I’ve always enjoyed hanging out with Om Malik. We’ve had a handful of nice, relaxed discussions about some deep stuff. Last week I took a break from Google I/O and spent an hour and a half with him. We spent about an hour talking about life and some very personal things and then did a thirty minute interview which includes a really nice post on GigaOm about me and Foundry Group.

I’m at the Glue Conference all day. So far, it’s far exceeded my already high expectations. I’m now sitting in the API track and the first two presentations have been dynamite. Clay Loveless from Mashery just did a presentation titled “5 Things I Hate About Your API-TOS“. He nailed it. Here are his top five (most important last), along with some commentary from me. For simplicity, I’ll call the company providing the API’s the “platform company” and the companies using the API as the “ecosystem partners.” Also – I’m not picking sides here as I’m an investor in both “platform companies” and “ecosystem partners”. Rather, I’m just trying to summarize Clay’s points, bring out a few ideas, and give you a sense of the kind of stuff we are talking about at Glue.

I promise I’ll write something thoughtful tomorrow and not torture you with more video and audio. Over the weekend, I did a fun interview with Howard Lindzon on StockTwits TV during his annual Lindzonpalooza event. We covered a wide range of entrepreneurial topics and gave each other plenty of good natured shit. Eek – I’m a looking a little chunky – note to self: more running, more swimming, less eating. Or maybe it was just the camera.

We’re doing the TechStars Founders video series again this year. The Rackspace Cloud has sponsored the series so look for some new and exciting twists. Episode 1 follows! “The Question is Why” The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 1 from TechStars on Vimeo.

I do not want to tangle with an army of 10,000 of these. Especially ones that have lots of sharp pokey electrocution things built in to their foreheads. I wonder what my golden retriever would think of these dudes. Now, what would have really been sweet is if I had one of these when I was 10 and could put it in my brother’s bedroom at night. Bwahahahahahahahahaha.

Here’s Teaser #2 for the TechStars The Founders 2010 video series, which stars airing at 9am MST starting tomorrow. “David Cohen” The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Teaser 02 from TechStars on Vimeo. It’s going to be better than the finale of Lost. I promise.

Last week, Microsoft sued Salesforce.com claiming infringement of 9 software patents. This comes shortly after Nokia sued Apple who sued Nokia over software patents, and after Apple sued HTC who sued Apple over software patents. As an example of the ridiculous nature of software patents, Microsoft’s claims cover user interface features, including a “system and method for providing and displaying a Web page having an embedded menu” and a “method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display.”

On May 28th I’m going to swing through Dallas on my way to New York. I’m going to see some of my family, hang out with my cousin Jon Feld and the companies at Jon’s Tech Wildcatters program, and do a Beers with Brad event on Friday night from 6pm to 8pm at Lotus on 2900 McKinney Ave in Dallas. If you are in Dallas on Friday, come drink a beer with me, meet my cousin Jon and Gabriella Draney who runs Tech Wildcatters, and hang out with a bunch of great entrepreneurs.

Trada – one of our investments that is based in Boulder – is absolutely killing it. It was started by Niel Robertson, who we’ve worked with in various forms going back to the mid-1990’s. When Niel first came up with the idea, he and my partner Seth Levine spent a few months really going deep and figuring out how (PPC) pay per click marketing campaigns (e.g. Google AdWords) worked and whether a crowdsourcing approach could materially improve their performance. It turns out that it does – if you are doing any sort of PPC marketing you will see dramatic improvements by using Trada’s service. And – if you are a PPC expert, you can make extra bucks by being one of the optimizers for Trada’s service. But don’t take my word for it, hear it directly from Niel the scarf maker.