Like many youngsters, and those young at heart, seven-year-old Max Geissbuhler and his dad dreamed of visiting space -- and armed with just a weather balloon, a video camera, and an iPhone, in a way they did just that.

The father-and-son team from Brooklyn managed to send their homemade spacecraft up nearly 19 miles, high into the stratosphere, bringing back perhaps the most impressive amateur space footage ever. The amazing footage starts at 2:35 minutes in the video below.

Last spring, the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Economic Council issued an RFI to collect feedback about university commercialization, including recommendations for more effective models, descriptions of current best practices and better metrics to gauge success. Apparently they’ve been reading the responses and may release a summary of the responses publicly. Federal policy makers should continue in this vein and fund a series of small-scale, test pilot programs to test out people’s suggestions.

Finding effective policy for an enterprise as vast as that of university technology development is difficult. Particularly since the massive university/industry/government ecosystem won’t reflect the impact of change for years and years to come (in other words, “turning the battleship” takes time, patience and a lot of resources). Small scale, government-funded pilot programs would be cheap, yield fast results and enable a lot of different tech transfer models to be tested. Successful funding recipients (hopefully tech transfer practitioners would be encouraged to participate in this) would propose tech transfer pilot programs that are novel and can be quickly implemented and later scaled up.

Here at Mashable, we chronicle significant social media campaigns on a daily basis. Some are notable simply because of a brand name, others get recognized for the technology or platform they employ, but the best always rise above the rest in how they resonate with readers and online audiences.

Social media affords brands limitless potential in the realm of creativity. The most creative of the bunch find a way to make something magical or unthinkable happen. Remember when the Old Spice guy’s viral videos were the only thing anyone could talk about? Or what about the controversial Foursquare () badge crafted by MTV that encourages young adults to check in at STD clinics? These are not your garden variety social media campaigns.

Washington, DC – As a part of President Obama's commitment to increase investments and engagement in game-changing innovations, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has announced the launch of Development Innovation Ventures (DIV).

Through DIV, USAID seeks to work with a variety of partners to create innovative scalable solutions to core development challenges. Borrowing from the private venture capital model, DIV will seek, through a competitive process to invest resources in promising high-risk, high-return projects that breakthrough innovations often require, but are often difficult to undertake using traditional Agency structures. DIV's goal is to identify and support innovations with a proven, cost-effective impact that can match the scale of microfinance—75 million end users worldwide.

Maura O'Neill, Chief Innovation Officer, and Michael Kremer, a world-renowned economist from Harvard University originally conceived the idea of DIV. Kremer will be joining USAID as the Scientific Director of the DIV and will help recruit new talent and ideas to the Agency.

For technology startups, the opportunity to make their pitches to potential investors at venues like the recent Ontario Venture Capital Forum is more than welcome.

But few expect the climate of scarcity to change quickly. Instead, they hope to make contacts that could eventually lead to cash.

"It is very different market from 2000," said Alexander Rink, chief executive officer of Gazaro, an electronic products online pricing comparison service.

So you want to be an entrepreneur. But what are the criteria and how do you learn the basics of entrepreneurship and the values and knowledge needed to chart a course in a field based on following your own path? First, immerse yourself in knowledge. Whether taking an academic path or learning by doing, entrepreneurship is about gaining the information necessary to test your ideas against a real market with real customers, and about figuring out how to operate within real regulations and limitations as well. We’ve put together a small crash course, along with a list of academic opportunities should you choose to follow that path. It’s time to start the learning process. Good luck!

If you’ve considered the possibility of becoming an entrepreneur there are eight traits that are important in describing the perfect entrepreneur.

1. Risk Taker – Entrepreneurs understand that in order to make a profit they will need to assume a certain level of financial risk.

2. Business Manager – Entrepreneurs have a keen understanding of finance and are well equipped to manage the finances of a business.

3. Organizer – Entrepreneurs are well equipped in the area of organizing all aspects of the business for current and long-term growth.

4. Marketing Expert – Entrepreneurs are capable of understanding and implementing marketing strategies both online as well as offline.

My company, Brazen Careerist, is moving from Madison, WI, to Washington, DC, where our new CEO lives.

Running the company has been absolute hell. Not that I didn’t know it would be hell. It’s my third startup. Each has had its own hell before we were solidly funded, but this one was so bad that my electricity was turned off, and I really thought I was going to die from stress.

So while my company moves its center to DC, I’m staying in Wisconsin. I just married a farmer and my two young sons and I are learning to live among the wonders of pigs and cattle and corn.

Wordpress may have begun life as a blogging tool, but the open source publishing platform has evolved into something resembling a full-fledged CMS in recent years, especially with the release of Wordpress 3.0 in June. In fact, it can easily be used to manage a Website for products and businesses, without or without a blog.

While we certainly recommend that any small business maintain a blog, it doesn't have to be the main focus of your company's Wordpress-based Website, thanks to the multitude of themes that are designed with products and businesses in mind.

Simply, creative thinking techniques are utilizing methods or procedures for discovering new or better ways to do anything. There is nothing in life that can’t be improved or revamped. All too often it is the accepting of things as they are or it just can’t be done attitude which holds us back from looking for a better way. Once creative thinking is put into position then new ideas flow freely that let the human mind to see the existing situation in a new light. The encouragement and exchange of thoughts and suggestions from capable and learned group participants can produce amazing results. So what type of techniques should be applied when conducting creative thinking forums or meetings for achieving the best results?

How to employ the Most Creative Thinking Techniques.

1. The most important requirement is believing that something can be realized, changed or enhanced. When there is no impression for the success of the project then the invested time of the individuals is wasted. All participants must have an “I’m sure that I can do this” attitude. When you begin with this belief the power and energy will flow to the ideas and creativity of all the members.

Everyone has a creative side, whether they can paint great masterpieces, write classic novels, make effective decisions or solve problems. In some people the creative side is supressed, but in others it is closer to the surface.

Whatever you want to have more creativity for, you can develop your creativity through hypnosis and reaching inside yourself for your hidden talents.

The following eleven steps will help you to develop your creativity.

* Do crosswords and other puzzles that exercise your brain. The more these require you to access your creative side, the more you will develop that side of your brain.

The Innovation Union is key to achieving the goals of the Europe 2020 Strategy for a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. It aims to improve conditions and access to finance for research and innovation in Europe, to ensure that innovative ideas can be turned into products and services that create growth and jobs.

As the state and U.S. economies sank, Michigan’s University Research Corridor grew in areas critical to the state’s resurgence: Educating more students and boosting research and technology gains, according to a new benchmark study.

The 2010 Empowering Michigan report shows URC partners Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University have improved in several key benchmarks since the first study in 2007. The study, comparing Michigan's URC with leading innovation clusters around the world, was conducted by Anderson Economic Group, building on data collected over the past three years.

After last month’s TechCrunch Disrupt, and to provide a business companion to the popular “Lean Startup” customer development methodology, this TC Teardown focuses not on how one specific company makes money but rather seeks to provide a breakdown of the main general ways consumer Internet startups try to make money. Consider it a guide to Internet business models. If you are currently thinking about or are in the process of developing your own consumer startup idea, these key business models will help give you a working knowledge of what it takes to get to $10 million in revenues (assuming you have a good product that the market wants).

(Before you post in the comments about how unique your startup is, this list is not meant to capture every consumer business permutation. There are always going to be exceptions. And the breakaway companies like Zynga, Groupon, Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, to name just a few, inevitably introduce nuances to pre-existing models.)

In November 2009, Ben Tseitlin was driving along on the 280 highway between San Francisco and Palo Alto when he noticed something weird. There was a Toyota Prius next to him with a weird spolier-like thing on the roof. And on top of that was some sort of spinning contraption. It was weird enough that Tseitlin decided to take a video of it and posted it to his Facebook page, guessing it was sort of test wind-powered Prius. Little did Ben know at the time, it was actually something much more.

What Tseitlin captured, of course, was the Google self-driving car. The secret project, which Google revealed for the first time today, is a combination of different technologies developed by Google that will allow a car to drive itself — yes, even on the highway. Google has disclosed that they’ve been testing these cars “recently“, but they’ve clearly been testing them for longer than that, as Tseitlin’s video proves. The fact that these specially-equipped Priuses (and one Audi TT) have racked up over 140,000 miles (1,000 of while have been completely human-free) on the road, suggests a longer cycle of testing as well.

This is the easiest way to get money from investors for your business idea: Be a person who has made millions of dollars for investors in the past.

But if you are unfortunately not that kind of person yet, what else can you do to tilt the odds in your favor? I’ve been asking local investors and entrepreneurs for their best advice about how to raise money for a new venture, especially for a first-time founder.

Israel may have transformed itself over the past decade into one of the world's vibrant economies, but innovation training is nonetheless sorely lacking in the nation's universities, according to Dr Milly Perry, director of the research authority at the Open University of Israel and CEO of OPMOP Ltd Technology Transfer Company.

She was speaking on 14 September at the OECD's Institutional Management in Higher Education general conference in Paris, titled Higher Education in a World Changed Utterly: Doing more with less.

"Israel has become known for its entrepreneurial activity, but the 'start-up nation' culture has actually not encouraged innovation in higher education," Perry said. "Innovation is seen as something nice to have, rather than a necessity, across the higher education system."

Michael Dell founded Dell Inc. in 1984 with $1,000 and an idea to build relationships directly with computer buyers. In 2010 his company earned $52.9 billion in fiscal net revenue, in a market that is more competitive than ever before.

Dell’s first rule to keeping an edge: failing.

“When you get a business that changes very quickly, you get some of that naturally,” he says. “You just have to change. To be successful, what you have to do is have an acceptance of risk and you have to be pretty explicit about that, because if you don’t accept risk, you don’t get any innovation. And that means part of risk is you have to accept failure because not everything works.”