Imagine you’re in prison. Your release date is quickly approaching. But you’re a high-school dropout with few job skills. Even if you took classes on the inside and learned how to weld or hang drywall—you are an ex-con. Who will hire you? How are you going to survive in the worst economy in decades?

In 2013, nearly 700,000 inmates will be released from state and federal prisons in the United States. Many dread the day they will regain freedom. Unable to find legitimate employment, many resort to a life of crime and quickly return behind bars. According to the Justice Department, more than 60% of prisoners are rearrested within three years of their release.

A few months ago, I wrote “The Non-Entrepreneur’s Guide to Starting in Startups” with the aim of helping those wanting to break into the entrepreneurial world. Now, let’s assume you’ve done your reading, attended events, have identified a solution to a specific problem, and are ready to start testing your hypothesis. What is the optimal path to gain the necessary resources?

Britain's youngest entrepreneur has set up his third business at the age of nine.

Henry Patterson started his first enterprise when he was just seven selling bags of manure for £1.

The schoolboy slicker then went on to set up his own eBay store where he sold items he had bought from charity shops - and made himself £150.

Now Henry - who looks like a junior Gordon Gekko from 80s film Wall Street - has started a children's online sweet shop called Not Before Tea.

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. I often get asked about the real alternatives to bridge this valley, and there are some good ones I will outline here.

According to a Gompers and Lerner study, the challenge is very real, with 90% of new ventures that don't attract investors failing within the first three years. The problem is that professional investors (Angels and Venture Capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than the more risky research and development efforts

Honolulu, Hawaii & New York, New York – January 23, 2013 – The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) today named the 2013 Top7 Intelligent Communities of the Year. The Top7 list includes three from North America, two from Taiwan and two from Europe. “The Top7 communities of 2013 have made innovation – based on information and communications technology –the cornerstone of their economies and fostered economic growth through high-quality employment, while increasing the quality of life of their citizens,” said Lou Zacharilla , ICF co-founder in announcing the list at the Pacific Telecommunications Council’s annual conference (PTC’13) in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.   

The Top7 Intelligent Communities of the Year The following communities, drawn from the Smart21 of 2013, were named to the Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2013 based on analysis of their nominations by a team of independent academic experts:

When the Survey of Earned Doctorates was released in December, much of the analysis focused on the worsening job market for those with new doctorates in humanities fields.

But research presented this weekend at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science -- based on that survey and other federally sponsored data -- suggested that the job market for those in many scientific fields is also taking a beating. And this is so much the case that tenure-track jobs should now be considered "alt-ac" positions (or alternative academic careers) because they are not the norm anymore for new Ph.D.s, in the words of Paula Stephan, a professor of economics at Georgia State University who specializes in the intersection of economics and science.

In several science disciplines, she said, so many young scholars are being forced to go for postdocs rather than tenure-track jobs (even a few years out of doctoral education) that career paths are shifting in ways that will hurt science. "Things weren't really so great before 2008, and since (the start of the economic downturn), they have gotten much worse," Stephan said in an interview about her presentation.

87.5 percent of Americans are satisfied with their jobs. That’s a pretty impressive number, even considering the 12.5 percent of people who aren’t thrilled by the Monday through Friday slog. So what determines whether an office is pleasant or prison-like, and can a few plants, a gym break, and a smiley boss really make or break employee enthusiasm?

Seeking Satisfaction — The Need-to-Know

Job satisfaction research can be traced to the early 20th century. Faced with an increasingly rapid pace of production, assembly line workers were more tired and prone to making errors than ever before. So managers began seeking ways to boost employee mood and morale. Happier employees, the thinking went, produce better work, stave off burnout for longer, and keep colleagues competitive.

President Obama is outlining a multi-billion dollar plan to map the human brain.  The goal is to “to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics,” according to The New York Times.  But do such government investments in science and technology really work?  Do they translate into commercial and economic value?

Many assume they do.  Departing Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, on February 1, wrote a letter decrying the “Stone Age” mentality of the critics of government investment in clean technologies.  There is arguably some truth in what Secretary Chu wrote.  But there is also some truth in what critics say about the relatively poor return of government investments in new technology development.  So what is the real answer?

In August 1942, General Montgomery arrived in North Africa to take command of the British 8th Army. Within a few days he began replacing the senior officers. One of his new corps commanders was Brian Horrocks, who had last seen action in France in 1940 as commander of an infantry battalion, after which he had been promoted quickly to leadership of a Division.

Montgomery put Horrocks in charge of stopping Rommel's last offensive in what has become known as the Battle of Alam Halfa. The British defenses held and Rommel was forced to withdraw. Horrocks was understandably pleased with himself until a liaison officer from 8th Army headquarters brought a letter from Montgomery. It began:

"Well done — but you must remember that you are now a corps commander and not a divisional commander..."

Stanford University ratcheted up interest in online education when a pair of celebrity professors attracted more than 150,000 students from around the world to a noncredit, open enrollment course on artificial intelligence. This development, though, says very little about what role online courses could have as part of standard college instruction. College administrators who dream of emulating this strategy for classes like freshman English would be irresponsible not to consider two serious issues.

First, student attrition rates — around 90 percent for some huge online courses — appear to be a problem even in small-scale online courses when compared with traditional face-to-face classes. Second, courses delivered solely online may be fine for highly skilled, highly motivated people, but they are inappropriate for struggling students who make up a significant portion of college enrollment and who need close contact with instructors to succeed.

Online classes are already common in colleges, and, on the whole, the record is not encouraging. According to Columbia University’s Community College Research Center, for example, about seven million students — about a third of all those enrolled in college — are enrolled in what the center describes as traditional online courses. These typically have about 25 students and are run by professors who often have little interaction with students. Over all, the center has produced nine studies covering hundreds of thousands of classes in two states, Washington and Virginia. The picture the studies offer of the online revolution is distressing.

Gov. Scott Walker is setting aside $25 million in his two-year budget bill to boost venture capital investment in the state, but isn't putting forward a plan for how such a program would work.

The amount of money the governor is recommending and the lack of details provided differ dramatically from his $400 million venture capital proposal in 2011. That effort failed after getting bogged down by political disagreements and the use of out-of-state investment managers with questionable track records.

Many in the venture and angel capital communities said they were pleased that Walker will include the venture capital program in his proposed budget, which will be released Wednesday. They expressed hope that the Legislature would boost the dollar commitment and details of the program.

Steve Jobs: How to live before you die

At his Stanford University commencement speech, Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple and Pixar, urges us to pursue our dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks — including death itself.

As the startup funding landscape goes through so much change, there is quite a lot of conversation about the role of angel groups in the startup community. I enjoyed a recent discussion among ACA members in our LinkedIn Group for members and investors on this topic, following a blog, Can Angel Groups Regain Their Relevancy? Feel free to check out the whole discussion, but I got a couple of great kernals from ACA's members that I want to share.

Angel group activity is growing and better than ever. From Brian Cohen, New York Angels: If anything the angel group environment is growing, getting smarter and much more in-tune with the needs of the startup community - particularly in New York City, where the growing network of angel groups (new one recently called 37 Angels - for women angels), super angels, micro-VCs look for every opportunity to collaborate and learn from each other to be smarter investors and most importantly advise young entrepreneurs flooding in to the City from all parts of the globe.

Justin Moore is the CEO of Axcient, a rapidly growing cloud services provider. Moore, now 31, is also a former star of the youth chess circuit. At 10, he found a chess book in his mother’s cabinet; by his teenage years, he was one of the 20 top-ranked youth chess players in the United States. With the seriousness of an athlete, Moore played chess for several hours every day for half a decade.

Moore doesn’t play much competitively anymore; by his college years, he was “probably a bit burnt out,” he confesses. Even so, the kinds of thinking that his days as a chess prodigy taught him has deeply informed the way he runs a successful startup. In a sense, Moore does still play chess every day--by running Axcient.

Good bosses look good on paper. Great bosses look great in person; their actions show their value. Yet some bosses go even farther. They're remarkable—not because of what you see them do but what you don't see them do. Where remarkable bosses are concerned, what you see is far from all you get: 1. They forgive... and they forget. When an employee makes a mistake—especially a major mistake—it's easy to forever view that employee through the perspective of that mistake.

Being likeable will help you in your job, business, relationships, and life. I interviewed dozens of successful business leaders for my last book, to determine what made them so likeable and their companies so successful. All of the concepts are simple, and yet, perhaps in the name of revenues or the bottom line, we often lose sight of the simple things - things that not only make us human, but can actually help us become more successful. Below are the eleven most important principles to integrate to become a better leader: 1. Listening

"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen." - Ernest Hemingway

Listening is the foundation of any good relationship. Great leaders listen to what their customers and prospects want and need, and they listen to the challenges those customers face. They listen to colleagues and are open to new ideas. They listen to shareholders, investors, and competitors. Here's why the best CEO's listen more.

There was a recent report highlighting the fact that the legal sector will never return to its pre-recession heyday. The report was jointly produced by the Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown University Law Center and Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor.

Too many lawyers, chasing not enough work, and pressure  from clients to provide discounts have become a fact of life in the current market.

In fact, because of the high unemployment, law school applications are on pace to hit a 30-year low. Since the recession, the fraction of new J.D.s finding a full-time job requiring a state bar license dropped from 74 percent down to less than 60 percent, according to data compiled by the National Association for Legal Placement.

If you want to work for one of the big tech giants, it helps if you start as an intern. Which tech companies treat their lowest-level people best? Job review and career site Glassdoor assembled a list of the 20 best internship programs. The rankings are based entirely on feedback from previous and current interns. Companies were only included if they had received at least 20 intern reviews in the past two years.

Carley Roney and David Liu have been married for 20 years and in business together for 18. They co-founded XO Group, formerly known as The Knot, in 1996. It's now a publicly traded company. Liu says 80% of women who are planning a wedding join the site. Although the pair have been successful as cofounders, they give other aspiring entrepreneur couples the following advice:  "Don't try this at home."