Jack Bauer does the voice over for the new Mac / Intel ads. It just dawned on me that The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is simply the reverse of the digits of 24 – that helps me understand my obsession a little better.

I’ve never really gotten into Desperate Housewives (I’m – well – more of a 24 guy). However, I saw a note forwarded to me today from another VC that is definitely a mashup between “Desperate Housewives” and “24”. It could also be subtitled “a note you should not send to VCs.” From: Desperate Entrepreneur (not his real name) Sent: Recently To: A long list of VCs, including a bunch of “dead email addresses” like deals@vcfirm.com Subject: As you know we need our financing today. Thank you for discriminating against me. Good thing I own the copyrights as well. Price is now 1 million per lateral ejection seat.

Paul Allen (of Microsoft fame) has put up a web site for his collection of Digital Equipment Corporation mainframes and minicomputers. The collection has a real history, some pretty pictures, and the ability to telnet to a DECsystem-10 or an XKL Toad-1 and actually use them. Serious cool nerd factor.

Two things happened at both ends of the spectrum today in deal land. A little company named Truveo was acquired by AOL and a little company named SearchFox announced it will shut down on January 25, 2006. While congrats go out to Truveo, I expect we’ll be seeing plenty more of the “SearchFox case” in 2006 even as AGILEAMY (or GEMAYANI, or GYMAAAE) continue to do the acquisition thing.

The whole world knows that Apple officially announced it’s first Intel-based products today. Simultaneously, Apple stock closed at a price of $80.86 (it has traded up to $81.89 in the aftermarket, but that doesn’t count.) I once had a Compaq Deskpro with an Intel 8086 microprocessor. What a delicious number trick – I wonder how Jobs got Nasdaq to clear the final trade of the day at $80.86.

Matt Blumberg has a good thoughtful post up on the notion of the “We Media Deal.” Matt spends a lot of time paying attention to the transition from “Old Media” to “New Media” to “Next Media” (or “We Media”). Matt posits that We Media has two components: The value of the service to you increases in lock-step as you contribute more data to it. The more transparent the value exchange, the more willing you are to share your data. Worth a careful read if you are developing anything that interacts with end users.

Ah – 24 Season 5 starts on Sunday. To celebrate (and warm up), we are planning having a 24 party starting Friday night. We’ll toss the first disk from Season 1 in at 6pm and go until we crash and then start up the next morning at 8am and try to finish things off before the Broncos game starts. Fortunately, my brother Daniel found a drinking game for 24 – at least we’ll have some assistance.

NewsGator has been gradually releasing new inline features for NewsGator Online. If you haven’t played with it in a while and are tired of your existing web-based RSS reader, give it another try. Several new improved features include: Folder drag and drop: You now have the ability to drag and drop items in the navigation pane. This functionality includes folders and feeds, resembling how most email clients handle folders and messages. Folder management in the read view: Right-click functionality has been added to folders allowing instant delete, rename, expand and collapse capabilities. Feed management in the read view: Right-click functionality has been added to feeds giving options to unsubscribe, rename or visit the feed website. Also, a new ‘Edit’ link in the feed banner allows renaming of feeds from the main viewing pane. Feed search enhancement: When you search for feeds on any topic, the most popular feeds (most subscribed) will display first. Some more FeedDemon 2.0 features and screen shots are also sneaking out. And – keep your eyes open for the upcoming launch of FeldReader.

Jason and I continue our Letter of Intent series with one of our “favorite” clauses (sarcasm intended). The escrow is another hotly negotiated term that often is left ambiguous in the LOI. The escrow (also known as a “holdback”) is money that the buyer is going to hang on to for some period of time to satisfy any “issues” that come up post financing that are not disclosed in the purchase agreement.