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Upon first glance we were skeptical. Generally when someone says they’re launching a business directory it’s an SEO play with little value to users. Nevertheless, the small business web directory is a pleasant surprise. The group is providing a variety of useful resources to help startups integrate services and scale up their internal operations. Sponsor Launched at last year’s SXSW, the small business web is a group of software as a service companies that have joined forces to offer cheaper services to clients. Companies like Batch Blue Software , Freshbooks , Mailchimp , Shoeboxed and Outright have been integrating APIs in order to help businesses flourish. This week’s launch will help startups stretch their dollars even further. If you were fiddling with multiple platforms to manage your finance, human resources and analytics tools before, the directory can help you fix this through third party service integration. While a number of resource lists are available for accounting and domain management services, this collection is geared specifically towards productivity and life hacking. To check it out visit thesmallbusinessweb.com . Discuss

Our top stories this week were about cutting the strings that tie us to our desks. And also about stalking celebrities at SXSW. Read on for our coverage and analysis. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010, including Real-Time Web, Mobile Web and Internet of Things. Note: We’ve refreshed the format for our longest running feature, the Weekly Wrapup. It now focuses more explicitly on the key trends that ReadWriteWeb is tracking in 2010, as well as giving you the highlights from the leading story of the week. Let us know your thoughts on the new format. Sponsor Story of the Week: Leaving your desk for the cloud, a bike or someplace you’d rather not say. Put.io Turns Torrents Into Streams [Invites] Bicycling Directions, Trails Come to Google Maps Chatroulette Creator Coming to America? 6 Thoughts About Location Madness SXSW 2010 for Web Celeb Stalkers More coverage and analysis of location-based technology Announcing the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit Join us for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7 in Mountain View, California as we explore the latest mobile development trends, both the technology and the emerging business applications. Be a part of the discussion on geo-location services , augmented reality , native app vs. browser-based , commerce and marketing , mobile social networking and the Internet of Things. Sponsorship enquiries: sales@readwriteweb.com , Register now for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit and get early bird rates – only $295. Mobile Web Twitter Location? Thanks, But No Thanks Is the iPhone Still More Personal than Professional? Japan’s Largest Telco Goes OpenID More Mobile Web coverage Historic Conversation in NYC: Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey & Richard MacManus On March 15, at the prestigious Paley Center in New York City, a conversation will take place between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei , Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey , and yours truly, Richard MacManus , ReadWriteWeb founder and editor in chief. The moderator will be Orville Schell , the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. The topic of the event is the emergence of digital activism for fostering positive social change. The onsite event is invitation only, but it will be live streamed exclusively on ReadWriteWeb on Monday, March 15, at 6:30 PM EST (-5 GMT), from the Paley Center for Media, New York City. Internet of Things Stickybits: Portal to Another Dimension or Graffiti for Nerds? More Internet of Things coverage Real-Time Web Google Wave Extensions Gallery Launches Chasing Real-Time Raindrops in an Ocean of Content Google’s Mobile Product Search Now Shows Real-Time Local Inventory More Real-Time Web coverage . Don’t miss the next wave of opportunity on the Web supported by real-time technology! Get ReadWriteWeb’s report, The Real-Time Web and its Future . Check Out The ReadWriteWeb iPhone App We recently launched the official ReadWriteWeb iPhone app . As well as enabling you to read ReadWriteWeb while on the go or lying on the couch, we’ve made it easy to share ReadWriteWeb posts directly from your iPhone, on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow the RWW team on Twitter, directly from the app. We invite you to download it now from iTunes . ReadWriteStart Our channel ReadWriteStart , sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark , is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs. 10 Principles For Not Killing Your Startup All the Small Things: Facebook Demonstrates How to Get Big Results From Little Changes First Look at TechStars Historical Results Data ReadWriteEnterprise Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise is devoted to ‘enterprise 2.0′ and using social software inside organizations. International Blackberry Outage Goes Into Day 2 Will StatusNet Be Another Open-Source Star in the Enterprise? ReadWriteCloud Our channel ReadWriteCloud , sponsored by VMware and Intel, is dedicated to Virtualization and Cloud Computing. SXSW 2010 for Cloud Lovers Cloud Religion: Do’s, Do Not’s, and a Glimpse of Nirvana Cisco in the Core: Preparing for the Next Generation Internet That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone. Discuss

As we profiled in our Never Mind the Valley series last month, New York is increasing its stronghold on the east coast startup scene. The city’s rich media and international business ecosystems make it the perfect launch pad for startups looking to leverage these markets. One other reason the city has seen successful growth of entrepreneurship is the holding company Betaworks , which shows no signs of slowing after raising $20 million from Intel, AOL, RRE Ventures and several others. Sponsor It is a little harder to place a label on Betaworks compared to other similar entities that some would call incubators. The important thing to know is that Betaworks considers itself a holding company and will not only invest in companies but will hold and operate some of them as well. Having previously raised $8 million in 2008, the company has put their money to good use; Betaworks’ history includes helping start companies like Bit.ly and Chartbeat , while investing in other real-time Web apps like Tweetdeck , and helping in the sale of others like Summize, which was acquired by Twitter in 2008. Needless to say, the company seems to know which horses to bet on, which is likely the reason why several corporations and investors teamed up to refresh their capital. Along with Intel, AOL and RRE, investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Softbank and The New York Times Company all contributed to help Betaworks keep moving forward. The real-time Web is a trend we’ve been following very closely at ReadWriteWeb as evidenced by last fall’s Real-Time Web Summit . For startups in this space, especially those on the east coast, Betaworks is a great resource and potential investor. The new funds will not only go toward helping bolster their already impressive list of companies, but also to bringing fresh new companies on board. As with the recent $750 million raised by Battery Ventures , the large collaborative investment in Betaworks is another solid indicator of returning venture capital dollars after a lackluster 2009. Discuss

If you visit the DreamHost blog today, chances are you’ll give a quick guffaw, shake your head in dismay at the state of the Internet and quickly close the browser tab. But if you take a moment to read all the way to the end of the post, you’ll find that the company has just announced the implementation of a one-click install for its open-source, white label microblogging service Status.net . Sponsor The blog, which features a tattooed beer belly and a cat sitting at a keyboard, is really showing off the proof-of-concept (hopefully) tongue-in-cheek site, PetStatus , a micro-blog for pets. Buried down at the very bottom of the post is the following nugget of exciting information: Status.net, our new one-click software package, powers the entire operation. DreamHost customers can now install Status.net to their own domains with a single mouse click – making specialized Twitter clones at whim in a matter of seconds! Triss Hussey first noticed the real announcement, saying if it hadn’t been for an email subscription to the blog it would have just passed on by. We first wrote about Status.net a year ago, saying that the service could be an “incredible opportunity to analyze a rich and dynamic set of data about interpersonal conversation.” The company just announced the launch of its public beta last Tuesday. And our Own Alex Williams just took a closer look at the service’s future in the enterprise last week and argued that it “has the features that the enterprise customer wants and it has a strong developer community.” A one-click installation means we may start seeing specialized Twitter-clones reproducing like rabbits across the Internet. We can only hope that PetStatus isn’t an omen of what’s to come. Discuss

Lately at ReadWriteStart we have talked with a few people working with startups in the co-creation and mass customization industry. Some of these startups use on-demand production techniques to minimize overhead costs and create early cash flow for their businesses. Of course, this business technique is nothing new; larger companies have put this to practice for years, like Dell which custom fits computers to customer specifications. Sponsor More recently, however, startups have begun to jump on the mass customization bandwagon. Cafe Press and Spreadshirt allow customers to custom design t-shirts, and others allow users to make bags, jewelry, perfume, games and even food to order. While these kinds of startups have become more popular in recent years, they have been more successful in nations with smaller markets, such as Germany , and have not taken off in larger markets like America. For those looking to begin a startup and who want to learn more about mass customization, we’ve compiled a quick list of a few books to get a crash course on the basics. Bear in mind the following list is in no particular order and is not a ranking, but merely a run-down of some of the more popular books on mass customization and co-creation. If you have any further suggested reading that people interested in this topic might find useful, by all means please let us know in the comments. Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition , by B. Joseph Pine II Mass Customization: An Enterprise-Wide Business Strategy , by David J. Gardner SPARK: Be More Innovative Through Co-Creation , by John Winsor The New Age of Innovation: Driving Cocreated Value Through Global Networks , by C. K. Prahalad Discuss