The meme of “Corporate Web Site As A Blog” is going around – and I like it. While this has been popular for individuals for a while (e.g. www.feld.com) – it’s starting to happen with companies. Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham did this recently with their site at Union Square Ventures and Matt Blumberg just launched a new Return Path web site organized around a blog – launched with a post on Matt’s blog about why Return Path did this.

Chris Wand forwarded me DJ RX’s mashup of George Bush Singing U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday. Newsweek has more on DJ RX in case you care. Beautifully done.

Tom Barrack is a legendary real estate investor that few people know about. The 10/31/05 Fortune has a good profile on him titled “I’m Tom Barrack and I’m Getting Out.” Barrack’s lead quote concerns polo, of which he is an avid player. “I feel totally safe playing polo on a field full of pros, but when amateurs are all over the field, someone can get killed. They have more guts than brains. They charge after every ball and don’t know when to hold back.”

I love running and I love Rome. My brother Daniel knows this and forwarded me a link to Sight Jogging. The next time I’m in Rome I can go for a run with Carolina and see the sights of Rome. That’s probably a little more fun than running up and down the Hudson River Park Greenway with Matt Blumberg.

Well – it’s about 20 days after the end of the quarter and the Ernst & Young / Venture One survey of venture capital funding is out and the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News feel compelled to comment on it. I really like Roger Fillion who wrote the RMN article (I don’t know Will Shanley who wrote the Denver Post article), but as I said to Ross Wehner from the Denver Post last quarter, “Who Gives A Fuck?”

Getting tired of that old Windows Start-Up Sound? How about trying on a serious Mac Start-Up Symphony?

On Wednesday, IBM announced that it had acquired DataPower. Bill Burnham (who originally did the investment for us when he was at Mobius) has a nice set of posts on his view of VC lessons from the deal and his view of the implications for software in general. After Bill left Mobius, Gary Rieschel and Robin Bordoli took over responsibility for the company in our shop. I got actively involved earlier this year (and eventually joined the board) when IBM made its initial overture to the company. In 2004, IBM acquired Cyanea, another deal that Bill sourced that I took over after he left Mobius. I spent a silly (large) amount of time last summer working on that deal and, while we were very happy with the outcome (as was IBM), the process and negotiation was brutal. As a result, when the first overture came this time around it was logical for me to get involved.

No – this isn’t going to be a screed on the crazy shit (at ridiculous prices) some of my early stage compatriots are doing these days. On my run today while listening to Brian Ibbott’s awesome Coverville podcast I heard Authority Zero cover Mexican Radio by Wall of Voodoo (from the Call of the West album). I was instantly transported back 15 years and sang along as my tempo picked up. There are definitely days that I wish I was in Tiajuana eating barbecued iguana.

I had an awesome day on Saturday. I spent the weekend with my fraternity at MIT (the Lambda Phi Chapter of Alpha Delta Phi) on an undergraduate retreat called ADPrentice (be patient, you’ll get it in a minute). I co-sponsored this with two of my frat brothers – Sameer Gandhi (a partner at Sequioa Capital) and Mark Siegel (a partner at Menlo Ventures). As I look back 20 years later, our fraternity generated a number of very significant entrepreneurs in a short period of time (the graduating classes from 1984 to 1990). Several companies that effectively started in the house (at 351 Mass Ave in Cambridge) included my first company (Feld Technologies – co-founded by me ‘87 and Dave Jilk ‘84), Art Technology Group (started by Joe Chung and Jeet Singh ‘85), iRobot (started by Colin Angle ‘89). Sameer Gandhi ‘87 and Mark Siegel ‘90 are prominent VCs. Ross Ortega ‘87 has started several companies. And – while the 1984 to 1990 period was rich with entrepreneurship, it didn’t stop there – Pehr Anderson (I think originally ‘96) dropped out to start NBX which was acquired by 3Com in 1999 (Pehr eventually got his degree).