Desire2Learn, the online learning platform based out of Waterloo, Ontario in Canada that raised $80 million in September 2012, is stepping up to the M&A plate. Today, we’ve learned, and confirmed, that the company is making its second acquisition in as many months by buying Wiggio, a collaboration platform for students.

The companies are not disclosing the financial terms of the deal, but what we do know is that the ten-plus-year-old Canadian learning company is looking to expand its foothold in the U.S. higher-ed market. Wiggio is based in Boston, which is a key hub for the e-learning market, but not because it’s a big college town or anything. (Just kidding, it has 35+ colleges and universities, more than one of which is a Desire2Learn customer.)

Boston.com recently interviewed our faculty director, Professor Fiona Murray, as well as managing director Bill Aulet and external relations manager Ben Israelite, for a video.

The three talk about our center's mission and goals, as well as programs we administer such as the MIT Founders' Skills Accelerator and Beehive Cooperative.

There's also some great B-roll of our center and the Beehive in action.

For everyone, the two years at HBS goes quickly. To make the most progress toward your objectives, it helps to be as focused as possible. For those interested in entrepreneurship this typically means a focus on:

• refining an idea you already have
• looking for an idea or a team to join
• thinking about an industry and a set of entrepreneurial companies in that industry that you'd like to try to join upon graduation

Suddenly in Silicon Valley, makers of enterprise technology—the largely unseen equipment and software that companies use to do everything from keep the books to run their websites—are the up-and-comers. Never mind the speculative business models of consumer Net companies such as Facebook (FB) and Zynga (ZNGA), says MobileIron Chief Executive Bob Tinker: “We sell software to people who give us money. It’s a pretty traditional model.”

They’re not offering traditional technology, however. Rather than Dell (DELL) servers, Cisco Systems (CSCO)routers, and EMC (EMC) storage systems that have dominated corporate info tech for decades, companies such as Arista Networks (networking gear), FireEye (security), and Coraid (storage) make a new generation of products—mainly software—to help large companies quickly roll out Internet services and deal with the soaring data traffic that results.

A New England winter means one thing: No matter how many layers you’re bundled up in, the chill of the outside will follow. Left shivering in your cubicle? Thanks to researchers at MIT, all it will take is a tap on the wrist to raise the heat of your entire building.

Called WristQue, the low-power wristband works with sensors embedded in buildings to monitor how you feel, and then helps adjusts their lighting and temperature accordingly. The ultimate goal? To keep you happy.

Designed to be simple and unobtrusive, each WristQue only has three buttons. According toNew Scientist, two of the buttons will allow users to indicate whether they are too warm or too cold, while the third will “activate gestural controls, so users can interact with any devices nearby,” including all televisions or computers.

“People can gesture with Kinect, but it doesn’t know who you are,” said Joe Paradiso, the director of the Responsive Environments Group at MIT’s Media Lab, who’s working on the project, to New Scientist. “We’re thinking of a device that can do that, but without distracting you like PDA.”

If there's one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what's best for our customers. This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness - don't waste the opportunity!

I will miss you terribly.

Love,
Andrew
(Groupon ExCEO)