Jolicloud has announced that they’ve received $4.2 million in funding. The company, which offers a new operating system for netbooks, received the funding from Atomico Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners.

Image: Jolicloud Press Release

Led by CEO Tariq Krim, Netvibe’s founder, Jolicloud has already gotten recognition for its intriguing potential.

“Jolicloud is poised to significantly change the way we use computers,” said Michael Jackson, a general partner for Mangrove Capital Partners (not the King of Pop). “The company’s founder is one of those rare people who understands what it takes to build a product with mass appeal. The early prototypes are encouraging and we look forward to being part of an adventure which we hope will bring low cost computing with exceptional ease of use and high functionality to the millions of people who simply find existing products unexciting, expensive or difficult to use.”

Jolicloud hopes to make computing more inexpensive and give consumers a world-class operating system that doesn’t hog resources.

Said Krim: “Traditional operating systems find their roots in the late seventies and are built around software. But today, 90% of our computing life is on the Web. Jolicloud was built with Web users in mind. This is a project of passion. To make the largest impact, we decided to surround ourselves with people who have real experience in achieving large-scale disruption.”

If you want a recently updated and complete reference guide covering the major issues startups face in today’s economic world, a book to consider is “Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible”. The book is available online at BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon.com.

The tools, information and tips within the book have impressed many people, including Professor Richard Mammone, PhD of Rutgers Business School. In fact, he has made “Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible” a required book for his course.

Said Mammone: “I examined many books on the market before selecting the two we use. I choose Shoestring Venture as a solid reference for forming Virtual companies and to show that there is much detailed decisions involved in setting up a virtual business, but fortunately most of the work can be outsourced.”

Professor Ben Sopranzetti, also of Rutgers Business School, is also impressed.

Said Sopranzetti: “I recommend it as a reference book for starting virtual companies, and that such companies can often be done quite inexpensively. It is well-written and provides a wealth of information.”

The Startup Bible (Image: Zuma Press)

Marc Andreessen is one of the most famous people in Silicon Valley. The 37-year-old is perhaps most well-known for co-authoring Netscape Navigator — the first widely used browser.

According to various reports, Andreessen is stepping into the world of venture capital. He has reportedly raised $300 million for his new venture capital fund. Andreessen and his partner, Ben Horowitz, supposedly could have gotten even more money but they decided to cap it at $300 million.

Considering the economy, that’s a lot of venture capital money to draw in. It’ll be interesting to see which companies the duo plans to invest in.

After Netscape was sold to AOL in 1999 for more than $4 billion, Andreessen kept up his entrepreneurial ways. He formed Loudcloud, which was eventually sold to Hewlett-Packard for more than $1.5 billion. His latest venture is Ning, which allows people to make their own social networks.

Andreessen already has invested in a number of companies including Twitter, Digg, Netvibes and Plazes. He’s also connected to other massive internet entities such as eBay and Facebook.

Marc Andreessen (Image: Flickr)

JetAmerica, a startup airline in the United States that was scheduled to start business on July 13th, has decided to delay the launch of its first flight. Instead of July 13th, the startup airline will open its doors on August 14th.

Despite the delay, JetAmerica isn’t too worried about its ability to succeed.

Said Brian Burling of JetAmerica: “The delay is not as unusual as it sounds. Historically many of the world’s most successful airlines and charter services have had to delay their launches.”

JetAmerica has gained a lot of fame due to claims that they will offer non-stop fares starting at $9. Considering the rising fares seen everyone else in the airline industry and there’s no surprise that consumers will jump at those $9 tickets.

The company says that they will refund money that consumers spent on purchasing tickets that were for flights from July 13th to August 13th.

Said Bryan Glazer of JetAmerica: “Recognizing that this delay is an inconvenience; as a courtesy aimed at preventing erosion of consumer confidence, JetAmerica will offer passengers who were originally booked on flights from July 13 through August 13 special incentives to rebook on future flights when they call our reservations center.”

It’ll be worth watching to see if JetAmerica can truly offer $9 fares. If so, this budget airline could take off — no pun intended.

Alice.com recently launched its service that allows consumers to purchase household items online. But this isn’t your everyday online retailer. Alice.com has many reasons why its different and could be a huge hit.

First of all, there are no shipping fees. In most cases, if you want to order something like napkins online, a lot of the money you pay would go towards shipping. That isn’t the case at Alice.com.

Next, Alice.com offers very competitive prices. They do it by cutting out the middle man and letting manufacturers market and sell directly to the consumers.

“By eliminating the traditional retail layer,” said Brian Wiegand, Alice.com’s CEO and co-founder, “we allowed the companies that produce these goods to connect directly with the people who use them. The result is a neutral platform for (consumer packaged goods) manufacturers to work together as an industry and channel their resources in exciting new ways for the consumer.”

Third of all, Alice.com has a feature that remembers orders and offers warnings when household items may be running low.

Finally, this service makes it much easier to use coupons. You don’t have to take coupons to the store with you. Instead, coupons can redeemed easily using their online interface.

If you don’t like going to the store to purchase your household items, Alice.com gives you an interesting alternative.

Alice.com (Image: Alice.com Screen Cap)

If you are starting an online startup company, there are a number of ways you can save money. Saving money early on in the startup process can mean the difference between your startup company making it big or your startup running out of money before it can hit its stride.

Here are some tips on how you can save money on an online startup:

1. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
If there are software packages out there that can do the job you need, don’t try to reinvent the wheel right out of the gates. For example, don’t try build your own blogging software when there are a number of free blogging software packages on the market.

2. Be Smart with your Host
When buying web hosting, don’t overshoot your estimates of how much traffic you will get. The smart move is to start small and improve your web hosting capabilities as the traffic dictates.

3. Utilize Freelancers
Instead of hiring full time employees right away, go with freelancers. The great thing with freelancers is that you don’t run as much of a risk as paying someone when there is no work to be done.

4. Work from Home
Office space is rarely needed right away for an online startup. Wait until you are seeing definite signs of success before you guy purchase office space.

Work from Home (Image: Flickr)

YuMe has been chosen by MSNBC.com to provide advertising for the website’s videos. YuMe, a startup located in the California town of Redwood City, will be in charge of the targeted advertising for the Today show and Nightly News — both of which are aired on NBC.

Claiming to be the world’s largest dedicated video advertising network, YuMe has the ability to give extreme reach to advertisers through their network. Publishers who have chosen YuMe include Glam Media, egoTV, blip.tv, JoeCartoon and RedOrbit.

Per month, YuMe handles about 560 million video streams and more than 63 million unique viewers.

As video on the internet continues to grow in popularity, YuMe is definitely a startup to keep an eye on.

YuMe (Image: YuMe.com Screen Cap)

If you have a startup business, you should realize from the get-go that the long-term survival of your startup is unlikely, statistically speaking. For every startup idea, very few ever get off the ground and even fewer are still around in five years.

Admitting your startup has failed can be difficult to do, especially if you’ve poured your blood, sweat and tears into the company. But here are a few reasons that should make you consider closing up shop and moving on:

No sign of profits in the horizon
If your company is constantly losing money or simply not producing enough money to warrant the time you spend on it, that’s the main sign that it’s time to admit the startup is a failure. However, be sure to give your startup a fair chance. In the online world, two years is usually the amount of time a startup is given to show some signs of life.

Loss of passion
Most startups are brought into life due to a passion one of the founders has bout the specific field or industry. If that passion disappears, it can be very difficult to keep going. Instead of fighting the feeling, consider selling or closing the startup.

Too much quality competition
If you have direct competition that has a better product that is available for less money, that’s an ominous sign. A good rule of thumb is that if you can’t rationalize why someone should utilize your product or service over the products of your competitors, a new direction is needed.

Self survival
If you are trying to support a family with a startup business and you can’t make ends meet, that is probably a sign that you need to figure out a new plan. You don’t need to necessarily shut down your startup, but harming yourself and your family to chase a startup dream rarely makes sense — especially if the chase has lasted a number of years.

Startup Failure (Image: Flickr)

Ooma.com, an online startup that offers free home phone service, has reportedly received more than $18 million in additional funding. The grand total that the company has now received in funding is believed to be in excess of $61 million.

According to the Ooma.com website, once you purchase their device, you can plug it into a high-speed internet connection and you will be able to call anywhere in the United States for free. The quality is supposedly landline-like and has features such as voicemail, call waiting and caller ID.

While there are many other comparable services on the market, the reviews for the Ooma.com free home phone service have been very positive.

Recently, Ooma.com won the Innovation Award from the Technology Marketing Corporation and presented by Internet Telephony.

Said Richard Buchanan, Ooma.com’s chief marketing officer: “At ooma, we are committed to providing excellence and innovation within the IP communications industry through technologies that forever change the home phone experience. We are thrilled that the ooma Hub and Scout received the 2009 INTERNET TELEPHONY TMC Labs Innovation Award – as it validates our dedication to pioneering advanced technology like superior call quality and reliability, unique telephony and networking features, all at a significant cost savings to consumers.”

It’ll be interesting to keep an eye on this startup and see if they can get a significant portion of the lucrative free home phone market.

Ooma (Image: Ooma.com)

The rise of Twitter has spawned a number of Twitter related startups. One such Twitter related startup is BreakingTweets.com.

Founded in the beginning of 2009, Breaking Tweets says that their philosophy is “hyperlocal gone global.” The setup of their website uses tweets from Twitter to help expand the view of global events. It also allows gives world news multiple voices to get all different sides of the stories.

Instead of bringing in tweets automatically, Breaking Tweets has a group of editors that select and arrange the Tweets in a way that a news story is formed. In addition to tweets, outbound links are present to other stories that help give additional information.

BreakingTweets.com got a lot of publicity recently with the happenings in Iran. If you tried to follow the Iran news on Twitter, it was a bit confusing and a lot of the flow was flooded with spam and shouting. Breaking Tweets, on the other hand, was able to find the useful tweets and put them together in a useful manner.

Overall, Breaking Tweets is a Twitter related startup to keep an eye on.

Breaking Tweets (BreakingTweets.com Screen Cap)