It’s a beautiful morning in New York and my brother Daniel started it off with an email to me about Mahna Mahna.  His daughter Sabrina was eating a banana this morning and he started singing Bahna Mahna to her after I managed to get Mahna Mahna stuck in his head a few weeks ago at his birthday party.

This all started on Coverville which played the awesome Cake version of it on Episode 90.  Daniel dug up an original Sesame Street Mahna Mahna and a Dr. Pepper Mahna Mahna commercial (go to the Media Gallery).  I dare you to play them and then try to get this out of your head.

The question is “what is a Mahna Mahna?”  The question is “who cares?”

Scott Maxwell – a managing director at Insight Venture Partners – has started a blog.  I’ve gotten to know him through our time together on the Microsoft VC Advisory Board and can comfortably state that Scott is one smart dude (fellow MIT grad – Ph.D. in MechE and MBA from Sloan).  He’s got fantastic insight and – as a later stage tech investor – brings a somewhat different point of view to the table than early stage tech VCs.  I expect Scott’s blog will be well worth the time for both entrepreneurs and VCs to read.

Chris Wand forwarded me DJ RX’s mashup of George Bush Singing U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday.  Newsweek has more on DJ RX in case you care.  Beautifully done.

I love running and I love Rome.  My brother Daniel knows this and forwarded me a link to Sight Jogging.  The next time I’m in Rome I can go for a run with Carolina and see the sights of Rome. That’s probably a little more fun than running up and down the Hudson River Park Greenway with Matt Blumberg.

No – this isn’t going to be a screed on the crazy shit (at ridiculous prices) some of my early stage compatriots are doing these days.  On my run today while listening to Brian Ibbott’s awesome Coverville podcast I heard Authority Zero cover Mexican Radio by Wall of Voodoo (from the Call of the West album).  I was instantly transported back 15 years and sang along as my tempo picked up.  There are definitely days that I wish I was in Tiajuana eating barbecued iguana.

Today must be my day to catch up on “friends blogging.”  I was at Microsoft earlier this week for my three times a year “Microsoft Emerging Business Team (EBT) technical advisory meeting (my co-conspirators were Scott Maxwell – Insight, Chris Pacitti – Austin Ventures, and Vladimir Jacimovic – NEA).  We had a great (and very fun) meeting.

If you are running a startup company that uses any Microsoft technology, you should know about EBT and the other Microsoft programs for early stage companies such as Empower and the Microsoft Partner Programs.  In addition, several of the EBT members are now blogging regularly, including Cliff Reeves, Don Dodge, and Sam Ramji.

While the irony that they are all using Typepad is not lost on me (or them), their blogs are outstanding resources to get insight into how Microsoft thinks about partners, how EBT works, and other things these guys are thinking about.  All of them are well worth the time if you touch the Microsoft ecosystem in any way.

Peter Rip (Leapfrog Ventures managing director) – who has just started his blog – has yet another warning on “problematic behavior” that is emerging around the Web 2.0 frenzy and is likely to cause plenty of unhappiness.  He takes in on from both a VC – but more importantly – entrepreneur point of view.  I haven’t seen Peter in a long time, but remember him fondly and expect his blog to be on the must read list if you are interested in what VCs think.

My long time friend Alan Shimel, Chief Strategy Officer at StillSecure, has started a blog.

I first met Alan in NY when I was co-chairman of Sage Networks. We had started to acquire web hosting companies in 1997 and Alan’s was one of the first that we talked to.  At the time, he and his partners were running a very rapidly growing shared web hosting company.  We had our first meeting at a GE office in Manhattan that I was camping in that day – me in my long hair and jeans; Alan is a lime green jacket (looking like he’d rather be wearing jeans).  We connected immediately and were able to put together a deal quickly.

We then proceeded to go through plenty of ups and downs, but became good friends in the process.  When Raj Bhargava started StillSecure, he recruited Alan to join him – it’s been great to work with Alan again.

Alan has been spending a lot of time thinking about open source, especially in the context of security software and some of the actions of several of the companies that have been formed around popular open source projects.  Among other things he’s got a strong and well reasoned point of view that’s worth listening to.  Of course, if you are interested in security software, Alan is a great guy to talk to about it.

Not surprisingly, Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham have turned their corporate website (Union Square Ventures) into a blog.  If you follow the venture capital business, it’s a “must subscribe” site.