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You can keep your fusty old venture capital. For our money, you can't beat the Tamagochi-eqsue cuteness of Miro's Code Adoption Program.

Miro is the free, open source, cross-platform online video player that manages queued downloads much like TiVo for the Internet. And although the number of users has tripled to about 1.1 million uniques over the past three months with the release of Miro 2.0, the amount of funds available for nonprofits such as Miro has dramatically dropped. Insert yet another generalization about the crumbling economy here.

Twitter just announced that it has received another round of funding. According to TechCrunch, Twitter raised a total of $35 million in this round, which was led by Benchmark and Institutional Venture Partners. Altogether, Twitter has now raised a total of $55 million. According to Biz Stone, Twitter wasn't actively courting new investments, as the company still had enough money in the bank, but given Twitter's current growth, the company decided to accept the offer.

We first reported on VC Series A deals in the web-tech sector in October 2008, following the financial meltdown, and we updated our coverage in November, reporting some improvement. Now it is time for the good news from December and January. The amount invested by VCs in Series A deals for web-tech ventures went up from $19.1 million in November to $28.8 million in December, and up another notch to $30.3 million in January. Looking very good.

We first reported on VC Series A deals in the web-tech sector in October 2008, following the financial meltdown, and we updated our coverage in November, reporting some improvement. Now it is time for the good news from December and January. The amount invested by VCs in Series A deals for web-tech ventures went up from $19.1 million in November to $28.8 million in December, and up another notch to $30.3 million in January. Looking very good.

AboutUs, the wiki that's working to capture detailed information about every site on the Web, has secured $5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Voyager Capital with a $2.5 million investment.

How does a small startup secure capital in such turbulent economic times? Being profitable helps - something AboutUs achieved by mid-year 2008. The company is forecasting continued growth this year. CEO Ray King says the company is targeting $5 million in revenue for 2009. The primary source remains advertising, but the online marketing services AboutUs sells - including content creation and custom page development - continue to gain traction.

We published the first A-Team post in October, when only three web tech ventures got through our qualifying criteria: a minimum of $1 million in Series A funding from an institutional VC. Well you may not have noticed, but on one count the economy got better in November. In November, eight deals got through our filter.

However, we've also lowered our cut-off to $0.5 million. Tougher times lead to smaller rounds, which is not necessarily a bad thing because tough times force you to do more with less money. This got our list up to nine deals in total for November.

We published the first A-Team post in October, when only three web tech ventures got through our qualifying criteria: a minimum of $1 million in Series A funding from an institutional VC. Well you may not have noticed, but on one count the economy got better in November. In November, eight deals got through our filter.

However, we've also lowered our cut-off to $0.5 million. Tougher times lead to smaller rounds, which is not necessarily a bad thing because tough times force you to do more with less money. This got our list up to nine deals in total for November.

We like to report good news, not just because it makes us all feel good, but because when a company is doing something positive during a downturn, it indicates something pretty interesting about that company. That is why Jobwire reports on new hires when all the other news is about layoffs. In that same spirit, The A-Team will be a monthly wrap-up of all the Series A VC financing rounds in web technology. To close a Series A VC round these days, you have to be pretty special.

We like to report good news, not just because it makes us all feel good, but because when a company is doing something positive during a downturn, it indicates something pretty interesting about that company. That is why Jobwire reports on new hires when all the other news is about layoffs. In that same spirit, The A-Team will be a monthly wrap-up of all the Series A VC financing rounds in web technology. To close a Series A VC round these days, you have to be pretty special.

LinkedIn, a social networking juggernaut by anyone's standards and one of the few successful social sites targeted at business users, announced today that the company had secured an additional $22.7 million in Series D funding. The investment brings its grand total for Series D to $75.7 million.

During these uncertain times for many Web companies, the investment marks a decided vote of confidence in LinkedIn's strategy. Perhaps more importantly, the admittedly "strategic" investment hints at some potential partnerships for LinkedIn in the coming months.