Hemingway, it’s said, was sitting around a table with a gathering of friends, when he wagered a bet. I can write a complete story, he said, in six words.

Money fell onto the table.

Then Papa shared:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

To this day, nobody knows if it ever actually happened, though the tale of the wager and the 6-word story has become the stuff of legend in the world of writing.

In those six words lies an entire story, rich enough to bring some to tears.

Hemingway was hailed for his efficiency with words.

Nothing was extraneous.

This past year, we brought you stories on everything from tweeting toddler toys and streamlined ATMs to news-reading apps and remote controls that magically change channels with a wave of the hand. Though wildly different from one another, these projects share a common denominator: They're all display intriguing user-interface innovations.

That’s it. We’re putting a wrap on 2010. We’ll hit the ground running again on Monday. But, until then, we leave you with a handy list of our favorite and most popular posts from 2010, all ordered in a rather random way. If you crave a little more Open Culture goodies, you can always browse through our complete archive here, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and RSS. Hope you have a safe, happy and prosperous New Year!

• 45 Great Cultural Icons Revisited
• Richard Dawkins on the Awe of Life & Science
• The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D.
• A Virtual Tour of the Sistine Chapel
• 3 Year Old Kid & Herbert von Karajan Conduct Beethoven’s 5th: Dueling Videos

Forget dieting. To help fatten your bottom line in 2011, the experts at Entrepreneur.com suggest the following new year's resolutions for business owners.

Business Planning
Harness the power of planning your time well, taking care to allocate your schedule according to priorities. Wait when it's appropriate, hurry when it's appropriate, and apply patience, vision and common sense. -- Tim Berry, Business Plans

Social Media
Do whatever it takes to get out of your comfort zone and into your "power place" to grow your business. Embrace change and new technologies, including social sites. Choose what works best for reaching your target market, and run with it. Most important: Have fun. -- Starr Hall, Social Media

Over the last few years the acronym STEM has increasingly entered debates within the collective creative industries, and also at Skillset.

To those in the creative industries STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) as a concept has really been carried on the back of the technologisation of media, with its convergence, divergence and ensuing disintegration of traditionally stable and demarcated roles.
Its apotheosis with regards to education policy is probably in the Browne Review or what is known as “The independent review of higher education funding and student finance” which promises to change the landscape of Higher Education, although the document that doesn’t even mention the acronym by name. (A simple keyword search shows the Browne report mentions ‘Science’ 6 times, ‘Arts’ 1 time, ‘Entrepreneur’ only once, and ‘Creative’ is totally absent)

This year has turned out to be a boom year for the solar industry, thanks in no small part to lucrative government subsidies in Europe, particularly in countries such as Germany and Italy. New solar project installations shot up from 7.2 GW in 2009 to an estimated 15.8 GW in 2010, according to iSuppli. But analysts are predicting slower growth in 2011 because incentives in these key European markets are set to fall quite a bit. At the same time the U.S. market could grow faster. Here are key trends I expect to see in 2011:

1. The rise of the U.S. market. Given the size of the country, solar industry folks have long counted on the U.S. as becoming a dominant solar electricity generator one day. We’ll likely see a particularly big upswing in that direction because of a confluence of state and federal policies. Congress just extended a popular grant program that helps to cover 30 percent of the cost of installing solar projects. The extension will end Dec. 31, 2011, and projects that start construction by the deadline will still qualify to get the money. That deadline will prompt companies to quicken their project development pace.

For me, New Year’s Day has never been about resolutions – but realizations.

What has worked over the past year? More important, what hasn’t – and what have I learned in the process?

I imagine college students and recent graduates – millennials in general – are going through that thought process right now, especially as it relates to their careers. (Or lack thereof).

And although I’m 50 years old and wouldn’t pretend to speak for a young professional separated in age by an entire generation… I have had the privilege of working with many students over the past year. They are universally anxious about their futures, and are hoping the economy gets better.

It's been a big year for greentech and renewable energy and a big year for Greentech Media.

Even The Simpsons allow themselves the luxury of a clipshow every so often, so we're going to indulge ourselves on this last day of the year.

Here are some of the lists we've compiled in 2010.

Fourteen Tectonic Shifts in Greentech: 2011 is almost here. Here’s what might happen.

Greentech's Top Thirteen Faux Pas: You can't be right all the time.

15 Powerpoint Slides That Shook the Earth: By law, these slides must appear in all green powerpoint slide decks.

The more successful your community is at using information and communications technology (ICT) to build its economy, the more you need to think about those who are not online. I wrote in my last post that we don't always know who they really are – but the odds are good that they are largely people at the economic or social margins, whether due to poverty, lack of education, age, disability or other factors.

Why, aside from common humanity, does success breed a need for digital inclusion? Because when ICT is the route to success, it can actually deepen economic and social exclusion, which breeds social ills that cost everyone else a lot of money for criminal justice, social services and health care.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times — at least for Silicon Valley startups in 2010.

While many smaller, lesser known newbies languished as venture capital investments declined overall, those that did score, scored big, and have kept themselves in the headlines ever since.

So where did VCs put their money in ‘10? VentureBeat teamed up with venture capital analytics and reference researchers VC Experts to bring you the top 10 largest single investments in tech startups in 2010 — and why they had so many investors foaming at the mouth.

Although the economic downturn was historic, we were surprised to see how many savvy investors and startups simply shut down during this time period. While conserving cash was critical to survival for a lot of companies, whenever possible, that should have been done within the framework of doing more with less, rather than simply doing little or nothing at all.

It’s not part of our inherent DNA as entrepreneurs to eschew risk, and we must once again celebrate and reward the risk-takers among us as we head into 2011, because it’s these groups of individuals that will help pull us out of the morass of the past two years.

We’re already seeing signs that the startup community is getting back to its innovative roots, and we fully expect entrepreneurial endeavors to come back into style over the next year. Companies and consumers are beginning to spend again, the exit markets are rebounding, appetites for risk are resuming and natural selection has taken place – thinning out weaker organizations, as the stronger have survived.

Pundits often assume that what most established businesses need to survive – low taxes and less regulation – are equally important for fast‐growing tech firms. In fact, recent interviews with leaders of fast‐growing firms in a variety of industries and growth stages reveal something quite different. The good news is that what they want, the new governor can deliver readily.

To find out what would make Connecticut a compelling place for fast‐growing technology companies, starting in June 2010 the Connecticut Technology Council interviewed a cross‐section of Connecticut’s fastest growing and strongest enterprises in most technology clusters, from start‐ups to established titans. We also assembled a team of business leaders and graduate students, predominately from Yale and University of Connecticut, to research issues brought up by the CEOs and to review past reports and analyses of states’ competiveness. What we found surprised us.

Today’s most successful entrepreneurs and managers have a common and surprisingly consistent view—the state is not on their innovation and growth wave length. One after another the CEOs told us they like the quality of life here, but that it is a suboptimal location for their business. They expressed concern that the state’s leaders “don’t get it” when it comes to making Connecticut’s institutions flexible and innovation‐oriented. And given the high costs of running a business in Connecticut, the CEOs we spoke with expect our leaders to “get it.”

Download the PDF

If you've just stumbled upon Business Insider recently, then you've missed a ton of excellent stuff.

Our writers compiled a list of the most popular business strategy and entrepreneurship articles we've written in 2010.

See the best of marketing, strategy, social media, hiring, and just plain fun articles for a perfect "in-between-week" reading break.

One of the most pleasurable days of my life was when my kids picked out items they wanted to sell, put price tags on them, painted signs that they then copied at a copy store and then hung up all over town, and then bargained, negotiated, and made deals left and right until the front of our lawn was empty of all the items they wanted to sell.

Every kid needs entrepreneurial experience. The feeling that you create something powerful enough that people pay money for it. Its exhilarating and inspires growth in so many ways. But its not about reading, or studying, or being smart, or even providing a good role model. The only way your kid will be an entrepreneur is if he or she starts TODAY.

If your startup is great enough to get a term sheet from angel investors or a venture capitalist, the next step for the investor is to complete the dreaded due diligence process. This is the last step of the process, where surprises in the evaluation of the management team, documentation, and personnel problems can derail the investment.

Some startups do nothing to prepare for the due diligence process, assuming the people and business plan documents will speak for themselves. Others stage elaborate “training” sessions, to “assure” that everyone tells the same story. The right answer is somewhere in between.

I believe that proactive preparation for due diligence is a bigger job than the work for investor meetings, because your whole team is involved, not just you as the CEO. If there are financial anomalies, or someone on the team doesn’t know the current strategy, or is unhappy with you or the company, the investment will be jeopardized.

The burn: Finding yourself stuck in an unfulfilling annual process cordially called “life.”

The diagnosis: Going through life without assessing performance, results, and direction only encourages monotony and mediocrity. Machines were created for mindless, rote tasks, not humans. In fact, what makes us unique compared to even the most sophisticated robots is our ability to reflect and ruminate.

Life should not be a mundane process – and nor does it need to be. With some thought, reflection, and planning life can become a journey of purpose and passion. But I assure you, this doesn’t happen without being proactive and very honest with yourself. Keep in mind:

If you do not confront your past, you are destined to repeat it.

BEIJING - China's first national private equity "fund of funds", which invests in other funds, started operating on Tuesday, and one of its primary aims is to support the overseas expansion of Chinese enterprises.

Set up by China Development Bank (CDB) and Suzhou Venture Group, the Suzhou-based Guochuang Fund of Funds has 60 billion yuan ($9 billion) under management.

The first-phase investment of 15 billion yuan will mainly be raised among big Chinese companies and funds, such as the Social Security Fund, China Life Insurance Company Limited, China Reinsurance (Group) Corporation, and Huawei Technologies.

The initial investment consists of two parts, 10 billion yuan for private equity and 5 billion yuan for venture capital investment.