I’m doing a series of reviews of free online resources related to venture capital for a course I’m taking on Info Sources in Business. We’re posting them at a blog also called Info Sources in Business and students are reviewing a wide range of business websites. I’ll also be posting my reviews here at ProHipHop for folks interested in venture capital. They’ll tend towards the dry side but should give you a basic idea of the pros and cons of each site from a librarian’s perspective.

Review:
alarm:clock is a venture capital news blog that combines discussion of individual news items, profiles of emerging companies and roundups of relevant headlines in multiple daily posts. The focus is on “new tech ventures” however that focus includes ecommerce and content sites as well as software, hardware and web services so the range of companies covered is quite broad.

I find that alarm:clock picks up the major stories I would expect based on following other sources and adds commentary and analysis that suggests some insight into the topics covered. In surveying the various automated news services as well as free edited sources, I find the range of articles and news items more complete than most other freely available sources.

The company profiles are fairly unique and alarm:clock is currently organizing those by theme. For example, a recent series of profiles considered weblog networks, various groupings of weblogs either independent or owned by the network that work together in various ways, primarily to offer advertisers a single entity with which to buy adspace. Based on my own knowledge of this topic, one that I have been following for a few years, I was impressed by their brief descriptions and analyses of the companies. I was also introduced to companies that I have not seen covered in the weblog news services, so I was suitably impressed.

The overall appearance of the site is pleasantly simple and easily readable. A basic search feature is offered and archives are organized by date and category. In addition to going to the site, one has an option of signing up for a free newsletter version or subscribing via an xml feed. A short link list of high quality venture capitalist blogs is offered and each blog is identified by the vc blogger and the venture company with which he or she is primarily associated.

My primary concern is that the authors are not identified and their about statement does not explain why they do not identify themselves. They do describe themselves as having extensive experience with new technology ventures. Since they also have a call for communication from “moles” within companies, i.e. informers who would remain unidentified, one assumes that they are writing anonymously in order to maintain their ability to speak freely and continue other activities unimpeded.

Nevertheless, since alarm:clock is a blog and they do link to the news sources about which they write, one is able to verify individual items. Since they do a great job of aggregating news and profiling companies, individual users would have to access the added value of their analysis.

I gave alarm:clock a score of 4 out of 5 because, though it is an excellent resource, the authors are unidentified without a clear explanation and there are currently numerous spammy comments that have been posted over the last week and a half. Since new comments are easy to monitor using Movable Type, which alarm:clock is using, and the authors have been posting regularly, this monitoring lack undermines their professional appearance.