Top Prospect, a startup that helps members find jobs for their social network friends, is enhancing its social recruiting service Tuesday with improvements for job seekers and job matchmakers alike.

As a primer, Top Prospect is a four month-old startup that rewards users with referral bonuses — $10,000 to $20,000 per position — should they successfully recruit their Facebook or LinkedIn contacts for open jobs.

The site currently features more than 80 companies — including some of the hottest startups and venture capital firms — with 300 plus open listings. All in all, that translates to more than $3.5 million in referral bonuses up for grabs.

This year is a throwaway anniversary for Hoshi Ryokan. The Japanese innkeeper fluffed its first pillow in 718, meaning 2011 marks its 1,293rd year in continuous operation. Not a very round number and so no big deal, except for the fact that Hoshi Ryokan is the world’s oldest continuously operating business, according to Family Business magazine. When you’re in such exclusive company, every day above ground is a good one.

I’m not here to talk about Hoshi Ryokan, however. That’s because, for me, the more interesting story belongs to Kongo Gumi, another Japanese firm that formerly held the position as world’s oldest business. Kongo Gumi built its first temple in 578, so it would have celebrated 1,433 years in operation this year.

With the advent of LinkedIn, Facebook, and dozens of other websites requiring your profile, the old-fashioned written resume is simply an artifact of a hiring practice that is slow to change, and should be abolished. In fact, if your profile is not already on one of these sites, it probably means that you aren’t in the business market anyway.

Today, most personnel organizations readily admit that they already use the Internet to cross-check what they see in your written resume. You can bet that if the stories don’t match, they will more likely believe the online version. That’s why I emphasized in an earlier article how important it is to keep your online image clean.

Japanese eyeglass company Zoff has launched a new service on their website allowing users to try on glasses using a augmented reality virtual mirror . Using any computer with a web browser and webcam, users align their heads with an area marked in the screen and the glasses appear like magic on the face on the screen. No matter how you twist and turn the glasses remain on the user’s face.

Common: Doing everything or nothing under the label of “student” – often leading to either burnout or dropout.

Uncommon: This week marks an important milestone in my life. I am no longer a full time student of conventional education. Elation abounds. It’s back to business full time.

Anyone who knows me or reads my blog will know that I often wrestle with the concept and quality (return on time and money) of conventional education. Looking back, however, I did learn some key things – it just so happened that the majority of my most valuable “education” took place outside of the traditional curriculum.

When people ask me about the likely development of the venture capital industry I always answer that it is governed by two somewhat independent cycles.

The first is the macro-economic cycle. When the overall economy is performing poorly it is harder for startups to grow their businesses and create value and those that make it as far as exit find their companies attract lower valuations both at IPO and in M&A. These factors depress returns across the industry which reduces the attractiveness of venture capital as an asset class and hence the size of the venture industry as measured by investment into venture capital funds is driven in part by the macroeconomic cycle.

In my 11 years in this industry venture industry suffered significantly in the downturns from 2001-04 and 2008-2009.

The big news yesterday was Microsoft's acquisition of Skype for a striking sticker price of $8.5 billion.

Most people stopped at the price, expressing surprise that Microsoft could spend so much money for a company that had recently been spun out at a $2.5 billion valuation.

But here are two numbers that explain the logic behind the deal: $14.7 and 50.

What do they mean?

$14.70 is what Microsoft paid per user for Skype, according to Atomic Inc. When eBay bought Skype back in 2005, they paid $45.60 per user. So Skype's price went up, but its price per user went down. Another way to look at it is that when Microsoft invested in Facebook at a $15 billion valuation, a move then viewed as an act of desperation and now recognized as a masterstroke, the social network had less than 100 million users, which works out to more than $150 per user. Comparatively, Skype is a bargain.

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, May 10 (UPI) -- Industrialized nations need to make renewable energy a more attractive option to keep climate change in check, a U.N. report from Abu Dhabi says.

A U.N.-backed special report on renewable energy resources says that renewable energy sources like wind and solar energy could meet as much as 80 percent of the global energy mix by 2050 if major economies create the right incentives.

Initiative is the ability we all have to create, initiate projects and develop new ideas. Some people have great initiative and others have little.

Finishative is a neologism that means the ability (that few people have) to finish what they started or finish what others started.

It is the ability to put into practice an idea and take it to the end.

We know that companies which place a greater emphasis on information content in their business decisions will be those that face fewer surprises. And we all know that surprises in business are rarely a good thing.

In fact, getting the right information will be a key success factor for companies in the 21st century.

So why do so many businesses shy away from investing in research, particularly about new product ideas, acquisitions or business expansion opportunities, but will happily plunge ahead with a scheme and rack up million dollar losses when it turns out to be a dud?

A new report, compiled by the World Economic Fund and INSEAD The Business School of the World, called “The Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011” shows that New Zealand and Australia are the two fastest countries in the world to start a business in. According to the report, New Zealand requires only one day to start a business while Australia requires two.

In third place, after New Zealand and Australia, comes Singapore, Georgia and Macedonia with a three day requirement to start a new business. Below comes Belgium and Hungary, with four days each, and Albania, Canada, Iceland and Saudi Arabia with five days needed to launch a business.

Start-up companies in Canada are a little bit like animals in the wilderness.

Many die of natural causes soon after birth. Some survive a little longer, but are eaten by predators. Only a few survive long enough to run with the other young gazelles.

The key to creating a successful innovation economy in Canada is to help more of these young start-up animals survive—with their survival, we’ll likely see the development of high-growth companies that create jobs and help build a strong, new knowledge-based economy in this country.

As chief technology officer for the Obama administration, Aneesh Chopra has been heavily involved in efforts to expand access to huge amounts of government data, and encourage techies and entrepreneurs to help solve public policy problems using that data. Xconomy’s Wade Roush talked with Chopra last year, producing this in-depth Q&A that included discussions about healthcare innovation, the government’s role in baiting entrepreneurs with competitions, and big data feeding commercial solutions.

Since then, President Barack Obama announced a new initiative called Startup America, a public-private partnership that aims to boost the economy by improving the conditions for entrepreneurs. Chopra has been among the key evangelists of this effort, which he described as “the national call to arms, so to speak, around the opportunities to promote high-growth entrepreneurship.”

A feature in Fast Company highlights Portland State University's Social Innovation Incubator as part of a virtual tour of what the magazine calls the "United States of Innovation."

PSU's Social Innovation Incubator, launched last year, was recognized for its "Circuit Program," which provides six months of startup assistance to five new social entrepreneurs each year.

The incubator offers services including business consulting, coaching, assistance from MBA students, networking and workshops. Companies in the incubator include Preciva, which last month won $3,000 at a socially responsible business plan competition, Sustainable Harvest, Central City Concern and Tipping Bucket.

ATLANTA – Georgia Tech is launching a new four-month accelerator program twice a year to back 12 to 20 startups, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

The program, to be announced at the ATDC Startup Showcase today, is aimed at helping fill the early-stage funding gap in the region.

Acclerators, from Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator and Boston’s TechStars to new ones such as TechStarts+ and LaunchBox Digital in NC,have had a fair amount of success in helping fledgling companies develop “fundable” businesses in a shorter time than they would likely take otherwise.

If you’re one of the many who have decided to put off retirement or you’re simply not quite there yet, Garner News offers a couple tips on how to prepare for retirement at the last minute.

If you have no employees other than your spouse or a partner, you can establish an “owner-only” 401(k), also known as an individual 401(k). This plan offers many of the same advantages of a traditional 401(k): a range of investment options, tax-deductible contributions and the opportunity for tax-deferred earnings growth. You may even be able to choose a Roth option for your 401(k), which allows you to make after-tax contributions that have the opportunity to grow tax free.

Virtual work can significantly reduce useless meetings, eliminate commuting time and free up time for knowledge workers to focus on what is important: being creative and dealing with complex problems.

Virtual work also changes the organizational dynamic. Because you can’t watch each person and micro-manage the work, the organization must come up with real performance measurements (instead of obsolete measures such as pay for time), and that in itself might increase productivity.

Microsoft is in advanced talks to acquire Skype, which revolutionized telephone calls over the Internet, for $8.5 billion, including the assumption of debt, according to people involved in the negotiations.

A deal is expected to be announced Tuesday morning, these people said, although they cautioned that the talks could still fall apart. A spokesman for Skype declined to comment, and calls to Microsoft were not returned.

The acquisition would be Microsoft’s largest ever and it is the software giant’s effort to gain a foothold in the world of voice and video communications. Microsoft would be able leverage Skype’s more than 600 million registered users into using its other products. For example, it could be connected to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Kinect systems, and integrated into the company’s flagship product, Office, as a way for business users to better collaborate.

There are times when you just have to tell your friends about something — but not necessarily your Facebook friends.

Just ask Becca Akroyd. When Ms. Akroyd, a 29-year-old lawyer in Sacramento, Calif., wanted to share a picture of her new vegetable garden, she didn’t turn to Facebook. Instead she posted it on Path, a service that lets people share pictures, videos and messages with a small group.

“The people I have on my Path are the people who are going to care about the day-to-day random events in my life, or if my dog does something funny,” Ms. Akroyd said. “On Facebook, I have colleagues or family members who wouldn’t necessarily be interested in those things — and also that I wouldn’t necessarily want to have view those things.”