WebProNews

Silicon Valley venture capitalists vie with Google and Yahoo to shower money on the latest, greatest idea; this is a brief summary of two approaches to building one's presence.

Everyone likes publishing lists at holiday time. They're fairly simple to construct and provide fodder for conversation around the water cooler when everyone's taking a break from tweaking keyword phrases for AdWords.

Blogger and pastor Jordon Cooper took a look at Gawker Media maven Nick Denton's list of essential tools for a startup kit, and decided to post his version, from a non-profit context.

Cooper puts a big emphasis on freeware. Virtually every piece of software on his list, from Skype to Jotspot to Flickr, can be found without a price tag attached. One for-pay choice he includes indirectly makes reference to something missing from the land of free software: a shared, multi-platform calendar.

While Cooper does use Yahoo! Calendar, he also lists Trumba, which is available for $39.95 a year. It appears Cooper picked that reference up from Denton, as they both use the same text to describe the service.

Much excitement has been generated in the wake of Calendar.google.com going live, but the search advertising company has yet to launch its online calendar.

Denton's list discloses a focus on the business side of building a presence. Most of the products and services he lists come with a price tag, as well as additional "requirements" in some cases:

House of Pretty: High-maintenance, headstrong, but supremely talented graphic designers, particularly strong in typography.
The Web is very much a visual medium, and Denton obviously puts a high value on a quality visual experience, to the point of putting up with the idiosyncrasies of a graphic design house.

Maybe that's the object lesson for today. Does your site look its best? Would some of the money being plowed into advertising and SEO be better spent first on a more professional, or simply updated, look-and-feel for your site?

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.