Menlo Park, Calif.-based Draper Fisher Jurveston's past investments include electric-car maker Tesla Motors, algae biofuel firm Synthetic Genomics, thermal solar firm BrightSource Energy, as well as dot-com classics such as Hotmail  (MSFT 30.73, -0.27, -0.88%) and Baidu.com  (BIDU 710.69, +0.82, +0.12%) .

The firm has also taken stakes in information-technology power specialist SeaMicro, building-software maker Scientific Conservation Inc., and Power Assure Inc., which helps manage electricity at data centers.

Now Jurvestson, who serves as a managing director of the firm, is about to close Draper Fisher Jurvetson's 10th venture capital fund, which will partly take aim at opportunities to curb the roughly 3% of U.S. electricity output that goes toward running information-technology systems.

New software to support economical building techniques and technology to improve the quality of dairy products are just two of the projects inspired by federal research in 2008, according to a report the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released this week.

The annual Technology Transfer report details how the laboratories of key federal agencies collaborate with non-federal organizations to give social or economic purpose to research activities.

Eleven federal agencies have significant laboratory operations that engage in R&D and work with organizations in industry, academia, the non-profit sector, and state and local governments on improvement projects. They are: the Departments of Agriculture (USDA), Commerce, Defense, Energy, Heath and Human Services, Homeland Security, Interior, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and NASA.

If you're a cash-strapped entrepreneur looking for an infusion of capital, you may be curious about angel investors. Very few start-ups will receive an investment from an angel—in 2007, fewer than sixty thousand companies received angel funding, a relatively small figure considering more than ten times that many businesses are started each year. But for the right small business, this type of capital can fill the gap between that money you've gotten from friends and family and the venture capital that you hope to secure down the road.

So who is an angel exactly? An angel is a wealthy individual willing to invest in a company at its earlier stages in exchange for an ownership stake, often in the form of preferred stock or convertible debt. Angels are considered one of the oldest sources of capital for start-up entrepreneurs; the term itself, by most accounts, comes from the affluent patrons who used to finance Broadway plays in the early twentieth century. In 2007, angels invested $26 billion in 57,120 ventures, which breaks down to about $450,000 a deal, according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. That makes angels a potentially powerful resource for newbie entrepreneurs with promising young companies.

Even as the Detroit Red Wings seek to battle back in their NHL playoff series against the Phoenix Coyotes, entrepreneurs and innovators in Michigan are working overtime to help the state meet an economic challenge far more imposing than the Coyotes are on ice. That’s how we see it here at Xconomy, and that’s why it is with special pleasure and excitement that we announce today that Xconomy is bringing its hyperlocal coverage of key innovation clusters to Michigan with the launch of Xconomy Detroit. The Motor City (with our coverage including much of the rest of Michigan and northern Ohio) is now the fourth region in Xconomy’s network, joining Boston, Seattle, and San Diego.

Regular readers of Xconomy will recognize right away that Detroit doesn’t outwardly have the hallmarks of the other innovation clusters we cover, all of which are leaders in key areas of information technology and life sciences, and boast vibrant venture capital and entrepreneurial cultures.

But the innovation story playing out in Michigan is just as important, and in fact, the stakes may be far higher. To compete globally and thrive far into the future, the American auto industry will need to continue to reinvent itself. At the same time, entrepreneurs and government leaders recognize that the region needs a much broader economic base. That has led to a profusion of investments in areas outside (or peripherally related to) the automotive industry, such as biotechnology, biofuels, batteries, medical devices, software, and homeland security.

There are plenty of places for entrepreneurs to hone their skills, but none is quite as unique as “World of Warcraft,” says John Seely Brown, former director of Xerox PARC. In this entrepreneur thought leader lecture given at Stanford University last week, Brown praises the massively multiplayer online game, saying it’s a great way to learn crowdsourcing, how to work with groups and fosters an environment where performance is both measured and critiqued.

Chances are that anyone seeking a place to live in and around the trendy Detroit suburb of Royal Oak, Mich., eventually will come across property investment and management company Urbane Apartments. In fact, type "apartments Royal Oak" into the Google search toolbar, and the first result that pops up is the Urbane website--a destination highlighted by photos of the firm's modern, inviting rental units and the young urban professionals who occupy them.

With 16 apartment communities spanning across Royal Oak, Urbane has emerged as one of the region's fastest-growing property management companies. But the virtual prominence of its brand has little to do with its real-world scope. Credit instead founder Eric Brown's decision to extend the firm's message into the social media realm­--a move that not only slashed spending on paid property listings, but also afforded Urbane the tools to more accurately communicate the contemporary lifestyle experience so integral to its business.

Venture capital firms and angel investors around the country are trying a new investment model. Rather than target a small number of high-potential entrepreneurial companies with very large investments, there is a growing trend of investing smaller amounts of seed capital, called microfunds, with several entrepreneurs all of whom have promising ideas.

The venture capital firm Solidus Co. has pulled together a group from the Nashville entrepreneurship community to create a microfund to support local entrepreneurs and to help accelerate the growth of startups in the Middle Tennessee area.

JumpStart Foundry is focusing on very early-stage concepts. Over the next 12 months, the microfund intends to select 10 to 14 entrepreneurs for the program who will receive financial, business and technological support to accelerate their businesses' growth.

It seemed a dire way to ring in the New Year when in early January, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke told the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology that the American economy isn’t innovating enough to create advanced new technologies.

“[T]oday, America has a broken innovation ecosystem that does not efficiently create the right incentives or allocate enough resources to generate new ideas, develop those ideas with focused research, and turn them into businesses that can create good jobs.” He added, “Our balance of trade in ‘advanced technology products’ turned negative in 2002 - and has shown little sign of abating.”

Locke said more resources need to be devoted to R&D, but even in cases where enough funding is being channelled into R&D, “We’re not doing a good enough job getting these ideas into the marketplace.”

As Michael mentioned in his blog post earlier this week, we're excited to team up with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Domestic Policy Council for a day-long strategy session on promoting innovation through the use of prizes and challenges. We're equally excited to bring some of the key experts who will be sharing their insights with Friday's attendees directly to you for a special edition of our CaseSoup interactive Q&A sessions live from the event. These sessions will take place exclusively on our site beginning at 11 ET on Friday morning. The schedule of sessions is listed below, so mark your calendars and don’t miss out on this opportunity to ask your questions of these trailblazers in prizes, challenges and open grantmaking:

• 11:00-11:30:  Bonin Bough, Director of Global Social Media at PepsiCo and Tara Roth McConaghy, GOOD, Inc.
  
• 12:00-12:30:  Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, and Tom Kalil, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and National Economic Council
  
• 1:00-1:30:  Sonal Shah, Director of the Office of Social Innovation & Civic Participation, and Jonathan Bays, Consultant with McKinsey & Company and Co-Author of the recent report, And the winner is…: Capturing the Promise of Philanthropic Prizes
• 2:00-2:30:  Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer
  
• 3:00-3:30:  Jim Bennett, former Vice President Netflix, and Rob McEwen, Chairman and CEO of US Gold and Lexam Explorations and Founder of Goldcorp
• 4:00-4:30:  Beth Noveck, Assistant Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government, and James Shelton, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement, Department of Education

Brace yourself: Facebook is trying to take over the world. Or, if not the world, at least the entire Internet. With Facebook partnering up with popular sites like Yelp, many SMB owners may feel as if their load got lighter. I mean, why waste time worrying about your building your blog or your own site when you can grow your Facebook presence instead? If Facebook’s opening up the doors so that people can take you with them, you don’t have to worry about anything else anymore, right?

Wrong!

It doesn’t matter how hot Facebook or any of the other social media sites are looking right now. You still need to be focused on using your blog to create your own authority and brand. Want to know why?

Here are ten reasons.

1. You Don’t Own Facebook: Today, Facebook stands as a great marketing channel for small business owners looking to extend relationships or bridge social capital via Payvment . Sounds great today, but remember that a few years ago MySpace and Friendster were the hot social networks of the moment. You don’t see too many marketers making these sites part of their social strategies today. Why? Because users move on. Because these networks can be bought and sold. They shift focus. They stop lending themselves to social marketing.  While it’s never smart to put all your eggs in one basket, it’s especially unwise to do it when you don’t even own the basket. Make sure you’re diversifying your marketing and using the channels you most control.
2. Not Everyone Is Happy With Facebook: Google engineers are deleting their accounts (with obvious motive), users are angered by the new invasive approach, and Facebook has even caught the eye of four US Senators now asking them to take a step back. With regulators being asked to step in and force changes upon Facebook, no one knows what’s going to still be around tomorrow.

A new type of energy-focused startup has emerged recently focused on innovation around smart algorithms. These companies are using information analytics — in much the same way that the web giants like Amazon, Google and Netflix do — to mine information and use it to help reduce energy consumption in buildings. Call them Energy 2.0 or the next-generation of energy data innovators, these companies and tools could help provide a low cost way to deliver energy efficiency.

The creation of 300 jobs via Eirgrid’s new transmission network indicates how digital networks and future green industries are inextricably linked, says Communications Minister Eamon Ryan TD.

Will the green economy become a mainstream phenomenon?

Much of the infrastructure is in place. Overall, it will take 10 to 20 years. It will start off like the first mobile phones, the big, clunky things you hauled around. Five years later, 15pc of people had one and then, 10 years later, everyone had one. Maybe the first five years will be 'wow, look at that different car', then it will be mainstream. It will also happen in the home; it's an inevitable development.

Do you agree that many of today's out-of-work builders, plumbers and electricians should achieve gainful employment in the green economy?

In terms of green jobs and future industries, you might as well be part of that rather than struggling against it. The IDA, in fairness, has got it and projects have started to happen. I met the green IFSC people last week and I was very encouraged.

The majority of Internet users in the United States are going online to search for government information and access government services, according to a survey unveiled this week.

The findings of the survey by Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project lend support to the Open Government Directive, which calls for the federal government to use the Internet and other technology to better engage with the public.

The survey found that 82% of Internet users -- or 61% of all American adults -- looked for information online or completed a transaction on a government Web site in the year preceding the survey.

The report surveyed 2,258 adults aged 18 or older in the United States between Nov. 30 and Dec. 27, 2009 in telephone interviews. This particular Pew project gathers information on the cultural, political, and societal effects of the Internet.

The process of "creative destruction," whereby entrepreneurs with new ideas and methods of production displace less efficient incumbents, is believed to play a critical role in driving productivity growth in the economy. High-profile entrepreneurs create and commercialise new technologies such as automobiles and semiconductors--major innovations that spawn new industries. Although clearly important, such start-ups only represent a tiny proportion of overall entry in the economy. Perhaps 0.1%-0.2% of U.S. start-ups receive venture capital funding each year--the predominant source of finance for such high-growth ventures.

A less visible channel is the enhanced productivity growth arising from increased efficiency in existing methods of production. A substantial share of the productivity growth in the economy is believed to arise from through the birth of more productive firms and the closure of unproductive firms rather than just through existing firms becoming more productive. Foster et al. (2008) show the productivity advantages of new entrants in a variety of manufacturing industries, including traditional products such as concrete. A number of related studies further point to the vital role of this general entrepreneurship for economic growth. Policymakers should thus pay as close attention to these attempts to "build better mousetraps" as they do to venture capital-backed start-ups.

Two themes tend to stand out when you look at the portfolio of venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

One, the firm likes to plunge into relatively new markets before others do, which in turn arguably makes the firm's portfolio something of an indicator for the direction of the market. It was an early investor in energy and was an investor in Hotmail when the idea of free email seemed like crazy talk.

Two, it is not afraid to go international. "We think it is going to become an imperative," said Steve Jurvetson, managing director of the firm during a talk at Nordic Green II, which took place this week in Menlo Park.

A newborn horse 14 inches tall weighing just six pounds could be the world's smallest.

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“Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.” That’s the conclusion of a long (for the Internet) post by Steve Jobs himself on Apple’s website. Jobs takes on critics who don’t like it that on iPhone and iPad products, Apple has refused to support Adobe’s widely-used Flash technology for video, games and user interfaces.

In an essay titled “Thoughts on Flash,” Jobs tries to reverse the claim that the iPhone and iPad are are “closed” to third-party software, rather than open, because only Apple-approved apps can win placement in Apple’s App Store. You’ve got it backwards, he says. Apple is open, Adobe is closed.

The post comes one day after bloggers noticed that Apple’s annual software design awards will be restricted this year to only iPhone/iPad apps. Software for the more open and freewheeling Mac OS X platform, which ships on Apple’s Mac-branded desktop, notebook and server gear, will be excluded from the awards. “This is because Apple’s secret plans for OS X rolling over to the closed ’shop’ model of software distribution,” one VentureBeat reader speculated.

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