Coming off the high of a manic Monday in the tech business, Jason and I have decided to follow our Term Sheet series with a new series scintillatingly called “Letter of Intent.”  Deals like eBay / Skype (wow – what a deal – congrats to DFJ, Bessemer, Index, and especially the Skype guys) have to start somewhere, and often the first real “document” that gets negotiated after the foreplay turns serious is the infamous “letter of intent.”

Now – our friend Jack Bauer doesn’t bother with these – he rarely has time to call the lawyers or review documents.  However, most deals – especially those involving private companies – involve a letter of intent.  This sometimes delightful and usually non-binding document (except for things like a no shop agreement) is also known as an LOI, indication of interest (IOI), memorandum of understanding (MOU), and even occassionally a term sheet.

As with the Term Sheet, there are some terms that matter a lot and others that don’t.  There are plenty of mystery words that an experienced deal maker always knows how and where to sprinkle so that he can later say “but “X” implies “Y”, often resulting in much arguing between lawyers.  We’ve had LOIs get done in a couple of hours and had others stretch into periods of several weeks – experience, knowledge, and understanding matter and the LOI negotiation is usually a first taste of the actually negotiating style you will experience from the other party.

We look forward to walking you through this and hopefully concluding before Jack comes back.

Don Dodge – one of the guys at Microsoft on the Emerging Business Development Team – has a nice post up on why he loves NewsGator and how it fits into the Microsoft ecosystem.

As RSS becomes more popular, it’s inevitable that people will begin talking about security and companies will release “secure RSS related products.”  Before the feeding frenzy on RSS and security begins, it’s useful to step back and think about what is already in place and available.  Greg Reinacker – the founder / CTO of NewsGator – takes a crack at this in his recent post titled “RSS ‘security’”.

I’ve written in the past about the importance of APIs in today’s “web application” world.  Chris Law – an early employee of Tribe – has just created a Wiki that is a directory of the publicly available API / web services.  There is a corresponding blog to help report updates and changes.  Many of the expected APIs are already listed, but there are some good ones that are off the beaten path such as the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Pathway (cPath) Database and NOAA’s National Weather Service. 

If you’ve got an API, or know of one, contribute to the Wiki.

As I get caught up on various blogs I subscribe to, I’ve seen many suggestions, actions, and wonderful stories of help for Katrina victims this week.  Most of the companies I’m involved in did something – ranging from contributing a percentage of September revenue to sending folks down to volunteer.

Rick Segal wrote about what one of his portfolio companies – which makes kits that enable light steel buildings – is doing.  Money helps, but active deployment of new technologies to help is great leverage – both for this situation and in advance of the next inevitable disaster.  My understanding is that Rick’s company GenesisTP is offering up the use of their facility at their cost to help enable the rapid creation of new buildings.  Rick / GenesisTP aren’t looking to make money on this disaster – rather they are taking a longer term view around the value of the IP they are creating while getting real experience and exposure to disaster scenarios which they can then use to proactively sell their technology / IP in advance of the next catastrophe like this.

When I posted the article I wrote on Discovering Work Life Balance for the MIT Sloan School Alumni Magazine, I received numerous positive comments as well as several follow up interview requests.  One of them was from The Open Grove, a non-profit in Denver that “is an independent forum that provides a dynamic convergence of perspectives on holistic health and well-being.” 

Claudia Christian – the founder of The Open Grove – asked me a few questions; the resulting interview is available now.  It’s only 11 minutes long, is tightly (and nicely) edited, and is a good companion to the article I wrote.  Enjoy.

If you know Boston but don’t know New Orleans, boston.com has a superb graphic that is a mashup of New Orleans, Boston, and the area that was flooded.  It’s an amazing perspective for anyone that knows the Boston area.  The North End, Harvard Square, Brookline, Newton, Wellesley College, and Framingham are all under water.  Shoppers World in Framingham is spared, but just barely.

Pascal Levensohn just put up a teaser post about his upcoming white paper addressing venture governance and the CEO succession challenge.  I’ve referred to this paper in the last two posts I wrote on signs that a board should consider replacing the CEO and talking to fellow directors about replacing a CEO.

I’m speaking at the We Media Conference in New York on October 5.  We Media is being sponsored by The Media Center, is being held at The Associated Press headquarters, and Al Gore is giving the keynote.