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TechCrunch editor and founder Michael Arrington has left the popular tech blog to become a partner in a new venture capital firm called CrunchFund. As the proprietor of TechCrunch, Arrington has long been the blogger-turned-kingmaker in the startup ecosystem. With CrunchFund, he has now proclaimed himself king and is looking to build his kingdom. We will see if that is possible now that the influential blog he founded is no longer under his control.

Arrington's departure is indicative of the crumbling state of AOL, which bought TechCrunch last year. Arrington's departure will have a ripple effect felt throughout both the entrepreneur and media communities.

The venture capital database CB Insights has just released its report of investment from the second quarter of 2011, and based on the deals it's tracked, venture capital funding is at a nine-quarter high - both in terms of the amount of funding and the number of deals. Compared to this time last year, deals are up 25% and funding up 29%.

Of course, those wanting to point to this as yet another sign of a tech bubble will have ammo here, but the data from the report demands a bit more of a nuanced assessment. Even though investment is up, early stage VC funding is down. In fact, the overall portion of VC deals to early stage companies (primarily Series A deals) dipped to a five quarter low. It will be interesting to watch the impact of this over the next few months because, as CB Insights points out, "it's possible companies who've raised their Seed rounds might be orphaned."

There have been a number of narratives in circulation over the last year or so: the "we're in a tech bubble" (or "we're not in a tech bubble") narrative, the "venture capital is in decline" narrative (or "venture capital is broken"). So here's a new one to add to the mix: we're in a "venture capital revival."

That's the argument being made by Clearstone Venture Partner's Managing Director William Quigley. His 50-page report, released today, chronicles the changes to venture capital over the past decade and ends, not with an assessment about the end of VC but rather the possibilities for a stronger future.

The investment analysts at CB Insights have released their quarterly report on venture capital activity, and in terms of deal-flow and funding levels, the news is good. The first quarter of 2011 saw these return to their pre-recession levels with financing for Internet companies up 83% from the last quarter of 2010.

According to the deals tracked by CB Insights, 738 deals were funded in the first quarter, with a total of some $7.5 billion in VC investment. That increase will be used, of course, as "proof" that there's a bubble. It's a one billion dollar jump from the previous quarter, even though the number of deals has sad the same. That's just one interpretation of the statistics, of course.

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing released yesterday, the investment firm Sequoia Capital has raised at least $1.3 billion for a new fund.

The filing was uncovered in a story by Fortune, which points to a memo from the University of Michigan Regents, a longtime investor with Sequoia, to describe the strategy of the new fund. According to that document, the fund will continue the firm's focus on investment in early and growth stage technology companies in the U.S. and expand its investment efforts in those same sorts of early stage companies in China.

Investment research firm CB Insights has released its end-of-year report for 2010, which finds both the fourth quarter and the year overall ending strong. The $6.5 billion in VC funding over 735 deals makes the fourth quarter an eight quarter high on deals and dollars. And overall, the year saw $23.7 billion in funding in 2792 deals - a 14% growth in funding and a 13% growth in deals over 2009.

"For those of you looking for a data point that suggests VC is back and on the road to recovery after 2009's tough sledding," the report reads, "the eight quarter high on deals and dollars gives you something to hang your hat on. For those of you who think VC is overheated and we're headed for a bubble, the eight quarter high on deals and dollars gives you something to hang your hat on. Yes - it's all a matter of perspective." And for those of you wanting to argue that New York is indeed a hotspot for investment, this report will help make that argument too.

The forces changing the enterprise are not lost on venture capitalists. They recognize the transformation as well as anyone. So much so that it looks like cloud computing investments are expected to be greater than those in other market sectors.

That's evident in just the past few days with three venture capital investments that total $55 million.

The investments are going to companies that have only one thing in common: they are able to show promise due to the fast acceptance of cloud computing in the enterprise and the overall high level of interest in the ways that businesses can use Web and mobile applications for better optimization and reach with customers.

Venture capitalists say they plan to invest more next year, according to a survey released today by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and Dow Jones VentureSource. The survey polled 330 venture capitalists and 180 CEOs for their thoughts on where they see investment headed in 2011.

Fifty one percent of VCs said that they expect investment to increase next year; 24% say they think it will remain the same, and the same percentage think investment will decrease. The CEOs surveyed were also optimistic about venture funding: 58% indicated they think it will rise and 64% said they plan to raise funds in 2011.

Venture capital database VentureDeal has released its report on investment trends for the third quarter of 2010. During the third quarter, the report finds total funding for Internet companies down by 14% and the number of companies funded down by 6%. The mobile sector, however, saw a 40% increase over previous quarters, although the number of companies funded declined

With a catalog of over 2000 videos and with over 30 million lessons delivered, Khan Academy has become the world's most popular educational website. Salman Khan has the distinction of being "Bill Gates' favorite teacher," as the second richest man in the world says he uses the Khan Academy videos to help his children learn math and science.