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Free Training For Entrepreneurs New To Android App Development

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By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0) At the new Android Training site, you'll find a collection of classes to help you build Android apps. Find best practices in a variety of topics -- designers may want to check out how to improve layout performance or designing effective navigation.

If you're in San Francisco, check out the "Android Layout 101 with Chiu-Ki Chan" on Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 6:30pm at Blazing Cloud's office -- it's free!

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Dear Lego, Please Get It Right This Time

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By Alicia Liu (Product Manager/Mobile Developer, Select Start) Lego is at it again: trying to make Lego appeal to girls.

The introduction of “Lego Friends” should be good news right? With evidence that Lego is a gateway to science and engineering, and that playing with Lego improves spatial, mathematical, and fine motor skills, surely this will help with the gender imbalance in STEM? Yet my first reaction was a cringe.

Let me begin with a little history. My love affair with Lego began when I was seven. That was the year

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How to Get TechCrunched (And Much More Press) In One Week

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By Elissa Rose (Assistant Editor, Women 2.0)  

I met Lindsay Eyink on a scenic ride back to the Bay Area on the California Zephyr train. We connected about our experiences in the startup world over drip coffee and dining car food.

She launched Drinkify, a Boston Music Hack Day project that pairs music with drinks. Lindsay and her team, Hannah Donovan and Matt Ogle, watched their work become a meme that spread across the Internet instantaneously, surprising them with significant press and partnership offers from big players.

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The Giving Season: Stories Of Leadership, Mentorship (Videos)

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By Dara Olmsted (Grant Writer & Ethnographer, Iridescent) Did you miss the Technovation Challenge’s Women in Leadership panel at Andreessen Horowitz last month?

The science education non-profit that runs the Technovation Challenge, Iridescent, teaches high school girls how to design a mobile phone app prototype, write a business plan, and pitch their plan to a panel of venture capitalists.

The Iridescent website has posted short videos from the panel and backstage interviews that are packed full

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Study Shows Gender Diversity In Company Leadership Still Lagging

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By Blake Landau (Blogger, What's Your Story) It’s official, the tech industry is a major laggard in gender diversity at the highest levels of the corporate ladder, at least according to an extensive study produced by the UC Davis Graduate School of Management pioneered by Research Specialist Amanda Kimball.

I attended a panel of senior executives at Deloitte in downtown San Francisco last week. The event was co-produced with Watermark, a non-profit that aims to support women in leadership, for the purpose of discussing the results of the 2011 UC Davis report on California Women Business Leaders with alarming statistics

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Female Founders To Watch In Forbes “Impact 30”

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By Elissa Rose (Assistant Editor, Women 2.0) Forbes has created their Impact 30, a list of social entrepreneurs, defined by Forbes as "people who use business to solve social issues." They have chosen their 30 entrepreneurs, nine of whom are women, with a panel of diverse experts.

These are the people using business and non-profits to solve real world social problems in innovative ways. They give healthcare to freelancers, keep babies warm without electricity, provide affordable housing, and offering high value advice to promising businesses in low income areas. These are people who

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The Silent Killers: Entrepreneurs That Just Do It

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By Brad Feld (Managing Director, Foundry Group)  

On my run yesterday in Central Park, I was thinking about the characteristics of some of my favorite companies. Suddenly a phrase popped into my head about what ties all of these companies together – they are the silent killers.

When I look at the Foundry Group portfolio, we’ve got a bunch of them in it. They don’t spend a lot of time trying to get written up in TechCrunch. They often are not based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their CEOs don’t run around bloviating about what they are going to do some day.

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9 Things To Consider When You Name A Startup

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By Bernadette Jiwa (Brand Consultant, The Story of Telling) Everyone can agree that there’s nothing really objectionable about calling your business ‘Bargain World’. It’s an innocuous name and most people won’t hate it. That’s the problem. If you’re going to name your startup, product or service something that people won’t hate, then you’re giving yourself an identity that they will never be able to care about, either.

Bunkum! I hear your cry what about Apple and Amazon, aren’t they just unobjectionable words too? Back in 1976 when Apple was Apple Computer, tech startups and corporations were called IBM (what does that stand for?) and Microsoft.

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How To Create Social Proof — Subscribers, Followers and Fans

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By Kristi Hines (Contributor, KISSmetrics blog) One of the top things that helps increase a visitor’s confidence in your website, particularly if it is a blog, is evidence of social proof.

This evidence comes in the form of displaying social engagement numbers including your subscribers, followers, fans, tweets, likes, and other social shares.

While perusing the AdAge Power 150, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how the top marketing blogs were proving their social clout.

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Silicon Valley’s Designing Women Give Tips On Talking Tech

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By E.B. Boyd (Silicon Valley Reporter, Fast Company) Some of tech's leading designers gather at 500 Startups to inspire the next generation. Step one: Learn how to code.

On Friday, a dozen of Silicon Valley's top women designers gathered at 500 Startups for a sold-out mini-symposium on everything from design best practices to how best to chart careers. The event titled "Women in Design" was put on by The Designer Fund. The idea behind the gathering, Designer Fund co-founder Enrique Allen tells Fast Company, is to "inspire the next generation of designers through storytelling."

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Prioritizing Startup Projects: Stop Worrying About The Cupholders!

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By Laura Klein (Principal, Users Know) Every startup I’ve ever talked to has too few resources. Programmers, money, marketing...you name it, startups don’t have enough of it.

When you don’t have enough resources, prioritization becomes even more important. You don’t have the luxury to execute every single great idea that you have. You need to pick and choose, and the life of your company depends on choosing wisely.

Why is it that so many startups work so hard on the wrong stuff?

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Google Provides Grants To Code For America And Samasource

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By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0) In a blog post today, Google announces $40M worth of grants given to non-profits and academic institutions during the holiday season.

Congratulations to entrepreneurs Jennifer Pahlka (Founder & Executive Director, Code for America) and Leila Chirayath Janah (Founder & CEO, Samasource) for being among the recipients of Google's philanthropic grants.

Check out the Google Gives Back website to find a full list of grantees of over $100M donated by Google

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