Microsoft and HP are apparently ready to work together for the greater good of the consumers. The two companies have announced a joint venture related to cloud computing. In fact they are ready to put $250 million where their mouth is so we can’t but be curious to see what this endeavor will bring us.
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As I sat around wondering what this new gadget and service will lead to I started researching and trying to find all the material I could on the gadget. There’s a great bunch of video clips and small articles out there but they are scattered all over the place and it struck me that a complete collection of what’s available about it today was truly necessary.

Without further explanation, here is pretty much everything that has been revealed about the Square and a little more. It’s with excitement that I await more news about this venture and also whatever else that Jack Dorsey will undertake in the future. I can’t but think that he has more awesome things hidden away in his head that he will reveal in time. He is rapidly becoming a one person “brothers Google” with all his great ideas and I think that if he can just stay focused and listen to the community (just like Google does…sometimes) he can become the brightest shining star in Internet venture and engineering history.

I think it’s with his smarts and his will to serve the people (for example the cool choice of giving away the little Square gadget to the people) instead of the money greedy venture capitalists that he will win out on his ideas. Don’t think I am ignorant here. Of course Mr. Dorsey has his share of investors (or does he?) making sure he makes good money from his ideas but it’s the graceful act of really trying to put people first in his venture equations that’s most profitable for him. After all, it’s the people that will use his great ideas and make them popular. Isn’t that right Jack? (Oh and Jack totally kicks ass battling off a possible competitor to his own Square product in the last clip here in the list)

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These companies released a joint announcement today saying that they have entered into an independent venture to develop open standards for a new digital storefront and related technology that will "allow consumers to enjoy their favorite media content on portable digital devices."

The idea is that publishers can boost online revenue in a similar fashion to what the companies behind Hulu are doing with online television The publishers say the goal is to create a highly featured common reading application capable of rendering the distinctive look and feel of each publication, a publishing platform optimized for multiple devices, operating systems and screen sizes, a consumer storefront with an extensive selection of publications, and a rich array of advertising opportunities.

The selection of publications will not be limited to just those from the companies involved. They are saying that the venture will welcome other publishers to offer their content as well. Publishers will get their revenue from content and advertising sales, as well as print subscriptions.

"For the consumer, this digital initiative will provide access to an extraordinary selection of engaging content products, all customized for easy download on the device of their choice, including smartphones, e-readers and laptops," explained John Squires, the venture’s interim managing director. "Once purchased, this content will be ‘unlocked’ for consumers to enjoy anywhere, anytime, on any platform."

The storefront will of course offer magazine and newspaper publications, but will also include books, comic books, blogs, and other media. The venture does not yet have a name. It will be interesting to see what they come up with and if consumers jump on board with the model.

Is this a step in the right direction for publishers? Tell us what you think.

Related Articles:

> Google Changes How it Handles Paid Content

> Minds of the Media Gather to Discuss Future of News

> Google Okay With Blocking News Corp.

> Is it Really Crazy to Block Google?

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What was made public earlier this week has now been made official: General Electric is shifting control of NBC Universal to Comcast in a $30 billion agreement.

Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will form a joint venture, where Comcast will end up controlling 51 percent of the newly formed company while GE will own 49 percent.

The joint venture is valued at 30 billion dollars, with GE contributing its cable networks, filmed entertainment, televised entertainment, theme parks, and unconsolidated investments. Comcast will contribute its cable networks including E!, Versus and the Golf Channel, ten regional sports networks, and certain digital media properties, collectively valued at $7.25 billion. Additionally, Comcast will pay GE approximately $6.5 billion in cash.

Read the full press release here.

Tags: comcast, General Electric, nbc universal

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Originally posted at The Social

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This series is supported by Grasshopper, the Virtual Phone System designed for entrepreneurs. Learn more about Grasshopper at Grasshopper.com.

Let’s face it: as an entrepreneur, the odds are stacked against you. Most businesses fail after the first few years, and even if you do manage to survive, that doesn’t mean your business will redefine an industry, become profitable, or change the world. Getting off on the right foot is essential to navigating a startup from its infancy to profitability.

Luckily, there have been countless entrepreneurs that have gone through the same toils building their own businesses, and most of them are happy to share their experiences to better prepare you for the journey ahead. In addition, there is now an array of social media and web apps that no entrepreneur has ever had access to before. Together, these resources can give you the edge in a fast-changing business world.

While we can’t highlight the thousands of resources at your disposal, we have put together twenty of our favorite guides, web apps, and tools that can help you build and launch a startup. This guide is divided into six sections, covering everything from coming up with the right idea to the steps you need to take and tools you’ll want to have to secure funding for your early-stage company. In total, you will find that this guide is a comprehensive resource for anybody who’s trying to realize his or her entrepreneurial dreams.

Guides to Getting Started

Before you dive into your startup (or maybe after you’re neck-deep), you should get yourself a crash course education in starting a business. There is no education like doing, but reading up on incorporating, collecting some checklists, and understanding just what it takes to get your specific business off the ground will save you plenty of headaches later on.

1. The Entrepreneur.com Startup Kits: Entrepreneur Magazine’s website has a gem for entrepreneurs: startup kits. There are kits for everything from starting a restaurant to a consulting firm, complete with articles, guides, marketing tips, and more.

2. eHow’s Introduction to Entrepreneurship: Collaborative knowledge resource website eHow has hundreds of thousands of great articles, including a strong set of guides and resources for how to open a business, how to incorporate, raising money, and bookkeeping.

3. About.com Starting a Business Hub: Another resource you should not miss is About.com’s Entrepreneurs Hub. They’ve curated some of their best content for starting a business, including checklists, a small business startup kit, and detailed articles on naming and calculating the cost of your startup.

4. Library of Congress’s Entrepreneur’s Reference Guide: Yes, the U.S. Library of Congress has an entrepreneur’s reference guide, while it’s dated (1999), it also lists a lot of great books that are updated yearly. It covers practically every topic related to starting a small business.

Inspirations for the Idea

There are few things more important to the success of your startup than having the right idea and continuing to be innovative with your product as it gets built and released to your customers. Ideas don’t just come in cans from the store, though. That’s why we’ve brought together some resources that should help inspire your creative juices and help you nail down the next big idea.

5. Vator.tv: A play on “elevator pitch,” Vator.tv is a place where entrepreneurs can upload short video pitches about their startup. Not only that, but you can follow industry news and specific companies. Watching these pitches will certainly jolt your brain’s creative juices. Also check out VentureBeat Profiles (formerly TradeVibes), which also has a great database of startups and a community discussing each one.

6. Alltop Startups: Reading the latest news and opinions in the startup world can only help jolt your brain and keep you current. Alltop has a great list of blogs and news websites dedicated to the subject (including my personal blog). Take a read, subscribe to the blogs that interest you, and you’ll be guaranteed to be reading about great ideas soon enough.

Startup Web Apps

While there is an array of great web tools for entrepreneurs (10 of the best we previously highlighted), there are some tools that just make your life easier when you’re trying to bring order to the chaos of launching your startup. Consider these tools when you’re in the early stages of building a company:

7. Evernote: Information is king, and there are few web apps that do a better job of collecting information in front of the computer screen or on-the-go than Evernote. The service simply helps you remember everything. You can take pictures of your receipts for easy organization or save key info while you browse, for example, among many other ways to organize and catalog the things you need to remember for your startup.

8. Zoho: Zoho is a suite of online collaboration tools. Not only does it include email and spreadsheets, but it includes, wiki, chat, customer relationship management (CRM), and web conferencing as well. While it is similar to Google Apps, it is built specifically for businesses.

9. PBWorks: Wikis are amazing for organizing ideas and sharing them with team members. There are few better suited for business than PBWorks, which is not only a wiki but a collaboration tool, document manager, and project management tool.

10. FreshBooks: If your business is client-based, you need to track invoices, teams, and payments constantly. While there are many choices, Freshbooks is one of the best due to its mobile apps, integration with Basecamp, and reasonable pricing.

Social Media for Startup Success

Social media is about connecting with people. Interestingly enough, so is business and entrepreneurship, which is perhaps why there is so much overlap between the two. If you want to get your startup off the ground, you have to network, build up your social circle, and reach out to the right people. These social tools are adept at that task:

11. Plaxo: There are few tasks more important in business than maintaining and organizing your contacts. You never know when someone you meet will lead you to a big business deal, venture capital, or a new team member. Plaxo acts as a digital address book that efficiently organizes everyone you meet. Plus, it integrates with Outlook, Thunderbird and the Mac OS X Address Book to make importing contacts a snap. You have to be diligent about adding contacts, though.

12. Google Wave: Google’s experimental real-time communication platform not only has a consumer version, but also comes in a corporate flavor for users of Google apps. Having your team collaborate on projects through waves is a unique experience, one that we have used with success over here at Mashable. No other social tool has the same collaboration features.

13. LinkedIn: This one may be obvious, but its importance in business cannot be overstated. It is the world’s most popular business social network for a reason. Its business features, especially those connecting you to friends of friends, are unmatched, and with over 50 million users, it’s a social media tool you need to be using constantly.

Raising Money

Bringing your startup to the next level takes more than willpower, determination, and grit. In most cases, you need startup capital to build the product, hire the right team members, and maintain the product after it launches. That’s why it’s vital to do your homework on how to effectively raise money.

These are a few resources that will give you a crash course education in venture capital and raising money to grow your startup:

14. Introduction to Venture Capital: If you’re clueless about how venture capital works (most people are), this short presentation by Will Price, former venture capitalist and the current CEO of Widgetbox, explains all of the basics. It was given at Stanford University in 2007:

15. TheFunded: This entrepreneurship community is very unique in that it is focused on helping you raise money. How? By giving you ratings and inside details of the practices of countless venture capital and angel investor funds. The information, once you’re in, is invaluable to choosing the firm that will help propel your business to the next level.

16. How to Fund a Startup: This guide by Y Combinator co-founder and early-stage investor Paul Graham is shockingly detailed on the different ways to raise money, the disadvantages of each approach, how venture capital firms operate, and the reality of bringing investors into your company. A must-read for any startup founder before raising capital.

Startup Social Communities

You cannot and should not build your business alone. The world’s greatest entrepreneurs not only had co-founders, but they had friends, family, and a community of entrepreneurs and advisors that helped them with difficult decisions, overcoming adversity, and fixing mistakes.

With the rise of social media and the web, a crop of incredible startup communities have popped up, each one with a unique character but with a wealth of community knowledge that you’d be crazy to pass up on your journey to build a great company.

17. StartupNation: The recently redesigned startup community network has extensive and active forums, useful knowledge hubs, community groups, and plenty more.

18. Hacker News: The seed investment firm Y Combinator has built a thriving and active startup community known as Hacker News. Users add relevant and interesting stories on the topics of programming and startup entrepreneurship and consistently hold thought-provoking discussions. It’s an incredible place for insight and advice on startups.

19. Young Entrepreneur: Focused around discussion forums, Young Entrepreneur is a great place to ask any startup question on your mind or just to read the over 240,000 posts made over the years on the site.

20. PartnerUp: PartnerUp is a community that really focuses on one thing: helping you find business partners. In business, finding the right co-founders is often the difference between stellar success and a quick, painful startup death. PartnerUp is a community ideal for finding and networking with people that will shore up your weaknesses and help you answer those nagging questions about the partnership side of business.

Sound more professional and stay connected with Grasshopper, the Virtual Phone System designed for entrepreneurs. Grasshopper works just like a traditional phone system, but requires no hardware to purchase – it’s all managed online or by phone. Callers reach you whether you’re in the office, on your cell, or at home.

Get a toll free or local number, create extensions for employees, forward calls, get voicemails via email, and more – starting at only $9.95 a month.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, cmcderm1

Tags: alltop, entrepreneurship, evernote, Google Wave, grasshopper entrepreneur series, linkedin, PartnerUp, PBWorks, plaxo, startup, startups, TheFunded, y combinator

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As print publishers struggle to transition to the digital age (and essentially, survive), Time Inc. is shopping around an idea: a Hulu for magazines joint venture.

The core of the plan is to create an iTunes-like digital storefront where content can be bundled into subscriptions and delivered to customers on multiple devices.

According to All Things Digital, the plan is being well-received, with Hearst and Conde Nast reportedly expected to sign on to the venture.

Lots of details have yet to be worked out, with one particularly huge question to be answered: what type of content, exactly, would the store be selling? A simple digital copy of the corresponding print magazine is in most cases already available on the web for free, with customers showing little interest in paying for that format.

Will these old dog publishers be able to come up with new content tricks to attract a digital market? What will magazine content look in an interactive world, and how will it be tailored to work properly on a range of devices and sizes, from cell phones to eReaders like the Amazon Kindle to future form factors like the still-unannounced Apple Tablet or Microsoft Courier?

Controlling Sales and Distribution

These questions and more the consortium of publishers will have to answer before a joint venture storefront can come together. They have a lot of incentive to figure it out and figure it out quickly though, because their own content store would keep publishers in control of their own sales and distribution.

Other industries — particularly the music industry — are beholden to companies like Apple who control the distribution pipeline via iTunes. Time Inc. et al want to avoid allowing Amazon to strengthen its position as the corresponding gatekeeper in the publishing world, as it has begun to do with the Kindle platform.

Though it’s all still in the early stages, how do you think this transition will play out? Will publishers band together to create their own digital content storefront, or will Amazon make a play from books into the periodicals market? Some publishers have even contemplated making their own digital reading devices; will we see a fractured eReader market with many content silos, possibly publisher-specific? Or will Apple swoop in and bring sexy back to print in the digital world?

Tags: conde nast, hearst, hulu, magazines, print publishers, Time Inc

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