FastDue, which offers a range of online office tools and forms for small businesses and freelancers, has raised a $5 million a first round of financing.

The company’s services include invoicing, past due collection, expense reports, and legal and business form agreements. As the name implies, FastDue is focused on managing the relationships between businesses and customers, and specifically on payments, but it has a big vision — to provide any service that a business needs online. Features planned for the future include an iPhone application, board meeting manager, and account payment tracker.

To a certain extent, FastDue sounds like a cross between bookeeping products like Outright or Intuit’s online QuickBooks and web billing platforms like Zuora. The Palo Alto, Calif. company is probably particularly tempting to some customers because it’s free and ad-supported.

The round comes from an undisclosed angel investor — that’s right, FastDue raised $5 million from a single angel. The company is also planning to raise a second round in the next quarter.

VentureBeat is proud to announce three more heavy hitters who’ll be speaking at our GamesBeat 09 conference next month, which will focus on the most important issues in the video game industry:

The speakers are John Smedley (left), president of Sony Online Entertainment; Seamus Blackley, head of the games department at Creative Artists Agency and co-creator of the Xbox; and Curt Schilling founder and chairman of online game maker 38 Studios and Boston Red Sox World Series winning pitcher.

They are among dozens of speakers who will address the conference, which explores how gaming is expanding rapidly in almost everything we do, from the way we engage with content online to the way we pass time on mobile phones. If Shakespeare said “All the world’s a stage,” the 21st century tech community can say: “All the world’s a game.”

Smedley’s San Diego, Calif.-based division of Sony has created a series of ground-breaking massively multiplayer online games, from EverQuest to the upcoming free online world, Free Realms, which is supported by virtual goods sales. Under Smedley, Sony Online Entertainment managed to launch a series of profitable online worlds even as dozens of others failed. Smedley also has a charter to expand the company’s reach from hardcore male gamers to everyone. Smedley will be our keynote speaker.

Seamus Blackley (left) was one of the people who convinced Bill Gates to take on Sony and Nintendo in games by creating the original Xbox, which launched in 2001. Now in its second generation, the Xbox and Xbox 360 have sold more than 50 million units and made Microsoft a key player in the console game business. In 2004, he joined Los Angeles-based CAA, where he plays matchmaker, putting together some of the hottest game developers with publishers and other entertainment companies. He defines and executes CAA’s global strategy for representing many of the world’s most respected and successful game creators. Under Blackley’s leadership, the Games Department negotiates game production deals with publishers, financiers, film and television studios, and networks. Blackley has always been a passionate advocate for game developers and in his job at CAA he can advise them on how to gain greater creative and financial control. At GamesBeat, Blackley will take part in a one-on-one fireside chat about what it takes to make the highest-quality games.

He’ll talk with well-known game TV personality Geoff Keighley (right), the executive in charge of game relations at Spike TV and the host of Game Trailers TV with Geoff Keighley. Keighley, has spent more than half his life covering the video game business as a journalist, television host, and producer. Today he serves as both host and executive producer of Spike’s GTTV with Geoff Keighley, the No. 1-rated video game show, and has an overarching talent and production deal with MTV Networks Entertainment Group. His on-camera work includes GameStop TV in more than 5,000 retail locations around the country, and GameTrailers’ popular roundtable talk show, The Bonus Round. His print journalism in publications such as Entertainment Weekly and Business 2.0 led him to be named one of the top 30 journalists under 30 by NewsBios.com in 2004.  He is also a co-chairman of the Game Critics Awards, an independent group of journalists who award the annual Best of E3 and Game of the Year awards.

Curt Schilling (left) was an All-Star Major League Baseball pitcher who helped win four different World Series championships and struck out more than 3,000 batters. Most people don’t know that he was also an avid gamer as a teenager and continues to play to this day. In 2006, Schilling founded 38 Studios (named after his player number) to create a fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Code-named Copernicus, the game is a “deep throw,” or a big investment not only in a game but in a line of toys and comics as well. We interviewed Schilling about the new venture at the beginning of 2007.

He’ll have a fireside chat at GamesBeat 09 with Adam Sessler, co-host and managing editor of G4TV’s X-Play show, which has an audience of tens of millions of Comcast cable TV subscribers. Sessler has been a TV personality as a show host for more than a decade. He previously worked for TechTV and ZDTV. He currently is responsible for G4’s Sessler’s Soapbox web content and co-hosts X-Play with Morgan Webb. In 2006, he was named one of the top 50 games journalists by Next Generation Magazine, and today he regularly lends his expertise to CNN, MSNBC, AP, Maxim Radio, and a broad range of video game media across all platforms.

We’re very excited about these headliners and hope you’ll check out more at the GamesBeat 09 web site. We’ll be posting more of our speakers later this week. The event will be held on March 24 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. It precedes the March 25 start of the main Game Developers Conference. (Our event is located at 1675 Owens St., not far from the Moscone Convention Center where the GDC is taking place).

World of Good, which operates an eBay-powered online marketplace for ethical shopping, has raised another $1.1 million in funding, according to VentureWire.

The Emeryville, Calif. company emphasizes small artisans in developing countries. In order to sell products on the World of Good website, you must be certified as meeting environmental and ethical standards by an independent “trust provider” such as Transfair USA, Co-op America, or Aid to Artisans. The products include everything from electronics to jewelery to fair-trade coffee.

World of Good launched its marketplace in September, the same month that ethical shopping site GoodGuide also launched; both companies have connections to the University of California, Berkeley (World of Good was founded by Berkeley business school grads). Despite the similarities, the startups offer different approaches to the same niche. Where GoodGuide focuses on providing a lot of data about common products in a narrow (if growing) range of industries, World of Good is about actually selling products that are certified as ethical and environmentally friendly.

The eBay partnership makes sense, and not just because it means World of Good doesn’t have to build its own store. EBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network is an investor, and supposedly Robert Chatwani, the eBay executive who co-founded the online marketplace, had been pitching an ethically- and environmentally-focused eBay marketplace for a while.

In addition to the web market, the company also sells these goods directly to retailers like Whole Foods through its Original Good brand. World of Good previously raised $4 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Omidyar Network in 2006. The new funding comes from DFJ.

SynthaSite, an easy-to-use website builder, has raised $20 million in a second round of funding.

We’re talking about a jaw-dropping amount of cash, particularly when you add that to the $5 million that SynthaSite raised in 2007. That’s a big vote of confidence from Reinet Fund S.C.A.; before restructuring as Reinet, the fund’s prior incarnation as Columbus Venture Capital backed the San Francisco company’s first round. The round also cements SynthaSite’s tremendous lead in funding over its competitors — Weebly, its most prominent rival, has only been seed funded for $650,000 — and could allow the company to build out its product through acquisitions.

On the other hand, it looks like Weebly didn’t need the funding to take the lead. Last November, Weebly announced that it had hit 1 million users and was profitable. (SynthaSite hit the same user milestone a month later.) Perhaps more significant than a pure horse race comparison is the fact that interest in these kinds of services seems to be growing, at least according to traffic data from Compete — yes, Weebly holds the top spot, but both websites have been growing quickly.

The other question is whether SynthaSite will figure out a revenue model that justifies the investment, since its basic tools are free. The company already allows users to buy domain names through SynthaSite and to build online stores on their sites; chief executive Vinny Lingham told TechCrunch that premium services will be coming later this year.

Liberty Media is loaning Sirius XM about $530 million to keep the combined satellite radio service company afloat. The satellite radio company has millions of subscribers for its services, which feature exclusives such as shock jock Howard Stern. But do consumers really want this technology? Can it remain a viable business? Can satellite radio be saved? Please leave your comments.

Apple has been a lot more lenient recently when it comes to letting third-party applications into the App Store. For proof of this, see any of the hundreds of fart applications now available. It even has an NC-17 rating of sorts, for the truly offensive apps. That’s why it’s surprising that a South Park application has apparently been rejected.

The app, which was first announced in October and shortly thereafter submitted to the App Store for approval, has formally been rejected after a few attempts to get it approved, South Park team members tell BoingBoing. The reason? The content was “potentially offensive,” says the team, adding that Apple left the door open for possible acceptance later as the App Store’s policies “evolve.”

But this is still very curious. Apple allowed the Cartoon Network Adult Swim iPhone game Amateur Surgeon into the App Store months ago, and one can only assume that this South Park app would have the same cartoon-style foul language and potential gore as that one. It’s certainly possible that the South Park guys took it over the top — remember that when the South Park movie came out, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone had to go back and forth with the MPAA to avoid a NC-17 rating — but still, isn’t that why Apple has the NC-17 warning?

Apple also sells South Park the show through its iTunes store with no issues. And part of this South Park app would apparently let users stream episodes of the show, so perhaps that’s what Apple took exception to, as CNET notes. But then why say the app was banned for being potentially offensive?

When it was unveiled at CES, the Palm Pre got almost iPhone-like hype. Its slick interface including multi-touch capabilities on a solid device makes it an intriguing competitor to the iPhone. Still, relatively little is know about the Pre and its operating system dubbed webOS. If you’re thinking about making an application for the device, you’ll undoubtedly want to know more — and here’s your first chance.

The Palm Developer Network has posted the first part of the upcoming webOS book, entitled “Palm webOS: Developing Applications in JavaScript using Palm Mojo Framework,” written by Palm’s software chief technology officer Mitch Allen and to be published by O’Reilly Media. This first chapter is available to view on the web or downloadable in PDF format, as Daring Fireball points out.

Even just this first chapter goes into a nice amount of detail about webOS and what exactly it is, and what it will mean to develop for it. As you probably already know by now, the OS is built on web technologies, HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but they run directly on the device, rather than through a traditional web browser as is typically the case. That’s interesting because originally, when the first iPhone was unveiled almost two years ago, Apple wanted developers to use JavaScript to develop applications — but the problem is that they were required to run through the Safari web browser.

Ultimately, people wanted native applications, and eventually Apple scrapped this JavaScript plan for the iPhone software development kit (SDK), and the rest is history. Now the App Store and its 20,000 third-party applications are seen by many as the single best thing about the iPhone.

The introduction of the book is particularly interesting as it seems to take a direct shot at Apple and the iPhone.

Palm webOS is designed to run on a variety of hardware with different screen sizes, resolutions and orientations, with or without keyboards and works best with a touchpanel though doesn’t require one. Because the user interface and application model are built around a web browser, the range of suitable hardware platforms is quite wide, requiring only a CPU, some memory, a wireless data connection, a display, and a means for interacting with the UI and entering text.

That statement positions Palm at the exact opposite end of the spectrum from Apple and the iPhone. Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook (currently running Apple with Steve Jobs on medical leave), has made recent statements indicating that Apple will stay with one screen size and resolution (as opposed to making an “iPhone nano”) because it makes life easier on developers, and makes for a better end product.

Cook and other Apple execs also recently reiterated Apple’s stance that it would not do a device with a physical keyboard because the touchscreen gives them more flexibility. I’m happy about this as I see no real use for a physical keyboard anymore and consider it to be just a waste of space, but many others disagree. You’ll note though that the G2 (aka the HTC Magic), has no physical keyboard unlike its predecessor, the G1.

The Pre will also run Flash, something which despite a lot of talk, Apple and Adobe have not been able to come together on for the iPhone.

Palm and Apple are at the center of some legal intrigue after statements made by Cook during Apple’s quarterly earnings call indicated that the company was ready to go after anyone who infringed on its patents. And that came just days after Palm showed off the Pre, which is notably the first mobile device to use multi-touch since the iPhone. Recently, a source told us that the reason there are currently no Android phones using multi-touch is because of Apple.

There is no litigation pending between Palm and Apple, and some people we’ve talked to suggest the threat of a actual lawsuit may be overblown. But it’s pretty clear that Palm, which is filled with former Apple employees, is positioning the Pre to be the main iPhone rival on the market. That is something which should definitely interest developers.

Phreesia, maker of electronic tablets to replace those pesky intake clipboards at doctors’ offices, announced today that it brought in $11.6 million in a round led by BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners and Sandbox Industries. This brings the New York company’s total capital raised to $25 million — which it plans to use to enlist more doctors to use the product in the U.S. According to Phreesia, thousands already do.

It also says it should be greatly helped in this pursuit by the Obama administration’s new commitment to digital medical records and general healthcare information technology. The tablet itself consists of a wireless touchscreen and swipe-card technology that automatically beams the information to your doctor’s record software (and even that of other doctors you see who use Phreesia). At face value, it looks like this could significantly cut down on the time needed to process payment and insurance and take patient histories.

VentureBeat has covered Phreesia several times in the past, including a complaint that the company brings in revenue by showing patients sponsored “educational material” as they fill out the requisite electronic forms — basically ads. The ads allow Phreesia to provide its tablets free of charge, but have raised a few eyebrows. Regardless, the tablet garnered honors at DEMO in the fall of 2007 and still seems to be doing quite well despite the economic downturn. It benefits from a lack of competitors, facing only a partial rival in Harmonex’s digital questionnaire CliniCom. But this unit is specialized for psychiatric surveys and sends data to a central database where it’s used for diagnostic purposes.

Other participants in the recent investment round include Polaris Venture Partners, HLM Venture Partners and Long River Ventures. Below is a video of Phreesia’s winning presentation at Demo two years ago.

Bernie Stolar has worked for everyone in the video game industry. So it’s no surprise to see him appointed chairman today of Vivo Products, a manufacturer of consumer electronics entertainment products.

Over the course of a 30-year career, Stolar has been a big newsmaker in the game industry. He was executive vice president of third-party content for the Sony Playstation, but was fired just before the launch of that system. He was president and chief operating officer of Sega of America, but again was fired before the launch of the Dreamcast game console. (He often didn’t get along with his Japanese overseers). And he was president of Mattel Interactive.

More recently, he was chairman of Adscape Media, which Google bought to get into the in-game advertising business. And he is an active advisor to a wide range of startups and investment firms. Stolar is well known for his outspoken opinions.

Paul Chen is president and chief operating officer of Vivo Products, which was founded last year to deliver video and music to consumers. The company’s current products include the Gene Simmons AXE guitar controller for Playstation 2 and Playstation 3, the Jillian Michaels Flash Drive, and the Vivo Video portable MP4 media player.

The San Francisco-based company also appointed Kelli Richards, a veteran of music-related jobs at EMI and Apple, as vice president of business development and content partnerships.

Stolar will appear on a panel about taking on big companies at VentureBeat’s GamesBeat 09 conference on March 24.