

The building I found myself in was huge--about the size of a football stadium--and it was located some 200 miles outside of Beijing. With the same level of zeal its country used in preparing for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, this business was fully detailing each sensory impression its products will have on potential consumers. For this business, the objective is to become a global leader in car manufacturing. Here, thousands of cars were lined up to leave an ultra-modern production facility, which, until recently, featured all the familiar global brands. Now, there was a new take on it. The cars that stretched, row upon row, were all Chinese brands designed specifically to appeal to foreign markets.

“How did you get into venture capital?”

I kind of hate that question. Not because I have any particular point of view on how I became a venture capitalist. No, I just don’t like it because like so many other people in the business I arrived here following a fairly unique path. Inevitably the person asking is trying to find a pattern that they can use to get into the business and my story isn’t helpful for them.

As I gear up to hire a new associate for the San Francisco office of First Round Capital I know there is no standard way to find the next person to join our team. Our current experience mix includes entrepreneurship, academia, banking, government, crime fighting, and some very poor scooter riding. No one here burst from the womb wanting to do venture capital yet here we all are having the time of our lives while we strive to make our portfolio companies successful.

Yahoo just bought a company called IntoNow for a price close to $20 million, Kara Swisher reports.

Facebook and Twitter were also looking to buy the startup, according to TechCrunch.

Users of IntoNow's iPhone app can "check-in" to TV programs the way Foursquare users "check-in" to restaurants and bars.

Like iPhone app Shazam, which can listen to the a song that's playing and tell you its title, IntoNow listens to the TV show and identifies it.

In a press release, Yahoo says "The addition of IntoNow will enable Yahoo! to provide enhanced media experiences and video programming, bolstering its social engagement across the Yahoo! network and on all screens."

Lose your job? Take heart. Some of the most successful people in the world have also been let go.

For example, Walt Disney got fired from a local newspaper for not being creative enough. JK Rowling lost her secretary job because she spent too much time daydreaming about a preteen wizard.

Getting fired helped kickstart their true ambitions. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book shortly after getting canned.

And Mayor Michael Bloomberg used his severance check from Salomon Brothers to start his own company. He's now the 18th richest person in America.

We all need a pick me up from time to time.

And what would be better than some of the most inspirational quotes on this beautiful blue planet of ours?There's something about inspirational and wise quotes that gets your mind churning and thinking about the positive instead of the negative.

I've collected 11 highly inspirational quotes below that will supercharge your day with positivity if you spend some time contemplating each and how each quote relates to your life.

Even though we all live completely unique lives, there still something about quotes that speak to all of us.

Last year, I finished directing a documentary film called The Work of 1000. Our heroine was Marion Stoddart, a woman who in the 1960s spearheaded a cleanup of the massively polluted Nashua River in Central Massachusetts — one of the most dramatic environmental success stories in American history. Amazingly, however, the river was her second choice for an advocacy project. She had originally wanted to help with the adoption of Korean children, and could have gone down that path, but she decided she'd get "too emotionally involved" to do a good job — and thus became an eco-pioneer instead.

How do you know if your startup idea is the next next big thing?

It’s easy. It isn’t.

Most Great Companies Started With Bad Ideas

Most great companies started off with very different ideas that were either not very good or impractical. Very rarely does a startup actually start with the idea that makes them the next big thing.

Here are just a few examples of successful companies that had very different and troubled initial ideas:

Initial idea: Allow groups of people to band together to accomplish a goal called ThePoint
Eventually: Groupon

See Inside Why can most people remember a color, but only a few can remember pitch?
—David Hardie, Perth, Australia

Robert O. Duncan, a behavioral scientist at York College, the City University of New York, responds: Although most of us believe we are better at identifying colors than sounds, our ability to identify the exact frequency of light associated with a color is actually no better than our ability to name a pitch.

Our perception of visible light depends on context. You might go shopping for house paints, for example, and be shocked to find that the particular shade of white you selected in the store makes your kitchen look pink! You may have chosen the wrong shade of white because the ambient light in the store differs from that of your home. If we could accurately identify colors, we would never make such mistakes. People may think they are more adept at identifying colors, however, because they tend to associate hues with specific objects, which do not change. For instance, we will generally perceive an apple to be red because the light reflecting off its surface remains fairly constant from moment to moment.

Ever since Johannes Kepler traipsed over half of Europe wooing aristocratic patrons, scientists have grumbled about money. But their complaints these days go beyond the familiar griping about being underpaid and underappreciated. They amount to a powerful case that the system for funding science is broken—that it hinders scientific progress and fails to deliver the most bang for the buck. Fixing the system can no longer be put off.

Most scientists finance their laboratories (and often even their own salaries) by applying to government agencies and private foundations for grants. The process has become a major time sink. In 2007 a U.S. government study found that university faculty members spend about 40 percent of their research time navigating the bureaucratic labyrinth, and the situation is no better in Europe. An experimental physicist at Columbia University says he once calculated that some grants he was seeking had a net negative value: they would not even pay for the time that applicants and peer reviewers spent on them.

Most of us are still working our jobs, waiting for our paychecks and hoping or wishing to someday be millionaires. The problem with that is that having the title of "millionaire" just doesn't hold the same oomph that it once did. Being a millionaire no longer means you won't have to work, nor does it mean that you can get anything you want. Are we now having to shoot for billionaire status if we really want to have "made it" in this world?

Money can't buy you happiness, but in many cases it certainly doesn't hurt. Particularly in capitalist economies, the accumulation of wealth is a primary life goal for many adults. We want to be happy. We want to be worry-free. We want to live the "easy life."

With 8.4 million American millionaires, is it really a worthy goal?

Apparently not. This infographic contends that "Billionaire is the new Millionaire," and with inflation heading in the vertical direction, the contention may be truthful. Who wants to be a millionaire? More importantly, does it really mean that much anymore?

You decide.

01 / Yandex >>

For mastering search. The internet search company Yandex is already three times more popular than Google in its home market (Russia) and this year, it made its move onto Google's international turf with the launch of an English-language search engine. One of Yandex's key advantages has always been the complexity of the Russian language, whose Lego-set of prefixes, roots and suffixes has forced it to be a step ahead in the nuance of its algorithms. That pushed the Firefox browser to drop Google in 2009 as its default search engine in Russia, succeeding it with Yandex.

02 / Kaspersky Lab >>

For turning hackers into an army of virus fighters. Russia's leading computer security company has lured the most brilliant Russian geeks away from hacking (their usual forte) and into its virus analysis team. With the help of these whiz kids, Kaspersky Lab has become the fourth largest antivirus-program provider in the world.

I’m a big, big fan of vacation. Employees perform at a higher level when they are rested. Just like you need sleep to function properly, you need some down time as well. I’m such a believer that I would rather have a lower salary and more weeks of vacation than a higher salary with less time off.

You’ve correctly identified the 3 problems your employees face:

1. Actual dollar costs
2. Social costs
3. Workload costs

Actual Dollar Costs: People respond to costs and the problem is that it’s extremely expensive for them to take vacation. First, there’s the actual dollar cost. If you make $52,000 a year, than one week’s pay is $1,000. Assuming everyone has 3 weeks vacation a year, that’s $3,000 a year. if you stay at your job for 10 years (certainly not unheard of in a university setting), that’s $30,000 you’re throwing away to take time off work. (And that’s assuming you get no raises over that 10 year period, which is unrealistic.)

If you Google “how to be an Entrepreneur” you get a lot of mindless clichés like “follow your passion” or “think big.” That’s not what you are going to get here.

Again, for me, being an “entrepreneur” doesn’t mean starting the next “Faceook.” Or even starting any business at all. It means finding the challenges you have in your life, and determining creative ways to overcome those challenges. However, in this post I focus mostly on the issues that come up when you first start your company. These rules also apply if you are taking an entrepreneurial stance within a much larger company (which all employees should do).

The Small Business Administration (SBA) recently announced the start of the Early Stage Innovation Fund, a program that will provide $200 million per year in equity funding “over the next five years,” to “early-stage companies (that) face difficult challenges accessing capital, particularly those without the necessary assets or cash flow for traditional bank funding.”

Ray Leach of Jump Start America argued that the new fund will dramatically increase the amount of capital available to the founders of high potential companies. I disagree. The program’s expected impact, when measured in terms of incremental increase in available capital, companies funded, or jobs created will be very small.