Videos like this one remind me that I live in a very tiny corner of the universe.

Only 8% of the people interviewed (out of a sample of over 50) correctly defined a browser.  It also shows how effective Google has been in their approach to branding, especially given that they just aired their first TV commercial a few weeks ago.

On Friday I spent two hours at Mahalo headquarters in Jason Calacanis’ studio filming This Week In Startups Episode #35.  Jason and I have known each other since the mid 1990’s – the last time he interviewed me was at Josh Harris’ Pseudo.com thingymabob as part of a roundtable with Fred Wilson, Jerry Colonna, and Matt Ocko (can’t find the audio on the web – I know it’s out there somewhere.)  No – I wasn’t naked during the interview, but I was a lot younger and thinner.  And I think there were some naked people wandering around.  If you know Pseudo, you know what I’m referring to.  If you don’t, then Steaming Video will give you a few hints.

Jason is coming to Boulder on February 2 and 3 for the first Open Angel Forum in Boulder (if you are an angel investor or an entrepreneur that wants to pitch, sign up on the info on the Boulder Open Angel Forum links.)  So – we talked some about Open Angel Forum, Startup Visa, TechStars, and a bunch of other things.  And then in hour two we did the standard weekly TWiST things.  Oh – and I got to meet Jason’s mom and dad!

I’m not on an airplane again until 2010 (1/6/10 to be exact when I head to Las Vegas for CES) which is a relief since I flew 87 segments 2009.  Ok – not as much as Ryan Bingham in Up in the Air (very good BTW) but enough to decide to boycott United whenever possible.

One pleasant surprise on a flight from DEN to OAK on SWA was the presence of Wi-Fi.  I paid my $12 and worked online for two hours instead of using my airplane sleeping superpower.  Little did I know that I was on one of the four planes in the SWA fleet of 500 that had Wi-Fi according to the Gizmodo Complete Inflight Wi-Fi Cheat Sheet.

I think 2010 is the year that Wi-Fi will finally roll out across the domestic airline fleet.  It’s been in the works since 2000 and I remembered waiting, and waiting, and waiting for Connexion to roll out.  And then forgetting about it.  Until sometime earlier this year when Virgin America started offering in-flight Wi-Fi and quickly became my (and many of my friends) method of transport between the east coast and the west coast.  Todd Dagres from Spark Capital nailed it when he tweeted (presumably from an airplane) “True fact – planes with WiFi travel 2x faster than planes without.”

There is something magical about sitting on a seat in a giant metal tube that is flying 30,000 feet above the earth and playing FarmVille.  It finally feels like this is going to happen in 2010.  Hopefully there will be a lot more FarmVille than Skype on airplanes, although if everyone on the plane is on Skype at the same time it probably won’t bother anyone – too much. 

If you are traveling on a flight using Gogo Inflight Internet, My Money Blog has published a set of promotional codes that will give you free Wi-Fi through 1/7/10.  Oh – and join the Gizmodo Mile High Club while you are at it.

And one final question – is it “Wi-Fi” or “WiFi”?  That’ll keep the airline marketing weenies busy for a while trying to figure out the right answer.

I’m really pleased that FeedBurner has finally implemented a Socialize feature.  With a few settings, I can now connect my Twitter account to my FeedBurner profile and, when I post something to my blog, have it automatically tweeted out.  There are plenty of nice options to help me format this and the traffic data is supposed to show up in my Google Analytics account, but I haven’t seen it yet.

While I love that I no longer have to do anything to tweet my post (no Mom, that’s not an obscene thing to do, although it sure sounds like it) one thing annoys me.  The short URL.  It’s Goo.gl/fb/…  That’s both (a) not so short and (b) not what I want.  I want fndry.gr/.  That’s my happy short URL that I get from using Awe.sm. 

I’ve now gone through the following Short URL evolution with Twitter.  I started with TinyURL and manual shorted my URL’s before I tweeted them.  That was a long time ago.  Then Twitter started automatically shortening them with TinyURL and that made it a little easier.  Then Twitter started using Bit.ly to shorten URLs so I switched to Bit.ly.  Then I started using TweetDeck with automatically shortened things using Bit.ly and that made it even easier.  But then we got our own customer URL shortener (fndry.gr) via Awe.sm.  And I shortened things manually for a while.  Then I installed Tweetmeme on my blog and shortened things using bit.ly again for a few days until I figured out how to using the API to use Awe.sm at which point I started using fndry.gr again until FeedBurner Socialize came out.  Now I’m using Goog.gl/fb/

Confused yet?

Oh – and my stats are totally foobared.  I’ve got partial stats about click throughs in Bit.ly, Awe.sm, and Google Analytics.  I realize this is totally self imposed as I shift from shortener to shortener, but I’m just trying to get to the nirvana of (a) using a shortener that I want (fndry.gr), (b) not having to do anything to shorten a URL  (e.g. I want it integrated into my workflow), and (c) having stats about click throughs.

When I went looking around to see how many distinct URL shorteners there are, I was surprised at how lame the Wikipedia page for URL shortening is.  I expected a comprehensive directory – no suck luck. A Google search on URL shortener  wasn’t much help either.  A Bing search on URL shortener was a little better (eek!) and ironically pointed to a Google Knol on URL Shorteners.  Of course, Joshua Schachter’s fantastic rant On URL Shorteners was appropriately at the top of Bing’s search results (Joshua now works at Google if you missed the irony of that one.)

I finally found a Mashable directory on URL Shorteners (90 of them) but it’s from January 2008 – ergo very obsolete.

This is now officially a complete mess.  And it’s going to get a lot messier with the brand spanking new Facebook short URL fb.me.  I can’t wait to see Microsoft’s URL shortener – I’m guessing something like Microso.ft/bing/.

Someone please stand up and help stop the madness.  Al Gore, where are you when we really need you.

Last week I complained about how miserable I was with AT&T.  I love my iPhone, but the AT&T service (both data and voice) is abysmal here in Boulder.  All my Blackberry friends on Verizon are happier, so I decided to try a Droid on Verizon.  After 24 hours I bailed and went back to my iPhone – the Droid just isn’t ready for prime time IMHO.

Thaddeus Arroyo, the CIO of AT&T Services, is on the National Center for Women & Information Technology board with me and saw my tweet (apparently via Facebook) whining about AT&T.  He reached out to me immediately and asked if he could help in any way.  I sent him a long note which has resulted in a call tomorrow with the senior regional area support executive.

So – I’ve got my issues and can clearly articulate them, but I’m looking for a longer list.  If you are a Boulder-area AT&T / iPhone user and you are having trouble with voice or data, please leave a comment here with some details for me to share.