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. 

Eric Norlin emailed me an old VC joke that I thought I’d start your day off with. I put it in the category of “it’s an oldy, but a goody.” A fisherman owns a boat and is running a nice fishing business with it. He meets a venture capitalist who promptly offers to invest in the man’s business. Fisherman: “Why would I want you to invest?” VC: “Well, with my capital you can buy a second boat and double the size of your business.” Fisherman: “And why would I want to do that?” VC: “Because eventually you’ll grow your business so large that you’ll end up selling it and making a big wad of cash.” Fisherman: “You mean, so that I’ll be able to retire down here and buy a boat?”

I still read a handful of print magazines (you gotta do something in the bathroom) – one my favorites is Technology Review (MIT’s Magazine). This month’s cover story was The Internet Is Broken and is a fascinating (and probably important) article about the cost the Internet’s basic flaws which result in the need for a “clean-slate approach” being advocated by MIT’s David Clark (an Internet old-timer and chief protocol architect from 1981 – 1989.) 

Jeff Jarvis took some shots (well deserved) at VC bloggers and Ben Casnocha followed up with his own commentary. It motivated me to clean up my blogroll (sorry – no top 10 blogger list today) and dump bloggers that hadn’t posted anything in at least a month. Kind of like “ring out the old, ring in the new.”