Ok – not really – but Dick (FeedBurner’s mostly hairless CEO) did a nice pithy short interview with Manoj Jasra for WebProNews. I adore working with Dick and his team at FeedBurner – it’s been one of the funnest investments I’ve ever made. If you want to get a feel for what’s behind the curtain, you can almost hear Dick talking during the interview. Oh – and he does drop a few hints about what’s next.

Congrats to Susan Mernit at Yahoo for completing her first half marathon. I had a long, miserable run on Sunday for about the same length of time (3:15). I almost bailed at 4 miles – I was tired, my left knee is inflamed and probably a little infected from my fall earlier this week, and I was up in Keystone at 9000 feet. My friend Paul joined me at mile 10 or so – when Renee and Amy dropped him off, all I could do was shake my head and say “man – this sucks.” 

NDA’s (Non-Disclosure Agreements) seem to be floating around this weekend. I guess whoever leaked the rumor of Google’ acquisition of Youtube hadn’t signed one. I got the following question from a reader: We have a partner that we want to work with. They have both overlapping technology but also crucial technology and knowledge that would take a great effort and time to acquire. We know for sure that this company has recently been or is in the process of being acquired. (by a top 10 media & technology company). Our partnership has never entered into a formal agreement but we are now at a point where we want it to be formalized. They want us to sign an NDA to continue the process, which in any other case would be totally normal. However, things have changed slightly and we’re not dealing with a startup anymore but a major media & technology company. Is there a way we can agree to sign an NDA and at the same time protect ourselves from the lawyers from their acquirer if (potentially) our technology, product or business models is conflicting with theirs? They don’t know that we know the details of the acquisition.

On Wednesday, the IRS announced what it called “relief” extending the “transition period” of compliance with 409A through January 1, 2008 (unless you are a public company and you are involved in a back dating scandal, then you are still hosed.) What the IRS really means (as translated by my trusty sidekick Jason) is “We still can’t figure out how to implement this puppy, so we are telling y’all to keep complying the best you can (in good faith) and we’ll get back with you fine folks once we figure out what we meant in the first place.”

Andy Sack – the CEO of Judy’s Book – has started writing about his experience of evolving Judy’s Book. One of the really “exciting” (substitute your favorite word here for this euphemism, including “challenging”, “stressful”, “painful”, “complicated”, etc.) things about being an entrepreneur (or an early stage investor) is the continuous reassessment of what you are building. Andy’s writing as he’s living it, which is very cool. About six months ago, we had a board conversation where two things were clear: (1) Judy’s Book understood how to continue to grow using the “local only” strategy they were using and (2) the cost of doing this didn’t translate into a compelling business (e.g. we could buy content and traffic (measurement: a “unit”), but the marginal value of each incremental unit purchased was not positive in the long run.) Overall, while Judy’s Book was making steady progress, it was unclear that the long term economics of what we’ve been calling “local only” worked.

Two weeks ago, NewsGator released NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile. This is the product that resulted from NewsGator’s acquisition of Kevin Cawley’s company that created SmartRead and SmartFeed. NewsGator Go! is now a full featured Windows Mobile reader that tightly integrates with NewsGator Online Service, including full synchronization. If you are a Windows Mobile user, it’s by far the best thing I’ve ever seen for reading feeds on a Windows Mobile device – hats off to Kevin (and – oh – check it out.) If you want Greg Reinacker’s (CTO of NewsGator) view of how this evolved, he’s got a great post up about The story of NewsGator Go!

Todd Langer – who makes the very cool Functional Innovations PAST (Posture, Aerobic, Strength, and Total Body Integration) balance products sent me a link a to the Boston Globe article about the efforts of a California company – Allerca – to create a hypoallergenic cat. Ironically, I’ve never been allergic to cats – they seem to be allergic to me. I once had a cat called Tiny (who was huge) that – after a few minutes of sitting on my lap, would randomly bite my forearm – not a love nip – but teeth deep into skin and muscle. When I got divorced, I offered my ex-wife her choice of either the left half or the right half of Tiny – or – if she preferred – the front half or the rear half. 

I got a great email from a reader in Europe in response to my The Demo post that said “Here in Europe we VCs refer to the practice of introducing portfolio companies as ‘Panda Mating’. It should work, there is a logical fit but somehow even if they do mate they very rarely conceive.” Panda Mating is a great metaphor, although I generally have better success with partnerships between portfolio companies as long as they are more than a Barney deal.

I love working with Seth – he always challenges my brain. If you are “paying attention” and want to hear a great rant on the last year and how Seth sees it, check out his post Spying on Transparency.