While I’m delighted that my iPhone syncs with my Exchange Server, I’ve been struggling to figure out why Microsoft licensed ActiveSync to Apple (and Google). For a long time, I used a Windows Mobile device because of the integration with Exchange (I’ve never been a Blackberry fan). Once the iPhone integrated with Exchange, that was it for me and I switched to the iPhone. As I asked folks about this, I heard two reasons:

I had a great flight home from LA on Southwest Airlines on Friday. My boycott on United has been going pretty well, but Amy and I are flying on it tomorrow to New York as it seems to be the only reasonable way to get from Denver to New York. I’m pessimistic. Plus I have a nasty cold so that’ll just make it more enjoyable. But – I digress. When I got off the plane I went to the bathroom. As I lined up in my little stall next to 10 of my newest friends, I noticed that five of them had either iPhone’s or BlackBerry’s out and were typing as they went about their business. Now – I’ll admit to doing this occasionally, but in this particular case I was kind of stunned by the density of the juxtaposition of peeing and smartphones.

Some folks from the Boulder startup community came together last August to see who could eat the most sushi. I participated in the Sushi Regurge, but (as I promised Amy) stopped once I was full. Actually, I didn’t stop when I was full, I stopped when I couldn’t choke down piece number 55. While that was going on, a couple guys who met at Boulder Startup Weekend 2 were over on the side catching up and intelligently observing rather than participating in Sushi Regurge. After realizing they both started out their careers working for nonprofits, they started discussing how they hadn’t volunteered at all recently. Being good techies, they whipped out their iPhones and searched the App Store for “volunteer” only to find only some apps for Tennessee Volunteers fans. They looked around at the startup talent in the room, busily wolfing down sushi, and said, “This should exist. I bet we could build it.”

My friends at Rally Software continue to grow like crazy. As the Agile software development methodologies goes mainstream, Rally continues to lead the market in providing Agile application lifecycle management (ALM) software. One of the things Rally has been doing as part of “bringing Agile to the masses” is the Rally Agile Success Tour. As a recent attendee at one of the events said: “I thought this would be a Rally sales pitch… It was most definitely not that.”

There is a great article by Timothy Lee, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, out today titled The Case against Literary (and Software) Patents. Lee, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute who is also a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Princeton, totally nails it. Here’s the beginning: “Imagine the outcry if the courts were to legalize patents on English prose. Suddenly, you could get a “literary patent” on novels employing a particular kind of plot twist, on news stories using a particular interview technique, or on legal briefs using a particular style of argumentation. Publishing books, papers, or articles would expose authors to potential liability for patent infringement. To protect themselves, writers would be forced to send their work to a patent lawyer before publication and to re-write passages found to be infringing a literary patent. Most writers would regard this as an outrageous attack on their freedom. Some people might argue that such patents would promote innovation in the production of literary techniques, but most writers would find that beside the point. It’s simply an intolerable burden to expect writers to become experts on the patent system, or to hire someone who is, before communicating their thoughts in written form. Over the last 15 years, computer programmers have increasingly faced a similar predicament. We use programming languages to express mathematical concepts in much the same way that authors use the English language to express other types of ideas. Unfortunately, the recent proliferation of patents on software has made the development and use of software legally hazardous. That’s why many of us are hoping the Supreme Court definitively rules out patents on software when it hears the case of Bilski v. Doll this coming term.”

I’ve been a long time practitioner of having “random meetings” where I meet with whomever wants to get together with me. Some amazing things have come out of this over the years, including my first meeting with David Cohen which turned into TechStars. I’ve decided to try something different for the next few months. Rather than having random days in my office, I’m going to have “community hours” in the Bunker (the TechStars office) once a month. The TechStars space is big enough for people to hang out and mingle (unlike my office) so it’s easier for groups to hang out and meet each other, in addition to spending time with me. I’ve always loved the idea of “professors office hours” – this is the closest I could come to simulating it in my little section of the universe.

My partner Seth wrote a short post earlier today about Trada titled Are you a PPC expert? Read on… We funded Trada last year and Seth and I have an ongoing (and often entertaining) debate about “stealth companies”. Well – Trada is one the edge of no longer being stealth – here’s a hint: Trada is building the first crowdsourced marketplace for Pay Per Click marketing campaigns. On one side of our marketplace, advertisers create and fund PPC marketing campaigns for products or services they want to promote on the Google, Yahoo and Microsoft ad networks. On the other side of the marketplace, PPC experts like you (we call them Optimizers) select campaigns they’d like to work on and begin creating ad groups, ads and keywords, just as they would in Google AdWords.

The Cash for Clunkers program worked – at least according to our government. “The CARS program ended sales on the Monday night with nearly 700,000 clunkers taken off the roads, replaced by far more fuel efficient vehicles. Rebate applications worth $2.877 billion were submitted by the 8 p.m. deadline, under the $3 billion provided by Congress to run the program.” Ok. Whatever. Now the Cash for Appliances program is coming.

Venrock – one of the oldest venture capital firms (40 years old and going strong) has released a magnificent book titled Shaping the Future: 40 Years of Innovation. While self promotional, they’ve done it in such a clever and powerful way that all it does as you read through it is smile and get excited about the promise of entrepreneurship. I encourage you to put it up full screen and take your time reading through it.