Yippee! Jason had some comments up at AsktheVC. I can’t wait until the day comes that all the “obvious stuff that has been patented” gets invalidated (the patents – that is.) Having just read Supreme Conflict I have a new appreciation and respect for the Supreme Court.

I love new toys. It had been a while (at least two weeks) since my last one. I was sitting next to Howard Morgan at a meeting catching up and he asked me if I had gotten a Sony Reader (PRS-500) yet. Both of us are voracious readers and travelers – picture me lugging at least three books with me wherever I go. Howard said the Sony Reader had changed his reading life. I bought one online that afternoon (Sony uses Intershop software for their ecommerce – man – I’d forgotten they still existed.) I read my first book on it today – Simple Genius by David Baldacci. 

Jack Bauer (ok – Keifer) explains why he says “damn it” so much on 24. Thanks Jason S for the pointer.

I rarely read an entire magazine. I typically just skim them in the bathroom and tear out the articles I actually want to read. The Forbes 90th Anniversary Issue was an exception. I realized I was tearing out almost every article so I sat down (outside the bathroom) and read most of the magazine (there were a few skimable articles.) The cover title is The Power of Networks and has 28 essays from diverse, smart, and extremely articulate people. For a sample, take a look at David Gelernter’s essay on The Inside-Out Web (right on the money with Defrag.) 

I read Matt Blumberg’s post on Silly, Silly Patent Nonsense this morning. It concerns a bulk email patent that was issued in 2003 that is being used to sue InfoUSA for patent infringement. Matt doesn’t have the detailed data, nor do I, but if it’s true I’ve got to believe it’s totally bogus. I was involved in a patent suit of bulk email in the 1990’s. I am aware of prior art dating back to the 1980’s. The chance of there being anything non-obvious here is approximately zero. My suit settled for $1 and a cross-license after $1 million of aggregate attorney’s fees and a bunch of unnecessary hard feelings (some of which have cleared due to the fundamental good karma of some of the people involved.)

One of my favorite CTOs – Tim Wolters of Collective Intellect – is on Wallstrip today chatting with Lindsey. While I’d much rather there was less of Tim and more of Lindsey, I think Tim did a good job explaining what Collective Intellect does and why it’s useful to anyone that trades public stocks. I’m an investor in Collective Intellect and have been nudging Tim and his partner Don Springer along on how to think about dealing with all the user-generated content in the world. They’ve got it – and Tim is now actively participating in it – sort of. Plus – he’s basically long on everything, which is an attribute that is helpful for all entrepreneurs.

A blog reader (Sam from – well – somewhere) pointed out a critically important new set of accounting principles called SAAP that are a replacement for GAAP and are described on Long or Short Capital.

There are a bunch of verbal tics that people use that drive me crazy. “Honestly” and “to tell you the truth” are the two that I dislike the most. Another one that I hate is “that’s a good question” as the immediate response to a question. I know this is just buying time to start to formulate an answer, but it always annoys me. Today, one of my partners (who heard me coach a CEO on this the other day in preparation for a presentation) told me that I had just said “that’s a good question” three times in a meeting we were in. I looked at him with my normal incredulous “huh?” look and said “really?” He didn’t respond with “that’s a good question” but responded, “I don’t mean to be an asshole about it, but really.” 

Some of the companies I invest in are innovation factories – it feels to me like something interesting comes out of them at least once a week (and sometimes daily.) FeedBurner and NewsGator both fit in this category – it’s a combination of having amazing developers, a core platform architecture, and a philosophy of iterating quickly on small product increments (rather than the “big bang – take 12 months and release a product – approach.”) While the spirit of web-based apps encourages this, I’m amazed at the number of startups (including some that I’m an investor in) that have a rapid innovation cycle at the beginning of their development, but then slow down significantly as they add headcount and complexity in their application (more on this in another post.) Hint to those of you that want to go faster – consider using an agile methodology and tooling.