Working for a start-up is hard enough. Trying to wittily describe “the unique entrepreneurial culture that sets their company apart and inspires them to go to work each day”–in 140 characters or less–is equally challenging.

That was the task set by the National Venture Capital Association and job board StartUpHire, which asked for Twitter-esque submissions from start-up employees in celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

You can find more than 100 of them here, and submit your own. Many of them aim to be funny, some inspire, though quite a few are simply advertising their start-ups or didn’t seem to understand the objective. Here are a few of our favorites. (Post yours at the aforementioned link, and if it’s interesting enough, we’ll add it below.)

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Brizzly, the Web-based twitter client from Thing Labs, covered in Almost Famous two weeks ago, begins public beta today.

The company, which has been in invitation-only beta for months, riffs on the standard Twitter interface by automatically displaying tweeted images in line with the standard 140 characters and relengthens all those pesky shortened urls.

In addition to opening its “expanded” Twitter interface to the world at large, Brizzly is offering an on-the-fly translation tool (based on Google Translate) for foreign tweets, which it says will help users discover new information and gain context.

AllThingsD.com has learned that besides opening the front door to the public, the innovative start-up just grabbed former FriendFeeder and current Facebooker Ben Darnell for the team. Ben was an early Google (GOOG) employee and worked on the Google Reader team with Thing Labs founders Jason Shellen and Chris Wetherell.

Here are two screenshots–one off Brizzly’s new public beta offering and one of the translation feature:

Remember paying astronomical prices for college textbooks that, once class was over, had only one possible use: as paperweights?

To the relief of parents everywhere, shelling out $182 for Principles of Biochemistry may become a thing of the past. Several recently funded start-ups make it cheaper, or in some cases free, for students to obtain books.

Akademos Inc. raised $2.5 million in August to support an online marketplace for students to sell books to each other, saving buyers an average of 61 percent off list prices. Flat World Knowledge LLC, funded earlier this year with $8 million in Series A money, provides digital versions of textbooks online for free, earning revenue and paying authors by giving students options to purchase soft-cover textbooks, audio books and self-print individual chapters.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

China Mobile Ltd. (CHL), the world’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, is pinning its hopes on new third-generation services such as mobile television and mobile readers to drive growth amid increasing competition and falling voice revenue.

Chairman Wang Jianzhou said Thursday the company plans to launch mobile-reader services next year and is working with Datang Telecom Technology Co., Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. and Hanwang Technology Co. on electronic reading devices.

It is also planning to launch a trial service for mobile TV on third-generation handsets by the end of this year.

Mr. Wang said the company is targeting several million subscribers to its mobile-TV service in the first year and tens of millions of users in the second year.

The new services should help China Mobile achieve profit growth, he said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Scientists at IBM’s (IBM) Almaden research center have built the biggest artificial brain ever–a cell-by-cell simulation of the human visual cortex: 1.6 billion virtual neurons connected by 9 trillion synapses. This computer simulation, as large as a cat’s brain, blows away the previous record–a simulated rat’s brain with 55 million neurons–built by the same team two years ago.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Several reports from the US make the point: local is the new buzzword in the land of web entrepreneurship. No wonder. As more and more smart mobile phones are used to check in online, the demand for local information online rises.

However, listings magazines have been slow to adapt to the online world, so there is room for new hype, and maybe even a chance to make money.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Dell’s (DELL) fiscal third-quarter earnings fell 54 percent to $337 million, while revenue declined 15 percent to $12.9 billion.

The personal-computer maker saw revenue in its small and medium business unit slip 19 percent from the year-earlier period, while its consumer business was down 10 percent. In a statement, Michael Dell, its chief executive, said that the launch of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 7 has been “very well received” by consumers and businesses, and that the company will see those results more in the fourth quarter.

Dell also highlighted its performance in China, where sales grew 8 percent. Combined sales in China, India, Brazil and Russia rose 5 percent.

The company is likely to discuss its recent acquisition of Perot Systems, though investors may also want to hear more about its smart-phone plans and how it’s competing with Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), which reported a revenue drop as well as a purchase of its own last week.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Norwest Venture Partners on Wednesday announced that it had closed a new venture-capital fund sized at $1.2 billion. That’s nearly double the size of the Silicon Valley venture firm’s last fund in 2006, which closed at $650 million.

The new fund is unusual in this day and age amid a tough fundraising environment brought on by the recession. What’s more, many venture capitalists argue that funds need to be smaller to get back to the basics, especially since venture capital isn’t an industry that necessarily scales upwards.

Here’s what Promod Haque, NVP’s managing partner, had to say about all this:

Read the rest of this post on the original site

California created the nation’s first energy-efficiency standard for television sets, arguing that it needed to act because federal energy officials have been slow to confront the issue.

Under the standard adopted Wednesday by the California Energy Commission, no TV with a screen size less than 58 inches may be sold in the state after 2011 unless it meets limits on energy consumption. The standard tightens further in 2013. (Larger screens were left for future examination.)

Sets sold in California under the standard would consume 33 percent less electricity in 2011 and 49 percent less in 2013 than the average set sold today, according to the commission. The standard replaces a rule that only considered energy use when sets were in standby mode.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

With Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle, readers can squeeze hundreds of books into a device that is smaller than most hardcovers. For some, that’s not small enough.

Many people who want to read electronic books are discovering that they can do so on the smartphones that are already in their pockets–bringing a whole new meaning to “phone book.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site