Whatever your entrepreneurial aspirations, there's a city to match your needs, accelerate your company's growth and improve your quality of life. Which is the one for you? Entrepreneur identifies 50 cities and 10 lifestyles energizing businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Even in harsh economic times, America is still the land of opportunity, especially for entrepreneurs with the vision, ambition and flexibility to follow that opportunity wherever it may lead. In an increasingly connected world, no longer are businesses or their owners tethered to one spot on the map: Whether you're sizing up a regional opportunity, looking for a change of scenery or simply desiring a certain lifestyle, there's a location and culture that's perfect for you.

The challenge is identifying which spot is the best fit. Entrepreneur selected 10 contemporary American lifestyles and 50 related cities to complement all kinds of business types. Whether you're looking for tropical breezes, crisp mountain air, crowded city streets or wide, open spaces, they're all here.

If you stop and think about it, you might think it a bit odd that everybody is still talking about the Great Recession when the economy has been growing for a full calendar year.

Except, of course, that it certainly doesn’t feel like a recovery, does it? That are two reasons for that: job growth and consumer spending, both of which are pretty tepid.

There are plenty of people who want to sing the praises of small businesses at a time like this, because they expect small businesses to pull our collective economic chestnuts out of the fire by creating jobs.

You hear the word ‘alignment’ thrown out a lot in business conversations. And while it’s a wonderful thing to aspire to, it’s hard to achieve – particularly in entrepreneurial settings between the venture capitalist and the entrepreneur. It’s there, after all, that the stakes are high and there’s the ever-present risk of dysfunctional behavior leading to a Start-Up Soap Opera.

Ever since I began the research for my book, I have been spending time thinking about why VC-entrepreneur alignment is so elusive. And so when the Kauffman Foundation asked me to give a presentation to their recent class of young VCs, I decided to take the opportunity to develop a few thoughts that teed up the key issues.

I concluded that despite all the aspirational rhetoric about VCs becoming more “entrepreneur-friendly,” there are structural reasons why VCs and entrepreneurs are not always aligned. In negotiating term sheets, performing the inside-outside financing dance, discussing exit scenarios – and many other elements of the start-up journey - misalignment between VCs and entrepreneurs is common, natural and inevitable.

A meta-study covering more than 300,000 participants across all ages reveals that adults get a 50 percent boost in longevity if they have a solid social network

A long lunch out with co-workers or a late-night conversation with a family member might seem like a distraction from other healthy habits, such as going to the gym or getting a good night's sleep. But more than 100 years' worth of research shows that having a healthy social life is incredibly important to staying physically healthy. Overall, social support increases survival by some 50 percent, concluded the authors behind a new meta-analysis.

The benefit of friends, family and even colleagues turns out to be just as good for long-term survival as giving up a 15-cigarette-a-day smoking habit. And by the study's numbers, interpersonal social networks are more crucial to physical health than exercising or beating obesity.

Interested in applying for the Kauffman Labs Education Ventures Program? Listen in on one of two upcoming informational teleconferences to learn more about the program and ask questions:

Monday, August 9, 2010 at 11 a.m. CDT/Noon EDT

Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 1:30 p.m. CDT/2:30 p.m. EDT

Just fill out the first page of the Education Ventures Program application,
and you will receive call-in information via e-mail.

Kauffman Labs for Enterprise Creation , an initiative of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, is searching for aspiring founders to launch high-growth, scalable companies in the education market. Through an open application process available to anyone over the age of eighteen with a transformative idea, Kauffman Labs will identify up to twenty entrepreneurial concepts for the education market and work with the aspiring founders to teach them how to establish their organizations.

During this teleconference, you will learn:

• Why Kauffman Labs launched the program
• How to apply
• How the Education Ventures Founders will be selected
• What qualifications are required
• What selected Founders can anticipate throughout the program

Following a presentation on the program and the selection process, callers will have an opportunity to ask questions.

If you know any driven entrepreneurs with an education idea,  pass this on.

A couple weeks ago, we brought you a sneak peak at The Little Book of Shocking Global Facts, a slim but striking volume filled with illustrations of unbelievable facts.

This October, the publisher, Fiell, is releasing a successor: The Little Book of Shocking Eco Facts, by Mark Crundwell and Cameron Dunn, with illustrations by Barnbrook Design. We've got an exclusive preview of what the book will look like; here's a taste:

Up top: In the mountain forests of the Colombian Andes, 1/3 of bird species have gone extinct in the last 80 years.

Most green technologies gather energy above ground, but like Jules Verne, we want to take you on A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Alright, not even close to the center, but deep down nonetheless, where naturally occurring hot water can be turned into clean energy above ground.

It is estimated that the amount of heat within 30,000 feet below the earth’s surface holds potentially 50,000 times more energy than all global oil and natural gas resources combined. According to the Geothermal Energy Association, up to 6,400 megawatts of new capacity could be created from the geothermal projects under development in the U.S. But getting to that energy is proving to be a challenge.

Last week saw the release of two significant reports on angel investing. In the US, super-angel Ron Conway presented the results of an audit his company, SV Angel, had conducted on the 500+ investments it has made over the past 12 years. Meanwhile, in the UK, Professors Colin Mason and Richard Harrison published an annual report on the state of angel investing in Britain.

At first glance, the differences between these two reports seem mostly about American vs. British style: the Californian Conway laid out his data casually before a TechCrunch conference, while the British professors wrote a formal, 100-page study that was distributed through a government website.

But closer examination shows that there is also a substantive distinction, and it’s a profound one. Whereas Conway’s short talk focused almost entirely on the performance of startups and the returns that angel investors like him have achieved,

Mason and Harrison used their 100 pages to talk about every other possible topic—levels and types of investments made, tax incentives, co-investment structures and much else—and made merely one passing, vague reference to how these investments actually worked out.

This is a reprint of Jason Calacanis's latest "Jason Nation" newsletter, to which you can subscribe here.

I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. -- Michael Jordan

“Is the internet bubble going to pop? When?”

“Should I sell my company now, or wait and sell it for more next year?”

“Should I raise money now before everything collapses?”

I’m constantly asked these questions. Used to keep me up at night, these questions did. Now? Well, they’re so burned into my brain that they are instinct.

Lawrence Aragon, editor in chief of the Thomson Reuters publication The Venture Capital Journal, has compiled a list of 10 young venture capitalists who, he says, “are poised to do great things.”

Each budding start-up investor that makes Mr. Aragon’s “Hot Prospects” list is 35 or younger and none have made a great impact in the world of V.C. — yet.

Mr. Aragon writes:

While you may not be familiar with Chi-Hua Chien, 32, of Kleiner Perkins, Phin Barnes, 34, of First Round, Alex Kinnier, 33, of Khosla Ventures, Ken Howery, 34, of Founders Fund or Ann Miura-Ko, 33, of Floodgate, we’re sure you will be in the next several years.

A scheme run for the past 15 years to give life science PhD students more commercial awareness has been successful in developing entrepreneurial skills, according to an independent review.

The review, commissioned by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) shows that its Biotechnology Young Entrepreneurs Scheme gives early career researchers an edge in terms of encouraging entrepreneurial skills and enhancing future career prospects.

According to the review, participating in the Biotechnology Young Entrepreneurs Scheme competition prepares scientists to move into industry, where their improved entrepreneurial skills are highly valued. There is some evidence to suggest that past participants perceive their earning potential as greater following the competition and the review indicates that the skills gained are complementary to those acquired during a PhD.

Science can drive both intellectual and commercial dynamism, and when money is tight, it needs to do both, the new UK Science Minister David Willetts said when he made his first major speech at the Royal Institution in London last month.

“Emolument matters. Public spending on science, just like everything else, has to stand up to rigorous economic scrutiny,” Willetts said to an audience anxious for clues to where the axe will fall in the UK spending review (for which read announcement of cuts to public sector budgets), that will happen in October.

One of the most frequently used arguments to support research relates to the benefits – often unanticipated – which accrue from blue skies research. “The surprising paths which serendipity takes us down is a major reason why we need to think harder about impact,” Willetts said, adding, “There is no perfect way to assess impact, even looking backwards at what has happened.”

In order for any company to meet its goals and to achieve sustainable Innovation , proper training and coaching is an essential though often overlooked imperative. But how can a New Product Development (NPD) team represent the philosophy of its organization if the attitude, culture and processes are not continually reinforced? Proper hiring, training and coaching is essential to finding and keeping the right people for the right job – and having them trained in their role and processes on the NPD team in order to perform their personal best.

Training and coaching doesn’t stop after the initial phase. Continuity is key. New techniques, processes and best practices should always be shared to foster a constant culture of Innovation. From top to bottom, from executives to managers to newcomers, everyone must be included in training and coaching programs to be on the same page and for the New Product Development process to go as smoothly as possible. In fact, even the trainers and coachers themselves need ongoing training and coaching to prevent their practices from going stale. Sustained Innovation is a constantly evolving process.

How do you run a healthy community?

It’s one of the questions I’m asked most often as the Chief Branding Officer of an Internet marketing company. Once you get people on your site, how do you show them it’s a safe place to engage? How do you encourage them to interact with one another? How do you grow this “community” thing, anyway?

While your process for community building will change depending on your site and your goals, there are a few questions I always ask myself when evaluating a potential client’s site. There are a few key areas that, if focused on, can really increase the “socialness” of a small business Website. You may want to ask yourself the same questions when evaluating your own site.

Do You Have Comment/Site Guidelines?

This is the page on your site that tells people how they should act/behave while they are there. While just having it doesn’t mean people will adhere to it, this is your chance to state, in public, what kind of a community you’re looking to grow. By laying out the actions you will and will not tolerate, you show people what you’re about and the rules they need to adhere to in order to play. It also gives you a leg to stand on when trying to enforce order and boot someone out. (Not that you want to do that.)

Offering a cash prize to encourage innovation is all the rage. Sometimes it works rather well

There's nothing like a little prodding from Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to get rich people to part with their money--or half of it, at least. The pair has convinced over 30 of their fellow billionaires (and a handful of other millionaires) to sign the Giving Pledge, described on the pledge's website as "an effort to help address society’s most pressing problems by inviting the wealthiest American families and individuals to commit to giving more than half of their wealth to philanthropy or charitable causes."

Many of the pledge-signers are well-known. T. Boone Pickens, Jeff Skoll, George Lucas, Barron Hilton, David Rockefeller, and Michael Bloomberg are just some of the big names roped into the project. Of course, it's not as if each person on the list will simply give away half of their cash on an appointed date. Each pledge-signer has a unique plan, as detailed in their individual pledges (available here).

The United States has been called the Saudi Arabia of wind. But for the first time ever, China has exceeded the U.S. in newly installed wind capacity.

In a report released Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Energy details how all old records of wind power have been broken. In 2009, the U.S. added roughly 10,000 megawatts of new capacity--that's 40% more than was added the previous year.

In William Rosen's masterful new book, The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention, the most powerful idea is not the invention of the steam engine. Rather, the title refers to the development of the concept that ideas can be property, and that through the availability of patent law and capital, individuals tinkerers can become industrial scale innovators.

Rosen notes that: "From 1700 to 2000, the world's population has increased twelvefold - but its production of goods and services a hundredfold". (page 316) Will the innovations around digital technology, from cheap and powerful mobile computing devices to robust cloud based applications, bring about a commensurate rise in productivity as the industrial revolution? The steam engine allowed the cost of energy to come down rapidly, through its original use as the power source to pump out coal mines to its subsequent use in locomotives to bring down the costs of transporting coal. Today, it is less clear if digital technologies can bring about similar improvements in the productivity of education (increased access and quality at reduced costs), that the steam engine did for energy productivity in the 18th and 19th centuries.

(KANSAS CITY, Mo.), August 2, 2010 – Startup companies, the nation's most promising source of new jobs, are critical to reducing the current 9.5 percent unemployment rate. Not only are startups responsible for net new job growth in the U.S. economy, but recent research from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation shows that the majority of the employment they generate remains as new firms age, creating a lasting impact on the economy.

Conventional thinking on employment from startups is that many of the jobs they create evaporate as a high percentage of them fail only a few years later. The new study, "After Inception: How Enduring is Job Creation by Startups?" found, instead, that, while many new firms fail, destroying jobs, others also thrive and create jobs. This growth in employment partially balances out the jobs lost by closing and shrinking firms.

The jobs created when startups are established do not disappear overnight. In fact, they are remarkably durable. When a given group of startups reaches age five, the group's employment level is 80 percent of what it was when it began. In 2000, for example, startups created 3,099,639 jobs. By 2005, the surviving firms (half of those that had started) had total employment of 2,412,410, or about 78 percent of the jobs that existed when these firms were born.

We all know, vaguely, that the websites we visit are tracking us with cookies and whatnot, silently scrapping data on how and where we surf. But when you see the facts all laid out for you, it's gobsmacking.

The Wall Street Journal just published the results of an investigation they did into tracking habits at the web's top 50 websites, and summed up the results in this superb infographic. Basically, the top half shows the web's top 50 websites; the bottom half shows the tracking companies whose software can be found on those sites. When you click on one, it shows you the myriad linkages between them.

Here, for example, are all of the tracking sites used by Google: