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This week's ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup is chock-full of stories this week, so lets not waste any time recapping the top posts of the last week of February. We've got tips for keeping out the trolls, some advice for naming your startup, best methods for weeding out programming applicants, and an example of how Google Buzz can be used by startups to engage users. Also, our Never Mind the Valley series is back in full swing this week with profiles of Washington D.C. and Chicago.

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Keeping Out the Trolls: Relevancy in User-Generated Content

In the summer of 2008, J.R. Johnson sold Virtual Tourist to Expedia for $85 million dollars. While Johnson seems like the type of laid back Los Angeles entrepreneur that would take some vacation time, his quest for relevancy had him launching a new community the following March. Lunch.com is Johnson's attempt to cut through the noise that has proliferated since he first started in the user-generated-review space in 1999.

What's In A Name? For Startups, It's Crucial

If you've been following our Weekend Reading series on Fridays for the last few weeks, you've noticed that we've been discussing the importance of personal branding for entrepreneurs. But branding is not only an important facet for individuals; for startups, branding is an essential step toward building a successful business. Mint founder Aaron Patzer, who speaks Tuesday at the Future of Web Apps Conference in Miami, Florida, recently discussed with CNET's Caroline McCarthy how he believes Mint's branding helped it become a breakout success.

Hiring Programmers: Screening Out Liars and Duds

Every entrepreneur will tell you that recruiting the right candidate is important. While startups are constantly trying to find programmers that mesh well with their culture, team and work-style, one article suggests that companies still struggle finding candidates that know how to program at all. Jeff Atwood published a post this morning entitled, The Non-Programming Programmer with a stunning look at how many interviewees misrepresent their abilities.

Startups: Don't Don't Be Be Redundant Redundant On On Buzz Buzz

Google Buzz logo Tuesday night, ReadWriteWeb announced that we would be taking a new approach to how we use social media to communicate with our readers. Instead of blasting out automated content on Google Buzz as we do with our Twitter and Facebook accounts, we will be using Buzz to interact on a new level by discussing anything and everything in Buzz's forum-esque threads. I described it last night in a Buzz comment as "a better version of forums meets a less frantic chat room," and many positive comments seem to be welcoming this new form of engagement. This also got me thinking about how startups, small businesses and entrepreneurs can take advantage of Buzz.

Never Mind the Valley: Here's Washington DC

The words "fat cats in Washington" have been uttered in every corner of the nation from Texas to the Bay, yet DC's tech scene is anything but sluggish. Companies like AOL, Nextel, MCI and Uunet found early success in the region and since then, a slew of young entrepreneurs have emerged to follow suit. Some of the companies include LivingSocial, Clearspring, CareerBuilder, OPower and iPhone app development service PointAbout. ReadWriteWeb caught up with some of the industry's movers and shakers to find out what the DC scene has to offer for entrepreneur

Never Mind the Valley: Here's Chicago

Holding down the proverbial fort for the mid-west, Chicago, the Windy City, is the third largest city in the U.S. and the most populous city that doesn't sit on an ocean coast. The city, which does, however, rest on the shore of Lake Michigan, is home to a unique culture of nearly 3 million people and countless numbers of Fortune 500 companies condensed into its 234 square miles of city. Though the city is often passed over for Silicon Valley and New York in terms of startup cultures, Chicago has a expanding repertoire of companies, entrepreneurs, investors and organizations helping put the city on the startup map.

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Tableau

sponsor tableau Tableau Public is a free service that lets anyone publish interactive data to the web in interesting and compelling graphs. Download Tableau Public and in minutes, you can create interactive graphs, dashboards, maps and tables from virtually any data and embed them on your website or blog in minutes. Anyone can do it. You don't need to be a programmer or hire one - no language to learn, no plug-ins, no API. Your blog or website will stand out with colorful, interactive data visualizations. Bloggers using Tableau Public are averaging 3 times more reader comments.

And, once on the web, anyone can interact with your graph and the data. They can re-embed your work, download the data, or create their own visualizations. Check out our gallery to see some of the cool graphs bloggers have created. Or learn how in our 5 minute video.

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Crowd Science

Crowd Science gives online publishers reports on the demographics and attitudes of their audience. We at ReadWriteWeb have signed up to this new service, because demographic data is something we've struggled to get in the past. It's important for any online business to know their audience, so Crowd Science is a welcome addition to the stats armory that most of us in the Internet biz use.

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Medill School of Journalism

The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University offers programs that combine the enduring skills and values of journalism with new techniques and knowledge that are essential to thrive in a digital world. You might have a passion for creating finely crafted prose, or for telling stories using visual tools. Maybe you are invigorated by the possibilities of interactive publishing, or by videography for the small screen. Maybe you are an experienced professional looking to renew and retool your multimedia skills. You can find your niche in Medill's graduate journalism program.

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Mashery

Mashery is a platform for Web services, allowing companies to manage their APIs using Mashery's expertise. At the "Business of APIs" conference, Mashery CEO Oren Michels explained to the audience that while APIs are a technology, their use is a business decision. He went on to say that Mashery has helped customers such as WhitePages.com, Thumbplay, Compete.com, and Calais. Check out the white paper "Five steps to scaling your business development using Web services" to discover how you can use APIs for your business.

You can find out more about APIs and their business use at www.mashery.com.

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Rackspace

Rackspace is one of the world's largest hosting providers, but it's also competing in the cloud computing arena. Rackspace Cloud Hosting offers a suite of services which combines a scalable web and application hosting platform (Cloud Sites) with a cloud storage solution (Cloud Files) and on demand server instances (Cloud Servers). The addition of SliceHost a popular cloud computing and hosting provider and JungleDisk, a favorite online backup service that supports Cloud files, makes the Rackspace Cloud a powerful cloud hosting solution.

Explore Rackspace's hosting and cloud computing solutions.

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Global Delight

Global Delight is a dedicated team of developers passionate about everything Mac, iPhone and iPad. Global Delight has churned out some of the widely recognized applications for Mac and iPhone. Voila, nominated as the Best Consumer Software in the Macworld Awards 2009, is a powerful screen capturing, image editing, organizing and sharing tool on the Mac platform. Voila enables users to quickly capture and annotate anything and everything on their screen, turning their manuals, documents, courseware and more into a visual delight. Camera Plus Pro, currently nominated as The Best App Ever 2009 under the Photography section, is a power-packed camera app for the iPhone, thrilling users worldwide with its amazing capturing, editing, managing and sharing options. It is the only iPhone camera app that offers geo-tagging, full-resolution photo editing, and multiple and simultaneous photo uploading to various sites.

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Sproutbox

SproutBox is an elite team of product developers, creatives, and business experts that invest their talent full-time in start-ups. SproutBox's new approach to venture capital has helped launch several successful companies including: CheddarGetter, a subscription billing and analytics tool; ScheduleThing, an online scheduling and reservations app; and Squad, a web-based collaborative code editor.

To apply for start-up funding or find out more information visit sproutbox.com.

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OptionsHouse

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width="200" height="100" align="right" />href="http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?oaparams=2__bannerid=185300__zoneid=0__cb=a1c9bfa640__r_id=__r_ts=__oadest=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.optionshouse.com%2F%3Fpartner%3Dreadwrtewb%26utm_source%3Dreadwrtewb%26utm_medium%3Dpaid-banner-ads%26utm_campaign%3DThank-You-Post%26utm_content%3Dhome-thank-you-post"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow">OptionsHouse is an online broker, serving self-directed investors interested in options, stocks, and IRAs. We offer a streamlined, professional-grade trading platform and some of the lowest, most competitive rates available in the industry.

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Aplus.net

Aplus.net offers a variety of services relating to Web hosting, including shared hosting, Web design, marketing and online advertising services, search engine optimization, e-commerce solutions, and domain registration.

You can register for Aplus.net here.

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Search Engine Strategies New York

Taking control of your business's online destiny at Search Engine Strategies New York: From Social Media to Mobile, Video and Local Search, Search Engine Strategies New York will guide you through the complexities of search marketing and take you beyond the everyday fundamentals. Discover how this seemingly innocuous art touches and affects every aspect of your business' online existence, and how mastering it will transform both your brand and your profit margins.

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Conduit

Conduit enables Web publishers to distribute their offerings both directly and through its global network of 220,000 publishers and their 100 million users. The Conduit platform is a powerful marketing tool that allows you to offer the best of your site through a custom App or Community Toolbar, send desktop alerts to your users, and much more.

The Conduit platform opens a new world of content sharing. Your site visitors can add your content right to their browser by clicking on a branded 2go button that you place on your site. You can also share your content in the Conduit Marketplace, where all the publishers and users in the Conduit network can grab it.

The platform has been adopted by major brands such as Fox News, iWin, Major League Baseball, TechCrunch, and Travelocity, as well as thousands of small and medium organizations in 120 countries.

If you would like to Conduit your website, go to www.conduit.com.

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MyDomain.com

MyDomain is a leading ICANN-accredited provider of domain name registration and online business solutions. For over 10 years, MyDomain has offered low-cost domain names and free domain services including complete DNS management. Today, sub-$10 domains without the constant upsells you'll find at some competitors are the norm at MyDomain. MyDomain's complete range of solutions include Web hosting and VPS hosting, email, SSL Certificates and more.

Toopia

Nicolas Koenig is the developer who made our beautiful iPhone app a reality. He runs an iPhone development shop from the Netherlands called Toopia. Toopia also created the Thermometer iPhone app, which enables your iPhone or iPod touch to get the current temperature based on your location. The RWW app lets you read us on the go, follow us on Twitter, share stories on Facebook and Twitter, and browse at your leasure using Read it Later and Instapaper. Download the ReadWriteWeb iPhone application here.

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