We want to provide people with a perfect photographic memory,” says Martin Källström, CEO of Memoto. His startup is creating a tiny clip-on camera that takes a picture every 30 seconds, capturing whatever you are looking at, and then applies algorithms to the resulting mountain of images to find the most interesting ones.

Just 36 by 36 by 9 millimeters, the inconspicuous plastic camera has a lot crammed inside. The most important component is a five-megapixel image sensor originally designed for mobile phones. An ARM 9 processor running Linux powers a program that wakes the device twice a minute; takes a picture and a reading from the GPS sensor, accelerometer, and magnetometer; and promptly puts the device back to sleep.

Judi Henderson-Townsend and Cynthia Mackey: Senior entrepreneurship is a trending topic. Yet for every senior who sees entrepreneurship as an exciting opportunity, there is another senior who sees entrepreneurship as an intimidating option of last resort.

Age discrimination, job layoffs, dwindling 401(k) accounts and the potential erosion of Social Security benefits are a few of the reasons why seniors are turning to entrepreneurship in large numbers. In our previous blog post we listed 10 tips for senior entrepreneurs looking to start a business. But owning a business can be an anxiety-ridden experience, and the anxiety is magnified if you are an entrepreneur because you "have to" vs. "want to."

Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie once said that he who dies leaving behind many millions will "pass away unwept, unhonored and unsung." That philosophy took root in much of the last century, with major philanthropists giving vast fortunes in their later years to libraries, museums, hospitals and other institutions devoted to the public good.

But donors today aren't taking any chances. They are flexing philanthropic muscle at a younger age than their predecessors. At many top business schools, students are integrating the practice of philanthropy into education early on, and donors are often beginning to share substantial wealth long before accumulating the full measure of it.

A number of entities give cities in the U.S. and abroad scores for livability based on a variety of criteria. Use these resources to find out how livable your city is!

International Rankings

The Economist Inelligence Unit’s (EIU) Global Livability Report ranked Melbourne, Australia as the most livable city in the world in its most recent calculations. The EIU ranks 140 cities worldwide, based on “30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability; healthcare; culture and environment; education; and infrastructure." No U.S. cities ranked in the top ten this year, and Pittsburgh was the highest ranking at 22. Read more!

Together with two co-founders, I started Shasta Ventures from scratch.  Questions like “When did I decide to start a new company?” “What was that like?” and “Where did it begin?” are often asked. Here’s where it begins.  

A startup is a product of your imagination, fueled by a burning desire to serve your customers and create something new.  When I teamed up with Tod Francis and Ravi Mohan in early 2004, Google hadn’t gone public yet,  Amazon was about to go out of business, and eBay was at historic lows in the stock market.  At the time, no one thought the consumer mattered in the technology world.  Venture firms were openly abandoning their consumer practices.

“Ecosystems that support technology commercialization must be built collaboratively by industry, higher education and government leaders.”

This quote is from the Fifth Report on the Condition of Higher Education in Ohio: Advancing Ohio's Innovation Economy, issued in 2012 by the University System of Ohio Board of Regents. The report underscores challenges that exist for Ohio's higher education institutions, industry and government as catalysts for commercialization and innovation. A major issue, as illustrated in the report, is the “valley of death” that exists between knowledge creation and commercialization.

The common image of American manufacturing, as Harold L. Sirkin wrote in Bloomberg Businessweek, is of huge plants with waves of assembly-line workers producing cars and refrigerators. But there’s a whole other world of niche manufacturers in the U.S., and these small firms are more typical — and should be more of a priority, Sirkin argued — than you might think.

Some 250,000 manufacturers in the U.S. have fewer than 500 employees. Studies show these smaller businesses produce more innovations per employee than large manufacturers. And truth be told, it is generally from these small companies that the jobs of the future will spring. Indeed, as David Rocks and Nick Leiber observed last summer, smaller manufacturers have been leading the “reshoring” wave that my colleagues and I have been writing about.

1. Be able to sell anything

This is one of the most important qualities an entrepreneur can have. As an entrepreneur you are selling a lot. You will have to sell your ideas to customers, investors and potential employees. You sell your skills to these same audiences. You sell your leadership, your confidence, your vision and the importance of the values you promote. Aside from these things, you have to sell your products and services. Being a good salesman can be more difficult than it sounds. Are you able to step in front of a venture capital firm or a bank and defend that your idea is not only great, but is logical, convincing, and better than any other business who is seeking funding out there? You must be very convincing. If you are second guessing your idea back and forth, your idea is not ripe to take action, or you are not cut out for it. Don't waste your time and money on something you can't dedicate your whole heart to.

Two years ago, PayPal founder and libertarian futurist Peter Thiel declared higher education "a bubble" and decided to give 20 bright young things $100,000 each to quit college and start a company instead.

Harvard hasn’t exactly shut its doors since then. But over half of all private colleges in the country did just report flat or declining enrollment, despite record tuition discounting. (Maybe there is something to this bubble talk.) And how have the "20 Under 20" fellows from 2011 and 2012 fared? They have founded over 30 companies and raised a reported $34 million thus far, from venture investment, sales and revenue, sponsorships, and awards.

In the first of a series of video interviews with high-tech experts, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt explores the technologies likely to have the greatest disruptive impact on economies, business models, and people. Later this month the McKinsey Global Institute will publish an assessment of the probable economic impact of disruptive technologies.

One of the biggest challenges in economic development is determining what to hold economic development organizations (EDOs) and elected officials accountable for.

In business, accountability is critical to success. CEOs know lack of measurable accountability in the workplace has consequences that can negatively affect people and shareholder return. But CEOs also know you can't hold somebody accountable for something they can't directly impact.

If you’re a startup working on a product for the healthcare industry, Boston is the place to be. During a trip to Bean Town, I was curious to hear what startup founders found most challenging in a city so rich with resources. The usual gripes I usually hear elsewhere, like troubles with seed funding or FDA regulation, didn’t come up as much. Instead, these founders seemed to find the more personal elements of entrepreneurship most challenging. Many times, I found myself talking to people who had made a shift from working in tech or research to becoming a business owner.

The community realizes that, though. In addition to numerous startup accelerators and incubators, Boston is home to lots of collaborative startup space.

“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” ~ Zig Ziglar

One of my all time favorite quotes that changes me every time I read it. This quote resonates with me because I’ve gone through my own cycles over the past few years.  I work daily with professionals who are stuck and stalled. The mindset makeover and attitude adjustment always begins between the ears.

Coleman Greene is moving to Chicago this summer to join the nation’s most prestigious business accelerator program, the place where risky startup ideas have the best chance of attracting investors and customers or where they’re quickly quashed and reformulated into something better.

The Chapel Hill resident believes he’s the first in the state to be accepted to TechStars, the Boulder-based network with six locations of startup accelerators. Thousands have applied; 900 for the summer in Chicago alone.

OPINION – May 6, 2013 -- Oregon’s need for job growth is a conversation that extends well beyond the capitol walls this legislative session. In our businesses and homes, we’re debating how to solve Oregon’s unemployment and underemployment issues. While opinions abound in how to solve the problem, the consensus is clear. We need to support the businesses we do have, and we need to grow the industries that can sustain job growth.   This argument was echoed in a recent presentation given by Oregon Translational Research and Development Institute (OTRADI) to Oregon’s House Committee on Transportation and Economic Development.

I rarely meet an entrepreneur (or one of their investors) who doesn’t believe their venture will be a runaway hit. In three to five years, I hear over and over, we’ll be able to go public or sell big, providing huge returns for those who got into the deal early.

Many won’t reach that mark. Some will fail by way of a poor product or mismanagement. Some fall to competition, and some to bad timing or bad luck. And there will always be a few entrepreneurs who will get a chance to sell their business for a sizeable return—but turn it down believing there are greener pastures ahead.

You have an idea. Then you bring it into a product. Then you make the product better. And then you make the product over and over again.

The above four sentences represent the four types of work: thinking, building, improving, and producing. That's according to Lou Adler, the author of The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired, who recently relayed the roles--and how they're a part of every job.

Let's get into them.

Coming off a record-breaking 4Q 2012, PE deal activity predictably slowed in in early 2013. The B2B industry had its slowest quarter in three years, with just 121 transactions totaling $7.0 billion. Deal flow was down considerably in the B2C industry as well, but capital invested was relatively strong thanks to an uptick in the median deal size. Uncertainty pertaining to healthcare regulation and reimbursement rates continues to hamper deal-making in the healthcare industry, but investors are finding attractive opportunities in select sectors. And while IT deal activity saw one of the most significant drop-offs in 1Q, the industry remains attractive as technology becomes a more integral aspect of all types of businesses. Despite the recent slowdown, the McGladrey team has been busy in recent months and anticipates a pickup in deal-making through the rest of the year.

In-depth information and analyses on each of these industries can be found in the Private Equity Deal Flow Profiles published by McGladrey. Powered by PitchBook, the reports include current industry trends, deal activity and exit activity, as well as insight from McGladrey professionals.

The White House tapped Twitter legal director Nicole Wong as its first chief privacy officer, CNET reported. Wong, a Silicon Valley legal veteran, had only been at Twitter about six months; she was previously at Google for eight years.

It's not entirely clear what the White House chief privacy officer will do. Cabinet-level CPOs are generally tasked with ensuring that their departments follow federal rules for the handling of personal information (see, for instance, these authority and responsibilities of the Homeland Security CPO). It's fairly likely that the White House CPO would do likewise for the Obama administration, and might also serve as a presidential advisor on privacy-related federal regulations and legislation.

Donald Trump is putting his stamp of approval, but not his name, on a new crowdfunding platform that is scheduled to launch tomorrow. He's also an investor in the site, and each week will personally contribute to one or more projects that strike his fancy.

It's called FundAnything, and was the brainchild of The Learning Annex founder Bill Zanker.

"People in tech and some Brooklyn hipsters know about crowdfunding, but it hasn't been brought to the masses yet," Zanker explains. "This is a very big idea -- like eBay or online dating -- and we're just in the beginning stages."