Are there too many angel investors funding too many startups? That was the topic of some debate today at AngelConf, which was held at the Mountain View, Calif. campus of incubator Y Combinator.

The opening speaker was well-known and prolific angel Ron Conway (pictured), who argued that if anything, there should be more angel investing, not less. He said he hopes that any entrepreneur that has “the guts” to start a company gets funded.

“The more angels we have in Silicon Valley, the better,” he said, later adding, “We are funding innovation. We are funding the next Facebook, Google, and Twitter.”

Critics have described this high-quantity approach to angel investing as “spray and pray,” but Conway said angel investing is a hit-driven business. If you invest in enough companies, then you’ll eventually put money in a home run that pays off so well that it funds all your future investments.

In January, we broke the news that prolific Silicon Valley angel investor Dave McClure was to set up its own venture capital fund.

Yesterday, the man filed for the fund with the SEC, providing us with more details (hat tip to FormDs.com). The name will be 500 Startups – McClure has long called himself the master of 500 hats – and the initial fund will amount to max. $30 million according to the filing.

McClure has turned to 99 Designs to come up with a logo for the fund (my favorite so far).

Here’s part of the brief for the logo design:

500 Startups is a new, edgy, risk taking seed fund which invests in early stage consumer internet companies.

Incubator/seed investment funds are popping up left and right and we’re looking to differentiate ourself through edgier design. Our founder likes to swear. In public. A lot. Think Ari Gold, but for tech companies and without a suit.

2.0 Hippies don’t think like the “crowd” rather they think about the “crowd”.  The “crowd” represents the masses being lead down the wrong path only to be captured and used for “the media’s and the man’s” benefit. The media represents “the man” which reflects the philosophy of the past.

Many who stay stuck in the old business philosophy think they understand the power of social technology and try to apply it to old corporate practices in marketing, PR, advertising, customer and employee relations etc. only to learn that their strategies fail because they are driven by the wrong philosophy.

Hippies 2.0 challenge the assumptions and beliefs of organizational and personal thinking stuck in 1.0 philosophies. You can spot thinkers of Hippie 2.0 by their media which reflects profound changes in knowledge, values and reason about the human interaction with markets of conversations. Hippies 2.0 are early adopter ideologies which show the counter cultural values created by the intersection of technology with the human network.

Corporate venture investing has made a minor comeback in recent months, with three corporations establishing venture capital initiatives.

General Motors Corp., which has been an active investor in high-tech companies over the past few years, is committing $100 million to a new venture arm that will give the automaker a more structured way to tap into emerging technologies. “The idea is to identify early-stage technologies that we could potentially incorporate into GM vehicles,” said Jon Lauckner, who is heading General Motors LLC. “Also, there’s a possibility of a financial upside to boot.”

Kaplan Inc. launched its own venture arm to look at start-ups targeting students. Kaplan VC LLC is designed to identify and develop innovative learning strategies, technologies and products with the potential to transform education worldwide. The new group will be led by Jason Palmer, who will serve as senior vice president of Kaplan Ventures.

Have you seen the new HBO made-for-TV movie called “Temple Grandin?”

It’s a powerful story about a woman, Temple Grandin, who overcame autism to become one of the most influential figures in today’s livestock and animal husbandry industry. Not only is Temple’s story a testament to the ability of the human spirit to overcome tremendous obstacles, it teaches many principles that all business leaders would do well to embrace.

When diagnosed at a very early age, doctors said Grandin would never speak. When they recommended life-long institutionalization, Grandin’s mother refused to accept that possibility, and continually pushed her daughter to develop her abilities and learn to work around her autistic limitations.

With the support of her mother and several key mentors along the way, Grandin went on to graduate from college and earn a Ph.D. in animal science. More important, she revolutionized the livestock industry by designing innovative systems that improve herd management and facilitate more humane treatment of the animals we depend on for food. (Lesson #1: Don’t let others tell you what you can and can’t do!)

To mark an increase in allowable running time for non-partner videos, YouTube says it will promote a handful of video makers.

If it seems like YouTube videos are getting longer, you may be watching a particularly dull bit of filmmaking. Or it may be that the video actually is longer.

YouTube on Thursday said that it is now allowing content creators to upload videos with running times in excess of 10 minutes.

As a corporate social responsibility (CSR) recruiter, I study CSR job postings and titles. For the past six years, I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of CSR-related job postings. Recently, I published my biennial CSR Jobs Report, which identifies hiring trends in the field.

One of  the most notable findings is the increase in senior-level corporate positions—those with VP and Director titles. Before 2006, none of the job postings had a title of VP or above. What’s changed? Companies are placing an increased value on CSR as a component of corporate strategy, which elevates the importance of positions overseeing CSR. Dave Stangis, Vice President of CSR and Sustainability at Campbell’s Soup, says: “The emergence of the VP of CSR and VP of Sustainability titles seems proof of the growing strategic business position of CSR.”

But, why stop at Vice President? How high can the title go? What about a Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO)? Can CSR find a place in the C-Suite?

A team at Tokyo University has figured out how to make holograms "touchable." When you think of holograms, you probably picture your hand sliding right through them, being a projection of light and all. Here, you won't feel anything, but you certainly can interact.

At first blush, the tech seems to be little more than a trick. After all, you aren't really touching the holograms as much as you are manipulating them by placing your hand in a certain place. The ball doesn't bounce off your palm, for example — the system registers that that's where your hand is and the virtual ball react.

Google Earth is one of the great "wow" applications in Google's stable, especially on touch devices like Android smartphones or the iPad, whether it's showing undersea formations or cities in 3-D. It's also surprisingly useful, and Google's always adding elements to it to give it more utility and/or fun.

The newest is the clouds layer, which now shows rain and snow in real-time weather patterns, across the globe. After enabling the clouds layer, you can just zoom in to any location you want, provided Google has supplied the layer for the part you want to see. So far, that's limited to just parts of North America and Western Europe, but that includes some of the rainiest places I can think of, including the Pacific Northwest and the U.K. By enabling the radar layer, you can see where the precipitation data is available.

With a City Council committee’s blessing July 14, city beaches are one step closer to featuring commercial advertisements on lifeguard stations and seasonal lifeguard stands.

If approved by the full council, the proposed commercialization of the beaches could bring millions of dollars back to the city’s lifeguard program, which has been hit hard by budget cuts.

“It was an important step and I give the lifeguards a lot of credit,” said District 2 City Councilman Kevin Faulconer, part of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee that unanimously approved the project. Faulconer said the beach advertising proposal would likely be brought to full council in the fall, with public outreach planned between now and then. In this proposed pilot program, each of the city’s eight main lifeguard stations alone — including the one in Ocean Beach — could potentially generate between $200,000 and $500,000 per year — as much as $4 million annually.

Confidence among venture capitalists in Silicon Valley weakened in the second quarter, according to a new industry report, as concerns over financing, the economy and new regulations added to an already tough working environment.

But while confidence dipped, investments increased as several venture capitalists seemed excited about a new crop of quality start-ups hitting the Valley.

Venture capital has been one of the hardest-hit parts of the economy during the recession. The lack of financing choked off money to the industry, while the moribund capital markets made it very difficult to exit past investments through initial public offerings or mergers and acquisitions.

While not the political capital of Canada, Toronto is certainly the cultural and financial capital of the country. With over 5 million residents, Toronto is the largest city in Canada, sitting in a densely populated part of Southern Ontario. With over 200 ethnic groups speaking over 130 languages, Toronto's cosmopolitan population makes it one of the world's most diverse cities. Toronto also boasts a clean environment, low crime rates, a high standard of living, and incredibly nice folks who live there, all helping make it one of the world's most livable cities and according to a recent Huffington Post article, "the capital of cool."

It's also by all accounts a thriving startup hub, with both strong investor presence - the National Angel Capital Organization and Extreme Venture Partners are headquartered there, for example - and with a lot of entrepreneurial talent and activities.

As more and more organizations use all things social to attract audiences the issues of “spread” becomes a focal point for reaching the right audience.

In statistics, statistical dispersion is variability or spread in a variable of probable distribution. Probable distribution is important to distribution of relevant content in context with your audience.

Dispersion is contrasted with location or central tendency, and together they are the most used properties of distributions. If your content is not being dispersed to locations where your audience is then you are wasting efforts to attract the wrong audience.

A chemical-infused scaffold generates new tissue by attracting stem cells.

Today's titanium replacement joints work very well for 10 to 15 years, but replacing them after they've worn out is a challenge for both patient and surgeon. A team of researchers from Columbia University proposes a way around that problem: by implanting a scaffold that encourages the patient's own stem cells to regrow the joint.

In research published this week in The Lancet, the researchers demonstrate that the technology--a joint-shaped scaffold infused with a growth factor protein--works in rabbits. About a month after the implant, the animals began using their injured forelimbs again, and at two months the animals moved almost as well as similarly aged healthy rabbits. The study is the first to show that an entire joint can be repaired while being used.

"They used the potential of the body as a bioreactor, instead of doing everything in the petri dish," says Patrick H. Warnke, a professor of surgery at Bond University. Warnke wrote a commentary on the Columbia study for The Lancet. While the connection between bone and the titanium in existing implants wears out over time, the hope for this alternative approach is that the new bone formed by the stem cells will create a more natural and durable connection, and that the scaffold itself would disintegrate over time.

The foundation of the ocean food chain, phytoplankton, is declining at a much faster rater than expected. Phytoplankton are down 40 percent since 1950 and disappearing at a rate of one percent yearly. Scientists don't know what the effects will be, but clearly it's not looking good.

Sorry, this is another global warming story.

Spiegel:

"We had suspected this for a long time," Boris Worm, the author of the study for Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "But these figures still surprised us." At this point, he said, one can only speculate as to what the repercussions might be. "In principal, though, we should assume that such a massive decline is already having tangible consequences," said Worm. He said that the lack of research on the food chain between phytoplankton and larger fish in the open ocean is a hindrance to knowing the extent of the damage.

Microsoft's new search engine Bing has been making waves in the search market, adding new features and slowly chipping away at Google's established search dominance. But smaller search engines have an uphill battle when it comes to toppling Google in search.

As Ask.com's Barry Diller pointed out today, innovation in search often works toward Google's advantage. Regardless of whether Google does the innovating.

Ask.com made headlines this week with some userface changes that reverted the site back to its earlier question and answer format. Furthermore, the site beat analyst expectations, growing 18% to $197.2 million. But IAC head Barry Diller had some candid words about Ask's prospects during the company's second quarter earnings call. According to PaidContent, he said:

“One thing I want to make clear to investors is that Ask itself is not a large segment of the company. I had hoped it would become one, but I was wrong about that. I was wrong about the competitive landscape with Google."

Porsche said it would come out with electric sports cars in the future, but left the specifics to be revealed at a later date.

The company, in conjunction with Siemens and others, has shown off an all-electric Boxster at trade shows. We took this picture of one of the three all-electric Boxsters earlier this year at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. Now, Porsche says it has been testing the prototypes on the track and will come out with a car in the future.

"We will definitely be offering electric sports cars in the future," said Michael Macht, the President and CEO of Porsche AG in a prepared statement. "But such a concept only makes sense if it offers performance and a cruising range comparable to that of a sports car today."

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) announced in May that it’s launching three Energy Innovation Hubs, designed to “help advance highly promising areas of energy science and engineering from the early stage of research to the point where the technology can be handed off to the private sector.”

These hubs not only demonstrate the nation’s commitment to tackling our energy and climate challenges, but they also represent an innovation endeavor not often associated with the U.S. government.

Each of the three hubs will tackle a different energy challenge in a highly collaborative way that welcomes diversity of thought. They will “bring together top researchers from academia, industry and the government laboratories with expertise that spans multiple scientific and engineering disciplines under the leadership of a dynamic scientist-manager.”

How’s this for absolutely dominating an increasingly lucrative and fast-growing segment?

Google currently boasts a mobile search market share of 98.29%, with it closest competitor Yahoo taking up just over 0.8% of market share and Microsoft’s Bing barely touching even half that, according to recent data from StatCounter as relayed by Pingdom.

This graph, made by Pingdom, puts it all in perspective:

State ranks No. 5 on Top 10 list, based on strength of biotechnology industry.

Kansas has received recognition from a national site selection magazine for the state’s leadership position in building a vibrant regional bioscience industry.

Business Facilities magazine this week pegged Kansas as No. 5 on its 2010 list of Top 10 states based on biotechnology strength. The states, ranked in order, were: 1. California, 2. Texas, 3. Pennsylvania, 4. Massachusetts, 5. Kansas, 6. New Jersey, 7. North Carolina, 8. Illinois, 9. Maryland and 10. Ohio.

The annual rankings are compiled using more than two dozen criteria, including an assessment of state-funded research and development programs, interaction with institutions of higher education and major projects announced within the past year.

Tangible signs of U.S. economic turnaround are evident, and the recovery is already under way, according to this economic analysis from Ross DeVol, Executive Director of Economic Research.

From Recession to Recovery: Analyzing America's Return to Growth calls for modest but sustainable growth in GDP, consumer spending and jobs. According to DeVol, strong recovery in business investment in equipment, more robust exports, a more upbeat consumer and continued low interest rates will fuel the growing recovery.

Key points in the forecast:

• Real GDP will grow at 3.5 percent in 2010, 3.7 percent in 2011 and 3.8 percent in 2012. Growth returns to slightly less than 3 percent from 2013 to 2015.
  
• The U.S. will add 1.8 million jobs in 2010, 3.1 million in 2011 and 2.6 million in 2012.
  
• Real consumer spending is projected to increase 2.8 percent in 2010, 3.5 percent in 2011 and 3.0 percent in 2012.
  
• New home construction won’t aid economic growth in 2010, but residential fixed investment should jump 26.0 percent in 2011 and 25.7 percent in 2012.

After more than 13 years in Los Angeles, Clint Brauer decided to come home. The Haven native and Kansas State graduate was able to get in on the dot-com boom of the 1990s and turn degrees in business marketing and advertising into a career in high-tech that's taken him from entry level to senior positions at companies such as USWeb, Universal Music Group, Sony and Fox Interactive.

But at 36, Brauer wanted a change in the pace of his lifestyle.

So the West Coast techie opted to come back to his home state and run his current venture, Cyberread.com, an e-book company, from his hometown.

"L.A. was great. (But) L.A. is a hard place to truly relax because the bar is so high to do well there," Brauer said.

Video: A Panorama of Venture Capital and Beyond (Entire Talk)
Marc Andreessen, Serial Entrepreneur
61 min. 7 sec.

Dark clouds still hang over the venture capital industry despite a slight improvement in initial public offerings and mergers & acquisitions. Cambridge Associates and the National Venture Capital Association today issued a report showing that 10-year returns -- perhaps the most important measurement of the industry --were a negative 3.7 percent for the period ending March 31.

Some might like it hot, but extreme heat can overpower the human body. An expert from the CDC explains how heat kills and why fans are worthless in the face of truly high temperatures

Climate change promises to bring with it longer, hotter summers to many places on the planet. This June turned out to be the fourth-hottest month ever recorded—globally—scientists are reporting. With more heat waves on the horizon, and a big one currently sweeping much of the U.S., the risk of heat-related health problems has also been on the rise.

Heat exhaustion is a relatively common reaction to severe heat and can include symptoms such as dizziness, headache and fainting. It can usually be treated with rest, a cool environment and hydration (including refueling of electrolytes, which are necessary for muscle and other body functions). Heat stroke is more severe and requires medical attention—it is often accompanied by dry skin, a body temperature above 103 degrees Fahrenheit, confusion and sometimes unconsciousness.

It's not just about doing a pilot and then collecting data off of smart meters. Utilities looking to manage data coming from smart metering must have a multi-tiered plan in place, Larsh Johnson, director and CTO of eMeter, said during a GTM Webinar on Wednesday moderated by Chet Geschickter, Smart Grid Analyst with GTM Research.

While many people argue that smart meters are an end point and represent just one part of the smart grid, Johnson said that they should be thought of as a strong starting point that allows for greater intelligence below the substation level.

That intelligence, however, does not come without planning. "It's only getting worse, or better, depending on your viewpoint," Johnson said in regards to the amount of information that will be relayed through devices in the home area network, including smart thermostats, solar panels, smart appliances and electric vehicles.

Early stage venture capital investing in India appears to be the flavour of season. There are funds being set up from $5m to $30m in size. Some are proposed to be set up by angel investors, some by former executives and investment bankers while others by successful entrepreneurs. Some are likely to be supported by government linked institutions, some by international investors and high net worth individuals. I recently had occasion to meet with some fund managers of these proposed funds.

Clearly, they had done their homework: on the state of the Indian private equity and VC market, the various participants had been mapped out, the state of the Indian economy, the performance of existing venture backed companies, the valuations, the exit opportunities, the pluses and minuses of existing funds had all been analysed and the inevitable gaps/spaces/blue oceans (choose your favourite jargon!) had been identified. And they apparently conclusively pointed to early stage investment opportunities in India – the holy grail or the akshaya patra, if you will.

All the presentations however sounded similar if not identical. They all talked about how attractive the opportunity was and how money could be multiplied. They all would source deals by networking and by associating with the same set of organizations and institutions, by having business plan competitions; they all anticipated “adding value” as a differentiating feature – high powered advisory panel, incubation centres, connections with various corporations and the like.

This year, it’s different.

For the past three summers Dreamit Ventures has incubated early-stage startups at the University City Science Center, giving each startup a small bit of seed capital while providing advice from some of the brightest entrepreneurial minds in the city.

Startups like SCVNGR, Seatgeek and Notehall all have roots in the incubator.

This year, DreamIt upped the ante by partnering with Brooklyn-based Startl to incubate more companies than ever and DreamIt is starting to receive national attention as one of the best early stage technology incubators in the country.

It's easy to bash Microsoft.

From its CEO, to its massively popular operating system, the company does not exude the cool, hip style of Apple. Nor does it exude the wide-eyed optimism or Google.

For these reasons, and others, Microsoft is regularly bashed by the tech-set who drool over Apple and Google.

It's not just the tech scene. Wall Street is cool to Microsoft. After crushing earnings, Microsoft's stock is underperforming the market.

Well instead of piling on, we're going the other way. Of all the major tech companies out there, Microsoft is one of the most successfully diversified, exciting companies going.

Microsoft's new search engine Bing has been making waves in the search market, adding new features and slowly chipping away at Google's established search dominance. But smaller search engines have an uphill battle when it comes to toppling Google in search.

As Ask.com's Barry Diller pointed out today, innovation in search often works toward Google's advantage. Regardless of whether Google does the innovating.

Ask.com made headlines this week with some userface changes that reverted the site back to its earlier question and answer format. Furthermore, the site beat analyst expectations, growing 18% to $197.2 million. But IAC head Barry Diller had some candid words about Ask's prospects during the company's second quarter earnings call. According to PaidContent, he said:

“One thing I want to make clear to investors is that Ask itself is not a large segment of the company. I had hoped it would become one, but I was wrong about that. I was wrong about the competitive landscape with Google."

In a shift of attitude, they say it's the most important leadership competency for a successful enterprise of the future.

 IN TODAY'S uncertain world, what do CEOs want? How do they defy the complex world we live and work in? With creativity, it seems.

According to a new survey of 1,541 chief executives - including 25 per cent from growth markets such as the Asia-Pacific and Singapore - conducted by IBM's Institute for Business Value, CEOs identify 'creativity' as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future.

That's creativity - not operational effectiveness, influence or even dedication. Coming out of the worst economic downturn in their professional lifetimes, when managerial discipline and rigour ruled the day, this indicates a remarkable shift in attitude. It is consistent with the study's other major finding: Global complexity is the foremost issue confronting these CEOs and their enterprises.

I just received a bill from my lawyer today in which he itemized his time spent on my file last month. He spent four-tenths of an hour on an e-mail to a colleague and one-tenth of an hour leaving me a voice mail.

I have found billing by the hour to be a liability in trying to build a sellable business. Years ago I owned a small design studio that charged by the hour. We had $750,000 in revenue, of which more than 20 percent was flowing to the bottom line, yet the business was worthless because we were simply four people hawking hours.

Billing by the hour reinforces that your firm is just a collection of people and, therefore, that future profits (what acquirers pay for) are contingent on your sticking around. That’s one of the reasons firms that bill by the hour rarely get acquired, and if they do, their owners are bound to sign on for a torturous three- to five-year earn-out, the equivalent of selling their ownership status in return for a glorified job.

“The Best Magazine Articles Ever” – Sure the list is subjective. It’s all in English, and heavily slanted toward male writers. But you can’t quibble with this. This curated collection features pieces by some of the finest American writers of the past generation. We’ve highlighted 10 notables ones from a much longer list available here.

1 ) John Updike, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” The New Yorker, October 22, 1960.

2) Norman Mailer, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket.” Esquire, November 1960.

3) Tom Wolfe, ”The Last American Hero is Junior Johnson. Yes!” Esquire, March 1965.

4) Hunter Thompson, ”The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.” Scanlan’s Monthly, June 1970.

Phytoplankton, which are responsible for half of the world's primary production and are the basis of all marine ecosystems, have been declining for more than 100 years, perhaps the result of rising sea temperatures, according to a study published in this week's Nature -- a cause for concern about the health of the Earth's oceans.

"It is troubling," said marine scientist David Siegel of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the research. With data dating back to the late 1800s, "this paper finds a long-term trend that's huge," he said. "The phytoplankton community has undoubtedly been changing."

Phytoplankton productivity lies at the base of the marine food web, supporting all ocean life and contributing to global geochemical processes, including the carbon cycle. Through photosynthetic activities, phytoplankton reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. Satellite data from the last few decades has suggested that phytoplankton might be on the decline.

Microsoft Research demonstrated a new street-level image viewing option that knocks the socks off of Google Maps Street View this week at the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles. Called Street Slide, the technology allows users to zoom out from the fish-eye pannable photos you see on standard street view options and instead see a series of flat panoramic photos stitched together like a timeline.

It's a little hard to describe, but check out the video below. In addition to being less disorienting than zooming around inside Street View, the open space opened up for annotation in Street Slide is very nice.

Most people associate Wisconsin with cheese and beer, but you should think about adding startups to that list. Led by a tidal wave of mostly young entrepreneurs, Madison, Wisconsin is staking a claim as the startup capital of the Midwest. Madison was recently ranked as the 7th most innovative city in the country by Forbes magazine – just above perennial powerhouse Boston, MA.

Several key organizations are driving the growing startup community. Capital Entrepreneurs is a group of over 56 companies that meet on a regular basis to help founders network and develop connections. MERLIN Mentors provides free mentoring services to new startups. Applicants are assigned a team of experienced entrepreneurs who help founders navigate many of the challenges facing a new company. These groups, along with the University of Wisconsin, are fostering a great culture for new startups.