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As a leader in the Pittsburgh investment scene, long-time entrepreneur Mel Pirchesky is now using his experience to coach startups on fundraising and business strategies. According to his company Eagle Ventures, Pirchesky has raised over $45 million in his 35 years of structuring deals. In a recent guest post on the site Pittsburgh Ventures, Pirchesky breaks the art of the elevator pitch - a tool every young entrepreneur needs to learn to use - into an exact science tailored for the best results.

We recently told you about 5 Great Blogs For Funding Advice, and now we wanted to remind you about a resource that can get you advice straight from the horse's mouth: Larry Cheng's extensive list of 131 top blogs from venture capitalists and firms - a priceless tool for any entrepreneur looking for free advice.

The blogs are ranked by their number of Google Reader subscriptions, though Cheng, himself ranked 33rd, says, "there are many great blogs with fewer subscribers as the number of subscribers doesn't necessarily correlate to the quality of content."

Nevertheless, resources like this are a great tool for keeping up with what the VC's are talking about, but how can one possibly manage a blogroll so large? Thankfully, there are plenty of solutions for managing RSS feeds so you can stay on top of it all.

Earlier this week, the news of the first iPhone worm made its way around the net. Since the worm only targeted jailbroken devices and then only those which had the SSH program installed, there wasn't a need for concern on the part of most iPhone users. However, a second hacker tool which uses the same security hole as the so-called iKee worm has reared its head and this one is far more dangerous. According to security firm Intego, the new hacker tool goes after personal data stored on the device including email, contacts, SMS messages, calendars, photos, music files, videos and any other data recorded by any iPhone app.

In other words, if you're the owner of a jailbroken phone, you should now be concerned.

This article has been updated. A more current list of tools can be found here: "30+ Tools for Building Mobile Apps." Please visit that page instead!

These days, everyone wants to build their own iPhone applications, but not everyone knows how write the code necessary in order to create them. Fortunately, there are now a number of tools that allow non-developers the ability to create their own iPhone apps without knowing programming or scripting. Some are general-purpose app builders designed for small businesses while other target specific needs, like apps for musicians or for eBook authors. Still others let developers familiar with simpler programming languages like HTML write apps using the code they know and then will transform that code into an iPhone application which can be submitted to the iTunes Store.

Below we've listed 13 different tools that let you create your own iPhone applications, none of which require knowledge of Objective C, the programming language used to build apps for the iPhone OS .

Thanks to the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, it's a given that malicious hackers will devise ways to exploit the sites' numerous users in order to infect their computers with malware. This unwanted software is designed to do a number of terrible things ranging from identity theft to turning computer into remote-controllable "zombie" machines.

Without sufficient anti-virus and malware protection programs installed, social networking users can easily become victims to these ever-evolving attacks. However, the best way to avoid becoming a victim yourself is to be aware of what's out there and what sorts of things you should avoid. Below are the best practices which you should use on Facebook and Twitter in order to keep yourself safe.

When the President of the United States warns schoolchildren to watch what they say and do on Facebook, you know that we've got a problem...and it's not one limited to the U.S.'s borders, either. People everywhere are mindlessly over-sharing on the world's largest social network, without a second thought as to who's reading their posts or what effect it could have on them further down the road. For example, did you know that 30% of today's employers are using Facebook to vet potential employees prior to hiring? In today's tough economy, the question of whether to post those embarrassing party pics could now cost you a paycheck in addition to a reputation. (Keep that in mind when tagging your friends' photos, too, won't you?)

But what can be done? It's not like you can just quit Facebook, right? No - and you don't have to either. You just need to take a few precautions.

Amid the hubbub over new iPods and iTunes' LPs announced at last week's annual Apple event, one feature that was a little under-hyped was the new "anti-phishing" protection built into the iPhone's Safari web browser. The added feature, available via an iPhone software update, warns users when visiting fraudulent websites using Safari. This sort of technology is already commonplace on the web, but is rarely seen on the mobile platform.

Unfortunately, there seemed to be a problem with the new security feature: it wasn't working...or at least, so it seemed. As it turns out, the problem was that users weren't informed as to how to properly activate the anti-phishing protection, an issue that points to a poor implementation of what could and should have been a major breakthrough in mobile computing technology.

Twitter has launched Twitter 101, a "special guide" to the 140-character network aimed at businesses. Use of Twitter by marketing departments has seen explosive growth recently, if you're a user of the site that's obvious by now.

But for businesses, the ins and outs of using the site are not obvious. From small local businesses to huge international brands, countless companies have totally flubbed when it comes to using Twitter.

Now that iPhone's new OS 3.0 is available with all its nifty features like spotlight search, copy and paste, push notifications and maybe one day MMS and tethering, many users have happily upgraded their devices. For most people, upgrading to the new OS is as technical as they want to get. For others, however, a true upgrade isn't complete until the jailbreak is done.

After waiting for a few days, the fabulous iPhone dev team at last provided us with a new set of jailbreaking tools. If you're ready to dive in, you can use this guide to get going. And unlike some of the other guides on the net, we'll share our personal experience and tips so you know just what you're getting into...and what to avoid.

So you've joined Twitter and have finally started to get the hang of things. You know to put an "@" sign in front of usernames for public replies and you know how to send private messages with a "d." You filled out your profile and have mastered the art of TinyURLs. You even found some interesting people to follow and have started conversations with them. There's just one thing holding you back from complete Twittervana: those odd-looking abbreviations in people's tweets preceded by the pound sign (#). Congratulations, you've stumbled upon the Twitter hashtag, a tracking tool for Twitter topics. But what do they mean?