Tiffany Huang

An effort to engage students in discussions about education policy got its start last year as nothing more than a Twitter hashtag, #StuVoice. But with more than a thousand followers, Student Voice has now become a movement, and this month, with support from Dell, the group organized its first live event. On a recent Saturday morning, elevator doors at Microsoft's New York office opened to a crowded scene of high school and college students chattering away in much-longer-than-140-character conversations. One of the most popular panels featured several successful teen entrepreneurs discussing how the current education system fails to support entrepreneurship.

Pay and location will always matter when considering a job, but perks matter too. While great perks have been confined to giant companies or the most well-funded startups, now any company can offer them. It's a potent new way to attract talent. San Francisco-based AnyPerk sets out to level the perk playing field by providing smaller companies with access to benefits traditionally offered only by giants like Google. Smaller companies including Pinterest and Pandora are using AnyPerk to offer employees deals and to promote company welfare.

Diving down Google search rabbit holes and mindlessly scrolling through Web pages may be dulling our brains without our even realizing it. If we’re going to spend so much of our lives online, is there a way to transform some of that time into brain-building activity? Companies like Lumosity and BrainHQ are now offering antidotes to the affliction of Internet-induced brain drain. They've developed challenging and entertaining online brain exercises, games with hundreds of levels, along with personalized training programs to help people improve memory, problem solving abilities, people skills, attention span, and overall mental wellness.

Everyone’s dishes arrive at the table, and friends settle into an excited chatter as they catch up on life, eat, and share their food. What started out as smiles and laughter end up turning into anxiety and headaches when the bill arrives. Most people ordered their own dishes, while a few also shared some appetizers. How much should each person pay?

Every January, people make New Year’s Resolutions to exercise more, eat better, or try something different. Although resolutions often start off strong, even those with the best intentions eventually lose motivation. But this year there is a new iPhone app, Lift, to help convert these temporary goals into permanent ways of life.

There are lots of new ways to find cool stuff near your home and when you're out and about. Community-based platforms and a burgeoning market of social location apps make use of our online relationships. In addition to making life more enjoyable and convenient, it's transforming the landscape for local businesses. Here are five platforms that improve how brick-and-mortar businesses reach customers.

In the lead up to Techonomy Detroit, we are profiling tech startups driving the city’s re-emergence as a center of innovation. UpTo, a mobile application startup in the Detroit area, is garnering serious attention. The app is a social calendar that lets users share upcoming events with groups of friends, family, and co-workers. Techonomy contributor Tiffany Huang spoke with Greg Schwartz, UpTo’s CEO, about how his company is part of Detroit’s renewal as a city of the future.

In anticipation of the September 12 Techonomy Detroit conference on, we’re profiling six Detroit tech startups driving the city’s re-emergence as a center of innovation. FlockTAG, a universal, NFC-powered loyalty card and mobile application, is one of the latest Detroit area tech startups. It gives consumers a centralized loyalty card for a wide variety of transactions with merchants, and serves as a marketing tool for independent business owners. I spoke with FlockTAG’s co-founder Adrian Fortino about his company and why it’s following Facebook's model by building first at universities.

Internet and mobile users can find just about anything through the recommendations of friends. The concept of “social discovery” is seen in services like Pinterest, which provides members with fashion and lifestyle inspiration; Highlight, which creates new social connections based on personal interests and location; and Socialcam, which enables user-generated video sharing among friends. But whatever the content—reviews, images, music—how do you sift through it all to find what suits your preferences? Chill, a new social discovery service that aims to help users mediate the glut of online video content, is catching the attention of top-tier investors and online video gurus.