I’ve loved the phrase “open source hardware” from the first time I heard it from Peter Semmelhack, the CEO of Bug Labs. It made me think “software” which is exactly what Peter was trying to do. Bug Labs is starting to emerge after a year of hard work – Fred Wilson has a short post on it explaining that it’s about software/services and Dave Winer has a great post summarizing the dinner he was at last night where he got introduced to Bug’s stuff.

My friends Larry and Pat Nelson of w3w3.com interviewed me last week. The word of the interview appears to be “significant.” Feel free to play bozo bingo and count the number of times I refer to something as significant. I covered a bunch of stuff – exits, “web 2.0 or whatever”, several TechStars companies, Facebook, and Donkey Kong. Even David thought is was great (but was it significant?)

Andrew Hyde – a new friend and the creator of Startup Weekend – has a great post up today that all entrepreneurs should read for that warm moment of identification and inspiration. It starts off with “I look a drink of my coffee this morning, took a breath, closed my eyes and had a nice moment. Things are going well, really well. Unbelievable fairy tale well. “ And it gets better. Andrew has a beautiful rant on the “state between broke and funded” that describes the adventure he’s on.

I’m an email junkie going back as far as I can remember. It’s by far my favorite way to communicate. I’m utterly and completely baffled that Facebook email (ok – “Inbox”) is so poor. No forward a message. Can’t add people to a thread. No way to sort or manage the messages. And now Facebook apps are customizing the email form with message bling. Gack. Now, before you tell me “that’s not how Facebook works” I know that. However, more and more of my new Facebook friends (those of the between 30 and 45 age group, mostly tech nerds but some others) seem to be enjoying sending me emails on Facebook. I’ve started cutting the page with the Microsoft Snipping Tool and forwarding it back them via email to continue the conversation.

On the heals of G.E. Unveil[ing] Credit Card Aimed at Relieving Carbon Footprints I’m looking for someone that is willing to sell me some fat credits. I’m running the San Francisco Marathon on Sunday on a whim to hang out with my running buddy Katherine McIntyre as well as to give her someone’s ass to thoroughly kick. I wasn’t planning on running marathon #9 until October when I have one planning in Bar Harbor, Maine, but I’ve had a good stretch of long runs the past two months and feel like it’ll be relatively easy to crank out a marathon at sea level (where “relatively easy” means “only a moderate amount of ridiculous pain – emotional and physical – during the last six miles.”)

Got an iPhone? Want to read your feeds on it? Try the new NewsGator iPhone reader. As one of my partners who uses NetNewsWire said, “wow!” (ok – he said “holy shit”, but “wow!” seemed more appropriate.) And – of course – it automagically synchronizes with your NewsGator Online account (and any other NewsGator products you use, like NetNewsWire for all you Mac people.)

I love things that are like chocolate and peanut butter. Microsoft has embedded RSS throughout SharePoint – NewsGator’s new Social Sites product (built on top of NewsGator Enterprise Server) makes it tastier than a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup (did you know those things were created in 1928 – more useless trivial to fill your brain with.) As a happy user of both of these products (and an investor in one of them) I’ve advocated adopting the slogan “two great tastes that taste great together.”

My march through Vonnegut continues. Cat’s Cradle was the best yet – as predicted by everyone that saw me carrying it around the past few days. Ice-Nine was not a new concept for me, but I was unaware of its melting point (114.4 degrees.) While I often ponder how busy, busy, busy my world is, I’ve been noticing a lot of foma’s lately, especially being spewed by several wrang-wrangs. Sometimes they are sin-wat’s; other times they simply want to try to provoke pool-pah’s for no particular reason. Most of these people are granfalloon’s, which is just fine by me since I’m very happy with my karass.

My buddies at Rally Software were just named the fastest growing company in Colorado in the “Small Company” category by the Denver Business Journal. Last month they were named the fastest growing company over $2m by the Boulder County Business Reporter. According to official measurements, Rally grew 13,378% between 2004 and 2006. Congrats guys. 100% growth between 2006 and 2007 will be just fine (but don’t relax.)