Baltimore’s entrepreneurs want a helping hub, according to a study released earlier this month by the Innovation Allian ce of Baltimore.

More than 85 percent of the 170-plus people surveyed said they would use a “hub,” a communal space for meetings, mentoring and educational programs to connect the area’s entrepreneurs.

The hub would removes barriers “to community and connectivity” and “could not only fill the gaps identified in the survey, but emerge as a new model that measures itself by job generation and wealth creation that is replicable and sustainable,” the report said.

The Alliance also held a town hall meeting with entrepreneurs, investors, attorneys and other community members and professionals.

The $75,000 study was paid for by Baltimore’s Abell Foundation. Burtonsville-based Facility Logix conducted the study and provided recommendations, including how the proposed hub should operate.

You can see the full report here.

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As the tributes continue to pour in for Steve Jobs, many are asking a logical question: What’s next for Apple?

(The Washington Post has a roundup of many of the online tributes to Jobs. As would be expected, Apple’s own is perhaps the simplest but most effective.)

Jobs was to Apple what Walt Disney was to his eponymous company. But Disney should serve as a cautionary tale, according to The New York Times:

In the years after the death in 1966 of the entertainment company’s founder, the executives strived to stay true to Walt Disney’s spirit. For years, Mr. Disney’s old office was preserved like an untouched museum.

Its executives often praised corporate decision-making by saying, “Walt would have liked it.” But by the late 1970s, Disney was struggling after a string of box-office flops and was the subject of a hostile takeover attempt.

Jobs seemed to realize the void he would leave behind and attempted to prepare for it. According to Fortune, he created “Apple University” at company headquarters. There, top executives teach Apple case studies written by business professors to junior managers “to serve as a reference for future generations of Apple leaders.”

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Amazon would like to know, preferably by the time you make your holiday wish list.

The company is expected to unveil its much-anticipated tablet Wednesday morning. What this will mean for the burgeoning “tablet wars” is a question of much discussion. To be sure, it will at least start out as an uphill climb for Amazon, seeing as Apple’s iPad takes up approximately 75 percent of the marketplace.

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler appears to be the only person who got a preview of the Fire. Siegler wrote earlier this month that it has a 7-inch screen with a full-color display and runs Android. Reports say it will go on sale for $250.

There are conflicting reports as to whether a free subscription to Amazon Prime will be included with the purchase of the Fire. Prime, which normally costs $79 annually, is a preferred shoppers’ card of sorts for Amazon customers, giving them free, unlimited two-day shipping, for example. Analysts and observers are expecting a whole lot of cross-pollination between Amazon.com, the Kindle and the Fire.

Expect the tech blogs to light up (pardon the pun) Wednesday morning once the Fire debuts.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Apple invited media members Tuesday to a “special event” related to the iPhone on Oct. 4, where many people believe the company will unveil the iPhone 5.

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Mario Armstrong, the Baltimore techie and media personality, won his first Emmy Award last week.

Armstrong, who is president of Mario Armstrong Media, was named Best TV Show Host/Moderator for his work on the Maryland Public Television Program “You Can Afford College.”

The National Capital Chesapeake Bay chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences had given the award as part of 20 categories at the 53rd Annual Capital NATAS Emmy Awards in Washington, D.C.

“I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Maryland Public Television for believing in me,” Armstrong said in a statement.

In the 2010 “You Can Afford College” program, Armstrong gave parents and students a plan for finding financial aid.

But his MPT stint isn’t the only place you can find him. He’s continually helped consumers on latest technology issues, trends and products on different radio and TV segments. Armstrong has been on CNN, NBC’s “Today Show,” heard on WYPR, NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and he hosts a daily digital-lifestyle talk show on SiriusXM radio.

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With all sorts of online news sources coming to Baltimoreans locally, Baltimore Fishbowl is the newest fish in the sea.

Baltimore Fishbowl is a website that combines a commentary and editorial approach into a publication targeted at Fells Point, Federal Hill, North Baltimore City and Baltimore County residents.

The site covers content areas that affect schools, businesses, culture, residential real estate, family and other general interest ideas to these communities. Baltimore Fishbowl includes both fun and serious content, and will be spiced up with video and photography, as well as aggregated stories from local media outlets.

Baltimore design firm Fastspot created the site, employing bright design and easy navigation to draw in readers. The site is powered by Fastspot’s content mangement system, BigTree. It is the first time Fastspot is using BigTree as a customized platform for blog-based content with advertising.

After just four weeks of going live, the site already gained 20,000 page views, and is seeing returning visitors.

The idea was created by Susan G. Dunn, who also founded PaperDoll magazine. Baltimore writer and former PaperDoll editor Betsy Boyd is the senior editor.

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Local fans of the ABC show “Secret Millionaire” saw a familiar face Sunday night — John Ferber, who co-founded Advertising.com in the 1990s with his brother, Scott, and today lives in Palm Beach County, Fla.

Ferber spent a week posing as a documentary filmmaker in the notorious Skid Row district of Los Angeles.

The episode ended with Ferber cutting checks totaling $100,000 for three neighborhood organizations. He also purchased $20,000 in goods for the groups.

Baltimore-based Advertising.com was acquired in 2004 for $435 million in cash; Ferber pocketed about $72 million in the deal. He has several Internet ventures percolating from his Florida base, including Microgiving.com, which we blogged about a couple of weeks ago.

He says he was intrigued about going on reality TV after a producer for the show — who read a profile of Ferber in a magazine — forwarded him some YouTube clips of the British version of the program.

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If you’ve been wondering what Advertising.com co-founder John Ferber has been up to down in Florida, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel has Web video featuring one of Ferber’s projects, Microgiving.com.

Ferber describes it as a “crowdfunding platform” that enables anyone to raise money via the Web. The Milagro Center, a Delray Beach, Fla., education center for at-risk youth, is using the platform to raise money for programs.

“In the last few years the concept has really exploded and taken off,” Ferber says of crowdfunding in the video, which you can see by clicking here.

The online marketing wunderkind and his brother, Scott Ferber, sold Advertising.com to AOL in 2004 for $435 million in cash.

Microgiving.com is one of a number of Web ventures Ferber — now a Palm Beach County resident — has launched under the Vandelay Industries corporate umbrella (check your “Seinfeld” trivia for more on the name).

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Pam Haner’s a big spender. Mostly for other people, though.

I caught up with Haner while she was on a thrift store shopping trip Tuesday to talk about her fledgling vintage boutique, Salome Vintage, which is online only.  Haner and co-owner Erin Fitzgibbons started the store three months ago, and have spent much of that time working out the kinks and bugs of starting an online store without any formal Web training.

But neither are new to the Baltimore fashion scene. Haner has been organizing local runway shows for years; Fitzgibbons worked for lifestyle company Pedx.

Haner took some time to tell me what goes into making an online store happen, even with limited resources in the beginning.

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Responding to a rising chorus of complaints about rush-hour crowding and service breakdowns on the MARC Penn Line, the Maryland Transit Administration unveiled a plan to group the trains into six- and seven-car sets — compared with six, eight or nine cars — and run them more often.

The result would be about 1,000 additional seats per rush hour, MTA officials said. And given the negative fallout from the “hell train” incident last summer — when a Penn Line train broke down en route to Baltimore, trapping about 1,200 passengers aboard MARC 538 as temperatures approached 90 degrees — you could see where the MTA would be anxious to get the word out.

An e-mail hit my inbox Monday at 9:41 a.m. about a “significant Penn Line schedule change” effective March 14, pending approval by the Maryland Board of Public Works. At 10:09 a.m., I got another e-mail — this one about the MTA website “operating very slowly or not responding at all” thanks to heavy traffic to the site sparked by the Penn Line announcement.

Sure enough, #marcfail tweets filled Twitter in short order. “#MARCfail = not making prior arrangement for extra server capacity for the @MTAmaryland website prior to a major schedule change email,” wrote @insidecharmcity, a persistent MARC critic.

A tweet by @mtamaryland at 10:16 a.m. informed followers — and @insidecharmcity specifically — that the site was back up and running.

Sometimes the Maryland Transit Administration must feel like it can’t catch a break.

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