Yesterday was Demo Day for Y Combinator‘s latest crop of startups and All Things Digital has a brief description of 24 of the 43 presenting companies. Apparently 19 of the presentations were ‘off the record’ and were not included. Additionally, one company didn’t present because it was already under termsheet for a Series A investment and hence prohibited from pitching to investors.

These are now some of the hottest startups on the planet. All have been through the Y-Combinator selection process and then programme and many will now be chased down by some of the US’s best VCs. Additionally, all have been offered a $150k convertible loan by DST/Ron Conway.

The world's most important financial center is London, followed by New York, according to the newest Global Financial Centres Index.

But that won't last long.

Respondents in the survey by Z/Yen overwhelmingly named East Asian capitals as the cities most likely to become more significant and where they are most likely to open new offices.

Is your small business dealing with an increased workload and more demand from clients and customers? That’s a good thing. But with the economy still uncertain, many of us are leery about taking on full-time employees to help with the workload—even when we’re overwhelmed.

Well, there is a solution—and it’s closer to home than you might think. I first wrote about the trend of “ruralsourcing” on Small Business Trends in the summer of 2010, when several news outlets reported on the practice. Essentially, ruralsourcing means outsourcing jobs—but instead of outsourcing to India or China, the jobs are being outsourced to small and rural communities in the United States.

Getting people to link to your website is a struggle for any business. But it can be even harder as an SMB when you don’t have the large brand, immediate recognition or authority of a bigger, more established company. And that’s something I hear from many SMB owners- they think they’re doing everything right, but they’re frustrated that folks still seem wary of linking to their sites. What’s going on?

Below are nine reasons why people won’t link to your SMB site. Let me know if any sound a bit too familiar. We won’t tell.

Many entrepreneurs I know feel guilty about not quitting their day job when initiating their startup, worrying about not giving their all to an employer, juggling the multiple roles, or even a legal conflict of interest. I’ll try to offer some guidelines to address these issues, but I generally recommend you keep the day job until your new company is producing real revenue.

The exceptions to this advice would be if you are being paid for your startup position by external funding, or if you have enough money in the bank for both you and the startup to survive for at least a year. Otherwise, I suggest that founders be up-front with their employers, with an honest commitment that the “side” work on the potential startup will not jeopardize committed results.

As Congress moves closer to reforming a patent system that often has become an impediment to the innovation it is meant to inspire, many in America's innovation community - including garage entrepreneurs and venture capitalists - are worried that the reforms are only going to make matters worse.

"The way the bill came out really disadvantages small start-up companies," said Kelly Slone, an analyst at the National Venture Capital Association, which is among a diverse group of opponents to the America Invents Act of 2011.

The association, the nation's largest trade group for early-stage investors, complains that the proposal moving through Congress creates new ways for third-party outsiders to challenge the validity of an issued patent, a move that allows established companies with teams of product developers and litigation war chests to "string out small companies until they are out of money," Slone said.

Michael J. Dailey wants more space so some of his larger incubator tenants aren't working on top of each other.

Dailey, executive director of the Frederick Innovative Technology Center Inc. business incubator, said he is seeking mezzanine wet lab space — from 1,000 to 10,000 total square feet — in Frederick for the incubator's larger bioscience tenants.

There is "great demand for that kind of lab space in Frederick," he said, and incubator officials are evaluating three possible locations: 7320 Executive Way, with about 18,000 square feet; 7210 Corporate Court, about 12,000 square feet; and a location on Pegasus Court, which has close to 11,000 square feet of lab space and 8,000 square feet of warehouse space.

A new scheme called the Grant for Research and Development is to be introduced in the UK from 4 April 2011, offering individual payments of up to £250,000 for small and medium-sized companies to carry out R&D on new products and services.

The scheme, to be overseen by the Technology Strategy Board will offer three types of grant:

* Proof-of-market grants to assess commercial viability through market research, market testing and initial planning;
* Proof-of-concept grants to explore the technical feasibility and commercial potential of a new technology, product or process through, for example, a feasibility study, basic prototyping and specialist testing;
* Development of prototype grants to develop small demonstrators, protect intellectual property, and carry out market testing and product design.

The maximum funding available will be £25,000 for proof-of-market grants, £100,000 for proof-of-concept grants and £250,000 for development of prototype grants.

There were three businessmen walking down a long and winding road. No-one knew how all three came to be on the road at the same time, but there they were. Their names were Safe, Potential and Already There.

Safe (as his name suggests) was happy to be wherever there was room for him. He followed the coat tails of Potential and Already There and often stopped to admire the view, then run to catch up with his two friends later, out of breath and giddy just for being around others.

Potential was a strange one. He always seemed intense, and was forever taking notes of his surroundings, and testing new directions out to see if there were other areas the road might lead. Safe wasn’t too keen on Potential – he just seemed too erratic.

Already There didn’t care for either of his traveling colleagues – he accepted that sometimes you have to put up with company, but that was a bearable annoyance when you knew where you were and now you were just enjoying the surroundings.

As the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis slowly comes under control, global attention is turning to broader existential questions about nuclear power. Despite providing 6% of the world's power without emissions and fatalities from their nuclear facilities, countries like Germany and China have announced slow-downs to their nuclear programs, and other countries may soon follow.

How is this going to affect nuclear power around the world? If we wanted to turn off all the nuclear plants, how easy would it be? New Scientist, using the World Nuclear Association's Reactor Database, has made this helpful interactive map of the world's nuclear power plants (minus a few in South America and South Africa). The colors of the dots represent different types of plants.

People have paid good money to hear Eric Koester‘s advice about running a startup. One of his cardinal rules: Don’t go into business with people you don’t know very well. “Founders—it’s like marriage. You’re basically pinning your hopes on each other,” Koester says.

So much for that bit of wisdom. This time Koester ignored his own counsel to co-found Zaarly, an online buying startup that tweaks some of the current trends in crowd commerce by putting buyers at the center of a name-your-price market. Say you’re in a social emergency and would pay $100 for a decent bottle of wine to be delivered to your hotel by dinnertime. Zaarly lets people put those kinds of bids out to the crowd and see if anyone’s willing to make a quick buck.

Let’s face it, the scores of small towns dotting the Hoosier landscape aren’t exactly magnets for young entrepreneurs aspiring to build companies.

But a bill introduced by Sue Ellspermann, R-Ferdinand, and signed by Gov. Mitch Daniels March 22, could help stem the tide of population and job losses plaguing so many communities.

“It’s not going to solve world hunger, but it might create 50 to 100 new businesses,” she said. “If one in 100 becomes a large company, that would be fabulous.”

I came across this headline on Yahoo’s home page yesterday: “22 Secrets HR Won’t Tell You About Getting A Job”.

Apparently this was a guest post on Yahoo, written originally for Reader’s Digest Magazine. Reader’s Digest has some good headline writers; I was immediately intrigued. But as I began reading the list of “secrets”, it seemed that once they delivered the great headline, they handed the post over to sensationalist tabloid writers to complete the article.

As I read, I thought how depressed and confused many job seekers likely would be after reading this article!

That was the question I got asked the most during my time in Austin and San Francisco this month. Perhaps it's become the new ice-breaker at networking events. But also people are genuinely curious and unsure about whether the tech scene has entered another bubble. My answer to that perennial question over the years has never been focused on money and the valuation of companies. That's the way most commenters have addressed it over the past couple of months. Rather, I look at the state of product innovation in startups and big Internet companies. Are we still seeing innovation in web products and across market segments? For the most part, I think the answer to that is yes.

Based on the current state of innovation, I'd argue that we are NOT in a tech bubble at this time. We're seeing a lot of innovation in mobile, especially. Also with evolving trends like Internet of Things and tablets. The 'social media' market is one where we are seeing copycat products and 'me too' features, so that market has perhaps jumped the shark. But overall, I'd argue that we're not in a bubble.

AngelList, a sort of social network that brings entrepreneurs and investors together to talk about and fund deals, is more controversial than the average Joe might think. But one thing’s clear, top tier venture capitalists are using the site to find companies.

OATV Partner Bryce Roberts recently unsubscribed, citing too much noise in the email flow from the site, as well as a personal issue with the herd mentality of investors around certain deals. That created more yelling and personal attacks by bloggers than I’ve seen in a while (much of it rounded up here).

For consumers, the evidence of innovation- whether it be a new, more advanced phone or a more efficient, fuel-saving car- can be fairly obvious. But, as Gregory Ferenstein highlighted earlier this month, measuring that progress- as well as the multitude of other advances in technology developed and marketed by U.S. firms each year can be a difficult task. Faced with a world where the simple awarding of patents no longer reflects trends in innovation and business practices, Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office David Kappos recently called for the institution of a new way of measuring innovation.

01 / Epocrates >>

For creating software that gives doctors and nurses instant information on drug-to-drug interactions, treatment recommendations, and more on their mobile devices or laptops. Coming up: mobile access to electronic health records.

02 / SynCardia Systems >>

For giving mobility to artificial-heart recipients. Syncardia makes the world's only FDA-approved completely artificial heart. Now, thanks to a 13-pound portable power supply, recipients can leave the hospital for the first time and return home. During a ten-year study for the FDA, 79 percent of patients successfully lived on the man-made heart until receiving a human heart transplant.

LATE LAST SPRING, Omid Farhang, vice president and creative director at the advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, started hearing a word around the office: "carrots." He didn't think much of it at first. Crispin specializes in lavish, zeitgeisty campaigns for brands such as Burger King and Old Navy. New clients are often assigned code names, to keep them a secret as long as possible. Carrots probably meant a new campaign for Nike or Frito-Lay. Then Farhang heard the brief. "I was like, Wait, carrots is carrots?" he says, laughing.

Bolthouse Farms sells nearly a billion pounds of carrots a year -- the carrots Farhang kept hearing about -- under a number of different brand names and supermarket labels. Only Grimmway Farms, a few minutes down the road in Bakersfield, California, sells more, just barely. Together, the two companies control more than 80% of the carrot market in the United States. As produce growers go, they are huge businesses -- in Bolthouse's case, between $600 million and $800 million a year in revenue, including premium beverages (carrot juice, of course, as well as açai, fruit smoothies, and vanilla chai) and salad dressings.

Many entrepreneurs actually refuse to do financial projections beyond the first year, insisting that no one can predict the future. They need to realize that investors ask for projections, not merely as predictions, but more as commitments from the founder and his team. If you are not willing to commit, don’t expect anyone to back you.

In reality, you need to set these projections as goals for your own use, to convince employees as well as investors that you have a business which is challenging, but achievable. Projecting the financials should be the last step of your business plan preparation, since it assumes you already know the opportunity size, customer buying habits, pricing, costs, and competition.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. (TheStreet) -- What is an entrepreneur? A standard definition is someone in possession of a venture, idea or innovation around which he or she builds a business. It is a person who takes risks to succeed. Today's entrepreneur has become almost synonymous with "business owner," but the reality is that there are many business owners who are not entrepreneurs -- they are not pursuing a "new idea."

Entrepreneurs and business owners face significantly different issues. When using the term "entrepreneur," think about people (and their companies) that want to become the next big thing, the next Facebook, Apple(AAPL_), Google(GOOG_), Amazon(AMZN_) or Zappos. They are not in business simply to achieve a level of income to support their lifestyle. Entrepreneurs want more than to pay the bills today; they want future wealth.