1) Using Big Data to Save Lives

Computer scientists and a doctor are working to mine data from pediatric intensive care units to help doctors treat children and cut health care costs

“This data has the potential to be a gold mine of useful – literally life saving – information,” said Keogh, who specializes in data mining, which involves searching for patterns and irregularities in large data sets.

He is working with: Dr. Randall Wetzel, of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles; Walid Najjar and Vasilis Tsotras, both computer science professors at UC Riverside; and David Kale, one of Keogh’s graduate students.

Read More


2) A Khosla-backed big data energy startup you should know about

Are big data, analytics, and machine learning the answers to reducing the energy consumption of our homes? Yep, according to newly-emerged startup Bidgely that’s backed by Khosla Ventures. In an exclusive interview, Bidgely’s CEO gives GigaOM the details about what it’s been up to.

Read More


3) SAP's Creepy New Retail Software Uses Big Data To Make You Buy More Stuff

Not so long ago, the most advanced piece of technology present at the intersection of consumer and retailer was the cash register. Today, buyers are bringing their own technology on their shopping trips - and trailing a very revealing online data footprint. One big enterprise software company is promising retailers new technology that will let retailers leverage that information to market to those consumers in real-time.

For retailers and tech companies that serve them, billions of dollars are up for grabs. If there were any doubts that there was real money to be made leveraging big data to create custom marketing pitches in real time, those doubts should be shattered by Tuesday's entrance of mega-software corporation SAP into the retail tech frenzy. The move is the equivalent of an elephant walking into a room of working mice and telling everyone, "I've got this."

Read More


4) Gartner: Big Data to Be Big Job Creator

At a conference today in Florida, Gartner Inc. (NYSE: IT) forecast that information technology (IT) spending in 2012 would rise 3.8% in 2013, from $3.6 trillion to $3.7 trillion. But the really big news is in big data. According to the company’s head of global research:

By 2015, 4.4 million IT jobs globally will be created to support big data, generating 1.9 million IT jobs in the United States. In addition, every big data-related role in the U.S. will create employment for three people outside of IT, so over the next four years a total of 6 million jobs in the U.S. will be generated by the information economy.

Read More


5) Big Data: Moving from strategy to tactics

Big Data, which comes into the enterprise unstructured and unorganized, first needs to be “prepped” so that it can be processed by a business analytics program. Here’s what you need to do.

Now that business analytics are here and enterprises are grappling with their own “big data,” it’s time to set some technical strategies in motion to harness these assets. Fortunately, solutions for the data center that can deliver both high performance computing (HPC) and big data analytics are becoming increasingly scalable and affordable–even for medium-sized businesses.

The main challenge initially is getting your big data ready for analytics computing. Big Data, which comes into the enterprise unstructured and unorganized, first needs to be “prepped” so that it is able to be processed by a business analytics program.  This is no small task, as “cleaning up” big data goes through several phases.

Read More


Category: Big Data News

Tags: Big Data, Gartner, United States, Information technology, Khosla Ventures, Florida, NYSE, $3.7 trillion

If you feel that the present tech world is rapidly changing, with addition of new iterations to the products every now and then, then think again. Like every trend has some beginning, the tech world had one too, and it was seeded around 45 years back.

These innovations changed the way we live and run our businesses, the way we thought, communicated, bond over, the real and virtual worlds, all changed-- incited a new era in human evolution all together.    

Read on to know the 10 best innovations in the past 45 years, compiled by ComputerWorld.

#10 Computers

The invention of computer itself is a big thing, but the show stealer was not PC, not main frame, not even Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine(1849) or Konrad Zuse’s electromechanical Z3(1942). It was the most groundbreaking computer- ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer). The device was first electronic general-purpose computer, conceived and designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania; unveiled on February 14, 1946. It was capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems, and was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. Later other "automatic" computers followed it, relieving actual human calculations on paper, ranging from simple math to artillery trajectories.

#9 Word Processor

Wang Laboratories, a computer company founded by Dr. An Wang and Dr. G. Y. Chu Wang in 1951.  The company’s first attempt at a word processor was the Wang 1200(1971). Harold Koplow had written the microcode to perform word processing functions instead of number crunching, breaking new ground between typewriters and mainframes. Later WordStar for TRS-80(1979) put word processing onto personal computers. Something which made fingers just type on, than scribing it on paper.

#8 Delete Key

This simple innovation helped us to correct our mistakes without much fuss. It also reduced need for WhiteOuts, erasers, OS reboots and aftermath apologies; just press and undo.

#7 UNIX

UNIX is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system developed by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs in 1969. The OS simplified the execution of computer programs on machines, before which the program had to converted it to punch cards and give them to MIS, which was then fed to the mainframe.

The whole new world of product based software took the roots in IT industry, powering even those with law IT skills to write programs. The programs were line-of-business applications and large-scale ERP, CRM and SCP systems; which eventually moved to the cloud and took the form of Salesforce.com, Facebook and World of Warcraft.

#6 Local Area Network

ARCNET was the first widely available networking system for microcomputers. It was developed by principal development engineer John Murphy at Datapoint Corporation, provided first commercial LAN in 1977. It answered the people’s need to share files, printers and WAN connections at affordable prices, and with greater speeds.

#5 Acoustic Coupler

The external acoustic-coupler modem (1965) is the first device which converted analog signals from ordinary phone to turn huge computers of the time into network interfaces with blazing 300bps. Though it was included in PC World’s “Ugliest Product in Tech History” list, it defiantly paved way for modern ultra fast internet.

#4 Mobile Phones

The mobile phones were active as early as 1983 when commercial cell networks debuted in. Though at that time mobile phones were not sleek to fit into pockets or have multimedia functions, instead are huge and confined to vehicles, nevertheless the purpose of talking on the go was achieved.

#3 America Online

Steve Case founded AOL (American Online) the commercial ISP, introduced millions of people to internet and chat-rooms; the new experience unveiled. In 1989 when speed in kbps was norm, AOL brought in broadband, and started new online era. AOL led to CompuServe, which led to Web, which led to social networks like Facebook.

#2 Apple Newton

Apple’s Newton was first personal digital assistant (or PDA). Debuted in 1992, it changed the way a user managed personal data, and defined how convenient computer automation should be, making available the data whenever we wanted, in a portable user friendly device.  

#1 Wi-Fi Home Router

Before the advent of Fastwed, an Italian ISP Wi-Fi in 2001, building networks with cable modems was too complex, and expensive. Now Wi-Fi has turned into a domestic necessity of households like a water heater or cooker.

And also,

The Web

Tim Berners-Lee invented HTTP, HTML, and the URL in 1991. It was something which changed forever the way the information was exchanged, led to World Wide Web era, something indispensible in today’s personal or business life.

You probably won’t see the revenue bump in Facebook’s earnings report today from all its new monetization schemes. But with this quarter’s rollout of Gifts, a mobile ad network, app install ads, FBX, and Sponsored Results, Facebook tried show the world that it has new engines to power profits. Earnings and share price may drag for a while longer, but here’s how they have the potential to kick into high gear eventually.

Facebook VP of corporate development Vaughn Smith said at a conference last week, “It’s funny to reflect back that in the first quarter of this year we had no ads on our mobile product.” Wall Street sure didn’t get the joke. Facebook’s user base is shifting to the small screen, and investors were right to worry the social network might not have a way to squeeze dollars from them there. That’s partly why its share price has stumbled to $19.32 down from $38 where $FB IPO’d.

So Facebook has been pushing itself through a transformation to become a company that thinks mobile first. From a product development standpoint, that shift has been rapid. A year ago it was designing for the web and then porting those designs to mobile. Now Facebook spec’s out products with mobile as the priority. Most teams ship their own mobile code too, instead of relying on a specific “mobile” team like it did last year.

But transforming into a mobile money-maker takes longer and Facebook still has to prove it’s possible. When it builds new commerce channels, it has to raise awareness and then get people actually opening their wallets. When it offers new ways to advertise, it must demonstrate to businesses that the ads deliver return on investment, and then recruit big spenders to buy them. It could take several quarters for the bump from new monetization schemes to appear in the bottom line if they even work.

Facebook’s existing mobile ad formats are performing well and all the ads tech companies saybusinesses are eager to buy them. But Facebook needs whole new ways to make money if it’s going to get to a more reasonable price-to-earnings ratio.

So let’s take a look at the five big revenue drivers Facebook announced or implemented this quarter, and how close they are to actually giving it a revenue boost:

FACEBOOK GIFTS

Launched September 27th, Facebook Gifts is the company’s big entrance into ecommerce that lets users buy presents for friends when it’s their birthday, wedding, engagement, graduation, other special occasion, or just whenever. Users see alerts about these special occasions and a chance to buy Gifts on the top right of the desktop homepage and at the top of the mobile news feed. The gifts range from digital gift cards to physical shipments of flowers, chocolate or toys that Facebook sources from and has delivered by its partners. Facebook earns an undisclosed, varying revenue cut on each gift sold.

Facebook Gifts has big potential because it knows who people are likely to buy gifts for better than anyone else. Whose statuses we like, who we have the most friends in common with, who our family members are, and who we’re tagged in photos with all factor into its affinity rankings. Many people visit daily and spend lots of time on Facebook, so there are plenty of opportunities to get them to purchase.’

Facebook also built the shopping experience around convenience, using profile data to suggest what people should buy friends. Young dude? It’ll say to buy him Bourbon-barrel aged maple syrup. Middle aged woman? A Starbucks card or box of chocolate might be the top recommendations. It could get people to buy gifts when they otherwise might just say “happy birthday”, and could pull dollars away from Amazon, gift card providers, flower delivery services, and brick-and-mortar stores.

Unfortunately, even if a reasonable percentage of US users bought a few Gifts a year, the margins may not be big enough to seriously move the needle. There’s also no international roll out in sight. In any case, that would definitely complicate shipping and many markets don’t have the disposable income to buy Gifts. Facebook may need to find a way to convince people in its key markets to buy as often as once every two months for Gifts.

Status: Gifts is still being slowly rolled out to U.S. users. By the end of next quarter it should have reached most of the U.S. and we may hear if people are actually buying Gifts.

MOBILE AD NETWORK

Announced September 18th, Facebook’s mobile ad network allows advertisers to pay it to improve the targeting of ads they buy within non-Facebook mobile apps and sites. It solves a major problem for both ad buyers and sellers — namely that ads are often inaccurately targeted. That means a buyer’s message doesn’t reach the right audience and they don’t get clicks. Meanwhile, ad hosts like apps and website can’t charge advertisers for clicks and the irrelevant content worsens the experience for their users.

While traditional ad networks make educated guesses about who their visitors are, Facebook knows a ton about its users because they volunteer their data. With Facebook’s bio, social, and app usage data, this new mobile ad network lets marketing messages be pinpointed to appear to 30-year-old engaged women, 26-year-old guys who Like surfing and live in Los Angeles, or 22-year-old recent Harvard alumni who use apps similar to one made by an advertiser.

The mobile ad network is huge for Facebook because it earns the company more money without forcing it put more ads or commerce options in its own apps. That lets it maintain the quality of its user experience, and avoid drowning out organic social content with paid ads. As the Internet is increasingly accessed through apps that need ways to monetize, Facebook could earn a lot of money by getting them to host its ads.

Status: Facebook’s still calling this a test, and only a few trusted partners can use it. Facebook hasn’t released details of the ad network’s partners, design, or performance, and it is unlikely to have produced noticeable revenue yet. But mobile ad spend nearly doubled this year, and Facebook could rollout expand the similar ad network for the web that it’s testing on Zynga.com. By next quarter there should studies available on its performance. It should also be accessible to more advertisers and visible on more apps. In 6 months we’ll see if it’s gained traction.

APP INSTALL ADS

Announced on August 7th, app install ads allow developers to pay to inject “Install Now” ads into the mobile news feed. They show their app’s name, icon, description, Facebook App Center rating, and friends who use them. When clicked they lead straight to the App Store or Google Play market where users can download the apps.

If the mobile web is all about apps, Facebook wants to be the way developers pay to get people to discover and install them. There’s already a huge industry around paid app discovery that Facebook is vying for a cut of. It could succeed by leveraging the amount of time users spend browsing its mobile apps and the knowledge of which apps their friends use.

Mobile app install ads are also Facebook’s first serious foray into showing non-social ads in the news feed, which includes some risk.. Friends don’t have to have Liked a developer or used an app for ads promoting it to show up in someones feed. As showing too many of these pure ads could drive users way, the revenue Facebook could earn on them is constrained.

Status: Last week all developers gained the ability to buy app install ads. Expect studies on their performance to arrive soon and Facebook to highlight the money they’re generating in its Q4 earnings.

FACEBOOK EXCHANGE

Though it was revealed late in the previous quarter on June 13th, we didn’t hear the first results from the Facebook Exchange (FBX) cookie-based retargeted ads program until late August. FBX lets advertisers target their ads on Facebook to users who’ve recently visited specific websites. For example a travel company could target users who viewed but didn’t buy a flight to Hawaii with ads promoting that same flight.

The early rumors said they were working very well, and by September Facebook permitted the demand-side platforms that buy the ads to share performance results, which were extremely promising. For some advertisers, each dollar they spent on FBX ads brought in $16 in sales. And I’ve heard that while DSPs are still learning how to use FBX, they are getting as good of results from it as they get from Google’s retargeted ads that they’ve been buying and optimizing for years.

FBX lets Facebook break into the realm of advertising to people with purchase intent, similar to search ads. Because the return on investment can be linked more directly to ad spend, advertisers may be willing to pay more for FBX ads than the traditional brand advertising seen on Facebook. Many advertisers have specific budgets for retargeted ads that Facebook can now tap into. If it can provide conclusive evidence that FBX works better than Google’s ad exchange, massive spend could pour in.

Status: Over a dozen DSP partners can now buy FBX ads, initial results are strong, and more advertisers are getting excited about the program. They’ll still need time to learn how to master the ad format, but we may see notable revenue from the product on the earnings call. By next quarter spend should ramp up and FBX could become a significant part of Facebook’s business.

SPONSORED RESULTS

Facebook doesn’t have a full-fledged web search engine yet, but on August 22nd it officially launched its Sponsored Results ads for the site’s search typeahead. These let businesses pay to have their Page, app, or other Facebook property appear above organic results when users search for a specific property. For example, gaming company Playdom currently pays to show its game Marvel: Avengers Alliance at the top of typeahead results when people search for “Mafia Wars”, a game by its competitor Zynga.

Initially announced in the previous quarter, these last few months saw the rollout of the API for buying Sponsored Results, and the first reports of the performance. Optimal attained click through rates between 0.7% and 4.1%, well over 10x better than standard Facebook sidebar ads. Meanwhile Nanigans saw CTR exceed 3% in some campaigns, and found the ads could cost less than standard ads.

Sponsored Results are a powerful way for businesses to divert traffic to themselves and away from competitors, making them a lucrative buy in cut-throat industries. Their performance and advertiser interest bodes well for the money-making potential of a real Facebook web search engine — something CEO Mark Zuckerberg said is in the works and investors are salivating over. But for now, there may not be enough people searching in the typeahead for these to be hugely profitable.

Status: Sponsored Results can now be purchased through the Ads API and Power Editor, and are now appearing in the typeahead results of search for many popular apps and Pages. They may have already generated a little revenue, which could grow next quarter. More important, though, is how they foreshadowing a serious Facebook search ads business — a completely new monetization channel.

IT’S GONNA GET WORSE BEFORE IT GETS BETTER

Until these products gain traction, Facebook’s earnings may not be too impressive. And next month, nearly 1.2 billion additional shares will become eligible for sale by employees and investors when a big part of the company’s stock lock-up expires on November 16th. That means the share price is likely to dip lower.

$FB may rise again once this major post-lockup flood subsides and these new money-makers kick in, but at least until then Facebook will need to sell Wall Street on the future, not the present. It has to communicate that the evolution of advertising and commerce depend on the data only Facebook has.

Tags: Facebook, Starbucks, Wall Street, FBX, Facebook Gifts, Facebook features, Mobile code, Mobile payment

Silicon Valley may be America's most famous nebula of tech startup stars, but it's getting some serious competition a short hop down California's coastline.

With a robust system of incubators and accelerators producing a flurry of new companies -- more than 1,400, according to the AngelList startup community-- Los Angeles is looking to make a name for itself as a prime destination for putting down business roots.

Better weather, more affordable rent and proximity to the entertainment industry are just a few of the factors driving the L.A. startup scene's growth. Many of the ventures in what's been called "Silicon Beach" are tapping into the power of celebrity users and investors to drive awareness.

We spoke with the founders of three hot startups in the area about their success and key lessons they have learned piloting their ventures.

Viddy's Brett O'Brien, Chris Ovitz, and JJ Aguhob

image courtesy of the company

Company: Viddy
Product: iPhone app for sharing 15-second video clips with effects
Founders: Brett O'Brien, JJ Aguhob, Chris Ovitz
Launched: April 2011

What began as an iPhone app for sharing short user-generated video clips has grown into a community of 40 million users. An array of celebrity devotees have signed up for or endorsed Viddy including Jay-Z, Justin Bieber, Will Smith, Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

"Fifteen-second Viddys are the '140 characters' of video for people in Hollywood who create, share and consume with an online community," says Viddy co-founder JJ Aguhob.

Viddy has raised $36 million so far in two rounds of funding, from investors including Battery Ventures, Greycroft Ventures, Qualcomm and Jay-Z's Roc Nation. The company's major competitor, Socialcam, was acquired by 3-D design software company Autodesk in July.

The founders say their focus is on attracting more users and improving the product. Strategies for generating revenue -- such as in-app purchases for premium video effects, celebrity-sponsored add-ons, cloud storage and uploads of longer videos -- are still being worked out.

Startup lesson: Put users first. 
"To build a business organically, it 110 percent starts with the product and an experience that people can care about and easily engage with," says co-founder Brett O'Brien. "If you treat your venture as your passion, others will take notice and be drawn to your work." 

Related: 9 Cities You Wouldn't Think Are Hubs for Tech Startups

 

Instacanv.as founders Matt Munson, Todd Emaus, Steve Bull and Kevin Fremon

image courtesy of the company

Company: Instacanv.as
Product: Allows Instagram users to sell their photos as physical canvas art
Founders: Matt Munson, Todd Emaus, Steve Bull, Kevin Fremon
Launched: February 2012

Facebook's $1 billion purchase of Instagram has excited more than just that company's options holders. Other startups see the photo-filter and sharing app as a new platform worth building an ecosystem around.

In the case of Instacanv.as, its four founders saw an opportunity to turn pictures taken with Instagram into real artwork. Instagram "artists" can easily set up an online gallery enabling sales of their creative phone photos as physical media. Products include traditional canvases, framed prints, and a unique one-inch thick acrylic glass product dubbed The Prism.

A short six months from launch, the site is powering galleries for more than 100,000 photographers in more than 30 countries, says co-founder and CEO Matt Munson.

The product began as an online education site, operating solely on seed money. The team quickly changed course, based on the founders' interest in Instagram and their desire to buy their own prints. Instacanv.as suddenly grew "way faster and more wildly than we ever anticipated," Munson says.

A graduate of L.A. accelerator MuckerLab, Instacanv.as has raised nearly $2 million from several groups, including FF Angel, First Round Capital and Bullpen Capital. The company says it has been exceeding a $1 million annual revenue rate since launch.

Startup lesson: Iterate quickly. 
The Instacanv.as founders stick to the lean startup methodology of Eric Riess and to testing and learning on the fly. "If something's not working, try iterating very quickly to find something that does work," Munson says.

Related: The Next Big Wave in Tech -- And How Young 'Treps Can Surf It

 

Norm Schifman and James Citron, founders of Mogreet

image courtesy of the company

Company: Mogreet
Product: A mobile text and video messaging platform for marketers
Founders: Norm Schifman, James Citron
Launched: August 2006

Based in Venice, Calif., Mogreet began as a mobile greeting card delivery service. The company eventually pivoted, turning its mobile media platform into a tool for marketers to deliver text and multimedia message campaigns. The company now licenses its mobile marketing services to Fortune 500 companies.

Over the past two years, the company's mobile video messaging volume has grown by 400 percent, and Mogreet expects to increase revenue by the same amount in 2013, "as consumer brands, advertisers and mobile developers look to the mobile phone as the primary screen to engage with their audience," says CEO and co-founder James Citron. The company is profitable, with revenue coming from annual brand contracts in the range of $50,000 to $500,000, monthly messaging fees and third-party developer adoption.

With total venture capital of $14.1 million, Mogreet is supported in more than 175 countries and reaches two billion consumers. Most recently, the company launched an API service that gives developers a way of delivering text and multimedia messages, in-app messaging and more in their own apps.

Startup lesson: Don't be afraid to expose your idea.
Listen to the opinions of friends, customers and others, "and use them to create breakthrough products to evolve your ideas and, ultimately, build great companies," Citron says. "Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is everything."

Tags: Startups, Silicon Valley, iPhone, Los Angeles, AngelList, Justin Bieber, Jay-Z, Biz Stone, Roc Nation

In a world full of great entrepreneurial ideas, how do you get your idea to stand out from the others?

Today I served as a judge for the 2012 Medical Technology “Concept to Company” Competition. As judges, we were asked to select three winners from a group of eight different companies that presented to our panel. Each of these entrepreneurs brought their A-game and each of them had come up with impressive and innovative business ideas. The question for these aspiring business owners to have considered prior to today’s presentations is: When you are surrounded by tough competition, how do you make your business stand out to potential investors?

Each of the eight companies presented a good product or solution; each of them validated a need in the industry that their concept solved; each of them was catering to extremely large markets; and each of them had filed for patents to protect their idea. Therefore, it became necessary for me to look for other things that made one idea stand out from the next in order to determine which companies should receive my vote. While I am not allowed to share which companies I voted for yet, as the winners won’t be announced for a few weeks, hopefully the following four examples will help illustrate how entrepreneurs can help their companies stand out in the crowd when it is their time to shine.

Stand out by having a great story behind how you came up with your innovative product.

Reltus (www.reltus.com) The founder of this company was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 30. Through radiation treatments and chemotherapy, he was thankfully able to overcome the cancer, but he was left with an incessant ringing in his ears, a condition medically known as tinnitus. One evening while he was brushing his teeth with his sonic toothbrush, his young child came in the room wanting to be tucked into bed. As he went to answer his child, he inadvertently bit down on his vibrating toothbrush and noticed that for a glorious moment the ringing in his ears had stopped. After tucking his child in bed he returned to his sonic toothbrush and pulled off the brush head, wrapped the device, and held it against his ear. To his amazement he found that it gave him immediate relief from the ringing. He went on to experiment with several prototypes until he was able to create a solution he was happy with and thus, Reltus was born. Hearing the personal story behind any business idea really helps to draw an investor in emotionally, and it helps to illustrate the need your product can solve in a very personal way, thus making stand out from the others.

Stand out by introducing a disruptive, simple idea that will lead to a paradigm shift in the way things are done today.
iTest by 3PDx: This presentation was done by two young men, one being around 21 years old and the other being 25 years old. First I have to say that I love seeing talented young people put themselves out there in the business world, so that stands out all on its own. Young people bring such a great energy to the table, a fantastic ability to understand upcoming trends in the market, and they tend to have an eye for harnessing technology in new and innovative ways. These young men that presented were proof of this. Their idea was born from a group of smart people sitting around a room with a whiteboard, which in my opinion is how many a great idea is born, writing down whatever ideas came to mind. 

These students began strategizing on how to couple existing technologies in a new and disruptive way that could create a paradigm shift in the world of diagnostics. From their session, they realized that if they could find a way to leverage one of the most commonly used devices in the marketplace – a smartphone – and combine it with a widespread need for accessible, inexpensive, in-home diagnostic tests for sensitive testing such as HIV and HPV, that they could cause a paradigm shift that would decentralize central laboratory diagnostics and place personalized testing in the hands of the consumer. Their idea was simple yet elegant in that it leveraged two existing technologies, the smartphone and a home diagnostic test, and combined them in order to achieve this easy to use, simple to understand, private test for the consumer. I love that their idea would also have a huge social impact in that it would encourage more people to test for HIV in the privacy of their own home, leading to earlier detection, early treatment and hopefully better prevention of spreading the disease.

This next example was a double whammy: Stand out by being confident, not arrogant AND standout by having a business that can make money while changing the world for the better.
Signal Diagnostics (www.signaldiagnostics.com): The founder of this company really shone on his own because he had the perfect combination of confidence without being arrogant. That is a unique combination in an entrepreneur and one that always stands out to me as “one to watch” for greatness to be achieved. His technology delivers rapid and sensitive disease detection solutions to the masses, with results available in less than an hour.. Typically it takes days or even weeks to get critical lab test results back for a patient, but with his development of a battery operated handheld detection device that is readable by the naked human eye, he can reduce that turnaround to getting results in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. He tested his unit recently in Kenya, Africa, in a remote village where power and clean water were not an option. Just think of the social impact his technology could have across the world toward improving healthcare. Coming up with a concept that will make money and change the world for the better is a true home run in my book.

Aside from these four examples, I want to add a fifth and final thought. Keep your presentation clean and simple! Slide one of any presentation should include the burning questions that every investor in the room is waiting patiently through your entire presentation to hear.

Market Size (ex. $x billion annually, hopefully)
Revenue model and margin (ex. each unit sells for $500 retail, my cost is $20)

Do you have a simple solution for big problem? (ex. Yes)
Is your idea protected? (ex. Patent granted or filed)

By placing these on a single beginning slide, you will allow the investor to get these answers immediately, which will allow them to sit back and genuinely enjoy the rest of your presentation.

There is very little in life as invigorating as watching great ideas be brought to life. There is an energy that exudes from entrepreneurs who are passionate about their idea that can light up an entire room. I only listed a few of the companies that stood out today, but the reality was that each of the eight presenters stood out in their own right. Hopefully these examples will help others stand out when it is their moment to shine.

Tags: HIV, Business, Diagnostic test, Diagnosis, Entrepreneur, Electric toothbrush, Business idea, ITest

Gen Y came out of college exploring one job to another (to another). But when the recession hit, many said the days of job-hopping were over.

Yet there’s no reason to be scared into longevity at your current position. Here are 10 reasons to keep job-hopping:

1. Job-hopping allows you to widen your choice of jobs, not narrow it

When you have more experience in a wide range of positions, you’ll be able to increase your skill set. As long as you’re comfortable and adept at describing your transferable skills, you can easily act as a chameleon and morph from your current position to your dream job.

However, if you don’t know what transferable skills are, you may need to stay put.

2. No need to impress people you’ve never met

Many people, primarily HR managers, warn against job-hopping so you can theoretically impress another HR manager in the future—one you haven’t met yet. Besides the fact that you probably won’t be on the same career path a few years from now, let alone in the same industry, there’s no reason to build your career around what HR managers want.

Instead, impress yourself. Keep your own commitments and promises, and you’ll be fine.

3. Loyalty no longer exists

Your company is not loyal. Your boss is not loyal. Employees are never put first. More than ever, every job is unstable. It’s now more secure to build your own unique career from scratch.

So don’t show loyalty to a company that is not loyal to you. Now, that doesn’t mean ignoring your work or being disrespectful to the people who put money in your bank account, but it does mean being realistic in your career planning.

4. Job-hopping is a precursor to the future of careers

Careers are no longer linear. Instead, you will piece together positions and opportunities to fully form your career puzzle. You’ll have six to eight jobs before you’re 30, and you certainly won’t settle into the same company for the rest of your life after that.

As the idea of careers shift toward more contract work and portfolio careers, you can prepare by realizing results quickly and providing massive value.

5. Your network—not your resume—gets you jobs

When you job-hop, you expand your network tenfold. You meet more people: coworkers, managers, partners, influencers, leaders. And it’s your network, not your list of positions, that will get you in the door at the next job.

While you can and should apply with your cover letter and resume, when your network can recommend you for a position, it is much easier to advance your career.

6. Get a substantial raise and title upgrade

It’s better to find a new job that pays well and has a great title than to try and convince your existing company to give you a raise and a promotion. After all, you signed their contract. And it’s cheaper for them to keep you in your place.

When you ask for a raise, you’ll likely only receive a two to three percent increase. When you job-hop, the typical increase in income is 20 to 30 percent. Enough said.

7. You don’t know what you like until you do it

A slim minority of us fall right away into careers that are representative of our dream jobs. Everyone else gets stuck in jobs we hate.

While you can try to journal and vision-board your way into a soul-enriching career, it’s quicker and more effective to try several different positions until you discover what you truly enjoy. Action is quicker than thought—so don’t guess; go out and do.

8. Companies don’t move as fast as results

From startups to large corporations, every organization is fighting against some sort of barrier, whether it’s lack of money or lots of bureaucracy.

You may bring stellar results in the first three to six months, but by the time a year rolls around, your plate is likely devoid of challenge and meaningful work. Job-hopping means you always have relevant tasks to work on and can continually create positive impact.

9. The recession is a great excuse for high-performers

Naysayers warn Gen Y not to job-hop since it supposedly looks bad. But when Negative Nancies hunker down, it’s the perfect opportunity for high-performers to get out and fight. The recession is your excuse, as a high-performer in particular, to take risks and reap big rewards.

If it doesn’t work out, well, it’s been a bumpy ride for everyone. But the odds are in your favor.

10. Your talent is desperately needed

If you love your job, then for goodness sake, hold onto it with all your might.

But the truth is, the majority of Gen Y is disillusioned and dissatisfied with their careers. The longer you stay in a position that doesn’t fulfill you, the longer you cheat the world of your unique talents and gifts.

So whether you love picking out an accent pillow or get pleasure from financial projections, go on: get after it!

Rebecca Thorman’s blog Kontrary offers tips to create the career, bank account and life you love and is a popular destination for young professionals. Her goal is to help you find meaningful work, enjoy the heck out of it and earn more money.

Tags: Employment, Career, Human resources, Generation Y, Business, Cover letter, Jobs, Job Search

Recently, I wrote about employees as brand ambassadors and how they can help – or hurt – an organization’s global and social brand. It depends on how well the lines between personal brand and company brand are drawn.

Once a company and leadership has the brand issue sorted out, it’s time to think more deeply about social community and the actual role of community managers.

Companies which value collaboration, understand the value of social buzz, and see the need to add (or subtract) a step in the sales process are all ripe for social community development. So are brands which have sustained brand damage. So what are the guidelines for establishing a community manager role in your organization?

Here are 5 ways to empower a great community manager (s):

1) Know the boundaries of your existing community.  Is there a Facebook page? A corporate Twitter handle? How about G+, LinkedIn, YouTube, wikis, or a customer portal? Good, then you have community. At least the start of one. Now it’s time to show them the love. It’s time to manage it actively (and positively) with a community manager.

2) Build guardrails around your community with a very light touch.  Don’t tell your various communities of interest that you’re putting them in a big box – craft a community entity (think brand) by gradually bringing them closer. Try surveys, outreach, and blogs asking people what they’d like to see from your company’s brand, and build from there.

3) Hire carefully. There are lots of self-styled community managers out there. Look at Jono Bacon’s book The Art of Community. Use it as a guide as you build the job description. Or better yet – start “actively listening” in on social channels about what people are saying. And take the time to figure out what you want to accomplish with the community.

4) Don’t forget the importance of process. Communities work best when all understand the ground rules. Craft a community manifesto or a similar guidebook and share it.

5) Empower your communities. Once you have the community manager in place, and the goals, build an action plan. Make the goals both short and long-term; monthly, yearly, five years. Know what you want, and put the plan in place to get there. Make it measureable, and make sure your leadership and the community manager is accountable. This is a team effort.

Communities are critical to building a business which can navigate channels – direct to customer, social, sales, partner and employee. Leaders need to act now to gather community around their brands.

It’s 2012, talented people. Time to climb in the social sandbox. Maybe it’s time to show the community manager some love and respect as an essential and valued role within your organization. Let’s keep talking. This is only the beginning.

Tags: Twitter, LinkedIn, Art of Community, Jono Bacon, YouTube, Community manager, Leadership, Facebook

There are a few fundamentals that you must know before you begin spending your hard-earned cash advertising your business on Facebook. These terms and definitions are so important that you really should understand them comfortably and completely before giving Facebook your credit card and telling them to have at it.

An ad in Facebook is content displayed to Facebook users at an advertiser's specific request. Up to five different ads may show at one time. Where ads are displayed, what they are called, how they work, how they are presented and how many are shown at a time are subject to change at any time.

Here are six terms you'll want to get familiar with before embarking on a Facebook advertising campaign.

1. Impressions. Every time an ad is displayed, a user could potentially read the ad. Facebook calls that an impression; it's an opportunity for someone to see your ad. For example, if an ad has 1.4 million impressions, then the ad had 1.4 million opportunities to be seen.

But that doesn't mean 1.4 million separate people have had the chance to see the ad. The estimated reach for this ad is 200,000, the number of Facebook users who meet the criteria that the advertiser has selected for people the advertiser wants to see the ad.

If an ad has 1.4 million impressions and an estimated reach of 200,000 people, we know that, on average, each of those 200,000 people has had seven opportunities to see the ad.

Most people don't click on an ad on the first impression. As users browse Facebook, moving from page to page, the same ads are displayed multiple times.

If the ad title is good and the ad image is compelling, the ad may capture a Facebook user's attention and they may actually read the ad. If the user clicks on the ad, he is taken to a new destination specified by the advertiser. Facebook captures and reports the number of times all users have clicked on each ad.

One of the first questions everyone asks is "How well is my ad working?" There are many measures, but we'll focus on whether the ad encourages users to click.

2. Click-through rates. Facebook reports how well an ad encourages a user to click, in a statistic called the click-through rate (CTR). This identifies how many impressions it takes, on average, before a user clicks on the ad. CTR is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions. If your ad had 1,000 total impressions and users have clicked on the ad 10 times, then your CTR is 1%.

3. Landing pages. The page that is displayed after a user clicks on an ad is called a landing page. The advertiser specifies the landing page when the ad is created in a field called destination URL.

You can send a user who clicks on an ad anywhere that doesn't violate Facebook's landing page policies. You may send users to your own web page or you may send users to other locations within Facebook -- such as a Facebook page, event, application or group.

Related: What Facebook's Page Post Targeting Means to Your Business

4. Cost-per-click. Facebook does not display ads out of the goodness of its heart. It wants cold, hard cash. You have to provide a credit card before Facebook will even think of displaying your ad. Once it has your payment information, it lets you create an ad. During this process it asks if you want to bid for clicks or for impressions.

If you choose to bid for clicks, you will be charged only if a user clicks on the ad. You can specify the amount you are willing to pay for a click, the cost-per-click (CPC), starting at one cent per click. If you say that you are willing to pay a maximum of 45 cents for a click, then that is the most you will be charged for a click.

Technically, you are bidding on the ad space, against other unknown advertisers. Initially, the higher your bid, the more likely your ad will be displayed. After a few thousand impressions, additional factors affect the cost of your ad, including the click-through rate and whether users "like" or complain about your ad. The good new is that Facebook reserves the right to "lower the price" you pay per click, and usually does.

5. CPMs. You may also select to bid on impressions instead of clicks. In the Facebook interface, pay per view is labeled CPM, short for cost per thousand impressions. (Mille means 1,000 in Latin.) You can pay to have your ad displayed 1,000 times whether or not anyone clicks on it.

6. Reach and frequency. Ads display on Facebook multiple times to the same user. The number of individual people who have seen your ad during a specific period is called reach. The average number of times each individual user has seen your ad is frequency. But as the frequency gets high, you face ad fatigue. Even if the ad is excellent, your prospects stop clicking on it because they have grown tired of seeing it.

Tags: Facebook, Advertising, Pay per click, Clickthrough rate, Landing page, Impressions, Google, CPC