As 2011 comes to a close, we asked several venture capital investors to reflect on the past year and give us their outlook for 2012. Continuing our series is Peter Fenton, general partner of Benchmark Capital.

Fenton talks about how Twitter defined this year, and how the key to success next year lies in venture firms asking themselves hard questions.

Looking back, how would you characterize 2011?

The rise of Twitter defined 2011. Once every 5-7 years, a company emerges that changes not just the technology industry, but the world…after what some viewed as a rocky start, in 2011 Twitter broke through into the elite group of companies that profoundly shape our world. From the Arab Spring, to the live-tweeting of Osama Bin Laden’s death, in 10 years we will look back and say, “Google in 2001,” “Facebook in 2007,” “Twitter in 2011.”

Business Secretary Vince Cable has announced steps to create a new taskforce to boost the future of business finance for SMEs, including a focus on crowdfunding. The taskforce’s raison d’être will be to examine the challenges facing small businesses seeking finance options and improve access to finance for small businesses. In Vince Cable’s own words, “I want to see as much competition in the market as possible and for businesses to have access to a wide range of finance sources.”

The UK taskforce follows President Obama backing a crowdfunding revolution in the US with the Obama administration and Republican lawmakers drafting legislation that allows ordinary US citizens to pool their money together to back an entrepreneur or business. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking to revamp the rules as it seeks to keep pace with emerging models and public demand.

Giving the holiday presents of a French hen, a milking maid, a leaping lord or even a partridge in a pear tree is rather unlikely in this day and age. But the gifts from the favorite holiday carol “The 12 Days of Christmas” are lighthearted clues to how the economy is faring.

Over all, prices are fairly stable and not rising precipitously for even the quirkier gifts, according to the Christmas Price Index released for the 28th year by PNC Wealth Management, part of the PNC Financial Services Group. On the down side, the price tag for the eye-popping 364 items and services in each of the song’s verses breaks $100,000 for the first time this year.

You wanna be a successful Internet entrepreneur?

Here’s a key piece of advice — hit the ground running, at full speed.

Here’s another — Canadian entrepreneurs need to up their game.

“My rule of thumb is that for every startup that we have in (Vancouver) there are probably five to 10 other startups working on a similar idea in a different region. Only the fastest and the strongest are going to survive,” explained Boris Wertz, British Columbia’s leading angel investor.

“There is so much innovation these days. There are so many startups being created — if you’re not one of the first ones, and the perceived category leader, it’s going to be tough to build a big business.”

Taking vitamin D, along with calcium supplements, may reduce your risk of breaking a bone, but there's not yet enough evidence to say whether it may lower your risk of cancer, a new analysis concludes.

People who were taking vitamin D and calcium supplements were 11 percent less likely to fracture a bone than people not taking the supplements, according to the study.

There was an even larger reduction in fractures — about 30 percent — among elderly people living in institutions who were taking vitamin D, said study researcher Mei Chung, a nutritional epidemiologist and assistant director of the evidence-based-practice center at Tufts Medical Center.

Tis the season of good tidings and great joy as Americans take time to enjoy the holidays and ignore the doom and gloom of economic pundits, the gyrations and tepid growth of their 401-k accounts, the wacky and zany Republican presidential selection process, and our dysfunctional Congress that continues to kick someone’s can down the road. And whose can is it that they are kicking? Could it be the middle class and the 99%? Hmm! I must have missed the latest software release of the “kick the can” game.

And with every yuletide season, we have the inevitable villain – the grinch who steals Christmas. This year’s villain comes gift-wrapped and tied with a bow, just in time to put under the Christmas tree. What was stolen? The payroll tax cut extension! Who stole it? Congress! Yes, once again, Congress puts a lump of coal in our Christmas stocking and removes over $1000 in disposable money per wage earner for nearly 160 million Americans. But wait! Maybe there is still time to save Christmas. We’ll skip a vote in the House of Representatives and send the issue to a conference committee. That should get the job done. (I would attach an LOL at this point, but I’m still not completely sure what that acronym stands for.)

As most people have figured out by now, the annual holiday party isn't an opportunity to get sloppy drunk and paw your favorite co-worker. In fact, few things can derail your career faster than acting inappropriately at such a work event.

Office parties can, however, work to your advantage and become an opportunity to advance your career. The casual atmosphere allows you to chat up the boss or break the ice with a new colleague. To optimize your time at the soiree, create specific goals to help you focus; it's not enough to vow you'll stay away from the cocktail station and appetizer trays.

"The most important thing is to remember it's still a work function – it's not just your friends gathering for a good time," says Cynthia Lett, an executive coach and executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based International Society of Protocol and Etiquette Professionals.

Startups working on a technology called Hadoop have become talent magnets in Silicon Valley, hiring top engineers away from the likes of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook.

And they've become a popular investment for ex-Cisco execs turned VCs, too.

Hadoop is software for managing "big data." It makes it cheap and easy to store massive bits of information and then sift through it to find interesting trends. For instance, Google's Flu Trends uses Hadoop to see where flu outbreaks are by watching where people are doing flu-related searches.

There is a lot of innovation happening outside of Silicon Valley.

We drew startups from TechCrunch and Gigaom articles, as well as Business Insider's own sources and found some massive startups being built abroad. Five or ten already have billion-dollar valuations. Others will soon follow.

Here's who's behind the biggest startups in Europe, how much venture capital they've raised, and why these startups have such high valuations.

Over the last two months, the U.S. government has been running one of the most audacious experiments in entrepreneurship since World War II.

They launched an incubator for the top scientists and engineers in the U.S. This week we saw the results.

63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in eight weeks, turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. Nineteen of the 21 teams are moving forward in commercializing their technology.

It was an extraordinary effort.

Today’s university technology transfer model is built on the assumption that inventing faculty will remain employed by a single university for the long term, if not for life. In the face of harsh economic realities, if universities eventually buckle to public pressure and hire faculty ac- cording to renewable, short-term contracts, re- search administrators would need to revise – perhaps dramatically re-vamp – their university intellectual property strategies. Outside acade- mia, the switch to a mobile faculty workforce could introduce unintended negative conse- quences to our nation’s university technology transfer capabilities.

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Members of a Flickr group formed by The Guardian have recreated the greatest moments of 2011 in Lego, including the Royal Wedding (pictured), the death of Bin Laden, Occupy Wall Street and Rupert Murdoch's near-miss with a custard pie.

Previous Lego efforts by the same bunch have included this World Cup project. And, Lego fans, there's still time to submit your entry. Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or join the Guardian's Flickr group.

On the night last spring when Osama bin Laden was killed, the chief of staff to a former U.S. secretary of defense broke the news to the world—more than an hour before President Barack Obama's announcement. Keith Urbahn (aka ­
@keithurbahn) wrote to his 1,016 Twitter followers that he'd heard the news from a "reputable person." Within a minute, 80 people had reposted the message. One of them was New York Times reporter Brian Stelter, whose retweet led to another large burst of responses. Urbahn's tweet was on its way to going viral.

Investments projected to create more than 6,850 jobs statewide

Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) Secretary C. Alan Walker announced today the allocation of $29.2 million of funding from the U.S. Department of the Treasury's State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) to economic, community and technology development partners throughout Pennsylvania.

"The Corbett administration is committed to supporting our small businesses, and the best way to do that is by partnering with the private sector to maximize resources," said Walker. "I am proud to say that Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation that requested proposals from our local partners with a goal of maximizing investment and supporting the best projects. This initiative will result in significant small-business job creation across the state."

Today, a new startup accelerator for women, the Women Innovate Mobile (WIM) Accelerator, is opening its doors for applications. The program will start off small, offering two to five companies seed funding of $18,000, plus mentoring, support, and free office space in New York during the course of its three-month program.

The company was founded by Veronika Sonsev, the co-founder of inSparq and the non-profit Women in Wireless, Deborah Jackson, founder of JumpThru, and business strategist Kelly Hoey.

“Accelerators are dominated by men and Women Innovate Mobile is the first dedicated to cultivating female founders,” said Kelly Hoey, WIM’s Managing Director. “No one disputes the talent and capabilities of female entrepreneurs, yet they remain severely underrepresented among mentor-driven accelerator programs. That’s why we developed an accelerator program just for women-led mobile ventures.”

To support a from Intel aimed at uncovering and supporting young Innovators, PSFK has tapped some of the world’s established innovators to share some insights into what young entrepreneurs should be on the lookout for in 2012. Below is a summary of their thoughts.

JAMES GROSS, PERCOLATE

It seems to be celebrated in our tech and startup culture that in order to win you need to be as busy as possible. Doing a million little things and running fast is what will get your startup on a Bloomberg show and praised on VC blogs. I’m not sure this model is sustainable. We all have dreams of creating companies that last and aren’t built to be a plugin for Google or a talent acquisition for Facebook. To build a long lasting company requires a tremendous amount of thought. We all know this, but we don’t practice it if we spend our day optimizing for being frantic.

In 2011, entrepreneurs and startup activity sprouted up everywhere. Not coincidentally, the Bay Area, New York, Boston, Austin, Portland and every college town from Abilene to Gainesville is fostering young, eager minds. The millennial generation is proving it can create companies — and thus, jobs — that solve real problems.

Trends like these are quickly impacting how young people relate to and absorb education. These days, higher education is a dynamic and increasingly digital environment — and some are questioning the relevance of the traditional educational institution at all. Here’s a look at some of the big changes in tech and funding that have shaped education in 2011.

Government observers surely noticed that this year, even as the pages of the calendar turned, the political debates always stay the same. Every few months, the federal government nearly shut down (it never actually did). Every few months, the threat of widespread municipal bankruptcy reared its heard (that never happened either). Meanwhile, state and local governments spent the year dealing -- almost universally -- with the same set of challenges: decreased revenue, exploding pension obligations, and crumbling infrastructure, to name a few. It's a year most will be happy to forget.

As they slogged through 2011, some elected officials (and the reporters who cover them) got a bit lazy and began repeating the same old platitudes to describe the mess facing government. Here's Governing's list of political cliches that need to retire in 2012.

When you think of research hotbeds that will be the launch pad for the next generation of gee-whiz tech names—and founders' fortunes—institutions such as MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Cal Tech usually come to mind. The University of Utah (U of U) would not be considered a short-list candidate. That's a gross underestimation of what has become a dynamo in academia's startup derby—this year the U of U spun off 18 tech newbies.

This is the second year in a row that the University of Utah has taken the laurels as the U.S. leader in creating startup companies, in an annual survey conducted by the Association of University Technology Managers on commercialization success based on university research. Once again, the Salt Lake City university defeated rival MIT (17 startups) and a host of other institutions such Carnegie Mellon (10) and Cal tech (10).

The founders of an ASU student startup, called G3Box, have been named "College Entrepreneurs of the Year for 2011" by Entrepreneur Magazine.

"The College Entrepreneur of the Year" award is one of three awards bestowed by the magazine on the nation’s top entrepreneurs of the last year. The magazine received thousands of entries for the competition and then selected the top five entries in each award category as finalists. The finalists were then announced to the general public who voted for their top picks for each award. G3Box received votes from all over the world, including Ireland and Russia. A judging panel made the final decision.