Ambient intimacy, accelerated social life, thawed relations between Google and Facebook, and an iPhone that looks impersonal by comparison. These are just a few of the short-term ripple effects of the Facebook “Phone” project to be unveiled April 4th. In this video, I recap leaked intel from my sources and 9To5Google, show photos of the phone itself plus its software, and discuss why you might even care.

To some people and a lot of businesses, it’s going to be a big deal over the next year. Even bigger if it succeeds. Watch the video to see why.

The Iowa Senate passed a $78.5 million economic development budget bill Wednesday that Democratic lawmakers contend should help bolster Gov. Terry Branstad’s efforts to create 200,000 new jobs statewide.

Senate File 430 represents an increase in spending of $40.8 million over the current state budget year and an increase of $5.6 million over Branstad’s spending recommendation. The vote was 26-24 with Democrats in favor and Republicans against.

The Intelligent Community Forum is proud to name BlackBerry Founder and Vice Chairman Mike Lazaridis as the Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year for 2013. 

The Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year Award is presented to an individual or an organization that has taken a leadership role in promoting broadband technology and applications as an essential and transformative utility in the Digital Age. 

A big-data revolution is under way in health care. Start with the vastly increased supply of information. Over the last decade, pharmaceutical companies have been aggregating years of research and development data into medical databases, while payors and providers have digitized their patient records. Meanwhile, the US federal government and other public stakeholders have been opening their vast stores of health-care knowledge, including data from clinical trials and information on patients covered under public insurance programs. In parallel, recent technical advances have made it easier to collect and analyze information from multiple sources—a major benefit in health care, since data for a single patient may come from various payors, hospitals, laboratories, and physician offices.

Philadelphia has reached a new milestone in the drive to build its startup healthcare ecosystem. DreamIt Health’s inaugural class includes 10 startups. The four-month program co-sponsored by Independence Blue Cross and Penn Medicine includes members seeking to develop tools for healthcare providers to speed up diagnoses and improve outcomes.

The accelerator will be housed at Venturef0rth, a shared workspace for early stage companies run by Dr. Elliot Menschik, who will co-lead the accelerator with DreamIt Health Managing Partner Karen Griffith Gryga.

The Crowdfunding landscape is changing rapidly with new technologies and giving trends. There is a lot of attention on Crowdfunding in the United States because of the JOBS act, short for Jumpstart Our Business Startups, which allows the general public to receive company equity in exchange for funding business startups. AngelList and FundersClub were recently blessed by the SEC, and white-label Crowdfunding software solutions such as Katipult will help others produce similar innovative crowdfunding platforms.

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Many entrepreneurs love the idea of getting an angel to invest in their business. But the problem is they don’t really know how to do it. Where do you find these angels? What are they looking for? How do you get your business ready for them?

Indeed, the idea of finding and getting an angel investment can seem almost as exotic as this gorgeous city I am reporting from today.

Venture capital specialist Innovation Capital has launched a new $100 million fund.

The company announced this week that the new fund would be focused on providing financing to Australian companies developing or utilising advanced manufacturing techniques.

It said the launch of the fund followed on from Innovation Capital being named as one of three venture capital managers selected under the latest tranche of the Federal Government's Innovation Investment Fund (IIF) program.

LANGUAGE, LIKE ANYTHING ELSE, CAN BE HACKED FOR GREATER EFFECTIVENESS. HERE ARE SOME TECHNIQUES TO MAKE YOUR WORDS--YOUR BEST TOOL AT WORK--MORE POWERFUL. BY: LEO WIDRICH 7 COMMENTS EMAIL

One of the things I fuss about a lot (especially for Buffer copy, for example our welcome email if you sign up) are words; very simple words in fact. Should it say “Hi” or “Hey.” Should it be “cheers” or “thanks.” How about “but” or “and”? I’m guessing you might have a similar obsession with this.

There are many occasions when Joel and I sit over one line and change it multiple times, until we feel it really sits right. This is partly to improve our metrics for click rate and others. It is also to simply create an emotion. The one key question we ask ourselves is:

It might be the most fool-proof argument for ending the disparity between men and women in the boardroom: A new study finds that women just might run a company better. 

DO YOU THINK WOMEN MAKE BETTER DECISIONS THAN MEN? LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENT SECTION BELOW.

It’s never a good idea to make generalizations about the differences between men and women. But when there’s real data to back these generalizations up, it’s worth paying attention. Take a new study from McMaster University, which found that women tend to be better corporate leaders because of their decision-making abilities. Women, take note: regardless of whether you subscribe to Sheryl Sandberg’s "Lean In" philosophy, this study indicates that your innate abilities make you well suited for corporate power.

Starting a business isn’t easy, you don’t need us to tell you that, but at least it’s not as lonely as it used to be. Start-ups and entrepreneurs now have the support of hundreds of organisations, government agencies, educational courses, websites, meet-ups, and even apps to help them build their businesses. The challenge for entrepreneurs is now to decide which of these is best for them.

We like positive surprises and fear negative ones.

That means (surprisingly) that it's better to have a consistently negative experience than to confront one that's sometimes negative and sometimes neutral. The TSA, for example, would be easier to take if they were always consistently irrational, time-wasting and disrespectful, thus eliminating the risk and replacing it with certainty.

Your startup is gone, it’s never coming back, and you are in mourning. An entrepreneur whose business fails grieves similarly to anyone who has lost a loved one. The pain of losing a business is not only about a significant loss of income, but can send your entire identity into turmoil.

Most entrepreneurs define themselves by their business projects. They calibrate self-worth by what they accomplish or do not accomplish. In other words, if a project fails, then they are failures. If a project takes off, then they are wonderful. It’s the universal entrepreneur reaction.

Organizations big and small have begun to explore the practice of collaborative innovation as a way to increase engagement and to foment a culture of innovation. Let’s say you work for such an organization. What’s the quid pro quo when you find yourself part of the crowd from which wisdom is sought? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins wrestles with questions that you may want to ask the practice sponsors and yourself.

South Africa’s funding scene is cagey. It’s really hard to find concrete information, but it’s no surprise really, considering all the non-disclosure agreements. Silicon Cape has been running a survey in an effort to unlock some funding information which it hopes will enlighten the country’s tech startup community. The survey results were compiled into this infographic. While 60% of startups are self-funded, 41% are in search of funding. Funding is still a luxury available to a select few — about a quarter of the survey respondents have received funding from VCs, Angels and family.

You’ve heard it an eye-rolling number of times: anything you post online, or any message you send—be it a seemingly benign text or a photo taken when you were drunk—can come back to haunt you.

Does it have to be true, though? A growing number of startups, led by rapidly growing photo-sharing app Snapchat, are challenging the assumption with apps that allow you to send text and multimedia messages that—like in Mission Impossible or Inspector Gadget—quickly self-destruct (minus, of course, an actual explosion). Even Facebook has gotten in on the action, releasing a Snapchat lookalike app called Poke for sending friends notes, pictures, and videos.

There are several definitions for the term entrepreneurship. If you are an entrepreneur or aspire to be one, you truly want to understand what it really means to be an entrepreneur and what it is all about.

You may think that entrepreneurship is about becoming a millionaire, or being your own boss or doing it your way or becoming famous. This is not completely true. Those are only some of the side outcomes of entrepreneurship, that may or may not always happen. More importantly they are not necessary to happen.

In the last few weeks I’ve been in the middle of a number of discussions, talks, debates and arguments about the entrepreneurship ecosystem and I have another one coming up towards the end of this month at IC2 in Austin.   I keep pondering about what the ecosystem can be when it goes beyond the network of usual suspects of business support and resource providers.    I’ve also been really interested in the question of how the ecosystem might evolve, so here is an example of ten years of general work in this area at one specific site.

Do you know the difference between an S Corp and a C Corp? Have you ever wondered if you should form an LLC for your business or where you should incorporate? Or maybe you’re not sure if you need to create a non-profit for your activities? These are just a few of the frequently asked questions about incorporation.

Assembled below are all the answers to the most frequently asked questions when it comes to incorporating your business. If you’re a small business owner, read on to learn more about the various business structures and how you should incorporate your business.

In creating and building an online presence, ultimately we want to stand out, get noticed and be remembered for the right reasons.

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well. ~ Jeff Bezos

This requires a thoughtful, strategic, purposeful process and most importantly, consistency.