Santa Monica-based Clearstone Venture Partners is the lead investor in a Northern California firm focused on the blogging and publishing industry, Apture . Apture said this morning that Clearstone was the lead investor in a $4.1M, Series A investment in the firm, which develops tools which allows publishers to add multimedia to their articles and web pages. David Stern and Sumant Mandal of Clearstone have joined Apture develops tools which allow publishers to highlight and link terms in articles to multimedia popups, showing additional information, videos, photos, and other content. ...Tags:

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Visitors to our web site are most likely familiar with our Insights and Opinions section, where we share advice, opinions, insights, and more from our readers. Docstoc's Jason Nazar gives a primer on The 7 Ways to Get Traffic On The Web . Frank Peters , of the Frank Peters Show, talks with Clearstone Ventures' Jim Armstrong about Trouble in Venture Capital . Mixergy's The latest contributions: Docstoc's Mixergy's Andrew Warner --who organizes the Lunch 2.0

This is the beginning of a content community that collects and organizes the best content from blogs and web sites. So here's the Hot List for 1/1/2009 - 1/15/2009 Top 5 Posts The 7 Ways to Get Traffic on the Web Why You Need To Lead A Tribe - Seth Godin LA Gets Dugg, Hammered, Screwed How To Get The World Excited About Your Business –The James Siminoff Interview Viral analytics and metrics - go viral young startup Top 20 Keywords SEO Metrics Marketing Social Media Alelo Google Yahoo Mahalo MySpace Tech Coast Angels

Last week I hosted a panel of Los Angeles Venture Capitalists with Jim Armstrong (Clearstone Ventures), Mark Suster (GRP), David Travers (Rustic Canyon), and Brian Garrett (Crosscut Ventures). If you’re about to start a web based business, consider building websites or applications that aren’t going to need a lot of capital before they start making money. There has been a lot of conjecture about how the Venture community will respond to the economic downturn. My personal opinion is that its going to be bad, really bad.

Los Angeles-based The Rubicon Project , the online advertising optimization firm backed by Clearstone, Mayfield, IDG, and Peacock Equity, said today that it has enhanced its "Certified Inventory" program with a partnership with AdSafe Media. Rubicon's certified inventory program rates publishers' sites for safety, quality, and other factors, so that advertisers can better target their ads to the most appropriate web sites. According to Rubicon, it is integrating AdSafe's proprietary content analysis technology to help provide more advanced brand protection for its advertisers. Financial

Rubicon, which provides online advertising optimization for web publishers, said that Stevens joins form MySpace, where he was SVP of Audience and also VP of MySpace's European operations. Rubicon is venture backed by Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, and IDG Ventures. Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project announced today that the firm has expanded into the UK, and hired on Jay Stevens as Vice President and General Manager, International. As part of the hire, Rubicon said it has opened up a new office in London.

According to LeisureLink, the resort has implemented its booking engine on its web site. LeisureLink provides online travel booking software used by vacation rental and specialty lodging operators, and is venture backed by Mission Ventures and Clearstone Venture Partners. Pasadena-based LeisureLInk , which operates an online platform for vacation rental and specialty lodging providers, said Wednesday that it has signed on a Florida luxury resort, Silver Lake Resort. Financial impact of the win was not disclosed.

According to the firms, ActionAllStars.com's sports entertainment will be available directly from Candystand.com's web site. ActionAllStars is operated by Six Degree Games, and is venture backed by Clearstone Venture Partners and Prism Venture Partners. Marina Del Rey-based ActionAllStars.com , which develops virtual worlds for kids from six to 14 years old, said this morning that it has linked up with Candystand.com , an online gaming and entertainment site. The deal includes access to Action Allstar's sports games from the National Basketball Assocation (NBA) and Major League

Rubicon Project develops technology used to optimize advertising revenues for web publishers. The firm is venture backed by Mayfield Fund, Clearstone Venture Partners and IDG Ventures. READ MOR Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project, which develops online advertising optimization software, announced this morning that it has hired on two executives to the firm. Rubicon said that it has hired Mark Douglas as Vice President of Engineering, and Seizo Welch as Vice President of Finance.