HourTown announced the $1 million in new funding today, from NBC along with Baseline Ventures, Hatch Ventures and a handful of Silicon Valley angel investors — some of the same companies, HourTown’s founder points out, that initially got behind Google and PayPal in their early days.

HourTown lets clients manage appointments with small business owners through its Web-based interface — so if you were, say, a music instructor, you could have students log directly onto the site to schedule or change appointments. Founder Ryan Donahue describes it as “Web 2.0 for your yoga instructor.”

The service is available in a limited capacity for free, or with expanded features starting at about $20 per month. HourTown is based in Palo Alto and launched in early 2007.

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The company has announced a deal with NBC Universal to feature BlogHer content on iVillage, NBC’s female-focused online service. Posts will also appear on Oxygen.com and BravoTV.com as part of the arrangement, and BlogHer will in turn feature content from those sites on its front page.

BlogHer will get $5 million in funding along with the partnership, provided by a series B investment from Peacock Equity (co-owned by NBC Universal and GE Commercial Finance).

BlogHer’s co-founders say the deal should increase earning potential for its bloggers because of the added advertising opportunities. BlogHer has been around since 2005 and boasts about 2,200 bloggers within its publishing network.

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