Longtime forum moderator Mark O'Sullivan's Vanilla, an open-source, standards-compliant, fully extensible discussion forum CMS, is a favorite of many designers and webmasters alike.

One reviewer said it best: "Forget how 'normal' forums are done - Vanilla strips it back to what's important: the conversations. Not the smileys, the bandwidth-hogging signatures, the mailbox, the forum categories. It pushes discussions to the forefront and uses subtle AJAX to make the experience of communicating with others fast and simple." Read and watch on for a discussion of the product itself as well as open-source monetization and forum culture versus the real-time web.

This is one post/chapter in a serialized book called Startup 101. For the introduction and table of contents, please click here.

"It ain't over till the fat lady sings" means that nothing happens until you get the signature on the contract. That is when the money gets wired. Deals often get derailed. They drift, and then nothing happens. Or a competitor comes in and snatches the prize from you. That is why a "closer," someone who can seal the deal, is so prized.

What do supermodel Veronica Webb, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Jajah co-founder Roman Scharf all have in common? Besides wealth and celebrity, they're all connected to today's launch of Talenthouse entertainment network. The site promises to be a space where creators in film, fashion, visual art, music and photography showcase their work for collaboration and discovery. Scharf is Talenthouse's CEO, while Dorff and Webb have agreed to invite community members to contribute to upcoming projects.

According to the release, Talenthouse "empowers all artists to create original content, collaborate with each other and become recognized by a global audience." I know what you're thinking. Apart from the flashy graphics and Bono voice over, how is this different from YouTube or MySpace?

Don't you hate it when your friends set you up and all they can say about your blind date is that he's / she's "nice". Your mind races. Is he / she a total sea donkey? A buffoon? Should you bring the pepper spray?

Imagine what venture capitalists think when their brother-in-law invites them down to the Starbucks to meet yet another friend / entrepreneur.

Hong Kong-based Grow VC just launched a midnight beta to help triage the dealmaking system. The company is a dating-style site where investors and early-stage companies meet and marry online. Grow aims to be the premier social network for early stage investments" between $10,000 to $1 million dollars USD, and for most investment groups that's a fairly cheap date.

With fifteen years of experience in Internet-based entrepreneurialism, Gnip CTO Jud Valeski is well qualified to offer expertise to startups, which he does through the Boulder, Colorado-based TechStars summer program.

In this interview, we see him working hands-on with the young team developing EverLater, a site for social web-using travelers. He also talks with us about how startups can get a critical mass of feedback to make important business decisions and discusses what he sees as consistent issues and characteristics of new teams, both in terms of business acumen and general temperament.

Three years ago, David Cohen and three friends started a summer program for startups.

The idea was that over three months, around ten startups would get enough money to survive and enough guidance to build great ideas into viable companies. Today, TechStars boasts a remarkable roster of startup mentors and an equally impressive stable of program alumni. At the TechStars Boulder headquarters, we sat down with Cohen to talk about how and why the program works.

Laura "Pistachio" Fitton's TechStars project, OneForty, has received an angel round of funding to the tune of around $250,000 just 15 days into the business accelerator session.

The startup, which was selected to participate in the Boston TechStars program, is described as an "app store for Twitter." Fitton, who literally wrote the book on Twitter and currently consults on business uses of the popular microblogging platform, describes the product as a tool to help users navigate the Twitter ecosystem. And to be fair, Fitton was seeking funding before the company was accepted for TechStars.

After selling Last Minute to Travelocity, Alexis Bonte developed an obsession with Sid Meier's strategy game Civilization. Bonte played so often, that his wife began to complain. He jokes that he partnered with George Lemnaru to started eRepublik Labs and the eRepublik game in order to satiate his gaming appetite through work. The company officially launched in time to win the 2007 Le Web awards.

eRepublik is a multi-player online strategy game where members interact as citizens of one of 60 countries. More than 125,000 active users sign in on a daily basis to work, join the military, form political parties, launch newspapers and in some cases, wage wars. Just last week the Iranian president was impeached. Meanwhile, last month Russia was invaded and Indonesian users hosted the game's largest real-world meet up.

Venrock has quite a history as a VC firm. In the 1930s, Laurance Rockefeller pioneered early-stage financing by investing in the entrepreneurs who started Eastern Airlines and McDonnell Aircraft. In 1969, Venrock was founded to continue this heritage of investing in and building entrepreneur-backed companies, beginning with Intel. You will find a bunch of household names in its portfolio, such as Apple, as well as more recent Web tech ventures, such as CC Betty, BlogHer, Bungee Labs, and SlideShare. Venerable, perhaps, but not one to rest on its laurels, as Brian Ascher explained in our recent interview.

As proven by last month's Facebook Vanity URL rush, there's value in personal domain names. As an answer to brand protection across multiple networks, DandyID is launching ClaimMyName at around 3pm this afternoon. The site allows users to register their custom URLs across hundreds of social networking and social media sites for a fee. And the service certainly doesn't come cheap to individuals. The 20 domain starter pack costs $80 and the 300 domain pro pack is $699. Then again, when has security ever been sold at cut rate prices? Essentially this is a seemingly easy way for companies and individuals to mitigate risk; however, when there is no verification process to keep out squatters, the system can definitely backfire.