ReadWriteWeb

Here on ReadWriteStart we are often providing resources and tips for young companies looking to raise funding from venture capitals and angel investors. This week's recommendation for our Weekend Reading series, Money Magnet: How to Attract Investors to Your Business by Jacoline Loewen, is a book aimed at helping entrepreneurs learn how to deal with financing and how to make their businesses attractive to investors.

A software update for Kindle and Kindle DX is on deck, according to Amazon.

Kindle Version 2.5 will provide pan and zoom for PDFs, allow you to assemble your books into collections and to use larger, sharper fonts. Interestingly, you will be able to post selections from your reading to Facebook and to Twitter directly from your Kindle.

One of our favorite new trends here at ReadWriteWeb is the quickly growing field of mobile technology and how we can take more of the Web along with us when we leave our computers. Because of the expanding popularity of smartphones and mobile data use, startups these days need to develop plans for marketing their brand on mobile devices at very early stages of their development. Cindy Krum, CEO of Rank-Mobile, a consulting firm focused on mobile marketing and SEO, is the author of this week's featured read, Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are.

Jaron Lanier was a pioneer of "virtual reality" in the early 1980s and in his book, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, he makes the case for a more humanistic approach to Internet technology. Lanier rails against web 2.0, which he calls at the start of the book "a torrent of petty designs" and "freedom [...] more for machines than people."

Lanier's main issue with web 2.0 is that, in his view, it promotes the 'hive mind' over individual expression. He writes that web 2.0 presents the current generation of kids with a "reduced expectation of what a person can be."

Okay, so you'll have to file this one under "future weekend reading" because this book isn't out yet, but I thought I would provide a bit of a heads-up post in anticipation of what should be a very interesting read. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose is written by Tony Hsieh (pronounced "Shay"), CEO of online shoe retailer Zappos, and lands in bookstores in early June. Hsieh helped to create one of the most successful online retailers which was well known for its stellar customer service and which eventually was acquired by Amazon.

Lately at ReadWriteStart we have talked with a few people working with startups in the co-creation and mass customization industry. Some of these startups use on-demand production techniques to minimize overhead costs and create early cash flow for their businesses. Of course, this business technique is nothing new; larger companies have put this to practice for years, like Dell which custom fits computers to customer specifications.

For entrepreneurs trying to form a startup, one of the first challenges they face that persists throughout the businesses life is how to find and keep talented partners and employees. From finding that first co-founder to finding the prolific programmers to fill your ranks later down the line, talent acquisition is always a major step in any business. Just look at some of the deals that have gone down in the Valley; Facebook didn't buy FriendFeed for their technology, that deal was mostly about getting FriendFeed's talented employees on the Facebook team.

With the week coming to a close and the weekend just a few hours away, we thought we would take the opportunity to recommend a few books for the entrepreneur looking to do some weekend reading. Whether you've got a lot of time to sit and read, or just a little time in the car to listen to an audiobook, find some time to knock these off your reading list.

Writing a book will never be easy, but FastPencil's mission is to make things easier for authors by bringing this process online and to collaborate with others. FastPencil takes writers from idea to published book. The service offers features for collaboration, editing and design, as well as professional consulting services for authors. One cool feature of FastPencil is that it can import blog posts and turn them into books and e-books that bloggers can then sell through all the major book distribution channels.

The Internet Archive has just unveiled their ambitious project called BookServer, which will allow users to find, buy, or borrow digital books from sources all across the web. The system, built on an open architecture and using open book formats, promises that the books housed there will work on any device whether that's a laptop, PC, smartphone, game console, or one of the myriad of e-Readers like Amazon's Kindle.

The project's lofty goal is to essentially create an open web of books where anyone can publish their books and make their content available via search.