Google has so many of its own projects going on at any given time, but the company maintains that the majority of its resources are still being put into the company’s core businesses – search and advertising. “That’s our core focus,” CEO Larry Page recently told investors, saying that they’re not betting the farm on things like self-driving cars.

But Google Ventures, Google’s investment arm, is putting its eggs in quite a few different baskets. “We look at companies in a wide variety of sectors and stages. Many of our investments are in the areas you might expect, such as consumer Internet, software, and mobile — but we’re also backing companies in areas that might surprise you — from human anti-body discovery to smart grid platforms,” Google Ventures says. “We aim to invest about $100 million a year, with deal sizes ranging from seed investments as small as a hundred thousand dollars to late-stage investments of tens of millions of dollars.”

So just what is Google Ventures investing in?

Antibody Discovery

Google Ventures invests in Adimab, a platform for yeast-based antibody discovery.

Social Learning Games for Kids

The firm invests in Airy Labs, which creates learning games for kids between the ages of 5 and 13.

Fuel

Google Ventures invests in CoolPlanetBioFuels, which works to develop these kinds of fuels using plant photosynthesis.

Language Learning

Google Ventures invests in English Central, which uses web videos to create language learning experiences. “Google Ventures has opened many doors for us into the wider Google ecosystem,” says Founder/CEO Alan Schwartz. “From YouTube through Android connections, we have benefited from Google Ventures’ unique status as a financial investor, with deep strategic tentacles. This has been much more than mere intros to potential partners or potentially useful technology complements; it has also included intros to experts on areas like user experience and conversion.”

Offline Information Discovery

Google Ventures invests in Hipster, which is described as “a fun way to help uncover the vast amount of information about real world locations that isn’t yet available online.”

Therapeutics

Google Ventures invests in iPierian, which works in cellular repogramming in creating therapeutics.

Legal Q&A

Google invests in LawPivot, a legal Q&A site that connects companies with crowdsourced legal answers from legal professionals.

Cars

Google Ventures invests in American car company Next Autoworks, which it says will introduce a safe, high-quality fuel-efficient car for the U.S. market.

Predicting the Future

Google invests in Recorded Future. We looked at this before. It’s essentially a tool that predicts the future when you enter the what, the who/where and the when.

Car Sharing

Google invests in Relay Rides, which the company says, “enables car owners to make money while providing those in need of a car with affordable access to one.”

Retail Price Tracking

Google invests in Shopobot, which tracks price changes at popular stores.

Weather Insurance

The firm invests in WeatherBill, which provides weather insurance products that are described as “technologically advanced.”

That’s not everything that Google Ventures invests in, but are some of the most outside the box companies and areas. You can see all of the companies Google Ventures invests in here.

Fortune’s Dan Primack brings up an interesting question, following Google’s proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility: “Will Google and Motorola ‘venture’ together?”

A few stats she dropped include: 65 of the Forbes 400 live in NYC, there are 2,000 Google employees in New York, there are 175 funding sources focused on digital in New York, and there are over 1,000 Internet tech companies in NYC. 

One reason in particular that it’s a good time to have an innovative startup is that the big companies are going hog-wild when it comes to mergers and acquisitions.

"Clearly the message is that the stakes are going up fom the M&A perspective," says Gridley. Google itself has made 24 acquisitions this year based on talent and technology. IBM has acquired 15 (mostly geared more toward data and analytics).

Over 200 startups have been founded in NY in last 4 years, she said, and they’re disrupting many established categories. "We think that should be a huge warning sign…" Leaders of traditional companies, take note.

Some advice she had for sellers: "Really consider what your current offering is and what kind of transaction could make you part of a broader offering." Also, she said to think through what your opportunities are, disconnect valuation between buyers and sellers, and act early, because next year, the M&A market might get kind of crowded. "Be reasonable on valuation if you are in a crowded sector," she said. "Build the most attractive customer base that you can before you sell."

For buyers, she had some more advice: consider all potential acquisition candidates (not just the ones in the market), understand the competitive differentiation and potential threats, and stretch for key capabilities as they are only going to get more expensive.

Finally, to investors, she advised, innovation is happening at a faster pace – don’t miss, earlier stage companies – be thoughtful because there are lots of risks, and NYC is "where it’s happening."

Inside Facebook reports that fbFund appears to be "mothballed". fbFund is a seed fund and joint venture run by Facebook Founders Fund and Accel Partners. Investment capital for the fund was provided by these entities.

fBfund gave startups up to $100k in investment, as well as access to key people, presentations on technology, product, marketing, and business topics, mentorship, and even office space. Eric Eldon writes:

After noticing that the company has been completely quiet about fbFund plans so far this year, we asked it about its plans. "At this time we have no plans for future iterations of the program," a company spokesperson tells us, “but we will keep you posted as soon as we have anything new to share.” The company also says that it will "continue to support innovation from the startup community through initiatives like the developer garage program."

fbFund operated for two years, funding companies building Facebook’s developer platform, and as Eldon points out, it has kind of taken a backseat to the big boom in the social gaming market.

Andreessen serves on the boards of both eBay and Facebook, and is a chairman of the board of Ning, which he also co-founded. His biggest claim to fame was co-founding Netscape.

Horowitz also has background with Netscape. There he ran several product divisions. He co-founded LoudCloud with Andreessen. This became Opsware, which was later acquired by HP. Horowitz served as vice president and general manager of HP’s Business Technology Organization Unit.

The new firm will focus on investments within the range of $50 thousand to $50 million. The duo also announced its first round of funding at $300 million aimed at entrepreneurs, products, and companies in the tech industry.

"Innovation is thriving despite the current economic climate," says Andreessen. "Ben and I are huge supporters of entrepreneurs and want to help turn today’s sparks of brilliance into the next big thing."

"We see venture investing as a company-specific exercise," says Horowitz. "Therefore, we are looking for the best entrepreneurs and companies regardless of stage."

Andreesen outlines some things they are looking for out of entrepreneurs and companies on his blog. They want motivated entrepreneurs, technical founders, founders that intend to be CEOs, and founders that understand their products.

The firm is looking to invest in categories like consumer Internet, business Internet, mobile software/services, software-powered consumer electronics, infrastructure and apps software, networking, storage, and databases.

The firm is NOT looking to invest in "clean", "green", energy, transportation, life sciences (biotech, drug design, medical devices), nanotech, movie production companies, consumer retail, electric cars, rocket ships, space elevators.

Marketers Not Investing Enough Online

I added the last part.

The report was put together by Media-Screen, who titled it Netpop | Play, following Avenue A | Razorfish‘s preference for confusing vertical bars between nonsensical, hard-to-remember nomenclatures.

Regardless of titles, the report is pretty interesting and notes that over half (54%) of that half-spare-time is spent accessing entertainment and communication functions on the Web.

The study’s authors say the media habits of the modern human are shifting as the days of iTunes, YouTube, and MySpace come in to full fruition.

"Users’ ability to ‘pull’ information and content associated with their favorite genre, artist or title changes the marketing game from gross ratings points to access and advocacy,” says Josh Crandall, managing director of Media-Screen.

“Many broadband consumers go online for entertainment, and to talk about entertainment with other fans. Marketers need to leverage that interest and focus on catalyzing a conversation now, instead of just talking to their fans via traditional advertising channels.”

The younger crowd, whom advertisers love because of all that disposable income, are especially reachable online. Nearly half (48%) of younger users say they learn about new entertainment through user-generated sites like YouTube (a fair rebuttal to media companies’ tendency to guard their content so iron-fistedly).

In contrast, only a quarter of these younger broadband users say they learn about new entertainment through television. And that makes sense considering most of us pick just a few channels to watch and stick with them (a la carte programming anyone?). It will be especially interesting to watch what happens once television and the Internet are fully converged.

With this major sea change in mind, Media-Screen is encouraging marketers to more aggressive to move their ad dollars online.

"Currently, the proportion of advertising resources devoted to the Internet (about seven percent according to ZenithOptimedia) is nominal relative to the value it generates in interest and engagement among fans," said Crandall.

"We have found that consumers, on a typical weekday, spend more than 40% of their time consuming media online. As more of the population goes online and there are more marketing channels, it will be imperative for the entertainment industry to know how to effectively allocate marketing and advertising dollars."
 

It’s quite believable that Engadget couldn’t have known in the time allotted that their reporting would send investors, to quote Charlie Daniels, "steppin’ and fetchin’ like their heads was on fire and their asses was catchin’."

Block posts that the tip came from an internal source at Apple, pulling from an internal memo that circulated among several Apple employees – a memo so correct in form that it fooled even them. The memo stated the hotly anticipated iPhone would be delayed until 2008.

"For a reporter, this kind of thing — an internal memo to a company’s employees — is solid gold," Block said.

Unfortunately for everybody, the false information sent Apple stocks plummeting in late morning trading, knocking $4 billion of the company’s market capitalization. Shares recovered upon news that the memo was bogus.

Block notes that Engadget wasn’t the only publication reporting the news, though they may have been the first.

"Given the nature of that news," he writes, "we felt we had an obligation to inform people that Apple had sent out an internal memo in preparation of a delay in the iPhone and Leopard. And so I ran the story; I believe most people in my place would have done the same."

Yes. Yes, we would have.

It’s still unclear as to whether Apple will face an investigation from the Security and Exchange Commission for apparent stock manipulation, whether somebody’s head will roll down Apple HQ hallways, or whether the memo was just an exquisitely executed prank.

Social Networking… Stock Investing… the two seem like a natural fit, right?

Yeah, I’m not convinced either.

At first glance, these concepts just don’t strike me as two great tastes that taste great together. Social networking is a quirky beast, rife with personalized layouts, photos galore, blogs cleft with tinges of lamentation, and message boards with gems of erudite, highbrow commentary such as, “OMG! Those pics are t3h r0x0rz! L337sp33k FTW!” (Or should I say “Sarcasm, FTW!”)

Conversely, stock investing is a world of suits, power lunches, analyzing trends and living on the bottom line. The only friends you make are the ones you plan to screw over later rather than sooner.

Nevertheless, Stockpickr is live and open for business.

These are some of the features that the site is touting:

“With Stockpickr we initially started off creating a tool that we could use to generate trading ideas from browsing the portfolios of the top hedge funds and investors,” said James Altucher, who also serves as the CEO of Stockpickr.

“However, it turned out to be even a stronger platform for investing knowledge once we opened it up to a community of active investors. With the addition of TheStreet.com user base, Stockpickr will be the number one community site for exchanging stock ideas and investment knowledge.”

I know that social networking is all the rage these days, but this just doesn’t seem like a natural fit to me. Why would I want to share my best stock tips with everyone else? It seems counterintuitive to the very nature of the capitalist engine that drives the machine of commerce we call the stock market.

I could be way off base here, but I certainly wouldn’t imagine the likes of Gordon Gekko creating a Stockpickr profile.

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In this article we’re going to discuss the importance of asset allocation – how you spread your assets into different types of products (from safe to speculative).

When we talk about asset allocation we refer to the various vehicles in which we invest our cash. We can split our assets into three specific classes – security, buy/hold and speculative. It is advised that the largest chunk of your assets should fall into the security (approx 70%) bucket and this includes assets such as cash, ISAs, pension funds, home of residence, safe bonds and government securities. These are the safest of assets.

The next type of asset class is the “buy & hold” variety – these tend to be longer term investments that are generally safe. Assets in this class include buy & hold stocks/mutual funds and investment real estate. This type of asset is generally solid with the stocks being of high pedigree with sound fundamentals that promise much for the future. The buy & hold chunk of your total assets should include approximately 15% of your entire assets.

Finally, we come to the speculative class of assets – these are higher risk products that you jump in and out of quickly for short term financial gains. These include stocks that you trade actively (jumping in and out within a few days/weeks), IPOs, options & futures, warrants and some of the more speculative mutual funds.

Before you decide to enter into stock investment it is worth drawing up a plan so that you can set your own rules about your asset allocation (and discover where you are right now). Ultimately, The 70/15/15 rule to asset allocation will depend upon the individual investor, their risk tolerance and their mindset. You can adjust the numbers to more closely match your attitude towards risk.

Many experts believe that the asset allocation proportions should vary according to the investors age. For example those aged 40 or below may wish to employ a more aggressive strategy where only 40% of assets are in security and 30% are held each in buy/hold and speculative investments. Again, your personal circumstances, preference to risk and other influencing factors should be considered before arriving at your personal asset allocation numbers.

Your Investment Plan – The Most Important Thing To Create Before You Risk Even One Penny In The Markets.

One of my online businesses helps provide information and products to help other people set-up their own dot com businesses. One of the first things I advise my clients is to create a plan for their business. A plan puts all those thoughts in your head together, combines then with practical facts & figures and gives them a blueprint to get to exactly where they want to be in a structured and efficient way.

You’ve heard the motto, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail! This applies as much (if not more) to investments as it does to anything else in the world.

Here are just a small sample of things that your personal investment plan should highlight:

1. What amount of money you have available to invest and how this sum will be allocated within each different asset class.

2. How will you find suitable investments? Will you learn about them yourself or will you seek out professional advice (for example brokers or follow investment gurus).

3. How you will cope psychologically when your investments turn against you. The market moves heavily on psychology and how you react to situations can be the difference between winning and losing.

4. A more detailed plan should be created for each investment outlining the reason for the investments, as well as an entry and exit strategy.

To try and start investing without a clear plan is asking for trouble.

Remember – before you even look at an investment report, you MUST decide how your wealth will be allocated and then draw up a long term investment plan that’s right for you.

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Having a good spread of investments is also a good idea, in the event that one area of investments takes a loss. Here are some tips about how to get an investment portfolio that is well balanced and should enable you to weather most storms.

By investing in only one area of the market, you are more apt to run into a larger loss if that part of the market does poorly during a given time period. On the other hand, if you diversify enough, other profitable areas can make up for poor growth in one area. This allows you to continue doing at least reasonably well in some areas – in other words – all is not lost.

Diversify Into More Than Type of Market

A balanced portfolio will not resort only to trading in various types of stocks, but should also include some items that are more financially sound, even though they may not yield such a high increase. To your stock trading, you need to include bonds, trust funds, and possibly even property. The principal, simply stated, is that you do not want to risk losing everything. Though the interest rates are not as good on the bonds, yet they are stable and will provide a good hedge against loss – even in a rather economically strapped time. Trust funds do even better with interest than bonds, they are much more stable than stock in general, but they also can have their bad days, too.

A general rule in investing in stock is that you should never invest more than you want or can afford to lose. The reason is obvious – you could lose it all. But by taking a percentage of your investments and dividing them up between these various investment instruments, you should be able to gain a much more stable portfolio, and still end up with some for retirement.

Market Transactions By Sectors

The market is generally made up of a number of sectors – each one consisting of several groups of industries, and each one with their own share of stability and instability. While one sector, such as telecommunications, may not be doing as well as it once was, other areas may really be thriving. Only by a constant watching of the market will you be able to discern these developments, and know which one is worth investing in. A safer way to pick stocks is to be careful what advice you receive (the best being those who have successfully traded for years), as well as the means used to determine which ones are “good investments.”

Instead of just going out and buying the stock of a particular company, it is a real good idea to use stock options. These “tickets” (my word for a call option, or a put option) allow you to be ready to make stock purchases or sales, depending on what you want to do. They can save you a considerable amount of money and give you a window to see what may transpire with the company you are looking at. For instance, if you buy a “ticket,” and it costs you $400, you have a window of opportunity that will give you a little time to make your transaction. It is not an actual commitment to do so – just a readiness. Instead of just going and buying that $5,000 worth of stock, and possibly losing thousands, by using this ticket method, you may only lose the cost of the ticket.

Learn the Options Available To You

When you want to create a really stable portfolio, it is a real good idea to make a strong effort to learn all you can about the various techniques of investing, understanding the stock market and mutual funds, as well as products that you can successfully invest in. You may even want to invest in foreign properties, such as in Costa Rica, or consider the FOREX (foreign exchange) market.

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There are, however, some common investing mistakes that people make that can result in huge losses and missed opportunities. Here are a list of the absolute worst mistakes to avoid when investing in the stock market.

Mistake #1 – Invest When You’re Old

You are never too young to start investing in the stock market – in fact, it’s recommended to get started sooner. The perception of investing is that it is reserved for older, financially established people who can invest large sums of money. This is a misconception that is limiting people from tapping into the power of investing. Waiting just ten years can make a huge difference in the total gains that one can make over their lifetime. For example, investing just $2000 a year (thats just $170 a month) starting at the age of 26 can yield $2,114,379 by the time you are 75. This is with an Annual Return Rate (ARR) of 10% per year steady through the life of the investment. The same investment, with the same ARR, made ten years later at the age of 36 will result in a return of only $802,895 at the age of 75. That is a 1. 3 million dollar difference. If you are not able to invest as much as $160 a month, set aside $25 per month. Even this small amount can have a large impact over time.

Mistake #2 – Not Understanding The Company

It is shocking that many people will put more time and research into choosing an MP3 player or home theater system than they will researching the stocks they will invest in. It is imperative that you take the time to understand the financial history of the companies you wish to have shares with. Make sure that you understand what you are buying and how it will benefit you in the long run. It is also important to keep in mind that you must remain objective when choosing stocks. Stocks that you have researched well and carefully selected are more likely to increase than ones you choose based on a feeling. Put your emotions aside and consider your options carefully. Taking time to research and investigate is also important when choosing your financial advisor. Consider meeting with a few candidates and evaluating their approach to investing. If you are meeting with someone on a recommendation, make sure that the person who recommended the advisor is someone who is qualified to do so.

Mistake #3 – Gambling On Stocks

Another common mistake is confusing gambling or speculating with investing. Investing in stocks is part of a long- range financial picture and not a get- rich- quick scheme. While there certainly are high yield quick return programs out there, it is wise to limit your participation in those programs. Day trading is one of these types of programs. When someone is involved in day trading they trade very rapidly in and out of stocks in order to profit daily from marginal changes in the market.

This practice may seem easy to profit from but it actually results in more losses for investors than gains. Similarly, some try investing over a short period of time in very risky stocks. A short- term investment of six months to a year in a hot stock does not belong in a well- thought out financial plan. True investing should be done in quality companies over a period of several years. Finally, listening to someone who has a hot tip is a quick way to lose a lot of your investment. Research any tips you get carefully and only invest if the numbers pan out, no matter how much others insist that this is the stock to have.

Mistake #4 – Putting All Your Eggs In One Basket

Don’t underestimate this old addage. In any portfolio, you will want to diversify your holdings. Additionally, having too much stock in one specific industry can also be a recipe for disaster when the market changes. Spread your money over several different companies and different industries. That way there would have to be some catastropic disaster in order for you to lose all your money.

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