Entrepreneurial

Boxee CEO Avner Ronen recently sat down with me for a wide-ranging video interview on the state of television, and its future. His company just released a $99 device that uses the Amazon cloud to give its users an infinitely-sized DVR. If it takes off, the Boxee TV could fundamentally change the way cable customers consume content -- and the way they pay for it. Users will also be able to watch their recordings from devices like the iPad. Can Boxee play nice with an industry it's trying to disrupt? Ronen says yes. But between the Aereo lawsuit and the Apple TV rumor-mill, it's a crowded, competitive landscape. So, can the company keep competing with the next generation of startups that have the television industry in their targets? Please watch, and find out:

Stuck in an elevator with a well-known investor, but not sure how to make the most of your two minute ride?

Becky Reuber, a professor of strategic management at Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, has a few tips on how to craft an effective elevator pitch.

Here are Reuber’s four main points you need to get across to get investor attention:

Michael Jackson, the recently deceased "King of Pop", was also lauded as a pioneer in celebrity advertising.  But many in the marketing industry appeared much more personally upset by a tragedy that was closer to home -- the death on Sunday of  Billy Mays, the "King of Infomercials".

Some viewers flee infomercials, which often last almost a half hour, and are filled with brash claims about products that, of course, are always the best inventions on the market for anything from peeling a vegetable or cleaning a house.

But Mays, who made it big in the late ninetes with a stain remover called OxiClean, convinced many viewers to listen by shouting his wares. As a result he became a popular icon and created a close following among marketers who saw him as a valuable pitchman.