Bloomberg has started ranking the richest people in the tech industry, and it's going to adjust the rankings daily based on the movement of stock prices and other assets.

Not surprisingly, Bill Gates is still number 1 by a large margin, with more than $61 billion. He lost about $800 million today, presumably because Microsoft shares dropped about 0.7%.

Two other Microsofties made the list: CEO Steve Ballmer and cofounder Paul Allen.

For those of you who want to get in on the ground floor of a new venture, but haven’t yet worked up the nerve to start your own, begin with a job at a startup. But first you should ask yourself if you are prepared for the realities.

Working for a startup is not a career choice, but more of a lifestyle. The long-term opportunities may be large, but near-term paychecks will be small, compared to large companies in the same industry. Stock options, if you get them, won’t help you pay the mortgage for a least a couple of years, and the value then is totally unpredictable. Don’t even think about health and dental benefits for your spouse and kids.

So here’s a strategy I recommend (definitely the most common strategy in Silicon Valley). One family partner works for a startup, and the other sticks with a large enterprise company like Intel, HP, Apple, IBM, or Fujitsu. The large enterprise provides one stable income, an excellent set of benefits for the family, and that partner can get off work at 5pm to pick up the kids.

Declinism may be all the rage in intellectual salons from Beijing to Barcelona and Boston, but decisions being made in corporate boardrooms suggest that the United States is emerging the world’s biggest winner. Long the world leader as a destination for overseas investment, the U.S. is extending its lead as the favored land of overseas capital.

Since 2008, foreign direct investment to Germany, France, Japan and South Korea has stagnated; in 2009, overall investment in the E.U. dropped 36%. In contrast, in 2010 foreign investment in the U.S. rose 49%, mostly coming from Canada, Europe and Japan. The total was $194 billion, the fourth highest amount on record.

Research and innovation have led the Bay State’s economic recovery and remain strong, according to a new report from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative’s John Adams Innovation Institute.

The report, called the Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy, examined such metrics as patents, academic publications, and venture capital funding in reaching its conclusions.

According to the index, Massachusetts outperforms nine other states on the technology front.

So-called “power angels” have emerged as a force in the U.S.  technology start-up scene. They bring money and relationships to help promising start-ups get to the next stage.

David Cohen,  founder of TechStars, a well-known incubator of start-ups, has emerged as one of them — and he’s doing it by focusing his energies outside of Silicon Valley.

He’s just finished raising his own second seed fund, totaling $28M, which like his first fund is completely independent from TechStars.

TechStars has its own funding program, which awards every start-up in its program $118,000 in seed funding.

“Each hour you spend watching TV increases your risk of death by 11%.” The average person has a 100% chance of dying, so if you watch an hour of TV after work today, you’ll increase that to a 111% chance. Watch out, your flatscreen is deadly!

This is just one of the shocking statistics in this recently released infographic by Onlineuniversity.net. It’s pink, it’s an infographic, it has meat cleavers scattered throughout… what’s not to like? It also contains some pretty scary statistics — they confirm that as a result of all the automation and improvements in technology, jobs now require more desk time and less running about than they did 50 years ago (at least in the US), and it’s affecting  workers’ health. The more you sit, the less calories you burn. Sitting burns one calorie a minute (which means you’d have to sit for 95 minutes to burn off a medium-sized apple). It’s not surprising, then, that this would result in an average weight gain of 14.6 pounds (6.6 kilograms) a year.

There are methods and techniques used by the highest-paid and most successful people in our society to get paid more money for what they do and get promoted faster to higher levels of authority and responsibility.

When you begin to use them yourself, you put your entire life and career onto the fast track. You will make more progress in the next couple of years than the average person makes in 10 or 20 years. Here are 7 ways to get started:

1. Find a High-Growth Industry

You can make more progress toward getting paid more and getting promoted faster in a couple of years in a high-growth industry than you might in five or ten years in a slow-growth industry.

More than 40 leading business leaders recently urged the Utah Legislature to restore $6 million in funding cuts to the Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR) initiative. The group went further to encourage the Legislature to increase its investment to this critical program by $10 million, in either one-time or ongoing funding, as we now have a unique opportunity to take advantage of Utah's position and maximize the benefits of USTAR for the Utah economy.

USTAR is a commercialization-focused research initiative that recruits world-class innovators to Utah. These researchers and inventors are at the leading edge of creating new technologies, which will in turn generate new start-ups, technology companies and high paying jobs. Through a regional technology commercialization outreach program, USTAR helps expand the reach of the program to every corner of Utah.

Cambridge University is drawing up plans for a major technology venture fund, capable of late-stage investment into both university and non-university inspired firms. Tony Raven, the new CEO of the university's technology transfer company Cambridge Enterprise, wants to help bring through the next generation of Arm and Autonomys with a fund of at least £20m-£30m that can invest from the seed stage right through to VC.

With more than 300 technology companies that have direct veins flowing into high-level education and research within the parameters of the City of Tempe’s city limits, it is understandable that Tempe is often referred to as a city transformed, founded by and defined by a steady stream of innovators.

Just as Tempe’s pioneers of yesterday used early innovations such as Hayden’s Ferry and the Mill Avenue Bridge to overcome the obstacle of the Salt River, the City’s transformation from desert buttes into verdant fields and growing businesses continue to surge ahead as home to innovative researchers that are bridging the gap between industry and research.

It is the week before "demo day" at StartX – a non-profit organisation in the heart of Silicon Valley that assists Stanford University students with their own startup businesses. Budding entrepreneurs are putting the finishing touches to their pitches. "Do you want the 10-second, one-minute or 10-minute version?" asks Pratik Verma, founder of AgeTak Inc, a company that solves healthcare database problems and which is among the 13 student businesses finishing the current programme.

StartX – whose offices include a dedicated nap room and walls that can be used as whiteboards – is a business accelerator program run by Stanford Student Enterprises, the business arm of the student body, since 2010. Thanks to web giant AOL, which hosts StartX inside its US west-coast headquarters for a token rent, StartX provides a time-limited "incubation space". Those on its three-month boot camp also get advice and support – including mentoring by experienced business people – to help create fast-growing companies that can attract investors like those that got Google and Facebook started. It culminates in "demo day", where the startups pitch in front of more than 200 investors.

Where do donors come from? They can be obtained from a variety of different sources, though one of the most popular is a donor list. These can either be purchased or built from scratch from existing contacts.

Renting, swopping or buying a list might be the easiest method of acquiring donors. But, it can be quite expensive. That’s why Howard Berman, author of “Making a Difference,” recommends building one from scratch.

In 1961, after 70 years, professional baseball created its first expansion teams – the Angels and Twins. Naysayers harshly criticized the growth of the league, fearing that new teams would dilute the talent pool and ultimately lower the quality of game play.

Since 1961, professional baseball has grown from 18 teams to 30. Over the same period, professional football and basketball leagues also expanded dramatically.

With youth unemployment at a 60-year high and student-loan debt nearing the $1 trillion mark, can anything be done by the technology sector to help young Americans struggling to find work? Yes, says the #FixYoungAmerica campaign, launching Monday.

#FixYoungAmerica is seeking to address a single, nagging question in the U.S.: How do we overcome the twin epidemics of youth unemployment and underemployment?

Researchers say that the left hemisphere of the brain may not be just logic and math, but could also help play a big role in creativity as well.

Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) are working to try and pin down the exact source of creativity in the brain.

“We want to know: how does creativity work in the brain?” Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, assistant professor of neuroscience at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, said in a statement.

We all too frequently hear that the copyright monopoly is supposed to encourage creativity and that the patent monopoly is supposed to encourage innovation. Most lawyers whose jobs depend on the belief in these myths even claim that the monopolies fulfill these functions to the letter. But when we look at history, a different pattern emerges.

Let’s start around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In that day and age, copyright monopoly laws were in force in the United Kingdom, and pretty much the United Kingdom alone (where they were enacted in 1557). You know the “Made in Country X” that is printed or engraved on pretty much all our goods? That originated as a requirement from the British Customs against German-made goods, as a warning label that they were shoddy goods made in Germany at the time. It spread to pretty much global use.

“It is difficult to come up with a description of what a “common” entrepreneur looks like or acts like, or to pinpoint the necessary skills or experience one must have….but there is one thing all entrepreneurs have in common: Vision.” ~ Matthew Toren and Adam Toren in Small Business, Big Vision

If vision was a box of tools, then you could buy a kit from the local Dream Store. And that box of vision would contain all the essential things that the small business owner needs to “see” in order to dream bigger and act on it.  But as it turns out, you can’t purchase vision.

It’s always encouraging to come across perfectly fitting resumes that indicate rich and exciting experiences. These folks would be great additions to your team and make a faster impact on the business.

However, a rock star candidate must be vetted in terms of attitude and culture. The simple fact is that people can be awesome but they need to fit together well. Here are a few tangible points that can help your decision on the next 10/10 candidate:

Energy and Passion

Our daily life increasingly revolves around blog posts, emails, and status updates. The folks at mbaonline provide a snapshot of what happens in one day on the Internet. Take a look at the startling numbers below: