The first quarter of 2010 could see a higher number of investments by venture capital firms than the fourth quarter of 2009, according to figures from new reports by the National Venture Capital Association and information and data services company ChubbyBrain . Data from a report relased by the NVCA yesterday shows that the fourth quarter of 2009 saw a growth of $1.7 billion in venture funds over the previous quarter, similar to numbers seen from Q4 2008 to Q1 2009. Data released today by ChubbyBrain shows that following the earlier growth in venture funds, Q2 2009 saw a $1.4 billion increase in VC investments, a trend that could mean big bucks for startups in the first quarter of 2010. Sponsor As we reported last week , 2009 was a difficult year for startups and venture capital firms, with venture-backed mergers and acquisitions continuing a downward trend in 2009. Carolynn Duncan, founder and director of the startup incubator Portland Ten , says that the "pressure crunch" of 2009 caused VCs to give prospective startups more than the third degree. "It was more like the fifth degree," Duncan told ReadWriteWeb. "It was so intense, even for the companies showing great traction and that had bootstrapped the hell out of their project." Duncan believes that as the new year kicks off VCs that raised funds at the end of 2009 will be looking at a new class of startups to invest in. When asked if 2010 would be an easier year to find funding, Duncan was hesitant, but optimistic. "I don't think 'easier' is the right word, maybe just not as demanding," she said. "People are just glad its 2010 and not 2009 anymore." Photo by Flickr user borman818 . Discuss

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New Year's Resolution? VCs Could Spend More In 2010

Over the weekend we had a chance to highlight

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Always Be Testing: 8 Services For Usability Feedback

With the first week of 2010 in the books, we thought we would take a look at the most popular posts of the new year in ReadWriteStart - our channel devoted to entrepreneurs. In this ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup, we've got tips for funding advice , keeping organized and building loyal communities , but be sure to check out the newest post in our new series "Never Mind the Valley," highlighting thriving startup communities outside of Silicon Valley. Sponsor 5 Web Apps To Keep Your Startup Organized In a world where emails, phone calls, texts, and Tweets constantly bombard us, it is getting harder and harder to manage the firehose of data and information being thrust our way. For young companies to succeed this environment, it is imparitive they become organized and efficient lest they fall behind and quickly become overwhelmed. While there is no shortage of online solutions, it can be hard to know which one is the right tool for the job, so here's a list of five web applications to help kick-start your company and keep it organized without breaking the bank. 5 Great Blogs For Funding Advice The best advice we can give you is to know your audience. You don't try to sell booze to pregnant women, you don't make God-jokes in Utah and you don't get a term sheet without tailoring your pitch. Investors are already blogging about what they want from potential portfolio companies, so if you're looking for funding you should be reading their blogs. While we know there are plenty of useful investment-related blogs, here's a list of five to get you started. Community First: How Wufoo Created a Captive Audience So you've got a fabulous idea for a startup? That's great, but before you get wide-eyed and start thinking about wireframes, venture capital and moving to San Francisco, get your feet wet first by beginning to build your community. Having a strong and loyal community behind you is an important step in the startup process. After all, it will be much easier to convince a potential investor of the viability of your product if there is a thriving community eager to get their hands on it. Never Mind the Valley: Here's Los Angeles Best known for its movie stars, sun and surf, Los Angeles probably isn't the first place you'd think to breed technology. But when you consider the influence of investors like Jason Calacanis and Mark Suster, in addition to the fact that companies like

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ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week - we report on a new "superphone" launched by Google, take a look at how the Web is transforming personal finance, give you 5 reasons why RSS Readers still rock, get a first look at the new startup of ex-Facebook CTO Adam D'Angelo, analyze the trends that emerged from this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and more. And as usual we check in on our two main channels: ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' trends and products) and ReadWriteStart (our daily resource for entrepreneurs). Also read on for details of the newly released printed edition of our current premium report , about the Real-Time Web. Sponsor Now Available: Printed Edition of The Real-Time Web Report At the request of the librarian community and people that just like paper , we have made The Real-Time Web and its Future report available in print . For those of you that prefer it digitally, you can still download it . Don't forget about our Community Management Report . It too is coming in print soon, so watch out for it! Web Trends How The Web is Transforming Personal Finance Not too long ago, personal finance tools like Quicken and Microsoft Money used to be bound to the desktop. Today, free online tools like Mint , moneyStrands and Wesabe make it easy to track financial information. So you can now get a better overview of your personal finances than ever before. Editor's note : This story is part of ReadWriteWeb's Personal Finance series, a weekly, three-month-long look at how the Internet has transformed personal finance. If you are interested in sponsoring this Content Series on Personal Finance, please contact our COO Sean Ammirati . 5 Reasons Why RSS Readers Still Rock Recently we wrote about the decline of RSS Readers as a way for people to keep up with news. We noted that while many people still use RSS Readers, usage has decreased due to the emergence of real-time and social flows of information via Twitter, Facebook and other such services. The post sparked a fascinating discussion, with over 160 comments. What we learned from that discussion is that while the RSS Reader market is indeed in decline, there are still a number of compelling use cases for RSS Readers. Welcome to the Age of Robot Reporters Recently, three emergency vehicles responded to a report of an unconscious person at the world headquarters of Nike Inc. in Portland, Oregon. How did we know? An automated form-pumping robot from startup company Nozzl Media told us. Nozzl Media unveiled this week a demonstration of its first product, a widget intended for newspaper websites seeking to display real-time local information derived from Twitter messages, blog posts and automatically extracted public records. Web Apps Meet Consumer Electronics at CES The 2010 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show ( CES ) saw a big trend emerge: web applications being ported to consumer electronics , from the technology inside cars to Web-enabled TVs. Earlier this week we noted that online music service Pandora will be made available in cars , courtesy of a new Pioneer device that will begin selling in March. Other evidence of this trend can be found in Ford's announcement of a new in-car system and Samsung's latest Internet-connected TV . SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY ReadWriteEnterprise Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise , devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' and using social software inside organizations. The Pros and Cons of the Google Nexus One As An Enterprise Phone The Nexus One is another smart phone that we will inevitably see inside the walls of the enterprise. Smart phones seem to have a way of being used for all kinds of work activities. So, what are the pros and cons of using the Nexus One in the enterprise? ReadWriteStart Our channel ReadWriteStart , sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark , is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs. 5 Web Apps To Keep Your Startup Organized In a world where emails, phone calls, texts, and Tweets constantly bombard us, it is getting harder and harder to manage the firehose of data and information being thrust our way. For young companies to succeed this environment, it is imparitive they become organized and efficient lest they fall behind and quickly become overwhelmed. Never Mind the Valley: Here's Los Angeles Best known for its movie stars, sun and surf, Los Angeles probably isn't the first place you'd think to breed technology. But when you consider the influence of investors like Jason Calacanis and Mark Suster, in addition to the fact that companies like Demand Media and Docstoc call Southern California home, it's not surprising that the community is emerging as one of the country's hottest startup hubs. SEE MORE STARTUPS COVERAGE IN OUR READWRITESTART CHANNEL Web Products Live Blog: Google's Android Press Gathering Google held a press event this week to showcase the new Nexus One , which it described as "Where Web Meets Phone." Google calls this a new category of phones - the "super phones." The Nexus One apparently "pushes the limits of what is possible on a mobile phone today." Google will sell the phone in its own web store. Check out our live blog coverage for more details. Droid's December Boom: Metrics Show Device Use Doubled in One Month The Android platform has grown exponentially since mid-2009, but December's stats show a particular factor that might help catapult the platform to greater heights of user adoption. In figures just released from mobile advertising company AdMob, the Droid singlehandedly boosted calls to their network by nearly 300 million requests. Facebook's 1st CTO Launches His Next Company Adam D'Angelo was a programming genius who knew Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in high school, became the young company's first CTO and has just begun to unveil his new startup company, Quora . Built by D'Angelo and a team of crack young engineers, Quora is a real-time enabled Q&A site. The company calls itself "A continually improving collection of questions and answers." Skype: Coming to a Couch Near You Starting this spring, you won't need to gather the whole family around a 15-inch laptop screen to talk with cousin Joe on the other side of the country. As a matter of fact, you won't even need to get up off the sofa after the evening news, because Skype is coming to the big screen - the big TV screen, that is. Skype announced this week that they have been working with LG and Panasonic to embed Skype in Internet-connected widescreen HDTVs. SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone. Discuss

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Weekly Wrapup: Google Nexus One, CES Coverage, Online Finance, And More...

Let's say you want a list of every Fortune 1,000 CEO in the United States, along with a picture and contact information. You can look through Google. Top page results may help a bit. But to get the granularity you need, top page results can only go so far. What's the best way to go about discovering and collecting information that is so often scattered and fragmented? Crowdsourcing works but you need a process and a way to organize the information. Sponsor Smartsheet provides a way to use wikis and spreadsheets for crowdsourcing information from services like Mechanical Turk and Live Works . Smartsheet recently integrated with Google Apps. Clients can work from Google Apps to crowdsource information through Smartsheet. Let's say you have a list of the startup companies from the top 10 metro areas in the United States. You have the names of the companies in Google Apps. But you are lacking the name of the CEO and any contact information. So, you add some columns and open the Smartsheet application directly from Google Apps. You may now make your request to have the work done for you. Smartsheet opens a service such as Mechanical Turk. You describe the job, what you need and set your price. As the tasks are performed, the new information pops into the spreadsheet. You can then import the spreadsheet back into Google Apps. Smartsheet integrates with a wiki environment. For example, Smartsheet works with Brain Keeper . Structured information from Smartsheet may be imported into the wiki, providing the crowd-sourced data to anyone with access. Crowdsourcing is a classic example of how the enterprise can get information almost immediately that could take hours to collect if done manually by one person. The cost savings alone makes Smartsheet an application worth giving a try. SmartSheet is a subscription service. Pricing starts at $9.95 per month on a per-user-basis. Discuss

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Smartsheet and Google Apps: Crowdsourcing Made Easy

In a blog post from 2006 titled, " The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy ," Silicon Valley venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki wrote, "you cannot drive your competition crazy unless you understand their strengths and weaknesses." Kawasaki undoubtedly knows what he's talking about, and his advice - while almost 4 years old - still rings true today. If you've got a great idea for a startup, knowing as much about your potential competitors is invaluable, and the people behind Competitious know this as well as anyone. That's why they created their handy application for keeping close tabs on the competition. Sponsor Developed by RivalSoft, the makers of RivalMap , Competitious is a free service that allows users to collaborate on numerous projects for tracking industry competitors. You and your team can gather and collect news clips, build feature comparison matrices and keep an eye on traffic trends with Alexa data. The comparison matrix feature is very useful and we here at ReadWriteWeb are even putting this feature to use in researching an upcoming report. However, entering in individual features for each company can become a bit tedious. It would have been nice to see Competitious offer a list of popular companies whose core features could be automatically placed into a matrix. Users would also benefit from suggested competiors for any given company based on what other users are comparing, but perhaps these features are on Competitious' roadmap for the future. The traffic graphs can only be seen if your competitors are ranked in the top 100,000 on Alexa, which can be a problem for small business with equally small competition. Competitious does claim, however, that they are working on "a much more robust traffic system" for their post-beta release. In the meantime, free site analytics services like Compete and Quantcast can provide data for those hard-to-reach sites. Despite its early flaws, with the ability to easily compare any number of companies in a side-by-side fashion, Competitious is a convenient solution for researching that "competitors" slide in your startup's pitch presentation. Discuss

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Know Thy Enemy: Competitious Helps You Stay Ahead

The most important component of a startup is the team. Not only do you need to hire the right people for the job, you also have to hire them at the right time. Polaris Venture Partners' Mike Hirshland wrote a great post entitled, How to Kill a Startup: Hire Executives instead of Entrepreneurs . After investing in companies like Automattic and

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Are You Hiring the Right People at the Right Time?