When I was in Aspen in December, I once again found myself sitting in a house with Internet access (via DSL) but without wireless. This time there were only three of us competing for the Internet cable but that was two too many. We all had wireless adapters in our computers so we grumbled to each other that there must be a better way. I was determined to find an inexpensive, portable, easy to set up Internet wireless base station. My primary computer is a Windows box so I went through all the logical network gear vendors. Everything I saw was big, bulky, or stupid looking. For some reason I wandered over to the Apple site and took a look at the Apple AirPort Express with Air Tunes. It was love at first sight – perfect size, the functionality I was looking for, and a fair price. I jumped over to the Amazon site and with 1–Click I bought it hoping it would work.

On Thursday CA announced that it was buying Wily Technologies for $375 million. I had a busy day and didn’t fire up FeedDemon (2.0 Alpha 1 – very very cool) until the evening to go through my 400+ RSS feeds, but I figured I’d see some commentary on it. When I read through my feeds Thursday night, I saw lots on CES, GooglePack, Google / CBS, Google Video the impending release of Skype 2.0, and Microsoft Urge, but only one post on the CA / Wily deal. Huh? I had exactly the same feeling that I wrote about early in December after Liberty Media acquired Provide Commerce for $477 million but all anyone wanted to talk about was the Yahoo / del.icio.us deal.

My long time friend Scott Moody once told me that “old computers are like porn to me.” I agree – over the years I’ve spend my fair share of money and time on eBay buying old video games and computers (many of which either reside at my office or at friends’ houses.) One of the recipients of my old computer collection – Jenny Lawton (proud guardian of a TRS-80 Model 1) sent me a copy of Retro-Electric. This beautiful book is the computer porn equivalent of Playboy’s 50th Anniversary Issue (actually – my guess is that Retro-Electric is much much better.)

Actually, I didn’t (although I have some ideas, but I’m going to keep them secret for now, just like Google has.) But I did find some fun videos on Google Video this morning. Banned Visa Priceless Video: I saw this one a year ago and it holds up well. It’s racy, so don’t watch it if you are prude or against pre-pornography on the Internet (but, but, but – it’s on Google.) Funny Cats: I had a cat once (ok – twice). I remember the water in the bathtub thing. Terry Tate the Office Linebacker: Terry – can you give Jason a call on Monday? We’re hiring (in the California, not the Colorado, office.) Time for a run.

I regularly get asked the question “why do you bother writing things like the Term Sheet series or the Letter of Intent series.” (yeah – I also get the “why do you bother blogging” question.) While writing things like the Term Sheet series is fun, gives Jason and I chance to collaborate on something different, gets us connected to lots of new and interesting people, and occasionally forces us to think about something and/or express an opinion on something where we previously would hedge about, we don’t learn that much.

I came back from lunch to a bunch of posts on the new Yahoo! Go service. I had 15 minutes before my next meeting – I figured I’d check it out. Hi Terry – nice picture – but I’m a smart user and just want to get started. Clicking on Get Started Now seems like the way to go. Ah – a PC – I figure I’ll start there. The complete Yahoo! Go Desktop is coming soon but you can add life to your desktop now with Yahoo! Widgets. Fun, stylish widgets that keep what’s important to you one click away.

Not surprisingly, Guy Kawasaki has come out swinging. Post #11 is The Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists.

Microsoft BizTalk is one of the sleeper products in the Microsoft Windows Server family. BizTalk is at the core of Microsoft’s Business Process Automation (BPA) solutions and – with the release of BizTalk Server 2006 – is maturing nicely. One of my investments – Oxlo Systems – has built its products for the auto industry on top of BizTalk and has had great success with the BizTalk Server platform. Microsoft recently wrote up a nice case study on Oxlo and what they’ve done using BizTalk. Oxlo has received a lot of help and support from Microsoft – both the BizTalk product team, the vertical sales organization, and Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team (lead by Dan’l Lewin.)

I read You Need to Be a Little Crazy : The Truth about Starting and Growing Your Business over the holiday break. Barry Moltz’s marketing and PR Director Sarah Moore sent me Barry’s book after sending me an email suggesting my blog fit with Barry’s writing. While I probably have read my lifetime supply of “entrepreneur / startup books” I decided I’d give this a try since (a) Sarah asked nicely and (b) I once had the domain “entrepreneursarecrazy.com” (with some weird idea of writing something about entrepreneurship) so the title of the book “spoke to me.”