Today's Equinox Event at San Francisco's 111 Minna will be the most recent SF Beta event and program from Virgance, the for-profit activism campaign management company whose primary tool for encouraging change is online networking. They're the brains behind 1 Block Off the Grid, a community effort to make solar power available in bulk to neighborhoods, and consumer network Carrotmob, which invites people to reward companies that make socially responsible purchasing decisions. Promoted as “the biggest beta ever,” today's Equinox Event is co-sponsored by cloud hosting company GoGrid and GOOD Magazine, and promises cocktails with entrepreneurs and activists to celebrate Virgance's upcoming first anniversary.

Ben Kaufman wants you to work for him. And you. And you. And all those people in that building next to you. We told you about his ever morphing business of crowdsourced product development called Kluster. Now it has landed on something new: Knewsroom, a user powered daily news feed. Of course, Kaufman doesn’t expect you to power his enterprise for nothing. That’s why every day, if you’ve submitted or bet correctly on the winning stories, you get cash. It’s kind of like a headline horse race, and you’re the one feeding the pony anabolic steroids. No, wait. It’s kind of like CNN meets American Idol. Well, it’s not quite that either. Here, Ben can explain it better. Oh, and he’s also throwing a party with Mashable at Webster Hall on Friday. Just tell him we sent you. When that doesn’t work, pay for a ticket.

Kluster, founded by friend and young punk Ben Kaufman is in full force here at TED. The former iPod accessory entrepreneur recently (ie: last week) launched his new platform to allow groups of people (just like you and me) to affect decision making processes inside what for has long been a buttoned up-decision making process. I encourage everyone to pop by the site, check out some of the open projects and watch the tutorials to learn more. It’s a truly unique and game changing proposition.

The deal at TED is simple; Kluster is going to create a brand new product in the next 72 hours, with the help of the “1000 brightest people in the world” and all of you. That time is broken down into phases starting with the inception (the idea), through industrial design, naming, engineering, identity and branding, ad campaign, and finally packaging. There’s a good 7 hours left in the first phase (brainstorming the product idea), where users can contribute ideas (sparks) as well as invest their currency (watts) towards the future of the project. The team has kitted out a hotel room suite with all the fixings of a true prototype lab, 3D printers and tools. 72 hours from now, we’ll see what idea rises to the top and into the hands of everyone involved.

To make the deal a little sweeter, the team at Kluster put up $15,000 in rewards. Fancy yourself an innovator and think you can contribute? Time is running out. Go get involved!

Writing cover letters to potential employers are a serious PITA for most people. I personally deal with them well, because I like that they give me an opportunity to show I’m sort of an interesting person employers might like to have around (at least I think so), in addition to being dependable with knowing the correct placement of en-dashes and em-dashes. But student graphic designer Stephen Woowat’s introductory portfolio leaves me looking like a pitiful novice who needs classes in creativity; the jobless Woowat put together an outstanding, humor-tinted package promoting himself to employers under a self-designed “Help Stephen” campaign, complete with an “appeal pack” that includes “I Helped Stephen” stickers, a badge, mug coaster and an interview appointment card. The wording isn’t unlike something you see from a non-profit organization’s solicitation to help a cause, making it all the more funnier, and all the more clever. I hope by now Woowat’s been hired as a result of his brilliant idea — I mean, look, the guy proved his worth even before you read his resume — but the rest of us should keep his address on hand just in case we hit writer’s block when applying to that dream gig.

Among my contemporaries, there seems to reside a belief that it is hard to make a good thing happen; good ideas exist by the bucketful, but the initiative to turn those ideas into something graspable exists in far smaller quantities. This is why most people hover over coffee tables with good friends and talk about doing good things… then promptly forget about it. The ideas are there, the passion is there, but the initiative…well, the initiative takes a little bit of its own initiative.

Assuming the initiative is found, the next step calls for action, which then calls, more often than not, for money — which there isn't very much of, it seems (and which, incidentally enough, may be very root of the initial lack of initiative). Here's where CrowdFunder comes in. Currently in beta, CrowdFunder is the creation of Dave Rogers and Joe Pezzillo, two Colorado entrepreneurs who wanted to help people help themselves and their communities. Read on to see how one little site may soon be re-writing the rules for big changes.

Joshspear.com: What are your personal backgrounds?

Joe Pezzillo: Dave was a publisher of The Onion in Colorado for a decade until Onion, Inc. bought them out. I worked at the secret Apple lab here in Boulder back in the 90's, and started one of the first and most popular Internet radio companies during Web 1.0. We both spent most of the last year with IV bags of espresso plugged into our arms as we worked on another startup that never made it over the verge of greatness… READ MORE…

Amit Gupta is an entrepreneur. If you read Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, or any other combination of America’s best publications, your eyes have probably skimmed the same pages that some of Amit’s more popular projects have graced. Photojojo, the friendliest photography* newsletter around, and Jelly, the co-working sessions that help creative types get even more creative, are perhaps the most popular examples of Amit’s endeavors (and definitely the most written about).

Popularity aside, the best thing about Amit’s brand of entrepreneurialism is not how it tends to win fast friends — or even how it seems to win media attention as soon as each new project has a homepage. The best thing about Amit’s entrepreneurialism is that it actually solves problems. While this has always been purpose of the profession, one would find it hard to debate that- more often than not- the “problems” solved by such ventures are ones that people didn’t know they had in the first place, making the motives of said ventures too obviously financial. I'd venture to guess that I stand with thousands of others when I say that Amit does what should be done with a talent for entrepreneurialism: He helps people. Whether it's having fun, making money, or gifting their Facebook friends with a digital form of Chlamydia, Amit's ideas help people do what they like to do better, and that's exactly why we love him.

Joshspear.com: What do you find so exciting about entrepreneurialism?

Amit Gupta: I’ve had internships and I’ve volunteered, but I’ve never had a full-time day job. READ MORE…

My friend Ben Casnocha is off and running with his first of what I expect will be many books. The book is called My Startup Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley, and while in all honesty I haven’t even had a second to open my copy up (or see if it came in the mail), the positive reviews are pouring in and I can’t wait to dig into this on my next flight. Ben discovered at the age of 12 that he was an entrepreneur and his track record to date (he’s 19 now) show’s he isn’t here to just talk the talk. If you’re a young person interested in starting something, an old person who wants some insight into the quick and nimble thoughts of a young person, or you just want a bit of inspiration, read this book. Congrats Ben, you’re a fantastic representative of our young startup generation!

Uber-famous entrepreneur and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki recently launched a new project, Truemors.com. His latest venture aims to open access to information and capitalize on user-generated content – namely rumors, news, and other tidbits. Anything seems to be fair game, aside from what Kawasaki & Co. deem to be “crap”. Wary of hypocrisy, Kawasaki closely monitors new submissions and deletes many yet retains quite a few questionable posts as well. (After all, self-promotion and grassroots buzz-building are part of what make ventures like Truemors work.) Few obstacles discourage potential submitters (the site does not require registration or email validation) and options for slinging dirt (via phone, text, email, or online) abound. Once posted, users can score posts in a Digg-like fashion. To date, the reception from the media and in the blogosphere has been decidedly mixed. Some point to the site’s clunky performance (load times can be slow and automatic page refreshes can get irritating) and uninspiring design and cry “dud” while others seem enamored by Kawasaki’s boldness and willingness to take a risk. Yet, as he himself frequently mentions in defense of Truemors, the site took only $12,000 to build — not much of a financial risk nor should any would-be entrepreneurs be surprised at how little it takes to launch a site in today’s market. I doubt he’s risking much personal capital either — at this point, most people inclined to have an opinion either consider him a genius or a lucky self-promoter. The site’s success or failure doesn’t seem likely to significantly change his image. From my perspective, Truemors is more interesting as a Web 2.0 exercise than in reality. If anything, its potential success may tell us something about ourselves – if we decide we really need another source for trifles like the details of Julie Bowen’s labor and childbirth (#9 on the “Greatest” list at the moment), Truemors will make sure we have it.