ReadWriteWeb

Despite "collaboration" becoming increasingly accepted and valued in business, there are still those that remain hesitant about sharing information or resources and about working with others. It's still common to hear people say "I have developed a great tool, but I'm afraid that if I share it with anyone, they'll steal my idea."

You must overcome that fear of losing out on the glory and the profit and learn to work with others.

The collegiate calendaring system DormNoise announced today that it has secured a $500,000 investment from DN Ventures LLC and PRESENT e-Learning Systems Inc. The funding will be used to support the company's sales and marketing endeavors.

DormNoise was founded by 21-year-old University of Pennsylvania student Jay Rodrigues, who recognized the need for universities, campus groups and college students to have a centralized, online resource in order to share and track campus activities.

As I've mentioned earlier in posts this week, I'm currently up in Boulder, Colorado for Startup Week, a week-long smorgasbord of startup events organized by Andrew Hyde of TechStars. It's been my first time visiting Boulder, and to be completely honest, I've been blown away by its close-knit friendly community of startups, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and more. I had always heard that Boulder was a very unique atmosphere for entrepreneurship, but I had no idea just how special this place was until I was invited to come visit.

It's been almost two weeks since Facebook's F8 developer conference, and we're still talking about the social networking site's announcements and the repercussions for the Web. While users' privacy concerns continue to dominate much of the discussion, many developers and entrepreneurs are seizing the opportunity to not only access the wealth of data that Facebook's Open Graph promises but to serve the needs of the site's disaffected users.

A few weeks ago we mentioned an open door of opportunity for startups that could provide a solution to one the Internet's longest enduring problems: comment management. Shortly after that article was published, I received an email from Toma Bedolla, a Denver-based founder of a startup that was looking to provide a unique commenting service to online media outlets. This week I'm travelling in the Denver area for Boulder Startup Week, and Toma tracked me down at a tech meetup last night to tell me about his startup Veracious Entropy and its first experiment, HowTru.

Startup culture is continually growing in the greater public interest, and with that growth comes a sort of celebrity for the founders of the more popular companies. Mark Zuckerberg and Evan Williams are now household names, and in many ways, these entrepreneurs are like rock stars in the startup world. In fact, the journey of an entrepreneur through the startup experience is a lot like that of a musician seeking stardom and millions of adoring fans, and artist Shane Snow has a perfect infographic to illustrate this.

In March, President Obama announced the National Export Initiative (NEI) in order to improve conditions that affect the private sector's ability to export. By working to remove trade barriers and hurdles to entering the export market, the NEI seeks to help meet the Obama administration's goal of doubling exports over the next 5 years.

While exports accounted for almost 13% of GDP in 2008, the global recession that began in 2009 hit exporters and employees particularly hard. The government's efforts to facilitate exports are meant to spur employment opportunities and economic growth.

Startups may need help recruiting online just like more traditional companies, but when it comes to also finding advice, getting feedback or seeking early partnerships, it's not easy to meet these needs in one handy location. Chris McCann and Brendan McManus, the co-founders behind the Startup Digest email event newsletter, may have solved this dilemma with their newest project, Help a Startup Out (HASO). HASO is a Craigslist-like classified forum where people can find various entrepreneurial listings, including startup jobs, events, office space and advisors, just to name a few of the available categories.

With the 2010 ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit just a few short days away we are working this week to put the finishing touches on the event. One thing we are really excited to include in this summit is the opportunity for innovative startups in the mobile space to show-off their products to our growing list of mobile experts and enthusiasts that plan on attending. This Friday at the Mobile Summit in Mountain View, California, we will be hosting a "speed geeking" session that will allow companies to present their products to as many people as possible, but we need your suggestions on who to invite!

It's hard to believe that it is May already as a third of the year is complete and summer is almost here. With graduation season upon us, perhaps the entrepreneurs of tomorrow will want to take a look at the most popular startup stories from this week in our Weekly Wrapup. This week we've got more pitch deck suggestions, dealing with PR disasters and learning from failure. Also, we discuss some new data surrounding angel-backed companies, founders as long-term CEOs and how intellectual property effects innovation.