Now here’s something that’s out of this world.

A group of guys affiliated to The Seasteading Institute are starting a tech startup incubator called Blueseed, 12 miles off the coast of the San Francisco Bay Area, which is not too far away from Silicon Valley.

Stopping short of reclaiming an island, they’re doing it on a ship. They’ve already closed two investor rounds and have opened applications for entrepreneurs from around the world who are interested. They estimate a launch of Q3 2013 or later.

The Seasteading Intitute is a global initiative that aims to build floating cities that will experiment with new ideas of running society. If you think this is run by a bunch of crackpots, well, you’re half right.

How to Avoid a “No” from a VC: People

The old saying in the VC business is investors invest in three things: people, people and people. There’s more than a little truth to that. We’ve seen great teams dig themselves out of some deep holes, and weak teams dig themselves into the ground.

But how do you know you have a great team, at least in the eye of the beholder (us)?

First, ask yourself this question: “What is the probability that there is a team with more domain expertise, more horsepower, and more high-level industry connections located somewhere along the Silicon Valley, Seattle, Austin, Boston, London, Zurich, Haifa, Mumbai, Shenzhen, Tokyo, Seoul corridor?” Really – ask yourself that! Because we are asking ourselves that as you speak.

The Googleplex, Google’s corporate headquarters in Mountain View California, is legendary for its perks. Employees have access to unlimited free meals, haircuts, dry cleaning, massages, and even onsite medical care.

Yet earlier this year, when Google interviewed its employees about what they valued most at work, none of these extravagant benefits made the top of the list. Neither did salary. Instead, employees cited access to “even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.”

Whenever I invest in a new company, I send the CEO my customary email with advice on how to work with his or her new board. I’ve spent 24 years in the software industry—including holding operating roles at three early-stage software companies and board seats at 12 startups—so I thought my “Top 10″ list on the care and feeding of board members might be helpful to other CEOs and executive as well.

So, without further ado, here it is:

1. Have a plan, and get your entire company and board to understand and support it.

A company’s business plan and strategy is the map of where we are going. The plan almost certainly will change, but the best CEOs keep everyone informed about where we said we are going, where we are currently going, and why we changed plans if we did.

Hit 'em young and hit 'em often.

It's one of the recipes for creating tomorrow's tech leaders and creating a critical mass of technology and science enterprises in this part of the province, says Doug Robertson, president and CEO of Tech South East.

The not-for-profit group partners with the region's tech companies to grow the sector in the southeast of the province - including ensuring that today's students realize the fun and possibly lucrative careers that the sector provides those who emerge on graduation day with the skill sets the sector so badly craves.

"These are exciting technology jobs," Robertson says.

"They are high-paying jobs."

Researchers have created artificial muscles that can twist 1,000 times more than any suitable material made in the past—a development that could prove useful in robots and prosthetic limbs.

Artificial muscles are typically made from polymers and metals that change size and shape. But to be truly useful, these materials need to twist or rotate when an electric current is applied, and very few such materials created so far can do this.

The Wall Street Journal has a story out today that says "Web Startups Hit Cash Crunch." There has been a fair bit of reaction in the tech blogs and I thought I'd toss into the discussion some things we are seeing:

1) There are so many startups out there raising money. I don't think this is a bad thing. It's a good thing. Entrepreneurship is in vogue. Innovators are innovating. Makers are making. But I cannot remember a time when we have gotten more inbound traffic. It is not just coming from entrepreneurs. It is coming from angels, seed investors, VCs, lawyers, accountants, friends, aunts, uncles, you name it. I'm waiting for the guy who sits at the front desk in our building to pass me a business plan on my way into the office.

2) There are a lot of "me too" investments out there. And the delineation between startups is getting narrower. Almost every investment that comes our way these days causes us to ask ourselves "is this too close to xyz?" with xyz being one of our exisiting portfolio companies. The startup market is hypercompetitive. The user base is finite at some level. The capital markets are finite at some level. And the number of startups chasing these markets seems to have doubled or tripled in the past couple years.

TechAmerica Foundation’s 14th annual Cyberstates report details national and state trends in high-tech employment, wages, and other key economic factors. The report, Cyberstates 2011: The Definitive State-by-State Analysis of the U.S. High-Tech Industry covers all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

The U.S. high-tech industry lost 115,800 net jobs in 2010, for a total of 5.75 million workers.  This two percent decline in tech industry employment was less than half of the 249,500 jobs lost in 2009, which followed several years of sustained growth.  Over the longer term of 2007 to 2010 – the span of the economic downturn – the tech industry fared better then the private sector as a whole, with a four percent decline in employment versus a seven percent decline in the private sector.

The global economy has existed for at least 5 centuries now. During the 1400s and 1500s, explorers traveled from different parts of the world to establish trade routes and set the first foundations for the global economy. Merchants from Spain, Portugal, France and different parts of Europe began to trade with Asia and China, and vice versa. Many "universal" products today, like chocolate, coffee and potatoes were the result of this very global economy. Indeed, these products were not native to the whole world back then.

From the development of sea routes, all the way up to the industrial era, "products" continued to be at the core of the global economy. However, in the last fifty years, after the World War and later, the fall of communism, services have grown to be equally important. In the 1980s, in developed countries, including America, large sections of jobs shifted from factory or agricultural sectors to services, and this trend was reflected in the global economy.

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TechStars cofounder and CEO David Cohen told Portfolio.com that when he and fellow founders Brad Feld, Jared Polis, and David Brown started their accelerator for startups, they weren’t exactly looking to make it a national phenomenon.

“We started originally in Boulder as a way to support the entrepreneurial ecosystem there,” he said. “Really, we always thought of it as an experiment. We just started getting tremendous demand all over to expand it.”

But the program Cohen and his cofounders kicked off in 2006 has caught on nationally and TechStars has drawn funding from a network of 75 venture capital firms. It's expanded to include programs in Boston, New York, and Seattle, as well as in its hometown in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.

BlackBerry service, which had been out since Monday in some parts of the world, has been fully restored, executives at the company said Thursday morning.

Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie informed investors and reporters on a conference call that the service to all BlackBerry customers in all regions of the world had been restored as of the wee hours of Thursday morning.

Lazaridis explained in slightly more detail what caused the problem. And he once again apologized to customers. Earlier on Thursday the company released a taped video apology from Lazaridis.

Boomers already faced significant retirement challenges before getting clobbered by the recent stock market volatility. The possibility of another recession and the political gridlock over the federal debt only add to the uncertainty. More than ever, you will need to make every dollar count when it comes to planning for retirement — once you are in your 50s or 60s, there isn’t much margin for error.

Here five common retirement planning mistakes and a few tips for avoiding them. Be forewared: There aren’t easy answers.  It will take time to navigate an effective course of action. The end result, however, will be peace of mind that you’re doing everything possible in a tough environment.

The Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire just released its report on angel funding activity for the first half of 2011.

And the news is....good!

During the first half of this year, angel investments totaled $8.9 billion, an increase of 4.7 percent over the same period in 2010.

What does this mean in terms of number of companies funded by angels, and the number of angel investors?

Well, the study estimated that 26,300 entrepreneurs received angel funding during the first half of 2011. And the number of angel investors who funded these companies: a whopping 124,900 individuals.

I heard a fascinating one-liner the other day that I had knee jerk negative reaction to but when I thought about it more thought was deeply insightful, especially in the context of big established companies vs. new entrepreneurial companies.

A CEO of a very large, successful company said “execution is an order of magnitude easier than opportunity.” In the context of young startups, I often feel exactly the opposite. Opportunity is everywhere, but execution in a bitch.

But then I thought about this a little. For a big company that dominates a market, it’s totally focused on execution. The company is built for execution and, assuming it is built well, just cranks things out. What it cranks out might be inspiring, or it might not be, but it’ll keep cranking things out.

During the life of your business, things are bound to change. For example, in the early stages of your business, you may have preferred to keep things simple with an LLC. But as your business and expectations grow, you may need to change your business structure. After all, what may have worked for your business during the first few years of its existence may not be optimal for you now.

If you’re considering changing your company from one business structure to another, there are a few things to keep in mind. The procedures themselves are not necessarily difficult or complex, but will typically involve some legal steps, such as a merger or the dissolution of one entity and the creation of a new one.

Technology is fueling emerging markets previously unforeseen. These new markets are not being created from old business models rather new models that leverage technology and existing assets. Subsequently these new models are creating new value not previously recognized by older models.

The new models are in the middle and on the edge. On the edge being at the fringes of markets being served by the older models and buyers looking for  value at competitive prices and greatly improved experiences.  New markets in the middle represent those wanting neither the most expensive or the cheapest rather value in the middle.

Shark Tank is a reality television series based on the  Sony TV/ BBCTV  Dragons’ Den.It premiered on  ABC television in August 2009 and features a panel of five wealthy entrepreneurs who are called “sharks”. The panel evaluates and negotiates investment proposals from entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs would come into a room with five sharks, present their business plan and model then the sharks would ask questions. When the entrepreneur didn’t have the right answer is like fresh blood in water filled with swarming sharks.

While not a broadcast on a reality show made for TV the reality is we see brands presenting their products and services every second of every day to crowds within their reach.  The crowd’s reaction can be silent or it can be like sharks smelling fresh blood leading to a victim waiting to be devoured.

I recently embarked on an overland trip through Thailand and Cambodia. Asia is a truly fascinating place with similarities to Africa. I, perhaps rather naively, had a romantic vision of escaping from the madness of my everyday life and setting off into the remote wilderness of South East Asia and losing touch with the outside world. I was in for surprise.

As of 2008, there were 16 100 000 internet users in Thailand. In Cambodia and in Thailand there are literally tens of thousands of places where internet is available for public use, coffee shops, bars, restaurants and gas stations. Through USB modems and internet capabilities on cellphones, Cambodians are reconnecting with the outside world.

Throughout my journey; from central Bangkok, to Chiang Mai and Pai in the North of Thailand, to the home of the lost city, Siem Riep in Cambodia, and then south to the remote Thai Islands of Ko Phi Phi and Ko Toa, I was amazed how connected South East Asia is, regardless of how remote the location.

American workers are feeling worse than ever about their jobs, according to Gallup polls, but the reason may be surprising. It’s not low (or no) raises, limited benefits or even longer work days that are making employees unhappy -- it’s the work they’re doing.

According to research from the Harvard Business School, doing meaningful work and making progress in it make people the happiest on the job.

For many of today’s employees, these two basic elements are missing, and that’s a problem, not only for employees, but for their companies. Unhappy employees are less productive and hurt the bottom line.