Everyone enjoys writing and reading good content but in the world of online, it carries extra benefits. After all, every SEO specialist worth their salt insists that copy is king and that every site needs great copy and fresh content. The almighty Google itself has proclaimed that fresh, relevant copy is like catnip for the king of the search jungle. But how long does copy remain fresh?

In scientific circles, there is a concept known as a “half-life”. The half-life of a substance according to Wikipedia is:

The period of time it takes for the amount of a substance undergoing decay to decrease by half. The name was originally used to describe a characteristic of unstable atoms (radioactive decay), but it may apply to any quantity which follows a set-rate decay.

I caught up Friday afternoon with Reid Leonard, the Merck executive who will head up the new $250 million Merck Research Venture Fund. While the New Jersey pharmaceutical company still hasn't made an official announcement about Leonard's new gig, word started leaking out earlier this month on Twitter.

Leonard, who began working at Merck in 1989 and rose to be a top licensing exec at the company, told me a bit about the fund's strategy and origins:

The initiative to get it established was the work of David Nicholson, who is head of worldwide licensing for the company. Several of us had been pushing the notion for a few years that, given the overall reduction in the amount of venture capital available to early-stage life sciences companies, and the increasing role of corporate venturing, it was really a good time for Merck to consider stepping up in this way. Our future pipeline depends on accessing innovation from outside.

The world is even smaller than you thought.

Adding a new chapter to the research that cemented the phrase “six degrees of separation” into the language, scientists at Facebook and the University of Milan reported on Monday that the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the world was not six but 4.74.

The original “six degrees” finding, published in 1967 by the psychologist Stanley Milgram, was drawn from 296 volunteers who were asked to send a message by postcard, through friends and then friends of friends, to a specific person in a Boston suburb.

Google is almost as famous for its amazing workplace – (Free valet parking! Amazing retreats!) – as it is for its incredibly painful hiring process.

The problems have been:

• Google preferred Ivy Leaguers.
• It cared about your GPA, even if you're in your 30s.
• Google would hassle applicants with "brain teaser" interview questions.

We know about this painful process because we've experienced it first hand.

About five years ago, I applied for a sales job at Google and was told early on that my college GPA (a 3.0) would probably ruin my chances. (I didn't get the job.)

To encourage the next generation of tech innovators to pursue bold ideas now, Peter Thiel today announced that the Thiel Foundation is accepting applications for a second class of 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellows.

"Every moment in history happens only once. If you have a good idea, the right time to work on it is right away," said Peter Thiel, founder of the Thiel Foundation. "Our first class of fellows is busy working on difficult challenges to improve the lives of people across the world, and we're looking forward to helping twenty more people skip college and start changing the world."

The Thiel Foundation will follow the model it pioneered with its first class of fellows, by awarding $100,000 grants to 20 people under 20 years old, so they can skip school and pursue innovation. During the two year fellowship, the Thiel Foundation will help the Thiel Fellows pursue their scientific, technical, and entrepreneurial ideas.

Biotech executives are applauding Montgomery County officials for following through on another key recommendation of the county’s Biosciences Task Force.

The county council’s Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee on Monday recommended that the council provide $500,000 in annual supplemental funding as a local piggyback on the state’s own biotech investment tax credit. While not a formal tax credit, which would require an amendment to state law, the county appropriation would effectively make it a grant program, said Steven A. Silverman, the county’s economic development director.

When Joe Kitterman dropped out of Indiana University in the 1970s (not enough studying, too much fun), the United States still had plenty of opportunities for people without college degrees. He went to work at General Motors, which at the time built nearly half of all the motor vehicles sold in America. For the next three decades, Kitterman worked his way up through the industry, eventually managing entire plants.

During that time, the economy changed profoundly. Companies like GM endured long, painful contractions while well-paying, low-skilled jobs all but disappeared. By the 2000s, the workers in Kitterman's plants were living on the knife edge of economic stability. They needed new skills in order to provide for their families, and Kitterman was frustrated by his inability to help them learn.

Most people understand that serious weight loss requires changing attitudes toward what they eat and how often they exercise. But, what if the process could be aided by simply chewing a stick of gum after meals? That’s the question a team of scientists, led by Syracuse University chemist Robert Doyle, is trying to answer. In a groundbreaking new study, Doyle’s team demonstrated, for the first time, that a critical hormone that helps people feel “full” after eating can be delivered into the bloodstream orally.

Doyle’s study was published online Nov. 4, 2011 in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and is forthcoming in print. The journal is the most cited in the field and one of the leading primary research journals internationally. Doyle is an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry in SU’s College of Arts and Sciences. He collaborated on the study with researchers from Murdoch University in Australia.

According to a Gallup poll of a representative sample of 1,721 children in fifth through twelfth grade conducted this Spring, African-American kids were significantly more likely than White kids to report that they plan to start a business. While 39 percent of White children said they plan to start a business, 52 percent of African-American kids reported this intention.

These numbers are interesting because they are so different from current adult self-employment rates. According to a recent study by Steve Hipple of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, African-Americans had lower incorporated and unincorporated self-employment rates than Whites. For unincorporated self-employment the rates were 7.4 percent for Whites and 4.5 percent for African-Americans. For incorporated self-employment, the rates were 4.2 percent for Whites and 1.5 percent for African-Americans.

Venture capital plan No. 2, which was proposed recently by Gov. Scott Walker, is looking much better than capital plan No. 1. The second plan still needs a fix or two to minimize public risk, but once those are done it would be acceptable. The previous plan would have sold state bonds to raise venture capital money, but taxpayers would have been responsible for repaying the borrowing cost. Walker's new plan still proposes $100 million in bonds, but these would be backed by nonrefundable state tax credits, meaning that if there weren't enough earnings to repay the principal and interest, investors would receive credits to reduce tax liability. It comes down to an interest-free loan for the state. The $100 million would be invested in venture capital funds instead of directly in companies. What is good about this idea is that it rules out certified capital companies. These collections of funds benefited greatly from a $50 million venture capital plan passed by the Legislature in 1997, but it was a plan with little accountability. One company failed to report what it did with $8 million that it received from the state.

H.R. 2930 appears to be just another US Congressional Bill winding its way through the system. Yet I can imagine most Professional Angel Investors recognize (or should) the bill and its potential impact on their livelihood.  The House has already passed it with a 95% majority. It’s now on to the Senate and possibly the White House.

If the bill passes (watch the latest Congressional Bill Progress), you can say good bye to the Professional Angel Investment Community as we know it today.

Turn of your lights, close your door, and full screen this five minute video. It’s an incredibly time lapse video of the journey of the International Space Station (from one of my favorite random sites – NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day)  around Earth. It’ll put whatever you are working on in perspective.

Here’s a conundrum: Starting back in early 2009 the press (including us) started writing about how venture capital is collapsing upon itself as an asset class. And then a bit more recently came all the stories about Silicon Valley’s full-on bubble mode. Can both of these story lines be true? Um, not really.

This paradox was addressed last week at the annual meeting of TrueBridge Capital Partners, the venture fund-of-funds in Chapel Hill, N.C. that helps Forbes put together the Midas List of the world’s best VCs. TrueBridge has raised more than $500 million to date and invests significant chunks in blue-chip VC firms, among them Accel, Bessemer, Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Andreeseen Horowitz, Battery, Redpoint. Its network gives the firm terrific insight into the state of early-stage technology investing.

When a grey-haired grandmother clutching a smartphone mounted the stage at Montreal's Start-up Festival this summer, young Israeli entrepreneur Guy Rosen knew he had pocketed a very special award.

His company, Tel Aviv-based Onavo, offers an application that shrinks mobile phone data to help users save money - and appeals to any age. That made Onavo the winner of the Grandmother's Award for best start-up, judged by tech-agnostic ladies in the later stages of life.

Standing in his office in Tel Aviv, Mr Rosen recalls the moment: "They went on stage and said: 'We love Onavo and we understand what it does... it is such an easy app to understand' - we just save money, that's it, period, they loved us."

As you sit down to your sustainably raised turkey (or Tofurky) dinner this year, it’s a good time to think about the things that have gone well for greentech in 2011. Yes, there have been a lot of clouds for the industry this year, with the Solyndra debacle and the overall recession, but there have been quite a few milestones this year. Here’s what I’m thankful about:

1. Cheap solar panels. The prices of solar panels and cells have dropped dramatically this year. That’s been difficult for solar makers trying to stay in business, but for solar consumers, that’s great news. According to a recent study from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, between 2009 to 2010 the price of residential rooftop solar panels fell 17 percent to $6.20 per watt, or a $1.30 decline, and in 2011 fell 70 cents per watt, or 11 percent in the first half of 2011.

The holidays are a time for good food, gathering with loved ones, frantic trips to overcrowded malls and paid time-off from work — well almost. A majority of the U.S. workforce will be checking their work email over holidays this year, according to a new study.

More than two-thirds (68 percent) of employed adults in the U.S. check their work email on traditional holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, and 27 percent of those who check email do so several times a day, according to data compiled by email and social intelligence startup Xobni. The online survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, polled 2,810 adults in November 2011 on their holiday email behaviors.

It seems like every week there is a new Platform as a Service (PaaS) or beta cloud offering hitting the market. Some vendors tout the benefits of social applications, others emphasize mobile; others talk about how the cloud can save you money or speed up development time. While these are important benefits of cloud services, there’s a much more key benefit that tends to get overlooked: cloud services let you focus on innovating your core business.

Coming from a cloud services company, my perspective is that spending precious time on non-essentials will kill you and sap your innovative juices. Apple outsources much of its manufacturing so it can concentrate on design. Its absolute focus on core competency is in large part what drives its success.

Very interesting presentation. Nancy Duarte has demystified the hidden structure of great speeches, using Steve Jobs and Martin Luther King speeches as examples. If you are a public speaker or aspire to deliver keynote presentations, this is a very useful tutorial. (Hint: Start with the current reality, build to the compelling vision of the possible).

Mark Zuckerberg’s alma mater is hedging its bets to find the next hot entrepreneur (and the next Facebook) with the opening of the Harvard Innovation Lab, an incubator designed for startup-hungry students on campus.

The i-lab, as it is known by abbreviation, began as a response to Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s desire to introduce more innovation spaces Boston. “Let our legacy to each other be launching pads for those who follow,” Menino said in his January 2010 inaugural address. “Let us show the world that in Boston, history is just a prelude.”

25 Sustainability Reports are entered in the Creativity in Communications category in CRRA 12, the largest online annual Sustainability Reporting Awards. To enter this category, one assumes the reporters believe their report is meaningfully creative. What's creative in terms of Sustainability Reports? Well, according to CorporateRegister.com , it's this: Which report is a real pleasure to read, because the authors have given thought to both the content and the reader? Do you find the report engaging and informative, or boring and unimaginative? This award is for the report which best succeeds in getting its message across, using creativity as a defining factor.