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I adore action figures and I respect Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs, but the Steve Jobs action figure that's supposedly becoming available in late February makes me want to run away screaming.

While 2011 was a big year for political unrest, another uprising was afoot in the world of content creators and artists. Everywhere you look, artists are taking more control over their own economic well being, partly because the Internet has enabled them to do so.

Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple's iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes, has died, Apple said. Jobs was 56. "We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today," read a statement by Apple's board of directors. "Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts."

There is so much written these days about how to attract investors that most entrepreneurs "assume" they need funding, and don't even consider a plan for "bootstrapping," or self-financing their startup. Yet, according to many sources, over 90 percent of all businesses are started and grown with no equity financing, and many others would have ...

We know about immigrant founders at large technology companies, such as Intel, Google and eBay. Less well known is how many immigrants and children of immigrants have founded other successful American companies. A new report from the Partnership for a New American Economy found more than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Eighteen percent (or 90) of the 500 companies had immigrant founders. The children of immigrants started another 114 companies.

I have been awarded a golden ticket to the heart of Silicon Valley: the Thiel Fellowship. The catch? For two years, I cannot be enrolled as a full-time student at an academic institution.

Consumer Internet entrepreneurs are like pro basketball players,” a venture capitalist told me recently while discussing the prospects for a thirty-something founder, “They peak at 25, by 30 they’re usually done.

The tabloids are abuzz about a new study suggesting that Facebook can exacerbate the negative self-conceptions of kids troubled by low self-esteem. If you have 18 friends and see your neighbor has 1,118, the study says your sense of not measuring-up will get worse.

Lost among all the buzz about the uber-funded successes of Gilt Groupe, Beautylish and Etsy, three successful online businesses which rely heavily–if not exclusively–on the power of the female click and credit card, is the fact that all three companies were actually founded by men. No, the founding owners were not Alexis Maybank, Mariam Naficy and Maria Thomas, but rather Kevin Ryan, Vu Nguyen and Rob Kalin, respectively.