My friend Larry Nelson who with his wife Pat runs w3w3.com interviews me periodically. I’m always happy to talk to Larry – he’s a tireless reporter on the Colorado entrepreneurial scene. His most recent interview with me happens while I am reclining on my red coach downstairs in my house in Homer, Alaska. Note the blue sky in the background. It’s gone now, but it was here for a few days.

My Sunday morning online scan of the New York Times turned up an awesome Op-Ed by Frank Rich titled It’s the Economic Stupidity, Stupid. It’s a scathing (er – “fucking brutal”) criticism of McCain and his total lack of understanding of “the economy”, how it actually works, and what he would do about it were he to be president. While Rich takes a few cheap shots (hey – it wouldn’t be a political Op-Ed without some gratuitous things) I think it’s right on the money.

It’s unusual for a founder to write a long thoughtful post on the failure of his company. Roger Ehrenberg – the co-founder of Monitor110 – which shut down earlier this week, did just that on his outstanding post titled Monitor110: A Post Mortem. The post is oriented around Roger’s “seven deadly sins”: The lack of a single, “the buck stops here” leader until too late in the game No separation between the technology organization and the product organization Too much PR, too early Too much money Not close enough to the customer Slow to adapt to market reality Disagreement on strategy both within the Company and with the Board Every person in every company that I’m involved with should read this post carefully. Every entrepreneur should also. Failure is part of the entrepreneur experience – Roger has done us all a great service by being willing to be deeply introspective and share his thoughts on what went wrong at Monitor110 in such a direct way.

Who said the magic of Facebook is wearing thin? Nah. Cynics. One of our investments – Zynga – helped a nice young couple (Tyler Richardson and his (now) fiancee Christine) get engaged via Scramble, one of my favorite Zynga games. Thanks to Inside Social Games for showing us the way with their post Suitor Pops the Question in Game of Facebook Scramble.

One of the questions I’ve been asked numerous times since Gnip launched a few weeks ago is “when is Gnip going to start working with Twitter?” The answer is: today. Gnip’s current partners now include Twitter. Thanks Twitter guys! This happens to coincide with the end of my experiment of “a week without Twitter” (yes – I missed it) so to commemorate this I turned my Twitter client (Twhirl) back on and started tweeting again.

Wallstrip 2.0 is out. Fortunately, channeling the voice of the founder Howard Lindzon, they announce it very sarcastically on the homepage. Welcome to Wallstrip 2.0, where everything is happy and bubbly so you don’t have to think about how much money you’re losing on the market. Sure, the site is blue, but don’t let that fool you: we laugh in the face of market woes. Today’s episode is on a public online dating company – Spark Networks – owner of JDate, CatholicMingle, LDSMingle, and a whole bunch of other niche dating sites. I just got my final Wallstrip escrow payment from CBS from the acquisition. CBS (and – more importantly – Wallstrip and Howard) – I LOV you.

It’s time for another quick list of interesting things I found this morning on the web along with my occasionally witty commentary. Harmonix Party: Rock Band owns LA with Who concert. I love everything about Harmonix and Rock Band. Er, um, The Who just played at a Harmonix / MTV party at the Orpheum Theater in LA. The Who. The Who! One of my best friends – Warren Katz – who was also an angel investor in Harmonix had the following to say about the party:

Last week, Me.dium released its Alpha version of Me.dium Social Search. This coincided with Yahoo!’s launch of BOSS – Me.dium was one of the initial launch partners. This was picked up by Techmeme and prominently talked about throughout the blogosphere, tech media, and even the mainstream media. I’ve been involved with Me.dium since its first financing and the launch of Me.dium Social Search is a key pivot point as it starts to capitalize on the initial vision of the company. If you are familiar with Me.dium, you may know of it as a company that has a browser sidebar that enables real time browsing with friends. This concept started out as a “recommendation service” where the algorithms suggested alternative web sites and people based on how your browsing patterns matched the browsing patterns of your friends and the overall community.

My partner Ryan McIntyre has an excruciating story up titled Sharp’s Dull Service / My eCommerce Nightmare about his experience buying a snazzy new 52" Sharp Aquos LC-52D92U via Amazon only to have to go through over four months of warranty repair hell before his (now old) new TV worked. He’s being politically correct with his title – I would have titled the post “How To Get Rat Fucked When Buying A High Ticket Consumer Electronics Item From An Amazon Affiliate.” But then again, Ryan is nicer than me. And he’s apparently more patient than me – I simply give my broken things to Ross and order a new improved thing.