40 years ago Logo was created. When I was at MIT in the 1980’s, I worked for a semester as a UROP (undergraduate research opportunities program) in Seymour Papert’s lab. The Coleco Adam had just come out and was going to revolutionize the world of home computing with a variety of features, including a version of Logo the lab I was in was porting to it. Anyone remember the Coleco Adam? 

David has a summary of the great first week at TechStars. The Intense Debate guys weighed in with a post of their own and the energy in the room was huge on Thursday night when I was part of a panel with Greg Reinacker, Andrew Currie, and Jason Mendelson. It’s pretty awesome to hang out with 26 people that are at the very early stage of creating new companies, completely fearless, and focused on doing something great. 

I’m amused by the endless awards that our industry bestows on people and companies, but I can’t avoid the seduction of asking you to vote. I promise you don’t have to make choices between Clinton and Obama – yet. The Webware 100 are up for selection. Several of my friends are listed as candidates. Browsing category: NewsGator Community category: Me.dium Data category: Technorati Publishing category: FeedBurner Please vote early and often (ok – you only get to vote once – so early will have to do) for them.

Scott Yates won a copy of Ben Casnocha’s book My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley with the best haiku in the contest I had last week. There are 20 of them – many great. Ben chose the winner – it’s as follows: startups, like parents, get heaps of good, bad advice. which bits to ignore? Nicely done Scott.

It’s 2007. I was ready to go for my long run at 9am. It’s 9:27am. I’ve spent the last 27 minutes trying to get iTunes on my Vista-based laptop to sync my newly downloaded podcasts properly with my Nano. 10 minutes was spent fighting with iTunes before I gave up trying to get it to find my Nano (and then trying to close / restart iTunes.) 10 minutes was spent rebooting Vista (shut down / restart / reload everything.) It’s finally now syncing properly. Yes, I’m still living the iTurd life.

Is it “whither” or “wither?” I guess you’ll have to read the Onion article titled Even CEO Can’t Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business to determine which it is (hint – both?) I’m not a daily reader of The Onion – I rely on my friend Dave (who I think reads it cover to cover – or “every page” in webspeak) to send me the ones that will make me laugh. This article is a perfect description of the anacronism that is RadioShack. (Thanks Amy, Maureen, and Dave for the editorial, grammatical, and content help.) And thanks RadioShack for all of those gold tipped cables and wide array of battery choices.

On this delicious three day weekend (I love three day weekends), what would be more fun than a new version of FeedDemon. (Ok, I can think of a couple of things, but I’m the only one awake in my house at this point.) I’ve been a rabid FeedDemon user for several years. I’ve tried every reader combination I could think of (web and desktop) and the FeedBurner / NewsGator Online combination is the way I deal with the 800+ feeds I read daily. Nick Bradbury is an artist when it comes to crafting Windows-based software. FeedDemon is his current work of art.

In my first business, we didn’t have a line for EBITDA on our financial statement. We went straight to Net Income. We knew our cash flow from our statement of cash flows (and our bank account which we checked regularly since we were self funded.) We never talked about EBITDA, nor did we ever feel the need to come up with things like “Adjusted EBITDA.” Now – I went to business school so I knew what an EBITDA was – I just didn’t care much about it at Feld Technologies because it didn’t matter. Cash mattered the most. Cash Flow mattered next. Net Income mattered a distant third (as long as it was positive every month – it got more important if it was ever negative, but it was still third.) The list continued. EBITDA was not on it. This was 1987 – 1993.

The motto for my first company was “We Suck Less.” It’s one of my favorite lines and I think it’s a valid aspiration for many tech companies since so much that’s out there sucks. Apparently today Mel Karmazin – the CEO of Sirius – told investors at his annual meeting in response to XM that “we suck less.” Brilliant. (Thanks Bill for the link.)