ZDNet writes that “

[v]enture capitalists are having a confidence crisis as dwindling exit opportunities and a weak economy conspire to put the kibosh on returns.  According to the Silicon Valley Venture Capital Confidence Index the second quarter registered a reading of 3.07 on a 5 point scale, down from the first quarter’s mark of 3.22. That’s the third consecutive new low in the 4.5 year history of the index.  The study, conducted by Mark Cannice, a business and management prof at the University of San Francisco, points the finger at the weak economy. Steve Carnevale of Point Cypress Ventures said in the study that there are major economic problems worldwide that ‘will impact the revenue generation of portfolio companies, as well as exit strategies and funding sources.’”

PCWorld.com reveals that “[a] team from Indonesia took home a US$10,000 prize in the Rural Innovation segment of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup this year by developing a way for people to report environmental problems with their mobile phones.  It’s easy to see why the idea came from Indonesia. The nation is made up of over 17,000 islands in the South Pacific, many without electricity or good wireline communications. A fisherman from a small island village may see a problem such as a sinking oil tanker, but may not be able to report it quickly enough to stave off disaster.  Project Butterfly aims to solve the communication problem using the mobile phone networks that have become pervasive in Indonesia and many other developing countries. The Indonesia team created a way for reports to be collected and collated from voice calls, SMS, MMS (multimedia messaging service), or mobile or Web messages.  The software then classifies the problems according to priority and location, and sends an alert to authorities able to handle the problem.”

The Associated Press reports that “Executives from major Internet players — Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. — are due for a grilling about online privacy in a Senate committee Wednesday, but the company likely to get the most scrutiny is a small Silicon Valley startup called NebuAd Inc.  NebuAd has drawn fierce criticism from privacy advocates in recent weeks for working with Internet service providers to track the online behavior of their customers and then serve up targeted banner ads based on that behavior.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, “[w]ringing ad revenue from YouTube is proving to be a challenge for Google Inc.  Although users of the popular video-sharing site view clips more than one billion times on most days, the site hasn’t been as popular with big corporate advertisers. World-wide revenue from YouTube ads has fallen short of Google’s expectations this year, and is likely to total about $200 million for the full year, according to two people familiar with the matter.  YouTube is critical to Google’s campaign to extend its advertising reach far beyond text ads tied to Web searches, its revenue powerhouse. Google wants to sell more video ads and display ads on YouTube and elsewhere. It also wants to crack the television, radio and newspaper ad markets. Its target: the 90% of global ad dollars that don’t currently flow to the Internet.”

The Guardian today has an interesting interview with “inventor of the Web” Sir Tim Berners-Lee.