Gone are the days of typing a press release, making a few copies of it and physically mailing it to journalists, in the hopes they’ll cover your news in a less-than-timely manner. Today, press releases have become a piece of the online content marketing strategy.  You don’t have to have a PR Department to issue press releases, either.  Businesses of all sizes — from solo entrepreneurial startups to the Fortune 100 — are taking advantage of press releases.

Marketing and communications provider PRNewswire knows the times have changed, and the company is rolling with the times. The company, which offers press release distribution and online visibility services, focuses several of its products on the small business market.

Whether renting is better than buying depends on many factors, particularly how fast prices and rents rise and how long you stay in your home. Compare the costs of buying and renting a home in the calculator below. Click the ADVANCED SETTINGS button to change inputs such as your rate of return on investments, condo/common fees and your tax bracket.

Creativity. It’s a word that adults either love or run away from, claim for themselves or deny the very existence of.

Creativity is a characteristic prized in children. Did you ever create forts with sheets and a kitchen table, or play cops and robbers, house, or act out a TV show? Creativity is fun!

Children use their creativity to open up their minds, to learn and to enjoy themselves. Creativity is as basic and natural as breathing, and as useful as intellect.

Knowing how to code means that you’re better equipped to take charge of your destiny, because you can give a digital presence to any idea in your head. It’s a skill that lets you work with more freedom and independence. If you are an entrepreneur, code will get you to where you want to go faster, and in a way completely authentic to your vision.

Confession: I don’t know how to code! Honestly, it’s been a hindrance. So far, my solution has been to collaborate with a coder via Elance, but that’s an imperfect system; even a coder who is great at her job cannot exactly replicate what it is that’s in your head. And when you need to make arrangements with another person, you can’t take advantage of the momentum that comes at a moment of inspiration.

In this economy, getting hired is always good news, and T.O.’s got a new job with the Seattle Seahawks. Good for him, but the pundits are already buzzing in expectation of the drama that is sure to follow.

Let’s face it: this tremendous talent hasn’t worked well on his teams, and history is likely to repeat itself. I submit his work history for your consideration, including some of the reasons (information from Wikipedia) for his leave-taking:

• San Francisco 49ers (1996–2003): spat with 49ers front office members 
• Philadelphia Eagles (2004–2005): made negative remarks about Eagles management and teammate Donovan McNabb, suspended four games without pay, deactivated for the rest of the season, released 
• Dallas Cowboys (2006–2008): after feeling assured he would be remaining with the team, felt blindsided by his release 
• Buffalo Bills (2009): one year contract only 
• Cincinnati Bengals (2010): placed on injured reserve, not re-signed 
• Allen Wranglers (2012): released after season’s end

PUNE: The Big Picture

* The biotechnology sector is among the fastest growing knowledge-based ones in India.

* Human health biotech products account for 60% of the country's total biotech market.

* Agribiotech and veterinary products account for another 25% market share while medical devices, contract R&D, reagents and supplies constitute the remaining 15% share.

* R&D development in India mainly nurtured by various government funding agencies.

Crowdfunding has developed from a digital quirk to a powerful tool – this much we've talked about. But there is something even deeper going on with this new model, one that's less predictable than civic participation and far more disruptive.

Kickstarter itself is changing under the influence of digital culture. At first it was about making established forms of art. Film was big – documentaries about organic community vegetable gardens were not uncommon. Now that is changing. It is becoming a land of gadget makers and gamers.

Eating about two handfuls of walnuts a day may provide men the added boost they need to improve their fertility, according to a breakthrough study by researchers at the UCLA School of Nursing.

Findings from the study, “Walnuts Improve Semen Quality in Men Consuming a Western-Style Diet: Randomized Control Dietary Intervention Trial,” are published Aug. 15 in the “papers in press” section of the peer-reviewed journal Biology of Reproduction.

This is the first study to look at the effects of a plant source of omega-3 on sperm, the researchers say. Statistics from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine show that one in six couples is infertile, with about 40 percent of these cases due to a male factor.

THE HOUSE, BUILT FROM SUSTAINABLE WOOD AND MADE USING DIGITAL SOFTWARE, IS A KIT OF PARTS THAT TOOK JUST SIX WEEKS TO CONSTRUCT.

House-hunting? Soon, you can yank one right out of a machine.

A pair of Danish architects partnered with Facit homes, a London-based digital fabrication and architecture specialist, to construct a two-bedroom house out of parts produced in a rapid-prototyping machine. The 1,250-square-foot Villa Asserbo--named for the small Danish town 50 kilometers outside of Copenhagen, where the house sits--was built from 400 Forest Stewardship Council-certified Nordic plywood components designed in digital software, fabricated using a CNC miller, then snapped together (each part came with a number for easy assembly). All told, the house took just six weeks to build.

In “Contented Cows Still Give Better Milk,” coauthors Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden argue that your people are your biggest competitive advantage.

At its very core, the whole notion of people being a distinct source of competitive advantage hinges on the way organizations and individual leaders perceive their workforces and the nature of the employment relationship. Do you see people on the asset or the liability side of the balance sheet? Are employees an opportunity--that is, a source of strategic advantage--or a cost to be reckoned with and minimized whenever possible? Are they viewed as little more than plug-and-play cogs in the operating process? Or do you see them as real, pulsating, thinking, idea-generating, responsibility-taking assets?

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science has released its DE-FOA-0000760 funding opportunity announcment for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, seeking applicants for funding directed toward fiscal 2013 Phase I and Fast-Track (combined Phase I and Phase II) projects, starting in February 2013.

About $34m is expected to be available under this FOA for up to a total of about 162 awards. The maximum amount for individual SBIR and STTR awards will be $150,000, $225,000 or $450,000 for Phase I projects (running for up to 9 months) and $1,150,000, $1,725,000 or $3,450,000 for Fast-Track projects (running for up to 33 months), depending on the topic. 

As a high school student in Phoenix, Carla Chavarria said she felt left out when her classmates turned 16 and started getting driver’s licenses. An undocumented immigrant brought to the U.S. at age 7, Chavarria, now 19, thought her wait was nearly over, thanks to a new federal program offering young immigrants work permits without fear of being deported. Then came an executive order from Arizona Governor Jan Brewer instructing state agencies to deny driver’s licenses and any other state benefits to those qualifying for the Obama administration program.

Earlier this week (August 14), the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge announced its first prize winner: a solar-powered toilet that generates hydrogen and electricity from flushed human waste.

The Challenge, posed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, calls for researchers to come up with novel ways of disposing of human waste that avoid the drawbacks of the traditional flush toilet, including dumping high volumes of clean water and wasting the nutrients and energy found in urine and feces. In total, the Challenge’s contestants, each demonstrating their inexpensive (less than 5 cents per user per day) and productive (recovering salt, water, nutrients, and energy) human waste disposal prototypes, processed some 50 gallons of soy-based synthetic feces.

Every entrepreneur and small-business owner would love to know one key thing: The secret to growing their business. In fact, the topic of how to take your business to the next level is the issue I'm asked to address most frequently when I give speeches.

Strategies By Rhonda Abrams

Thinkstock Enlarge Thinkstock Sponsored Links Now, on the topic of growth, I can do a 30-minute keynote, a 60-minute seminar, or a daylong planning workshop — walking small-business owners step-by-step through the process of what it takes to substantially increase the size of their business. But recently, a group asked me if I could whittle down the steps to growth to just the very most essential "secrets" that separate entrepreneurs who grow their businesses from those who don't.

Let me paint a picture for you. It’s August in Paris. The town is empty. You can feel it: no lines, no traffic, metro un-jammed, you can get into restaurant of your choice without a reservation.  Shops, companies and those that are slaves to their master, are off on holiday til August 25. But not if you’re an entrepreneur at LeCamping.

At 4 pm on a Friday in August, LeCamping was packed with entrepreneurs, working. Not building Lego cars powered by an Android phone.

Most Californians live within miles of its majestic coastline – for good reason. The California coastline is blessed with arguably the most desirable climate on Earth, magnificent beaches, a backdrop of snow-capped mountains, and natural harbors in San Diego, Long Beach and San Francisco. The Golden State was aptly named. Its Gold Rush of 1849 was followed a century later by massive post-war growth.

There is no mystery why California’s population and economy boomed after the Second World War. Education in California became the envy of the world. California’s public school system led the nation in innovation with brand new schools and classrooms. The Community College system that fed its universities was free for its students. A college education at the UC and Cal State systems was inexpensive. UC-Berkeley, with its graduate schools, was arguably the greatest in the world while Stanford developed into the Harvard of the West. An efficient highway system moved California’s automobile driven commerce while fertile soil of the Central Valley became the fruit and vegetable basket of the world.

It's a lousy time to be a biotech company in search of venture capital. Life Sciences sector funding fell 39 percent in the second quarter, compared with the prior year, according to PwC's Moneytree Life Sciences report. This marks the fourth straight quarterly decline in dollars and deals in the sector, with VCs investing $1.4 billion in 174 deals, according to the report based on Thomson Reuters data. When compared to a year ago, the number of life sciences deals tumbled 22 percent in the second quarter.

An Amtrak Acela crossing Hell Gate Bridge in Astoria, Queens, en route to Penn Station in New York City. Long a punch line for harried Northeast travelers, Amtrak has come to dominate commercial travel in the corridor connecting Washington, New York and Boston. This summer, its trains are packed.

We want our children to develop basic literacy and numerical skills. We want them to develop a broad basis of knowledge in the sciences and the arts. We want them to develop analytical skills and good judgment. We want them to develop social and physical skills. Oh yes, we also want them to have creative skills.

When schools were called to action in the European Union’s “year of creativity” many schools focused on painting pictures, singing songs and staging shows. Of course the arts are creative. But what a shame to limit the creativity of our young people to just the arts. It is time to broaden the scope of creativity in schools and indeed in the education system.

The second quarter of the year was a banner one for early-stage companies seeking venture capital funding, according to a report released today. But overall fundraising is down compared with the same time last year, and the biotech and clean-tech industries continue to struggle.  

The good news: More early-stage companies raised venture capital in the last quarter than since the beginning of 2001, during the last tech boom, the latest MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) shows. $2.1 billion went into 410 early-stage deals. Overall, $7 billion went into 898 deals.