The global recovery is set to continue, commodity prices are going to boom, but there are threats that could take down the economy, according to Danske Bank.

Their 5 themes to watch include are largely optimistic, but there are also serious concerns the debt threat could rise and cripple global markets.

Even if that threat becomes real, it should still be a great year for equities, according to Danske.

On December 7, 2010, the cruise ship Clelia II had begun the final crossing of its weeklong Antarctic cruise. What remained of the journey was the notoriously dangerous Drake Passage between Antarctica and South America. And that day the ship was hit by a massive wave that shattered one of its bridge windows and damaged the Clelia'snavigational equipment.

Its 88 passengers were primarily American retirees, many of whom had paid more than $9,000 for their Antarctic adventure, and whose daylong stranding in the rough waters of the Drake Passage was the most dangerous thing that happened on their adventure in the Southern Ocean. Luckily for them—and the surrounding ecosystem—the ship was quickly repaired, averting a tragedy the humans on board and the surrounding wildlife that would have been affected if the ship had sunk and/or spilled fuel.

If you asked me to tell you a list of three of the best decisions in my life, I can certainly tell you that regularly writing is one of them. It’s the reason I’m an author here at OnStartups, made many new friends, had interesting opportunities cross my radar, and most importantly had the chance to share knowledge that has helped other entrepreneurs.

Why You Should Write
You Will Meet Other Smart People

Writing has allowed me to meet a slew of smart people. Some of these people are now virtual acquaintances and some are very close friends on a personal and professional level. Each article that you publish is a synthesized thought process that may click with other entrepreneurs instantly. Have you ever had a feeling when reading an article that “Wow, they are thinking exactly what I’m thinking”? By writing, you are likely to encounter a handful of people that experience the same thing. Occasionally one of those people will reach out to you via email or bump into you at an event. You might make a new acquaintance, a new co-founder for the future, potential investor, hire,etc. At the end of the day, being an entrepreneur is about finding other smart (hopefully smarter) people to collaborate with and writing frequently helps make this happen.

I spend much of my day thinking about words, working on my novel, interviewing people, writing articles and examining films. I like to think of myself as a creative person—that is someone who seeks to build, design, and grow things or ideas from scratch, from blank pages.

In these economically difficult times it seems we need more creativity woven in our everyday lives more than ever; an artistic eye that can spot and make unique connections in the companies where we work, in the jobs that we seek, in the social media where we play.

The Department of Commerce’s U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today announced it is accepting nominations for the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (NMTI).

Since establishment by Congress in the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980, the President of the United States has awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (initially known as the National Medal of Technology) annually to our nation's leading innovators.

The primary purpose of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation is to recognize American innovators whose vision, creativity, and brilliance in moving ideas to market has had a profound and lasting impact on our economy and way of life. The Medal highlights  the national importance of fostering technological innovation based upon solid science, resulting in commercially successful products and services.

If you know of a candidate who has made an outstanding, lasting contribution to the economy through the promotion of technology or technological manpower, you may obtain a nomination form from: http://go.usa.gov/1dU.

The deadline for submission of a nomination is March 31, 2011.

If you bounce from project to project and have a hard time focusing on just one, listen to this interview with Greg Thomson.

Lack of focus is what kept his previous businesses from reaching their potential. Once he learned how to work with his innate curiosity (not eliminate it, but harness its power), he made Tall Tree Games into a hit casual game company that generated $6+ million in its last fiscal year.

Listen to this program to hear how he’s doing it.

Every startup with any traction quickly reaches a point where they need to hire employees to grow the business. Unfortunately, this always happens when pressures are the highest, and business processes are ill-defined. At this point you need superstars and versatile future executives, yet your in-house hiring processes and focus are at their weakest.

The result is a host of hiring mistakes that sink many young companies, or take years to fix. The solution is to never forget that hiring is a top priority task for the CEO, which should never be delegated, and which often has to supersede the urgent crises of the day.

1. FDA’s decision to remove the breast cancer indication from the label of bevacizumab (Avastin).

2. Approval of Dendreon’s sipuleucel-T (Provenge), representing a new class of drug.

3. Sanofi-Aventis’ pursuit of Genzyme. It illustrates an industry move towards adding orphan and rare therapeutic areas to pharma portfolios. Another example of the trend came when Pfizer created orphan disease research division in 2010 and acquired FoldRx Pharmaceuticals.

Venture capital (VC) companies have performed poorly in recent years, according to Cambridge Associates’ recently released statistics.  Analysis by the consulting firm revealed that rates of return have dwindled substantially from the double-digit annual numbers they enjoyed in the 1990s.  As of June 30, 2010, five-year returns to limited partners (LP) were merely 4.27 percent; 10-year returns were negative 4.15 percent.

Because most venture capitalists are wealthy, you shouldn’t worry that poor financial returns are imposing true hardship on them.  But you should be concerned that their poor earnings are harming the ecosystem for developing high growth startup companies in the United States.

Small business owners desire certain things from a business bank — specifically, collaboration, openness and a good working relationship. However, a recent study from consumer satisfaction research firm J.D. Power and Associates reveals those needs are going unmet.

The U.S. Small Business Banking Satisfaction Study showed that small businesses’ overall satisfaction with their banks has dropped to 711 on a 1,000-point scale, down from 718 last year. The survey measured customer satisfaction with the overall banking experience by examining eight factors: product offerings, account manager, facility, account information, problem resolution, credit services, fees and account activities.

Last year we published the Top Web Design Trends For Small Business in 2010 and as I reflect on the  Top Website and Website Design Trends for 2011, I know for certain that technology is moving so fast that many new technologies will probably be introduced by the time I finish this article!

Websites as business tools will continue to be important. In 2011, shared content will become more significant, as people read it and then share it with their networks. Social optimization of websites coupled with integration of all marketing activities – e-mail, websites and social networks — will be the key to success.

I've been saying for a while now that I think mobile economics will trend toward web economics as the mobile web goes mainstream. In other words, the business models that work best on the web will ultimately work best in mobile.The corollary to that is that the business models that don't work well on the web will not work well in mobile in the long run.

And that includes tablets. There is some discussion in the tech blogs today about why iPad magazine sales have been disappointing. I don't understand why anyone would ever think that adding a presentation layer on top of web based content would make it something people would want to purchase when they are not willing to purchase the same content directly on the web.

As the sunset of 2010 gives way to the dawn of 2011, here at the Digest we resist the holiday temptation to look back over the challenges and highlights of the year gone by, and instead once again roll out our crystal ball as we list the Digest’s 10 Biofuels Predictions for 2011.

Last year’s predictions: 6 marks out of 10

For our 2010 batch of predictions, we give ourselves 6 marks out of 10.

We gave ourselves 1 full mark for predicting the spread of Low Carbon Fuel Standard activity, the boom in renewable chemicals, a jatropha revival sparked by new investments in SG Biofuels, and increased traction in heterotrophic algae and cyanobacteria.

The OECD points to annual growth rates of between 5 and 20% in its countries' creative and cultural industries. Also the demand for goods and services produced by the creative industries is anticipated to rise further. Sky News Business speaks to Mark Phibbs (Adobe) about the concept of the creative economy.

This Guide to Angel Investing Organizations is a detailed listing of more than 225 angel investor groups throughout the United States and Canada – as well as several international organizations. Although this guide is substantial, it does not purport to be fully comprehensive. Some of the information herein may be incorrect, and there may be Angel Organizations not listed in this guide. I have not included SuperAngels or the various accelerator/incubator programs in this list by intent.

The organizations are categorized by state (with every state but West Virginia represented), as well as National, Canada and Other International sections. The listings note the name of the organization, location, and website (which will allow you to obtain contact information in most cases). In many cases, notes about investment criteria are provided, to speed your evaluation of appropriate angel networks.

I frequently ask myself why it is that patents continue to come under attack by those who want to pretend they are only a burden on society and provide no benefit. Believing patents provide no benefit to society demonstrates a failure to understand fundamental aspects of the patent system, disclosure and publication of applications, as well as the basic economic reality that to innovate requires funding. Innovation, particularly cutting edge innovation, requires quite a bit of funding, sometimes many millions or hundreds of millions of dollars of funding. Where will that money come if there is no reasonable expectation of recouping the investment? Free-riders are not innovators and policies that encourage free-riders at the expense of innovators are nonsensical.

Those that look at the patent system and see no benefit for society are either the most intellectually dishonest people you will ever meet, or they are taking a ridiculous and objectively incorrect position because of some agenda. There really is no other way to say it. Just look at the number of patent applications that have been filed since 1975 (see chart below). As patents became more valuable more applications were filed, but a fraction of those applications filed actually are patented, which means that society gets the benefit of the disclosures in those applications without having the burden of having to live with an issued patent. What a deal! Without a patent system that provides for acceptably strong patent rights many, if not most, of these innovations would either not exist or they would be held as trade secrets. A secret doesn’t benefit society, but disclosed patent applications and expired patents do.

Over at Make: Online, we are running a series of posts called "The Best of Make." Here are the Top 10 Tools, and the Top 10 Blog Posts from 2010. Show here: a steam-powered record player (the 4th most popular post).

Since yesterday was 10.10.10, we’ve decided to celebrate this cosmic alignment of numerical symmetry by illuminating the measurements of magnitude. Today, we are taking five different looks at one of the most difficult concepts for the human brain to quantify and understand: The size and scale of the universe.