The other day you must have caught news that Copenhagen-based Trustpilot raised $25 millioin. Among their investors is Denmark's SEED Capital, one of the most active investors in the region and the largest early stage venture fund in Denmark with €240 million under management. Here's a quick look at them.

Science and technology impact industries across Oklahoma, improving our economy and quality of life. Learn about some of the internationally-recognized research taking place in our state and some of the results of OCAST’s work in the 2014 Impact Report. 

Particle accelerators, biobanks, telescopes, scientific databases - these are among the "big science" research infrastructure projects that have become an essential feature of the research world. Their scientific value is obvious. But their economic value can also be great: The World Wide Web was born at CERN. Can we quantify this kind of broader, indirect economic or social benefit? 

Image Courtesy of hyena reality / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The annual World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, bills itself as the place for "Reshaping of the World," with "Consequences for Society, Politics and Business." In reality, it's anything but.

While organizations will spend an average of $40,000 to send their CEOs, heads of state and moguls to the ultimate schmooze-a-thon, the reality is the world won't be reshaped in Davos next week.

Image: http://readwrite.com 

Published on Oct 24, 2013

THE ERIC SCHMIDT-BACKED SERVICE COFOUNDED BY AN EX-GOOGLER FOSTERS INVESTMENTS IN HIGH ACHIEVERS, WHO AGREE TO REPAY INVESTORS WITH THEIR FUTURE EARNINGS. SOUND LIKE INDENTURED SERVITUDE? IT'S NOT EVEN THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL PART OF UPSTART.

After college, Shanaz Chowdhery, 22, hoped to explore her intellectual passion. Like many a student before her, she didn’t know if she could afford it. She'd graduated from Yale in 2013 with Bachelor's degree in sociology and had grown fascinated by the intersection of education and inequality. She hoped to teach for a few years before going on to law school. But she worried about starting adult life in a lower-income profession like teaching.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com 

Are you a Veronica Mars fan? When Rob Thomas, creator of the popular television series, couldn't get a budget from Warner Bros. to make a Veronica Mars feature film, he turned to the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. Thomas raised $2 million on Kickstarter in 10 hours. By the end of the campaign, he had raised $5.7 million, along with tons of publicity and invested fans. The Veronica Mars movie comes out in March!

The UpTake: The first of three manufacturing institutes President Barack Obama has promised to create was announced today in North Carolina, and its focus is electronics. And to remind you of the innovation already happening in electronics in this nation, we bring you some of the brightest minds, so far, in the space.

Image: http://upstart.bizjournals.com - Ayah Bdeir is founder and CEO of littleBits, which provides electronics kits for kids to learn to engineer their own devices. littleBits 

CANNABIS CAPITALISTS, CRYPTOCURRENCY TRADERS, AND DRONE SAFETY EXPERTS ARE AMONG THE GREATEST, STRANGEST NEW GIGS AROUND. DO ANY OF THEM WORK FOR YOU?

For the first time in years, job growth projections aren't entirely dismal, and plenty of people are itching for a new gig. According to one survey, 20% of Americans are looking to change jobs in the next year. Economists are saying that there could be more full-time, high-quality opportunities out there, too. And while you could look for a job in sales or finance or engineering, there are more exciting options--weird new gigs that hardly existed six months ago but that, by this time next year, you won't stop hearing about. Here are seven of the most peculiarly promising new lines of work out there.

Image Courtesy of Victor Habbick / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

At 12:30 p.m. on August 19, 2009, Tom Lehman entered the first line of code that would eventually become Rap Genius. By 6:22 p.m. the same day, he finished the first version of the site. It took less than six hours to build something that now attracts 40 million new users a month, raised $17 million in VC funding, and very recently stirred up and survived an internet-wide controversy (which may only make it more popular).

Image: http://firstround.com 

I would like to amplify on my colleague’s last blog, as I too participated in The Economist Web debate on Smart Cities. I too voted “no” – Smart Cities are not empty hype, but I wasn’t surprized by the split vote.  As Robert Bell stated in the last blog, “Smart Cities are about using a new generation of cheap, powerful sensors, data storage and software to automate cities …. using information and communications technology (ICT) to do more with less.”  Cities that have become involved in these tech enhanced programs like are quite happy with their asset management initiatives.  But having worked with some of these cities, I cannot say that they would qualify as Intelligent Communities. They could if they go the next steps and build on the platform that has been built for them by the Smart City technology firm. So my position was a little different. I felt that these tech companies are doing these cities a big favor by helping them to get a terrific grounding on the first level of intelligent communities – namely by focusing on what we call getting the infrastructure right.  Here is what I said:

Look up to the sky and you might see birds flying in a 'V' shape. This pattern is thought to give the birds behind an aerodynamic advantage. Now it seems birds really do fly with a little flap from their friends. A Nature Video production.

Image: http://www.scientificamerican.com 

IDG News Service - A group of businesses and universities, led by North Carolina State University, will work together to design and manufacture next-generation, low-power semiconductors, U.S. President Barack Obama said Wednesday.

The new manufacturing innovation institute, one of five such innovation hubs proposed by Obama last February, will focus on enabling a new generation of energy-efficient, high-power electronic chips and devices by making so-called wide bandgap semiconductor technologies cost-competitive with silicon-based technologies in the next five years, Obama said during a speech in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Image Courtesy of Keattikorn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Investor’s Guide to University Startups brings together hard-to-find data from the high-potential, rapidly evolving university start-up market and organizes it into an easy-to-use directory. PLUS Buyers receive an excel spreadsheet with contact information, and one years access to the UTechWatch university startup database and monthly e-mail updates.

Two days ago I mentioned that Redlands, California, posed a question similar to one we'd encountered in Burlington, Vermont. Namely: what were sizable but standalone Internet-based tech companies doing in these smallish towns? In Redlands's case, this meant Esri -- a leader in the mapping-software industry, and a partner in our "American Futures" project. In Burlington's, it was Dealer.com.

The year that has just finished revealed a record-breaking achievement for angel investment in Europe: 5.1b Euros were invested in 2012. While it is still too early to say how much was invested in 2013, we are confident to have witnessed a consolidating and positive year for early stage investors and for business angels in particular. Here's a short sample of astonishing facts from 2013:

The problem of youth unemployment in the European Union is not new. Youth unemployment has been double or even triple the rate of general unemployment in Europe for the last 20 years. The events of the past few years have dramatically exacerbated it, however: 5.6 million young people are unemployed across Europe, and a total of 7.5 million are neither being educated nor are they working. Moreover, while young people are eager to work, more than half of those without jobs say they simply can’t find one—all while businesses across Europe insist they struggle to find young people with the skills they need.

Image Courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

YOU ARE JUST NOT YOURSELF LATELY, AND YOUR WORK HAS BEEN SUFFERING. WELCOME TO THE PROFESSIONAL SLUMP. HERE'S HOW TO GET BACK TO YOUR NORMAL AWESOME SELF.

Everything’s going wrong at work. Your co-workers and clients are wondering what’s wrong with you. You’ve lost your mojo, and nothing--not faking it, lucky socks, or a venti latte with an extra shot or two--is going to bring it back. Welcome to the professional slump.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com 

SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER DOESN'T JUST AFFECT YOU--IT AFFECTS THE WHOLE ECONOMY. WE SHINE SOME LIGHT ON WHY YOU'RE DEPRESSED IN THE DARKEST MONTHS AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT.

Consider Stockholm, London, Frankfurt, and Toronto. Each of them has stock exchanges, each of them have dark winters. Weirdly enough, you can see the weather in the stocks.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com 

YOU HAVE A SOUL-SUCKING BOSS, AWFUL CO-WORKERS, AND A DESK WITH NO PRIVACY. BUT YOU CAN STILL BE HAPPY! HERE’S HOW.

Here’s a depressing statistic: A September 2013 report from research leader Gallup found that 70% of people are unengaged from or actually hate their jobs. What’s even more depressing is that career coach Jessica Simko is surprised the number isn’t higher. Founder of Cincinnati, Ohio’s Conscious Career Intelligence, she speaks to people every day who hate their jobs. But finding that elusive “dream job” often lies in changing their own beliefs, she says.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/19752067@N00/83584239