Eh – shitty metaphor. But Bill nails it in his Dear Microsoft: Please Buy Plaxo post. I don’t have a nickel in Plaxo, but this has been an obvious fit for a lot of years. Hopefully someone at Microsoft is listening. While they are at it, maybe they can build a file format autoconverter into Office 2003 SP4.

For all you 24 fans out there, my now excruciatingly long time friend and third Feld Technologies employee Shawn Broderick (aka Mr. Doody) has a brilliant photo comparison up on his blog. In fact, it’s so brilliant I’ll just steal it and post it here. I’ll try to limit my overwhelmingly cynical political points of view to my Twitter stream, but I doubt I’ll be successful. Maybe Jack Bauer will be out of jail in time help us all.

Today the news started emerging that Office 2003 SP3 no longer supports older Microsoft Office file formats. When I first read this, I figured it only referred to really obscure formats. But I was wrong – it’s step 7 in trying to get everyone to use Microsoft’s OpenXML format. WTF? Has someone lost their mind?

As SaaS companies start to mature and go public (there were several in 2007 and a flood expected in 2008 and 2009) there is starting to be some interesting discussion about the real economics of a SaaS business. A new debt financing firm named SaaS Capital recently released a white paper titled Understanding the Financial Implications of the Software-as-a-Service Business Model. My experiences don’t agree with everything they say, but I find it fascinating that there is now a dedicated SaaS debt financing company.

Following on the “sales” theme I received the following question yesterday from a regular reader. Are you aware of any blogs that regularly deal with issues that arise when startups sell technology to customers? I am thinking of issues like: choosing strategic partners/ resellers/integrators/selling directly how to get to customers using a PR firm; spending on a website what a presentation should look like the sales cycle process deal structures key provisions – exclusivity, pricing, ownership of IP, liability If you are a VP Sales blogger (or sales guy (or gal – Amy made me say that) blogger) that is writing about this stuff, please leave a comment with your link. Wendy Lea – time to start blogging!

You are an experienced software sales person. You just drained your 2007 sales pipeline and are frustrated with the lack of growth of your existing company. You want to join a well funded company with great products, loads of referenceable customers, in a market that is exploding. Plus – you want to hang with people that know how to have fun. If you fit any of the following parameters, NewsGator is looking for you.

I heard a great line recently. Michael Price – one of the senior guys at Evercore and a long time friend (we were on the PeoplePC board together) was interviewed. Buried in the middle of a bunch of questions was a gem when the interviewer asked Michael about trust. The following popped out: “Trust is the business word for love.” Perfect.

My last book of 2007 was Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, one of the CIA books recommended in the comments of my post History of the CIA. I read it on my Kindle, which I love. I’ve read a lot of books in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that was as profoundly negative and damning on any organization. The author – Tim Weiner – is a well regarded Pulitzer Prize-winner New York Times correspondent so this book is the real deal.

Tom Evslin picked up my challenge to help invalidate the proposed patent in my post Have You Ever Coded a Progress Bar? Tom has prior art going back to 1987 from a program he wrote called Desktop Express (Dow Jones Software). He writes his thoughts and how he’s nailed 5 of the 20 claims in his post Patent Absurdity – A Possible Cure. Tom got on the Peer-to-Patent site and entered a detailed challenge to five of the claims.