I've never been much of a fan of incubators. Some have made the model work. My favorite of the bunch is Betaworks, based here in NYC. Betaworks is more than an incubator, but they have shown that they can make the incubation model work with projects like bit.ly and chartbeat.

But one aspect of incubation that I like very much is the idea that multiple projects are sharing the same workspace. The term for this kind of work setup is coworking. There are various approaches to coworking.

There is the shared space model. Foursquare, Curbed, and Hard Candy Shell have shared a single office for the past year and a half and they get a lot of benefits from working together even though they are three companies all working on very different things. Our portfolio company Outside.in has employees from our portfolio companies Disqus and Zemanta working out of their office. We see that kind of setup all over the startup world. I encourage all of our young companies to think about that kind of setup.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found that the appearance of website has a big effect on how honestly people answer personal questions put to them by the site. But paradoxically, it turns out we're more likely to spill our secrets on websites that appear less reputable. The way a website phrases questions also affects our willingness to disclose revealing information, the researchers found.

The findings could have implications for privacy online--affecting how marketers approach consumers, and how policymakers try to protect consumers from privacy abuses.

Companies are constantly collecting information about people online: Google stores billions of search queries every day, and Facebook tracks the interests and social habits of millions of users. Much of the information collected online comes from tracking how people behave, but some is volunteered willingly.

As promised in an earlier post, I now have the capability to add a standardized metropolitan-region field to any entry in my tbed database. Consequently, I’ve spent a few hours a week for the last several months revisiting my roughly 1,700 entries, adding, dropping, and revising as necessary to account for the ebb and flow of state and federal programming.

One of the categories I try and track is “national centers,” a broad rubric under which I’ve included major university-based, tbed-oriented research centers sponsored by federal agencies such as NSF, DOE, NASA, parts of DOD, and NIH. There you can sample a dense acronym soup: ERCs, MRSECs, STCs, NSECs, CTSAs, and so on. In the course of my data validation, I made some new observations about one particular acronym: I/U CRCs, the Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers program of the National Science Foundation.

Researchers in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering have developed software that can simulate complicated physical phenomena — how cracks form in building materials, for instance, or fluids flow through irregular channels — on an ordinary smartphone.

Although the current version of the software is for demonstration purposes, the work could lead to applications that let engineers perform complicated calculations in the field, and even to better control systems for vehicles or robotic systems.

There is a crisis occurring in 12.3% of the American population, otherwise known as Black America. The crumbling economic infrastructure of the nation has impacted every industry, media included. As a former journalist who voluntarily resigned a position as Web editor of an award-winning daily newspaper (owned by Dow Jones Local Media Group and News Corporation) to pursue my own Internet startup, I am considered among many pioneers who are voluntarily or involuntarily transitioning from long-held careers to entrepreneurship and creative opportunities made available by the Digital Age. Online Opportunity The Internet has become the tool of choice for hundreds of millions to communicate and conduct e-commerce. It also serves a very low-cost, low-risk entry to entrepreneurship with extraordinarily high returns on investment. Consider some of the big winners: 7 years ago Skype was created: Bought by eBay two years later for2.6 billion. 6 years ago Facebook was created: Today it boasts more than 500 million users and owns 25% of the social ad marketing revenue worldwide. 5 years ago Youtube burst onto the scene: Google (still a growing toddler at the time, bought it for more than1 billion). 3 years ago Twitter created a paradigm shift in communications: Received22 million in funding in 2008 and35 million in 2009.

Debates about women in technology are like merry-go-rounds: There’s a lot of movement and excitement but you always end up back in the same place.

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington argued that in Silicon Valley (and by extension, the tech business in general) success is based on merit alone and that nobody is keeping women down. The problem, as far as he is concerned, is simply that women just don’t want to start companies. These are arguments I’ve heard before — and that are, at best, naïve.  Merit alone is rarely enough to ensure success and women are starting more companies than ever (if not in technology). But instead of getting mired in arguments and counterarguments, I’ll make some suggestions on how to change the situation for the better.

I’ve written before about how to get more women into technology. How do we maximize the female assets already out there?

If you're capable of seeing past the old stones of Paris and the picturesque rural villages, you'll realize that France is every bit as technologically advanced as any other Western country - more so in some areas. Not only does the country have a higher percentage of homes with high-speed Internet than the U.S. (plus it's faster and costs half as much), it ranks first in the world for number of blogs per Internet user, and has a formidable market of Internet consumers who spent €5.5 billion online in the first quarter of this year.

When I came to Paris in 2006, I had a well-developed idea for a startup and nothing else. It's now been about three years since I joined the fray as an entrepreneur and tech blogger. In that time, I've discovered that the startup scene is infused with passion, energy and a strong spirit of collaboration.

John Osher, developer of the low-cost spin toothbrush, was a successful entrepreneur because he thought differently. William Sahlman, professor at Harvard Business School, breaks down the three most important factors in Osher’s success in this entrepreneur thought leader lecture given at Stanford University in 2007.

The key to improving your fortunes, he says, comes down to:

* Reflecting on your experience to improve your understanding.
* Looking at the situation differently to successfully innovate.
* Scanning your environment to find new opportunities.

Now that September is here, venture capital activity will pick up as usual. That's not to say that tons of VC deals were done over the summer; since they were.

Here are a few of the companies who raised venture capital in August that I found really interesting.

JiWire: JiWire has created an advertising network which reaches users at wi-fi hotspots. The company raised $2.1 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Panorama Capital and Comcast Interactive Capital.

From the automata of the ancient Greeks, to the curious mechanical inventions of the Age of Enlightenment, people have been creating robotic renderings of animals for centuries. It was only recently, however, that technology advanced enough to produce sophisticated robots that biologists can use for studying animal behavior. By mimicking specific behaviors with striking realism, these robots can stand in for (and fool) their living counterparts -- thus offering researchers the one thing that's often lacking in experimental setups that use live animals: control. "Having these robots allows animal behaviorists to try to tease apart the components of complex signals that are important for the individuals and for interactions between individuals," says Purdue University ecologist Esteban Fernández-Juricic, who has constructed robotic birds. Here are robot animals in action that help Fernandez-Juricic and other researchers learn more about animal behavior.

Financing a new business is never easy in today’s credit crunch times. The lending market is getting tight especially for the new and upcoming entrepreneurs, as no one is willing to take the risk of lending money for starting a business. However, it does not mean your new business venture cannot qualify for any financial support. Still there are several opportunities available for funding a new business. Less is known about angel investing as compared to venture capital, due to the privacy of their investments. However, these are the key points to consider in order to make the right choice.

Investment size

The range of venture capital funding is larger than the one of angel investors. Angels act alone or in organized groups and invest their own money. Venture capital firms are corporate entities that pool money from a range of investors to make larger investments.

How about snakes, Dr. Evil?

At Police Magazine's recent law enforcement expo, an army of exhibitors showed off the latest high-tech gadgets that'd satisfy the most elite SWAT teams, special forces--and even the bad guy from from Austin Powers. Applications for the devices showcased ranged from homeland security to overseas military efforts. Here are the top three highlights from the expo.

ARE Innovations. Police officers have to be quick on the draw, but how do they improve their reaction speeds? ARE co-owner Jim Bolen created a novel method: goggles that can instantly blind and then restore vision. Imagine having a blindfold removed--how fast could you locate a target after that disorientating affect? According to experiments done by ARE, officers who trained with the goggles responded to threats three seconds faster--a massive improvement if you consider what a difference those crucial seconds can make. The goggles were originally designed to help wide-receivers field passes quicker, but they've since been re-purposed for law enforcement and military use.

Whenever I speak about social media, the biggest question I get is “How much time do you spend on it?” My response? Not as much as you’d think. I use a number of time management tools to help me streamline my activity. The 5 with the greatest impact are outlined here:

1. Hootsuite or Social Oomph

The beauty of Hootsuite and Social Oomph is that they let you manage all of your Twitter activity and relationships in one place. You can post-date tweets for another time. You can monitor direct messages and mentions as well as your Twitter stream. You can decide which posts will go to which social media platforms.

Social media are communications. While there are a lot of attention given to social media in essence the attention is more about communications than this thing we call social media.

Who Is Communicating?

Doc Searls coined the term “markets are conversations” and markets encompass suppliers, employees, customers and prospects, your market. While markets have always leveraged communications the dynamics of social technology are changing how markets interact with all constituents. When markets dynamics change then all things must change otherwise you will not keep the markets attention. If you can’t keep and expand the markets attention about your brand then someone else is likely to do so at your cost.

THE first internet boom, a decade and a half ago, resembled a religious movement. Omnipresent cyber-gurus, often framed by colourful PowerPoint presentations reminiscent of stained glass, prophesied a digital paradise in which not only would commerce be frictionless and growth exponential, but democracy would be direct and the nation-state would no longer exist. One, John-Perry Barlow, even penned “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”.

Even though all this sounded Utopian when it was preached, it reflected online reality pretty accurately. The internet was a wide-open space, a new frontier. For the first time, anyone could communicate electronically with anyone else—globally and essentially free of charge. Anyone was able to create a website or an online shop, which could be reached from anywhere in the world using a simple piece of software called a browser, without asking anyone else for permission. The control of information, opinion and commerce by governments—or big companies, for that matter—indeed appeared to be a thing of the past. “You have no sovereignty where we gather,” Mr Barlow wrote.

BUYING a mobile phone was the wisest $20 Ranvir Singh ever spent. Mr Singh, a farmer in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, used to make appointments in person, in advance, to deliver fresh buffalo milk to his 40-odd neighbours. Now his customers just call when they want some. Mr Singh’s income has risen by 25%, to 7,000 rupees ($149) a month. And he hears rumours of an even more bountiful technology. He has heard that “something on mobile phones” can tell him the current market price of his wheat. Mr Singh does not know that that “something” is the internet, because, like most Indians, he has never seen or used it. But the phone in his calloused hand hints at how hundreds of millions of people in emerging markets—perhaps even billions—will one day log on.

Only 81m Indians (7% of the population) regularly use the internet. But brutal price wars mean that 507m own mobile phones. Calls cost as little as $0.006 per minute. Indian operators such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications sign up 20m new subscribers a month.

After building a 7 figure income from scratch in the past 24 months, there are 5 Components of Successful Entrepreneurship that I feel are critical in order to truly succeed in today’s marketplace.

I shared this information on my sister in law’s Internet Radio Show called Nothing But the Truth with Anh Vu on Money Mondays, so just in case you missed the show LIVE, here are my notes:

#1 – Know Exactly Why You Want to be an Entrepreneur

Your reasons for wanting to be successful have to be much more than just “making money”.

Now of course making money is great but you must know exactly why you want to make a lot of money.

It could be that you want more free time for yourself, or time w/ your spouse, or kids.

Canadians are funny. To promote its electronics recycling program, the City of Toronto has created a series of three brilliant video spots that spoof "the hard sell 'bring us your gold jewelry' ads" and they're dead on. They feature two collectors, Chuck and Vince, who wave sparklers, wear gorilla masks, and shout and point at you in concert. Yo, Toronto! Have an old TV encased in mahogany? They want it.