I traveled to Nashville for the first time in 2007, spending most of my time in the downtown area. I posted my impressions here, noting the high growth and high ambition level as well as the fantastic freeways, but also the generally unimpressive development and built environment.

I did another fly-by in April 2008. I made a conscious effort to try to get out and see different areas this time around. My tour guide was an Indy native who had spent the last decade or so in the northeast. He’d moved to the city about a year previously, so was seeing some of this for the first time himself. But it worked well, I thought.

Every year, Fortune magazine (where I started out as a reporter) comes out with its list of the Most Admired Companies in the world. In truth, it doesn’t really change much from year to year. Apple, once again for the fourth year in a row, is No. 1, as it should be. The company single-handedly created an entirely new class of touch computing with the iPad last year, and is on it’s way to becoming the most valuable company in the world.

Google is No. 2 (although, confusingly, it’s overall score of 8.22 is higher than Apple’s 8.16—it turns out that those are their industry scores not their separate Top 50 scores, a spokesperson explains, even though they are labeled “overall scores”). And Amazon comes in at No. 7. Microsoft hangs on at No. 9. So four of the top 10 companies are from the technology industry. And IBM is No. 12. After that, the list becomes a mixed bag, and even a little questionable. Cisco, Intel, Netflix, eBay, Sony, and Oracle also made the list. Netflix totally deserves to be there and maybe Cisco, but the others just seem to grandfathered in. Where’s Yahoo?

With more foreign-born students now returning to booming economies in countries such as China and India, technical communities hope a proposed bill will stop the brain drain.

The bill, soon to be reintroduced in Congress, pitches a let’s-make-a-deal plan for immigrant entrepreneurs: Want a green card? Start a company.

The StartUp Visa Act targets startup efforts across all sectors, but enthusiasm for the bill is especially high in tech communities where foreign-born students want to stay and develop a company.

The new EB-6 visas — permanent resident cards, also known as green cards — wouldn’t be available to any immigrant with a good idea.

When we hear the word "inventor," we think of people like Thomas Edison or the Wright Brothers.

Some of the coolest inventors, though, are people you probably don't know. They didn't invent planes or light bulbs; these people created products used so often, you probably didn't even realize they were inventions.

For instance, have you ever wondered how a lollipop ended up on its stick? Or how the straw became bendable? These seemingly simple ideas took a lot of creativity and technological prowess.

If you’ve been following this blog over the last couple of days you will know that along with Nicholas Lovell I’ve started a series of posts answering the fifty questions you should ask before raising venture capital. This post explains the series in more detail yesterday I wrote the first in the series, an introductory post answering the question “What is venture capital?”.

Overfishing large predators such as shark, tuna and cod in the past 40 years has left the oceans out of balance, and could result in the disappearance of these fishes by 2050, according to Villy Christensen of the University of British Columbia's Fisheries Center.

Christensen made this prediction at a panel, "2050: Will There Be Fish in the Ocean?" on February 19 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

In the age of iPhones, Facebook, and Twitter, we have instant access to information and constant means of communication. It is difficult to imagine life without these luxuries, but they are just that, luxuries. For a large portion of the world these technologies are not only a rarity, but an impossibility, as there is no access to electricity.

1.5 billion people do not have access to electricity; 585 million of them living in Sub-Saharan Africa and 404 million in India. Three billion people, almost half of the world’s population, rely on biomass, such as wood, charcoal, and dung for cooking and heating purposes. Sub-Saharan Africa is an especially dire case. Only 31% of the population has access to electricity and the Sub-Saharan African population (excluding South Africa) of 791 million consumes as much energy annually as the state of New York, a population of 19.5 million, according to a recent IEA and UNDP report entitled “Energy Poverty: How to Make Modern Energy Access Universal.”

With the help of employee-reviews site Glassdoor.com's Interview Questions & Reviews section, we've compiled 17 of the strangest interview questions asked in the past few months.

The questions come from interviews with companies including Walmart, Google, and JPMorgan Chase.

They include brainteasers:

"There are 25 horses and 5 race tracks. How many races need to be run to select the top 5 horses?"

Like technology experts and IT insiders, small-business owners may have noticed a startling trend. Technology is suddenly everywhere.

A slow buildup of netbooks, 3DTVs and eReaders at the beginning of last year quickly built to a crescendo, and is now giving way to nearly innumerable new apps, tablet PCs and online solutions.

Dozens of surprisingly affordable consumer electronics are ready to aid entrepreneurs in any new enterprise. The watchwords for small-business technology still remain the same: mobility, value and convenience.

I know what you’re thinking – link bait title, right? Wrong. I will stand 100% behind my assertions in this post. Justin Bieber is unbelievably entrepreneurial and most of you will never know it because he serves a target demo that doesn’t include you. I promise you can learn from him and this movie. I’m also betting that in 10 years he’ll be a mainstream talent rather than a pre-teen girl wonder. Read on . . .

On Sunday I took my 8-year-old son for a manly outing at the batting cages with his baseball team. I went in to get tokens and he got beaned by the effing first pitch while I was away.

If you’ve been following the Startup Visa, you may know that the bills that were submitted in both the House and the Senate expired at the end of the 2010 Congress. I’ve been on a number of calls lately discussing re-introducing these bills with updates to reflect the renewed understanding of the impact on high growth entrepreneurship on jobs in our country.

A few months ago several entrepreneurs took it upon themselves to create a great short (25 minute) documentary called Starting-Up In America. It is a set of interviews with foreign entrepreneurs in the US talking about why they chose to start their company here, the struggles they’ve had getting appropriate visas, and – in several cases – the severe limitations their visa status has placed on their businesses.

Starting-Up in America from Starting-Up In America on Vimeo.

The trick shot craze is sweeping the nation, and the latest athletes to climb aboard the trick shot train are Joe Hill and Steve Luptak of American University.

Take a look:

Last week Governor Branstad rolled out his "Jobs Plan" for putting Iowans back to work. A major part of his plan is the restructuring of the Iowa Department of Economic Development.

The Iowa Partnership for Economic Progress, under the leadership of Debi Durham, will eliminate the alphabet soup of incentive programs, develop a customer service attitude, use best practices of public and private sector, and create a 501c3 non-profit organization to house the Iowa Innovation Council.

One of the most common complaints I have heard from economic development professionals is that the incentive system is too complicated. The Governor's plan will correct that and expand opportunities for growth, retention and recruitment of business.

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam —Vo Van Toi’s high-tech laboratory clashes against its impoverished surroundings. Outside, cattle roam swampy fields and squatters sell sugarcane from wooden huts. Inside, he shows off his near-infrared spectroscopy machine, which measures oxygen content in blood, and a CT scanner.

The contrast sums up Vietnam’s current state of development: It’s a relatively poor nation, with per-capita GDP of $3,000, trying to follow its larger Asian neighbors’ leap into an era of skyscrapers and international commerce. To do that, it needs to bring in a plethora of new technology — and the innovators who come with it.

So where can Vietnam get its base of engineers, scientists and academics?

From abroad, especially from overseas Vietnamese who know the language and culture. They, like Vo, are invigorating the country’s growth that reached double digits before the 2008 economic downturn.

RISD grad Seth Goldenberg believes an entirely new way of thinking is needed to move the economy in a new direction, and he wants the most creative people to determine which challenges they must tackle.

He has returned to Providence and launched a new design studio, where he helps clients hone their business strategies while setting his own idea in motion.

Goldenberg has created his alma mater’s Office of Public Engagement, challenged big-time designer Bruce Mau in Chicago to take new risks and directed and curated all cultural special events for the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Empty coffers and rising gas prices may be the talk of the town, but cities across the country are finding innovative solutions to costly commutes by providing cheaper, healthier alternatives. In Lincoln, Nebraska, a 2011 Smarter City for transportation, low-income riders pay a mere $7.50 for unlimited bus rides all month long. Getting from place to place is more affordable in New York—at an average annual household cost of $5,289—than in any other large city. And at an average of 9,920 miles a year per household, New Yorkers travel fewer miles in the car than residents in any other region in the country besides Jersey City, New Jersey.

"By and large, ‘location efficient’ places – with essential services that are nearby or accessible by many transportation modes – lower transportation costs for residents,” says Scott Bernstein, president of the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT). “Cities and regions that foster compact, walkable, transit-rich communities can reduce reliance on automobiles and help lower at least one expense for households struggling to get by in the current economy.”

When you set out to start a business of your own a great option that can get over looked is franchising. Franchising gives you many of the same advantages of running your own business but comes with some great perks like training, credibility and a plan to start and grow right from the start.

One thing that deters many people is the costs that are involved to get into a franchise, but there are many options out there that require minimal investment. To help find some solutions for young entrepreneurs we went to our friends at FranchiseHelp.com to help answer some of these common questions…

* Which franchise would appeal to my experiences and interests as a recent college graduate?
* Which franchises feature low startup capital requirements?
* Which franchises are friendliest to young entrepreneurs?

Below is the list we came up with of not only cost effective franchises but also businesses that would be of interest to a younger business owner…

Noble Life Sciences, a relatively new company that assists clients in conducting research to advance human health, particularly through the facilitation of personalized medicine, has signed a 78-month lease for 6,200 square feet of laboratory and administrative space at 22 Firstfield Road, a roughly 50,000-square-foot building in Gaithersburg that is 100 percent leased and home to tenants such as ATCC, Intercell and MaxCyte.

In the new lease transaction, Scheer Partners Founder and President Robert Scheer, Senior Vice President Henry Bernstein and Vice President Matt Brady represented Noble Life Sciences. The building's owner, Pasadena, Calif.-based Alexandria Real Estate Equities, represented itself.

The Supreme Court heard arguments Monday about the rights of universities and colleges in patenting and technology transfer, an area of recent interest to higher ed in Delaware.

Generally, non-profit institutions have patent rights over any invention their faculty creates through the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 . This is the case even though the federal government funds most of university research through competitive grants from agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

Too bad, Mr. Seeker… because whether or not YOU are using Facebook to assist your job search, up to 85% of recruiters now use Facebook during their vetting process – and they’re using it to eliminate you from consideration.

“But I have all my privacy settings engaged. They can’t see anything.”

– Ms. Candi Date

Sorry, Candi… with just a couple clicks through the friends in your network I can learn enough to decide whether you are worthy of consideration as a candidate – or not.