According to statistics released from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, mobile advertising spend rose to $3.4 billion in 2012, up 111 percent from the prior year’s record levels, and mobile advertising now accounts for 9 percent of all digital revenue.

Spending on mobile devices continues to accelerate at an aggressive pace; naturally, advertisers are following the consumers. Despite this growth, the traditional display ad model of advertising that dominates the Internet just does not translate well to the several inches of screen available on the typical smartphone.

More than 60 companies showed off their health data applications at Datapalooza IV this week and Krishna Yeshwant, a partner at Google Ventures, was the MC for a demo session on Tuesday afternoon.

As one of the presenters was fighting with his PowerPoint demonstration and the projection system, Yeshwant answered a few questions about opportunities for healthcare startups with the search company’s investment group. He said that the outlook has changed for healthcare IT startups now that Obamacare is here to stay.

San Francisco digital health accelerator Rock Health is kicking off its fifth program next week, and it has some unique startups in the mix.

Bound to be the most talked about is Augmedix, which is developing a healthcare app for Google Glass. Co-founders Ian Shakil and Pelu Tran haven’t said much about exactly what kind of app they’re working on, but it apparently will leverage Glass’s augmented reality and voice activation to help doctors keep their focus on patients. Augmedix has already raised $55,000 from 32 Upstart backers.

A new study provides good news for breast cancer survivors—there is no need to give up wine drinking in moderation. According to a study from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, drinking before and after breast cancer diagnosis does not impact survival from the disease. In fact, a modest survival benefit was found in women who were moderate drinkers before and after diagnosis due to a reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, a major cause of mortality among breast cancer survivors.

Previous research has linked alcohol consumption to an increased risk of developing breast cancer, though the nature of the link and exact risk of consumption patterns is unclear. For this study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, about 5,000 participants with breast cancer were questioned about alcohol consumption habits.

I'm coworking. I love my coworkers. I love “going into the office.” I love what I do. It's a strange thing for me to be writing because I don't have a “real job;” I got laid off from my “real job” two years ago. And, like many people, I haven't been able to find a “real job” since. So, like many people, I have carved out my own niche and grabbed opportunities when they appear. I adapted to the new realities of the world. Part of that new reality is a fabulous coworking community called Sierra Commons. They support my work. And, much to my own surprise, I have found work that I love.

With the advent of LinkedIn, Facebook, and dozens of other websites requiring your profile, the old-fashioned written resume is simply an artifact of a hiring practice that is slow to change, and should be abolished. In fact, if your profile is not already on one of these sites, it probably means that you aren’t in the business market anyway.

Today, most personnel organizations readily admit that they already use the Internet to cross-check what they see in your written resume. You can bet that if the stories don’t match, they will more likely believe the online version. That’s why I emphasized in an old article, “Google Yourself to See How Other People See You,” how important it is to keep your online image clean.

While most people cringe at information overload, Tony Hsieh appears to welcome it. The Zappos CEO is known to have a penchant for research and a knack for using it in business experiments. He begins each one as if it will ultimately bring him closer to solving a theoretical jigsaw puzzle. And, if all goes as planned, his latest and largest experiment may do just that. 

Just a few miles north of the Las Vegas Strip, a gambling mecca clustered with the largest U.S. casinos and hotels, Hsieh is leading a five-year, $350 million urban experiment to revitalize the city's downtown. That's where Zappos headquarters will be located this fall when it moves from Henderson, Nev., to the old City Hall building. Investing in the surrounding downtown area is in part a way to support the growth of Zappos.

Guatemala’s economic history has been defined by corruption, instability and broad social inequality. In that context, Rigoberta Menchu received the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in promoting indigenous rights in the country. There are now other unnoticed social changers: entrepreneurs who see hope in technology as a tool to overcome social divides, as one local entrepreneur told the New York Times.

The New York Times was there in 2011 to explore how reverse brain drain apparently began turning reality around for many young Guatemalans. Juan Mini, for example, returned to Guatemala in 2010 after starting a successful Internet company in California called ZipRealty. He returned to create what is now dubbed “Campus Tec.” Juan and other savvy minds set up workspaces and programming classes with an eco-friendly atmosphere in a seven-floor-building located in a central neighbourhood that had lost its lustre. A year later, this hub had become the entrepreneurial playground for 375 people, such as the founders of motion graphics startup BigoMo: Pedro Méndez, 28, had worked in Spain and Kristoffer Hormander, 25, had returned from college in Florida.

What single behavioral change could make a difference in the productivity, health, and happiness of large numbers of people at your university? Getting more sleep.

In Change the World and Get to Bed by 10:00, a recent blog post at Harvard Business Review, Julia Kirby calls on business leaders to get involved in making better sleep a public health issue. She suggests that companies could begin work policies, wellness education, and most importantly, cultural changes to help their employees improve their sleep.

What a positive way to start the week. South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has awarded the first two incubators in its incubation support programme to The Micro Enterprise Development Organisation (MEDO). MEDO supports entrepreneurial activity by boosting trade between large organisations and SMEs or startups, and through its UK Trade & Investment programme.

The first two incubators will focus on the ICT and the Mining and Heavy Industries sectors, providing training and support to businesses that can service and supply these industries. South Africa’s mining industry is under increasing pressure, and the focus on mining innovation is a positive signal.

A new kind of artificial heart that combines synthetic and biological materials as well as sensors and software to detect a patient’s level of exertion and adjust output accordingly is to be tested in patients at four cardiac surgery centers in Europe and the Middle East. If the “bioprosthetic” device, made by the Paris-based Carmat, proves to be safe and effective, it could be given to patients waiting for a heart transplant. Currently, only one fully artificial heart, made by Tucson, Arizona-based SynCardia, has U.S., Canadian, and European regulatory approval for use in patients.

Given the sustained challenging economic environment, there has been a lot of focus on how the U.S. can grow and compete, particularly in the areas of entrepreneurship and small business. This does not only include from the government or public sector view point, but very much from that of the private sector.

Role of Business

Research from the Harvard Business School (HBS) U.S. Competitiveness Project delves into the role of the business sector in U.S. competitiveness. One area HBS has recommended for companies is "supporting innovation and entrepreneurship." An example of how this can be realized is a business investing in developing companies related to their supply chain.

New research suggests business characteristics that promote innovation are geographically clustered, with state and/or country values stimulating or suppressing an entrepreneurial personality.

Psychologists also discovered founders of successful companies tend to exhibit personality traits that make them more socially engaging, creative and able to handle stress than nonentrepreneurs.

Researchers from the University of Jena in Germany and The University of Texas at Austin mapped the entrepreneurial personality structures in the United States, Great Britain and Germany.

There is a quiet epidemic sweeping the world.  The breadth of this contagion is beyond our ability to measure.  And the consequences are potentially staggering.

What could such an overwhelming phenomenon be?  Fake nerds.

As we've all heard, when it comes to the definition of entrepreneurship, there are varying definitions of what this term really means. Some experts think of entrepreneurs as people who are willing to take risks that other people are not. Others define them as people who start and build successful businesses. According to the Small Business Administration (2013), an entrepreneur is a person who organizes and manages a business undertaking, assuming the risk for the sake of profit. An entrepreneur: Sees an opportunity. Makes a plan. Starts the business. Manages the business. Receives the profits.

Regardless of how we define an "entrepreneur," one thing is certain: becoming a successful entrepreneur isn't easy. In fact, it takes 110 percent of hard work and effort. So, how does one person successfully take advantage of an opportunity, while another, equally experienced person does not? Do entrepreneurs have a different genetic makeup? Or do they operate from a different perspective, which somehow directs their decisions for them?

Here is a tiny fraction of a list of people who changed the world through the power of speech

• John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• Martin Luther King
• Winston Churchill
• Ronald Reagan
• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Patrick Henry
• Mother Teresa
• Margaret Thatcher
• Cicero
• Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we take a look at some of the most prominent female leaders, we can see that many of them share similar traits that have helped get them to the top of their professions.

So what does it mean to be an effective female leader? And how does one get into a position of power?

I’ve examined the lives of some of the top women across many industries--from Arianna Huffington, president of the Huffington Post Media Group, to Maria Eitel, CEO of the Nike Foundation, to Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, and others. Here are the characteristics they all share.

To give more insight on accelerator, Paul Bricault, cofounder of Amplify, a Los Angeles-based accelerator defines it as “An accelerator takes single-digit chunks of equity in externally developed ideas in return for small amounts of capital and mentorship. They’re generally truncated into a three to four month program at the end of which the start-ups ‘graduate,’” he says.

I am a huge Steve Jobs fan. To me, he is in the same class as the great American innovators – the Wright brothers, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell. Beyond creating revolutionary technology, Jobs is also credited with one of my favorite quotes: the journey is the reward.

It’s a simple perspective but one few people have adopted. The modern condition has caused many of us to become metrics driven. We get hell bent on optimizing everything: zero inbox, 4G speeds, Six Minute Abs.  Society seems to have made a collective decision that everything we do must be done as quickly as possible.

If Sarah Kauss turned back the pages of her journal to August 2010, she’d likely find an entry about a scorching day in the Sonoran Desert. With the sun beating down on her, all she wanted was a cold drink--but the water she carried was lukewarm from the heat. The experience gave her an idea that would change her life.

Two months later, a stylish, reusable bottle with the ability to keep liquid cold for up to 24 hours, otherwise known as the S’well bottle, was born.