Entrepreneurs love developers. With the growth of the app economy, mobile development, and the social web, good software engineers and computer scientists are becoming more and more sought after.

The average starting package for a software engineer in Silicon Valley has risen from $85,000 in 2008 to $98,000 this year, despite the country's flat economy, according to data from Glassdoor. At Microsoft, software engineers can start at $128,000, and that's before options and bonuses. At Facebook, it's $138,000; at Apple, it's $149,000; and at Google, it's $151,000.

With Spring arriving early in most parts of Canada, the 2012 London Olympics are just around the corner. CTV has the rights for this year's summer games and they've already been very active in profiling Canadian athletes and their journey to the Olympics. 

Alexandra Samuel is the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University and co-founder of Social Signal, one of the world's first social media agencies. Earlier this week, she spoke at the Women in Film and Television (WIFT) luncheon in Toronto about strategies and tools for online branding, and reaching broadcasting audiences through social media.

Samuel explained to the WIFT luncheon attendees that “the audience dictates the success of a film or television show—even before it is made.” She gave the example of a Finnish-German-Australian sci-fi comedy called Iron Sky, which raised roughly one million Euros via crowd funding from internet audiences. Because the film was promoted heavily online to seek audience funding, it generated so much buzz that it sold out at the Berlin International Film Festival premiere.