You are going to hear me talk a lot about user interfaces and human computer interaction in 2008. It’s an area that I’m intensely interested in as I think the way we interact with computers 20 years from now will make our current UI / HCI paradigms look as quaint as DOS and 3270 emulation mode looks today. One of my friends working in this area is Bruce Wyman, the director of technology at the Denver Art Museum. Bruce periodically writes a blog called DAM Technology and recently put up a post titled The Sapir-WIMP Hypothesis.

I’m looking for a great book on the history of the CIA. Any recommendations from out there in the blogosphere?

Ok – it’s actually a Keynote presentation. The Onion demonstrates their deep insight once again with the article Gore Wins Oscar, Nobel Peace Prize For Slide-Show Presentation*.* I’m so pleased that someone has finally gotten recognition for their mastery of presentation technology (thanks Dave.)

A few weeks ago, Slashdot pointed out that a Critic of Software Patents Wins [the] Nobel Prize in Economics. I finally got around to reading the paper that Slashdot referred to – Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation by James Bessen and Eric Maskin (the aforementioned Nobel Prize winner.) The paper was written in 1999 and is an MIT Economics Department Working Paper #00-01 (one of first working papers to be published at MIT in 2000.)

There are a handful of hysterical VC Holiday Cards. I think the best one is The Adventures of Gary Snoman (produced by Blueprint Ventures.) Gary travels the world this year and helps us understand how VCs think about different cultures (or at least loads us up with a bunch of new cliches from the past year.) The deleted scenes are a nice add on – watch Gary struggle in Paris and abuse his assistant for no good reason. Gary’s 2005 and 2006 adventures are also available. To the gang at Blueprint – nicely done!

Congrats, thanks, and welcome to my friends at Fuser for joining the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. Fuser is the 11th Colorado company to join this year. The Colorado entrepreneurial community support for EFCo far surpassed my expectations this year – a big thanks to everyone that has embraced the idea. Now that we’ve got a solid base of great companies as part of EFCo, we will really crank it up next year.

Last week NewsGator announced that it had raised a $12m round led by new investor Vista Ventures and existing investors Mobius Venture Capital and Masthead. Greg Reinacker – NewsGator’s founder / CTO reflected on the progress from the first $1m investment that Mobius made and Jeff Nolan’s talked about our excitement of getting Lisa Reeves (formerly from SAP Ventures – now at Vista) involved. I’ve been an investor (via Mobius Venture Capital) from the very beginning of NewsGator. I wrote a post titled Why Did We Invest in NewsGator? in June 2004 shortly after making a $1m seed investment in the company (mostly in Greg Reinacker and his vision.) Reading back through it makes me feel simultaneously nostalgic and intensely proud of what the now 75+ people at NewsGator have accomplished.

Amy forwarded another 3QuarksDaily article titled Science Debate 2008, and Krauss on Science and the Presidential Campaign. Did you know that according to a 2006 National Science Foundation Study, 25% of Americans did not know that the earth goes around the sun? I had to stop and read that twice. I’m not talking about the age old “evolution vs. creationism” discussion that eventually devolves into a polarizing (and in my mind irrational) religious debate. I’m not talking about global climate change. I’m talking about basic science. How do plants grow? How do planes fly? What’s the difference between ice, water, and steam? What is the relationship between the earth and the sun?

An interview with my partner Jason Mendelson is up on the web. Jason gives some hints about what Foundry Group will be doing. Look for more after the holidays.