October 8, 2012 | New York Times

Patents are vitally important to protecting intellectual property. Plenty of creativity occurs within the technology industry, and without patents, executives say they could never justify spending fortunes on new products. However, many people argue that the nation’s patent rules, intended for a mechanical world, are inadequate in today’s digital marketplace.

October 7, 2012 | New York Times

Luis Von Ahn, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, sold one Internet start-up to Google in 2009, and is now on to another. With the new company, Duolingo, he hopes to tap the millions of people learning languages online to create a crowdsourced engine of translation. “We want to translate the whole Web into every major language,” Mr. von Ahn says.

October 4, 2012 | Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurs tend to be stereotyped as headstrong individualists who think they know the best way to do everything. While confidence and determination may be necessary when launching a business, sometimes the most important thing an entrepreneur can do is to talk with others founders and get some advice from experienced CEOs. That’s where a business accelerator can come in.

October 7, 2012 | Slate/Washington Post

It was the second, forgotten half of Obama’s inaugural address that best embodies a misapprehension of science shared by Democrats and Republicans alike. Obama promised to “wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its costs.”