Mars Curiosity Rover has captured our attention from the time it launched in November 2011 to the time it landed on August 5, 2012 in a very dramatic landing to now.

It has been on the red planet for almost 12 months. What has it done so far? Take a look:

Even with Curiosity there, there is still a lot to learn, and for that reason, NASA is sending another explorer, MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN Mission), which, instead of crawling along the surface, will be examining all aspects of Mars Climate History. From the LASP MAVEN website out of Boulder, CO:

Paula Long, CEO of DataGravity, decided she didn’t want to be a small fish in a big pond. So, entrepreneur that she is, she carved out her own pond: small to medium-sized businesses with self-serve, big data solutions rather than large companies with highly customized solutions that attract the competition.

Now she can be the big fish.

Her New Hampshire-based start-up received $12 million from Charles River and General Catalyst in its first round of financing and $30 million from Andreessen Horowitz in its second round. DataGravity also made the CRN list of Big Data 100 companies to watch in 2013. CRN reports on and analyzes the IT industry.

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As policymakers on both sides of the aisle wring their hands over creating new jobs to stimulate our sputtering economy, it’s become commonplace to hear them give lip service to how they want to empower entrepreneurs and small business.

Sadly, invigorating entrepreneurs stops there, and this lack of new business support and funding for startups is holding back our economy

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How do you deal with stress and life balance as an entrepreneur? This was the question posed on the latest Startup Edition thread. As I let the question rattle around, it seemed like a natural opportunity to expand on my previous post on avoiding burnout. So, here we are. The first, and arguably most important piece of achieving work-life balance as an entrepreneur, is simple: acknowledge that there’s no such thing. By becoming an entrepreneur, you’re making a conscious decision to forego balance in favor of excitement, learning, and opportunity. That’s very much a choice.

I have decided that any old Joe can start a company. In fact all you have to do is have an idea. It doesn’t even have to be a good one. All you need is for a bunch of other Joes to want it. In Africa, all the Joes are starting their own business, but not all the Joes can make it work — after all, This is Africa (TIA). We have written a fair amount about tech startups in Africa that have shown they have the potential to impress and have gained some very serious traction. Some companies have received funding in the millions, international investment and lots of press. That’s very cool.

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The rules of the fundraising game are changing for private equity and venture investors, but don’t expect to see general partners shouting news of their latest offerings from the rooftops.

A team of astronomers from the University of Anitoquia, Medellin, Colombia, have discovered a graveyard of comets. The researchers, led by Anitoquia astronomer Prof. Ignacio Ferrin, describe how some of these objects, inactive for millions of years, have returned to life leading them to name the group the ‘Lazarus comets’. The team publish their results in the Oxford University Press journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Comets are amongst the smallest objects in the Solar System, typically a few km across and composed of a mixture of rock and ices. If they come close to the Sun, then some of the ices turn to gas, before being swept back by the light of the Sun and the solar wind to form a characteristic tail of gas and dust.

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It’s no secret that seed and series A funding rounds are very hard to come by right now in cleantech, and perhaps for all startups. The massive VC firm, NEA, which manages around $13 billion and closed a $2.6 billion round last summer, has allocated a small amount of money for seed investing. Jon Sakoda, who was involved with funding OPower, gives an interview where says that NEA allocated about $20 million for seed investing and does investments as small as $100,000. NEA has become known for doing very large later stage investment rounds like ones at Bloom Energy and Fisker.

Have you ever wondered what your boss really thinks of you? Of course she treats you with respect and thanks you for your efforts, but how much of that polite behavior is just part of ordinary courtesy? And if the company started tipping into the red, how serious would its troubles have to be before someone decided to cut your position or replace you with an employee who could accept half your salary? In other words, how invaluable are you…honestly?

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As you may have heard, Congress recently passed a last-minute deal on federal student loans that ties the rate to government borrowing costs.

Still, I’m not convinced that Congress will deliver any meaningful reform of education funding, or take action to curb the spiraling cost of higher education anytime soon.

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Since a federal judge ruled last month that the unpaid interns who sued Fox Searchlight Pictures were in fact entitled to wages, there have been a slew of assertions that this is the beginning of the end for unpaid internships, and warnings that colleges had best distance themselves from such opportunities or risk unwanted litigation. But omitted from much of the discussion was a small but crucial fact: the two interns who filed the seemingly groundbreaking lawsuit were not students. They were 40-something men who’d left their jobs to try their hands at film production -- and they were not so much interns as they were volunteers, college officials say.

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September 30th marks the end of the federal government’s fiscal calendar, which means that the year-end buying season is upon as we continue through this fourth and final quarter. So, how can you make sure that your company is considered by government procurement officers and end users who use your product or service (and influence buying decisions)?

No matter what you sell ­– from janitorial services to agricultural supplies – these marketing tips can help you secure federal fiscal year-end business.

The sad truth is that cash flow surprises kill many startups, even though they should have been adequately funded to survive. Overall, 90% of small business failures are caused by poor cash flow, according to the D&B Small Business website. Cash is king when it comes to the financial management of a growing company, so this is not the place for shortcuts and sloppy practices.

Good cash flow management, in simple terms, means understanding every inflow and outflow of cash, and never delegating this function. In principle, you must delay every outlay of cash as long as possible, while incenting everyone who owes you money to pay it as rapidly as possible. Surprises are unanticipated lags between these two events, as well as unplanned cash outlays.

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They tweet. They showroom. They pin and like and yelp. And whenever they do, customers accelerate corporate IT's biggest challenge: to rethink and reinvent itself. The implications stretch beyond any one hot seat in the C-suite.

More than ever, customer experiences are based on a foundation of technology and delivered to a digitally-savvy population. Digital experiences come in many guises: mobile apps, web sites, how-to videos on YouTube, LCD screens on products (think of exercise machines that track calories burned). Some experiences come through channels that companies can influence but not control, such as social networks and review sites.

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When stores start to put away swimsuits and send coupons for composition notebooks and erasable pens, it's a sign that the school year is upon us. We're all guilty of a little nostalgia around this time of year.

Even though you're probably way past your elementary school days, you might be jealous of all the swag you no longer tote in your backpack.

The National Labs are a tremendous R&D resource, but their operations are still based on a decades-old management model that no longer meets the needs of our modern innovation ecosystem. This study presents a series of concrete proposals for Congress and the Administration that can ensure the Labs better meet their mission and produce useful technologies that benefit the American economy.

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Success in a startup is not possible as a “one-man show.” An entrepreneur has to engage with team members, partners, investors, vendors, and customers. In my experience, the joy of positive engagement is sometimes the only pay you get in an early startup. Amazingly, many successful startups are built on this basis alone, with almost no money.

I will talk here primarily about building the internal team of a startup, but the same principles apply outside to your “extended team” and customers. I recommend the ten practical steps outlined by Bob Kelleher, in his book “Louder Than Words,” from his many years of experience in corporate environments. These are easily adaptable and equally relevant to the startup environment:

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Bring together a bunch of highly-successful entrepreneurs in one room and you’ll notice a few common qualities. These people work their tails off, have an immense passion for what they do and exhibit excellent leadership skills.

But beyond that, is there a certain toolset every entrepreneur must have to succeed in this ultra-competitive startup world? Two Seattle entrepreneurs just penned a pair of insightful blog posts that touch on this.

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