Amazon made a big splash in the tech world when it announced plans to use drones for insanely fast delivery. While we're many years from Prime Air becoming a reality, there are still plenty of cool features available today for members of Amazon Prime.

Most people in the program sign up for the free two-day shipping, which can pay for itself depending on how much you shop. It can also be a great multimedia source, thanks to a large free streaming video library and a Kindle e-book lending library.

Image: IMAGE: FLICKR, STEPHEN WOODS 

Alex Pringnitz spent two weeks in January learning about lean manufacturing techniques — including how to make work stations more efficient — at Polaris Industries in Spirit Lake.

“I hope that I’ll learn exactly what engineers do,” said the Spirit Lake High School junior, shortly before he started putting in 8:15 a.m. to 3 p.m. shifts for the manufacturer of off-road vehicles, motorcycles and other vehicles. “I think it will also help me apply physics and give me a purpose for math.”

Image: http://www.desmoinesregister.com 

Sending objects into space doesn’t always have to be an expensive and complex task conducted exclusively by filthy rich entrepreneurs or governments. Sometimes all you need is a determined Canadian engineer, a backyard, and a Kickstarter campaign –  at least that’s what Richard Graf is hoping.

Graf built a huge, powerful “gun” in his backyard that’s capable of shooting small payloads in a suborbital trajectory. Now he’s trying to use crowdfunding to make the project a reality, which is a smart move considering the Internet generally enjoys funding ridiculously cool projects like this.

Image: http://venturebeat.com 

Six reasons to become an entrepreneur

John was 53 when the bad news hit: His department was being moved offshore. Since joining the company eight years earlier, he had worked his way up to a solid position in middle management with a decent salary and great benefits. Now, he was out of a job.

Having spent his entire adult life in corporate positions, he knew he could go job hunting. But this was the fifth time he’d had a “secure” position shot out from under him, whether through downsizing, restructuring or other reorganization. With a wife and two teenagers to clothe and feed, he was no longerwilling to trust his future to this game of corporate roulette. It was time to go into business for himself.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

TAMPA — If Florida voters approve a referendum to legalize medical marijuana in the November, legal weed might be available for prescription-toting Floridians as early as late next year.

Tampa entrepreneur Jeremy Bufford isn't waiting.

Bufford, 33, has launched Medical Marijuana Tampa, including a “cannabis college” where students already are learning how to grow pot. Still, success is “far more difficult than putting a seed in the ground,” Bufford said.

Image: http://tbo.com - Medical Marijuana Tampa founder Jeremy Bufford speaks during a class on cultivation fundamentals. Bufford says he does not smoke pot. He became interested in the drug after seeing its impact on patients. 

They're the most educated generation in history, and now they're the least employed. Their unemployment rate is nearly twice that of other generations. And they have an average student debt of $26,000 to boot.

The job market around them, too, continues to plod in its recovery. The US added 113,000 jobs in January, well below the 185,000 expected, according to figures released Friday morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The unemployment rate dropped to 6.6 percent – its lowest level since 2008 – but economists still consider those results tepid. 

Image: Martina Ryberg, right, of Plymouth State University talks with Tara Rossetti of On Call International during a job fair for college students in Manchester, N.H. in 2012. Facing a dearth of traditional job prospects, many recent college graduates are opting to go the entrepreneurial route. Jim Cole/AP/File 

What do you think is the biggest obstacle–either of their own making or not–that millennial entrepreneurs face?

HENRY ELKUS: Sheer density of entrepreneurs. The romanticized allure of 21st century entrepreneurship is great for the consumer but an enormous obstacle for millennials.

Because the digital age brought free enterprise to every geographic and socioeconomic sector, there are simply more entrepreneurs than ever before. Statistically, chances of success in this environment are slim. The cocktail of luck, proprietary design, networking-savvy and execution required of today’s millennial entrepreneurs is quite hard to achieve, and there is always someone else waiting to take your space if you slip.

Image: http://blogs.wsj.com 

Equity crowdfunding is about to come to unaccredited investors the United States, but some of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rules are hugely impractical.

If we don’t push the agency to implement some fixes, crowdfunding may be dead on arrival.

It’s historic when Congress passes legislation with nearly unanimous bipartisan support. Such was the case with crowdfunding in 2012: It passed the House with 96 percent approval and the Senate as part of the JOBS Act with 73 percent approval — not too bad in an era of “broken Washington.” It has been almost two years since President Obama signed the bill into law. In October 2013, the SEC released 585-pages of proposed rules for debt and equity crowdfunding.

Image: Eric Blattberg / VentureBeat 

An untraceable currency called Zerocoin is being designed by Johns Hopkins University researchers to compete with other virtual moneys such as Bitcoin. The researchers say that if virtual currencies are going to exist, there should be one that provides the same kind of privacy that people have when exchanging traditional forms of money.  

Inside a drab computer lab at Johns Hopkins University, a team of researchers is trying to build something that has never existed before: a digital currency that changes hands completely in secret. Its name is Zerocoin.

Image: http://www.sci-tech-today.com 

Successful entrepreneurs, like Tony Hsieh of Zappos and Casey Sheahan of Patagonia, have long since realized that influence is no longer something that you do to someone to get what you want, but requires listening and relationship building to do what they want, with a win-win outcome. We now live in a world where even subtle persuasion efforts are suspect.

If your business and your style is still focused on the “old-school” hard-selling push-marketing approach, it’s time to take a close look at how well it’s serving you these days. The new culture driven by social media is all about forging real connections and building relationships.

Multiple cities around the world have impressive startup scenes, from San Francisco and London to lesser-known tech hubs such as Grenoble, France, and Ramallah, Palestine.

However, many cities saw a drastic decrease in the number of new startups last year, as compared to 2012. According to data from SeedTable, 64 startups were founded in San Francisco in 2013, compared to 336 in 2012. In London, 39 startups were founded in 2013, as opposed to 216 in 2012.

Image: http://mashable.com 

Jay Leno ended his long stint as Tonight Show host on Thursday the same way he began it in May 1992: with Billy Crystal as a guest. But what stood out the most during the celebrity-studded finale episode was Leno's heartfelt goodbye speech.

"Boy, this is the hard part," said Leno, fighting back tears. "I want to thank you the audience. You folks have just been incredibly loyal. This is tricky. We wouldn't be on the air. Secondly, this has been the greatest 22 years of my life."

Image: NBC 

GoPro, the maker of high-definition cameras often used to record feats of athletic derring-do, is planning to go public.

The IPO is expected to happen after the SEC finishes reviewing the company's submission documents, according to a press release from the company.

Image: IMAGE: PHILIPPE DESMAZES 

“Small business is the backbone of our economy.” President Barack Obama, August 17, 2010

“New businesses are the lifeblood of a healthy… economy.” PM David Cameron, November 20, 2013

These two statements have something in common: they are wrong — or at best, misleading. This may surprise you given the prevalence of our leaders’ public declarations that small, new businesses are the key to economic health. (And one could add “knowledge-based” businesses to this list of exhortation.)  Indeed, for over a generation stimulating growth via “SMEs” or “small business” has been at the heart of economic and industrial policy throughout the world, only recently being upstaged by “startups.”

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Rip-roaring demand for tech IPOs has created lots of happy people in Silicon Valley. But it also has some tech CEOs feeling pressured to bring their companies to market -- and some venture capitalists worrying that things are getting overheated.

After a decade marked by dismal returns and restive investors in the wake of the dot-com crash, the valley last year saw the most initial public offerings of stock since those dark days. Venture firms took notice, pouring more money into startups last quarter than at any time since the Great Recession.

Image: Los Altos-based cloud storage company Box closed a $100 million funding round in December. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group file photo) ( Karl Mondon ) 

Walter Russell Mead, commenting on the excellent Glenn Thrush article on Pittsburgh’s renewal, writes:

Our economy is hyperdependent on innovation, and the cities that spend time nostalgically pinning for the 1950s style Fordist economy, trying to preserve the blue model for a few years longer, or heaping regulations and taxes on key economic actors, will be left behind by cities that give entrepreneurs more room to operate. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur, but entrepreneurs can lay the groundwork for broad regional renewals.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

The future is upon us: the millennial generation. Millennials come armed with mobile devices of every size, and the corresponding mindset that immediate access is a necessity. In a workforce increasingly comprised of millennials, how can an enterprise harness the power of its mobile workers to be more efficient while still fostering creativity and innovation? How can you quickly adopt the latest technologies while ensuring corporate data and devices are secure, and how do you accomplish this with a shrinking IT budget? To help navigate this landscape, there are a few concepts that CEOs must keep in mind while searching for technology solutions that are right for the company and employees:

Image: ajleon/Flickr 

Research universities have long been thought of as one of the nation’s powerful engines of economic growth. Given the success of Silicon Valley, the Research Triangle in North Carolina and Route 128 in Boston, it is not unreasonable to assume that strong, local research universities can stimulate high-tech business growth. This fits a common sense story – the more educated the population, the more likely they’ll have the skills and financial resources to start a business. Furthermore, cutting-edge research by top-flight faculty can lead to companies with enormous technological leverage. Every city and university wants the next Google GOOG +1.53%, Yahoo YHOO +2.68%! or Cisco, and a high-quality area university seems like a logical and effective ingredient.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

In a given year, about 6 percent of the U.S. population picks up and changes counties. Young families move from Chicago to the surrounding suburbs. Recent college graduates cross the country for a first job in Boston, or Washington, D.C. Retirees relocate for good down to the Sunbelt.

If you could track all of these moves simultaneously across time, you'd get a picture of the parts of the country that are net population gainers, and those that are losing people instead. That picture would look like this:

The principles underlying the U.S. approach to government-funded research and development remain solid—but the world has changed Feb 7, 2014 |By Timothy M. Persons

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology.

Vannevar Bush, the director of the World War II–era Office of Scientific Research and Development, was an innovator in fields including electrical engineering, computation and medicine. He invented the differential analyzer (an early analog computer), a silicone rubber valve for the heart and even an early version of a machine to search across large amounts of books and periodicals (what we now call a search engine). But his greatest contribution to American science was shaping the U.S. research and development system as we know it today.

Image: Lithium ion batteries are an example of an important technology sponsored and developed in the U.S. but commercialized overseas. Credit: Immortal_Undead/Flickr