Smart venture capitalists, top investors and incubators are shifting their views on written business plans. They pay more attention to where a business has been than to its projections for the future. They rather see founders building their concepts than spending time writing down ideas.
Business plans are snapshots in time. Written plans are statics, and startups are dynamic, facing a path to success full of surprise punches.
An respected author says in an article titled "Three reasons to skip the business plan" that "financial data exists in most plans only to demonstrate that the author has some basic business knowledge." "More important than the numbers themselves are the assumptions and methodology used to get to them."
Key thing is to do a demo. Most people are visual learners.
"True entrepreneurial skill comes not from knowing whether the punch is coming, but from having a Plan B when it does come. (...) Investors and customers want to know you are thinking about the future, but they really want to know you can handle anything the future may hold."
There is a new technique for building political attack ads: collecting more and more news footage.
Using TV journalists provides compelling, credible footage to back up the ads' arguments.
"More and more this election year, campaign ads include footage from television news programs, futher blurring the fading lines separating modern journalism and politics," CNBC host Jonh Harwood writes.
This is the storyline of the fanciful commercial of the new Fiat 500, which is owned by the Italian carmaker Chrysler Group.
Created by the Richards Group in Dallas, the spot tries to connect the product in the U.S. to its Italian heritage.
The first part was filmed on the Amalfi Coast of Italy, in locations that included Positano. The music on the soundtrack is a version of "Torna a Surriento," sung by Arianna and Pitbull.
"Thanks to the explosion of GPS technology and apps, smartphones are taking note of what we buy, where and when we buy it, how much money we have in the bank, whom we text and e-mail, what Web sites we visit, how and where we travel, what time we go to sleep and wake up – and more."
It was recently disclosed that cellphone carriers in the United States had responded 1.3 million times last year to law enforcement request for call data.
Reporters on digital privacy for ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative newsroom, say in an investigative report that these devices are tracking devices, not smartphones or cellphones.
"If you want to avoid some surveillance, the best option is to use a cash for prepaid cellphones that do not require identification. The phones transmit location information to the cell carrier and keep track of the numbers you call, but they are not connected to you by name. Destroy the phone or just drop it into a trash bin, and its data cannot be tied to you," they suggest.
Following the last post topic, here is an infographic about how a search travels around the world to bring the latest results. Click on the image to see it.
A Google software engineer head details in a video how the search engine scours the web on a daily basis, starting with the crawling and analysis of a site, crawling timelines, frequencies, priorities, indexing and filtering processes within the databases...
Want more? Ask any question in Google's Webmaster Help Forum.
Google has released a video that provides startups tips and suggestion about how to master search engine optimization (SEO) and get their brands ranked higher on search result pages.
Beyond a fancy Web site:
Use relevant keywords naturally in your text.
Each page should include a unique topic, title and meta description, but meta keywords tags aren't needed.
Keywords should be in the file name and typed with lower case letter.
Instead of "click here", put a descriptive phrase to highlight with a link. It should be "product specifications" or something that better matches the link with the content.
Do not hire any rogue or shady SEO provider who guarantees rankings.
Don't participate in link schemes or buying links for the purpose of passing PageRank.
The first reality show about the "Silicon Valley" is now being filmed and will be broadcast this winter in Bravo.
"Silicon Valley" the show, inspired by "The Social Network" film, will show hard-partying youngsters vying to start companies in a frenzy reminiscent of the dot-com peak of 2000.
Mark Zuckerberg's sister Randi, an executive producer of the series, said: "Inspiring more people to pursue an entrepreneurial American dream can only be a good thing."
NASA's "Seven Minutes of Terror" YouTube video describes wih the suspense and cinematography of a movie preview what will happen in August 6 when a one-ton spacecraft launched in November smacks into Mars.
Heat shield, parachute, rocket engines, a hovering crane that lowers the rover to the surface... Team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory share the challenges of the Curiosity Mars rover's final seven minutes to landing of the surface of Mars, going from 13,000 miles an hour to zero –a $2.5 billion mission that aims to see if life existed on Mars.
The movie starts with a computer with a computer-generated animation of a capsule falling toward Mars, then uses stark lightling, thumping music, fancy graphics, dramatic narration and texts flashing across the screen.
The slick video, viewed more than 630,000 times, is part of NASA's social media effort to increase interest in space exploration and give the American public a better view of their space program.
The video is a sample that education can be engaging. It is not static and dry content, but emotional.
Large Silicon Valley public companies, like Facebook, Zynga, Linkedin and Groupon, are increasignly diminishing shareholder voting rights.
The goal is to give control of the company to the founding shareholders over public shareholders and even directors.
Why? Because it dominates the idea of the visionary chief executive –Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckenberg or Larry Page style. More and more public companies appear to be run as privates ones without significant input from boards and shareholders.
Critics say that the number of visionary chieftains who made incredibly bad decisions is legion. A board can serve as a check on executives and prevent abuse.
Is this a trend that will spread to the corporate world?
Many of aspiring tech entrepreneurs live, work, eat and sleep in the Bay Area's so called "hacker hostels."
These communal housing for programmers, designers and scientists in their 20s has turned into a commercial enterprise.
Establishments – $40 a night – are not so different from crowded apartments that cater to immigrants. But many tenants are here not so much for the cheap rent as for the camaraderie and the intellectual stimulation.
"If you're wanting to do something to change the world and make it a fundamentally better place, you need to be around the right people," says a tenant to The New York Times.
Airbnb, the popular Web rental service for apartments or single rooms, has helped commercialize this idea.
This 3.5 million-views viral video is ingenious and funny. A man interviews his 12-years-old self.
British filmmaker and actor Jeremiah McDonald, 32, goes back in time and talks to a younger version of himself thanks to a video tape he made for his future in 1992 at age 12.
What if you could interview yourself from the past?
The United States Olympics Committee (USOC) has launched a fantastic YouTube channel, plenty of stories of American athletes and coaches.
It has four shows:
Qualified. It follows 17 athletes as they seek to make Olympic squads and confirm their trips to London.
Returning Veterans: Five U.S. military veterans seek to qualify for the Paralympics.
Olympic Coaching Tips: How-to from the pros.
Gold Medal Moments: Backstories of past gold medalists.
This is a great way to build a digital presence surrounding the 2012 Olympics in London, along with a relaunched website and higher Facebook engagement.
For many organizations and brands the London games are going to be "the first social Olympics."
Google is reinventing itself as a hardware maker too. Hardware has become the doorway to products and services, and the Internet giant seeks to get all kind of revenues.
Last week at Google I/O, the company's annual conference for developers, Google unveiled:
a new 7-inch tablet computer, called Nexus 7,
a sphere-shaped $299 device for streaming music and video that it is calling Nexus Q,
an eyeglass that comes with a camera and a tiny video screen, called Project Glass, and now a $1,500 prototype.
By selling Google-branded devices, the company also aims to protect its core search business as competitors hover, according to NYT.
Nexus 7 Android-powered tablet, priced at $199, in direct competition with Kindle Fire, will be manufactured by Asus, and will come with a powerful quad-core processor and all day battery life. Now it is available as pre-order.
The first reality show about the "Silicon Valley" is now being filmed and will be broadcast this winter in Bravo. 
