One of the reasons that now is the time to be an entrepreneur is the explosion of startup assistance organizations, usually called incubators or accelerators. According to the National Business Incubator Association (NBIA), there are over 7,000 of these locations worldwide, and even new online versions like Pitchswag springing up here and there.

Image: Free Digital Photos

It was only day four that the feelings of responsibility and guilt began setting in. I was halfway around the world, settling into life in Southeast Asia. It was a completely new reality. The culture was intoxicating and ready to learn more about this exotic world.

The purpose of the trip was simply: to travel, work, and live the Freedom Lifestyle to the fullest. As you might guess, this isn’t an easy task, but it’s doable.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Not a lot of people get the chance to work directly under billionaire founders and CEOs.

That’s why most people take what they see in the press or movies and create their own – often false and distorted – images of what it’s like to work with them.

Image: Business Insider

Online marketplaces such as Uber and Instacart are rapidly transforming the way people get what they want – whether it’s a ride, a meal, or a pet sitter – when they want it. To make that happen, these companies are on a hiring spree, one that’s gone virtually unnoticed by the statisticians and economists who track the labor market.

Image: Free Digital Photos

One of the toughest decisions for a startup is how to price their product or service. The alternatives range from giving it away for free, to pricing based on costs, to charging what the market will bear (premium pricing). The implications of the decision you make are huge, defining your brand image, your funding requirements, and your long-term business viability.

Image: Wikipedia

The day has come. You’ve founded, built and decided to sell your company. It’s been your baby for a few years and you’re happy to let it go for new challenges, whatever your reasons. Already up for sale and marketed by business brokers, a few buyers have expressed interest. Now this is where it get very interesting. I have sat in meetings selling my own company or project and I have sat in meetings potentially buying or investing in companies. I have also had the privilege of sitting around the table listening to buyers and sellers engaging.

It seems that Labor Day always comes too soon for the boys and girls of summer. I hope you got to do the things you love, whether pick-up games of volleyball on sand or smearing mustard on top of crisp, sizzling hot dogs at a family barbeque.   While the beach vacation I coveted didn’t materialize this year, I did get to exercise my memories. Some came from an article I read in the NY Times, and others from a box of old pictures that surfaced when my daughter moved to her new house.

In today’s business world, tech startups and incubators seems to be “The Hot Black.” I just came home from celebrating a Chicago incubator’s launch as I write this. But as Small Business Trends reported earlier this year, reports suggests a decline in tech startups over the past decade, despite widespread media coverage and intense interest from organization private and public, large and small.

When top-tier universities fail to embrace Meritocratic values, their very reason for existence comes into question. And it's happening right now.

It's become a frequent phenomenon the past few years, accelerating since the Great Crash of 2008-09 focused the sharpest of sharp spotlights on the gaping economic chasm between the very, very few who are very, very rich and everybody else everywhere on earth.

We have written many times over the years about the potential benefits of easy access to data and computing, but we’ve probably never done it this well.

The guest on this week’s Structure Show podcast was Kalev Leetaru (pictured above), the Georgetown researcher behind the Global Database of Events, Language and Tones (GDELT), which we have covered before, and who also helped the Internet Archive with the book-digitization project it unveiled this week. Leetaru, who has spent time programming supercomputers, talks all about the amazing shifts currently underway in information technology that let people gather, store and analyze data with no physical gear and just a few lines (or a single line) of SQL code.

Image: Kalevleetaru.com

When Louisiana State University was designing its new $58 million recreation center recently, it was partly with an eye toward besting its Southeastern Conference rival, Auburn University, whose new $52.5 million facility opened last August.

Auburn has a 45-person paw-print shaped hot tub and a 20-foot climbing wall by the pool. But LSU will have a lazy river students can float on that spells out “LSU.” Auburn has a 1/3-mile corkscrew track--believed to be the longest one at college rec center in the nation--that winds around its building. LSU tried to do one better, with a 1/3-mile tiger-striped track that waggles, inclines, and loops around a rock climbing wall.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com

An Onion article titled “New Law Enforcement Robot Can Wield Excessive Force Of 5 Human Officers” includes a remarkable bit of artwork, which you  an see above: a muscled, armored tank-like robot armed with guns and probes and sprays and hammers, using all its weaponry to attack the business-casual-clad attendees of a beige-carpet trade show. To create it, The Onion’s art department built a digital robot, staged the scene with real people, then combined original photography and digital art with pre-existing stock photography to achieve a perfectly surreal, violent scene. All to illustrate a joke that can be told in a 12-word headline.

Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com

Relationships are built on trust, and they require work to keep alive and well.

In his book The Trust Edge, David Horsager outlines the eight pillars he believes enable trust to occur within a relationship. The eight pillars are clarity, compassion, character, competency, commitment, connection, contribution, and consistency. Should any one of these start faltering, a relationship can quickly start falling apart and possibly lead to permanent damage.

Forget Silicon Mountain.

Cable giant Comcast has selected Denver for a multimillion dollar investment to help boost the city's innovation profile.

The support will expand Denver's technology infrastructure and services to foster growth in the area's innovation economy.

Upcoming projects will include a free public Wi-Fi network that blankets much of downtown Denver, including the 16th Street Mall, Union Station, and the Denver Performing Arts Complex and Sculpture Park.

Image: A Comcast truck is parked in Berlin, Vt. (Toby Talbot, The Associated Press)

Are you beginning to feel complacent at your current job? The Mashable Job Board is the ideal place to search for your next big move. More than 3,000 employers in tech and digital have posted on our board, and they're looking to fill positions from Mashable's community.

Each week, we highlight 10 recently posted openings that are currently hiring. Check out this week's newest listings, below, and be sure to read our Job Search Series for valuable career tips.

Image: FLICKR, ROMER JED MEDINA

We are on a constant quest to get as much done as possible, but it's time that we all become a little more realistic about what can and can’t be achieved through sheer willpower.

Repeat after me: My willpower is limited.

Columbia psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson argues that our willpower is often not up to the task of resisting temptation. She offers, instead, that we use if-then planning to reduce our reliance on our willpower.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Remember when IBM’s “Watson” computer competed on the TV game show “Jeopardy” and won? Most people probably thought “Wow, that’s cool,” or perhaps were briefly reminded of the legend of John Henry and the ongoing contest between man and machine. Beyond the media splash it caused, though, the event was viewed as a breakthrough on many fronts. Watson demonstrated that machines could understand and interact in a natural language, question-and-answer format and learn from their mistakes. This meant that machines could deal with the exploding growth of non-numeric information that is getting hard for humans to keep track of: to name two prominent and crucially important examples, keeping up with all of the knowledge coming out of human genome research, or keeping track of all the medical information in patient records.

Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(computer)#mediaviewer/File:IBM_Watson.PNG 

The 2014 Silicon Prairie Awards, honoring startups and technology companies and supporters in Iowa, Nebraska and the Kansas City region, named 5 Iowans to this year's list of honorees. Read more...

Founder and CEO Scott Harrison explains how the passion and commitment of charity: water's supporters altered his organization's approach. Gaining scale, says Harrison, was achieved by focusing on an easy-to-use platform to help supporters share their story, and then celebrating those stories.

Nominations are currently being accepted for the 2015 Intelligent Community of the Year Awards Program. Communities large and small, urban and rural, in developing and industrialized nations are all invited to apply. Nominations are accepted from local governments, institutions, companies, non-profit organizations, national government agencies and consular offices. There is no cost to submit a nomination. On average, the Intelligent Community Forum tracks the progress of 400 communities each year through its own research as well as nominations submitted by communities.