For the quarter ending this past June, we compared the findings of three research firms that reported on the money invested in Q2:

• July 21, MoneyTree (PricewaterhouseCoopers, with data from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters): $3.7 billion, with 612 deals,
• July 18, VentureSource (DowJones): $5.27 billion, with 595 deals,
• July 14, ChubbyBrain (a New York City-based startup partnering with ReadWriteWeb): $5.329 billion, with 613 deals.

VentureSource and ChubbyBrain seem to agree on the top line number. But MoneyTree's number is what most people report, and that is about $1.5 billion different.

As the old saying goes, "A billion here, a billion there. Sooner or later it adds up."

Disclosure: Our VC Funding Report

ReadWriteWeb has an interest in this. We sell a report for $299 that has details on the 240 deals done this quarter in the Internet, mobile, and SaaS space (not clean tech or bio tech), and this is powered by data from ChubbyBrain. So we are biased. But it also means that we are engaged and have been looking at this fairly deeply.

Who Cares?

We also think that accuracy matters, and we are trying to figure whom accuracy matters to. We see three main types of participants in the industry:

1. VCs. They need accurate data for their own fund-raising. They have to be able to benchmark their own funds relative to the broader market.
2. Entrepreneurs. Data on what funding deals are being made, and why, helps them figure out how much to raise, when, and from which VC.
3. The startup "community." This is a catch-all for everyone else, who tend to align to either VCs or entrepreneurs. Journalists, the non-aligned fourth estate, want reliable data to key off interesting stories.

Why does this matter? The startup community matters to the health of the overall economy. As the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA, the trade association of VCs) likes to point out:

"Originally, venture-backed companies have created companies that accounted for 10.4 million jobs and over $2.3 trillion in revenue (based on 2006 data)."

So a headline like "VC Investments Falling Off Cliff in the US" really impacts a lot of people. That is the kind of headline that most journalists/bloggers wrote in April 2009, based on data reported by those trusted sources.

We wrote a really boring headline:

"VC Investment in Internet Deals Did Not Fall Off a Cliff."

That's a lousy headline for generating page views. It's a story about "the dog that did not bark."

The point is that headlines drive business behavior to wild excesses on both the down-cycle bust and the up-cycle boom.

Just good reliable data would help.

Innovation Is Global, But It Keys Off US Data

At ReadWriteWeb, we love to track innovation from far-flung corners of the world, and we see the globalization of innovation as a critical trend.

So we want to be able to report on financing trends for early-stage Web technology startups across Europe and Asia, in addition to the US. And we expect any research process to be able to scale to that challenge.

But the reality today is that, globally, entrepreneurs and VCs key off US data. If they were to key off bad data, that would matter to everyone.

Why This Matters

Driving with one's eyes in the rear-view mirror is dangerous. We take action based on what authoritative sources tell us is happening today, and we base our assumptions on what that means will happen next and plan accordingly.

In reality, these sources tell us what has happened in the past, and they may not even tell us that accurately.

When we at ReadWriteWeb look at the macro picture, we favor a contrarian view simply because the reality we see today is often not what the headlines trumpet. When the markets were in the late stage of a boom, we were sounding the warning signals.

When the markets were melting, we began to see surprising signs of life in the early-stage Web technology world we live in.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or an investor, knowing what the crowd is thinking -- and what the headlines are trumpeting -- is valuable. Even more valuable are the underlying facts and trends that may be missing from those headlines. In the disconnect between the two often lies a lot of opportunity.

We hope to ignite a debate that leads to greater accuracy and transparency of these numbers.

Beyond that, everything else about the news appears to be speculation, including the phone's supposed June 2009 launch date. However, we're inclined to believe the rumor about the phone's form factor (or perhaps we just want to believe it). Some sources report that the new phone will resemble the Samsung Instinct, a currently popular touchscreen phone that features Power Vision Services, Sprint's over-the-air TV offering. Other rumors point to the phone being a closer match to the Omnia, a phone initially made available in Asia and Europe, and is now with Verizon. Either way, the rumors point to the device being a touchscreen with no slide-out keyboard.

That seems plausible enough to us since the keyboard-equipped G1 is already already available on T-Mobile, one of the carriers which would sell the new Samsung device. The company probably wouldn't want to launch a phone that was too similar to the other Android phone. It's also likely that they would want to capitalize on the success of their previous models, too.

If any of the rumors are true, there's a good chance that the new phone will be introduced at next month's Mobile World Congress, the world's largest exhibition for the mobile industry, held in Barcelona. Until then, we'll just have to cross our fingers and wait.

The study revealed that within American families, technology is enabling a new form of connectedness - something that wasn't even possible only a few years ago. Tools like cell phones and the internet have greatly impacted the way we communicate. Today, owning multiple gadgets and communication tools is a standard feature of family life:

• 58% of those living in married-with-children households own two or more desktop or laptop computers. Nearly two-thirds of those living in multiple-computer households (63%) link those computers in a home network.
• Both spouses use the internet in 76% of married-with-children households, as do 84% of their children aged 7-17. Indeed, 65% of married-with-children households with a child between the ages of 7-17 contain a husband, wife, and child who all use the internet.
• 89% of married-with-children households own multiple cell phones, and nearly half (47%) own three or more mobile devices. Children in these households are somewhat less likely to own a cell phone than they are to go online: 57% of these children (aged 7-17) have their own cell phone.

The proliferation of these tools has allowed for increased connectedness with others. 33% of internet users say it has improved connections to their friends and 23% say it has improved connections with their family. Families are now able to stay connected throughout the day, even as they go their separate ways. Whether through webcams, cell phones, email, IM, there are numerous ways that families can communicate with each other and coordinate activities.

Even internet use, once thought to be more of a solitary activity, is now becoming more of a shared experience. According to the report, 52% of internet users living with a spouse and one or more children go online with another person at least a few times per week. And 34% of families have had shared internet experiences at least occasionally.

In addition, a full quarter of adults (25%) believe that technology has allowed their family to become closer now than their family was when they were growing up.

The Bad News

The flip side of that last figure is that 60% of respondents feel that new technologies have not made their family any more or less close than families in the past. The PEW report spins this finding with a headline that reads: "A majority of adults say technology allows their family life today to be as close, or closer, than their families were when they grew up."

But, wait...hold up there for a minute...you could also say that a majority (60%) believe technology has had no impact on their closeness as a family. And that's an entirely different read on the finding.

When you take into account how the internet impacts people's work lives, the picture isn't quite as rosy, either. There's a group of people who feel that today's increased connectivity has led to an increased workload: 19% say that the internet has increased the time they spend working from home, for example, and 11% feel that it has contributed to increase hours at the office.

Because people are now working longer hours, in part due to this increased use of the internet, they're finding decreased satisfaction in other areas of their life. The impact of their heightened connectivity is leading to things like less time for family dinners and higher levels of dissatisfaction with the time they have for leisure pursuits. While nearly half (49%) of respondents are satisfied with the amount of time they spend with their families, only 1 in 3 are satisfied with the time they have for relaxing, for hobbies, and for clubs or other activities.

Wrapping It Up

Simply put, technology may bring us closer, but, as this study shows, its constant use also means that we may be sacrificing other activities in order to fit it into our schedule. It really is both a blessing and a curse in many ways.

As RWW'ers, we can ask ourselves how technology has impacted our lives and we're sure to find that we've somehow both gained more and given up more than the average American family. As with anything, the key is moderation and finding balance. Technology may bring amazing improvements to our lives, but it can come with a price. For those who love technology unabashedly, that price may be higher than expected.

Image credit: iPhone with transparent screen, edans

Jim Edlin has a long and distinguished history in the IT industry, including being the co-founder and first editor of PC Magazine. While giving my family and I a lift back to our hotel after the Crunchies (the taxis were non-existent that night!), Jim explained to me more about OnlinePrimary.

Jim Edlin describes OnlinePrimary on his website as "a personal project launched out of dissatisfaction with both the U. S. presidential primary election process and the current direction of using technology in elections." In a follow-up email conversation, he explained that "over the last year I have become increasingly distressed by a couple of things about how we do elections here in the US." The first is "the circus that [the] presidential primary system has become", such as states madly scrambling to get their primary earlier in the sequence so it will be more likely to affect the outcome. Also part of the circus is "horse-race-style media coverage that all-too-often becomes self-fulfilling prophecy." The second thing that prompted Edlin to start OnlinePrimary was "the disgraceful showing that technology (my field of endeavor) is making as it moves into the mainstream of the election process." He thinks that technology has failed in elections thus far:

"I don't understand why the straightforward process of casting and tallying votes should require special-purpose machines costing tens of thousands of dollars each, from companies so suspect of fraud and incompetence that they have to change their names (as Diebold Election Systems recently did) to hide from the shame."

Thinking big, Edlin decided to build a website "that would illustrate some alternate visions about both how US presidential primaries might work and about how technology might better support the election process more generally." He also wants the site to become a home for discussions and catalyst to action for new technology-based approaches to elections. As well as the onlineprimary.us domain, Edlin bought onlineconvention.us and onlineelection.us - indicating the broad plans he has.

What is OnlinePrimary?

At its core OnlinePrimary is a single, national, popular-vote primary - conducted using basic Web technology. Or at least it's an experiment in what such a system would look like, were it to become reality in the future. Edlin admits that there are "lots of questions to be worked out about these approaches", including security, auditability, ready accessability to all voters. Also he says it would take a lot of "political and legal gymnastics" to bring about changes like this to the US primaries system. But he says that OnlinePrimary is "a first crack" at building such a system.

In my tests, OnlinePrimary turned out to be a basic website form and still a little buggy (an SQL error popped up after I entered my selections). Here is what it looked like when I 'voted' for my Democratic choices:

There isn't a lot more to it at this time, although there are hints at the features to come. For example there is a "credibility rating", described as "based on a formula that takes into account how many ballots have been submitted from a particular internet address over various periods of time." Again, it's fairly basic. But I'm sure the technology will be enhanced as this project goes on.

The results section shows the promise of how real-time statistics could be used in an Internet primaries system:

Conclusion

Although the current site is relatively bare and there aren't many features, there's reason to think that OnlinePrimary could quickly ramp up. For one, Jim Edlin has been involved with technology mixed with politics before. In 1994 the company he co-founded, The HyperMedia Group (HMG), developed an interactive campaign video kiosk used by a candidate for California governor. And in 1996 HMG developed the California campaign website for Bill Clinton's re-election campaign. Edlin notes that "my personal involvement was small", but he is proud that his company HMG worked on those technology-enabled political projects.

Also Edlin notes that this is just the beginning of the experiment and that more features will be added.

OnlinePrimary is for now a part-time endeavor for Edlin, but it's an interesting experiment in how the Internet could be utilized to power the next generation of primaries and election systems. Tell us what you think below. How else could technology be used to improve the US political system? What other features would you suggest for the site?