Some idiot (me) scheduled a 7am breakfast meeting on a day when he had a six mile run scheduled.  Have you ever tried to get up at 4am (after going to sleep at 11:30pm) to get ready to go for a six mile run.  Nope – it doesn’t happen.  So – I gave up on the idea of a run and just did my morning email / web / blog routine.  I’m running a marathon next weekend anyway so I’m supposed to be tapering (ahem).

As a result, I have some morning reading for you.

– Law Firm 2.0 – Why can’t financings be easier and cheaper? My partner Jason has been writing a great series he calls "Law Firm 2.0".  He holds no punches with his provocative thoughts.  The feedback has been amazing – entrepreneurs love it, some lawyers publicly hate it but privately love it, and some lawyers just hate it.  He keeps going and – IMHO – keeps nailing important issues.

– Google visits TechStars: David Cohen put up a nice summary of Google Day and Andrew Hyde has one of my favorite segments of Kevin Marks talk on How Not to be Viral up on video. Kevin shows some subtle (and not so subtle) brilliance in this segment.  While you are at it spin over to the TechStars Community Site and join and take a look at the great early TechStars coverage from Monday in the Daily Camera (TechStars’ second coming) and the Rocky Mountain News (Looking for the next tech star). 

– iRobot enters the undersea robot market: In the unfortunately long category of "damnit – I should have made that investment" comes a cool new product from my friends at iRobot. 

– Google Co-Founder Books a Space Flight: Seriously awesome.

It’s another raining day in Boulder (weird) – maybe I’ll go to Boston tonight.  Oh – I heard it was raining there also.  I bet they don’t get hail in June.  Today’s reading is sponsored by Ted – the airline that never made any sense to me and is finally going away.

– The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article on Gates-Ballmer’s history including the headliner Gates-Ballmer Clash Shaped Microsoft’s Coming Handover.  The subarticles and videos also provide some great context on the past and current reality.

– My dad tells the story going to Yankee Stadium in 1948 during on a Saturday that was underwritten by the Herald Tribute Fresh Air Fund.  He snuck his six year old brother Charlie in and had a blast. If you have kids, read the article and answer the question my dad asks at the end – "Can any of you imagine giving your kids the opportunity to do all that at the new Yankee Stadium next year in 2009?"  I was excited about the idea of going to the Red Sox game on Friday night (thanks Don Dodge) – now I’m all in.

– Another friend – Doyle Albee – talks about Living with the Kindle: 30 Days Later.  It’s a good short strength / weakness summary.  I continue to love my Kindle with my affection growing with every use.

– Brilliant (but long) article in Vanity Fair about Inventing the Internet.  Al Gore is included in it.

– If you comment on my blog and are a twitter user, you can now Twitter Your Comment as a result of the IntenseDebate integration with Twitter.  If you have a blog and are not using IntenseDebate for your comments, give it a try.  While you are at it, install Lijit on your site for search (including integration with IntenseDebate, so you can include your comments in your search results on your blog.)  Send me an email when you’ve done this and I’ll send you some virtual love.

Lots of good stuff from my friends this weekend.  I’ve been periodically doing this daily reading thing – hopefully you like it.  Feel free to flame me in the comments if you don’t; give me positive feedback if you do.

– What, Why, Can and How – Deciding on the Next Business Idea: Paul Berberian’s last business – Zuzingo – didn’t work.  He blogged eloquently about what didn’t work in his post Tango Blue.   Now he’s written a great post talking about how he’s thinking about the next thing.

– The Importance of Virtualization: Mike Merideth – the director of IT at Lijit – gets down and dirty and talks about why / how they use virtualization.

– Widget Analytics: Widget stats are seriously wrong – often overstating what is going on and what the real impact of things are.  NewsGator has been systematically increasing the quality of their widget stats and are trying to help widget publishers understand what is really going on.

– Gnip’s Head is in the Clouds: My friends at Gnip have decided to go all out and use AWS/EC2. Jud talks about some of the issues and what he wants to see out of AWS.

– Semantic Search; The Myth and Reality: Alex Iskold of AdaptiveBlue applies his very big brain to the program of Semantic Search and describes both the myth and the reality.  The punch line – it’s all about the UI.

Ah – the bipolar nature of the web.  Today’s daily reading includes some humor and some lessons, all rolled into one (or five).

– Fear: it’ll make you shit your pants:  Thanks for the image Andy.

– Hiring; and Personal Responsibility: Everyone is hiring.  Jud Valeski – the CTO/co-founder of Gnip has some points of view.  Oh – and they are hiring awesome software developers in Boulder and San Francisco that like to work inside the web pipes.

– Fantasy: My almost daily dose of xkcd made me smile.  It’s like many of my dreams – there’s fire, death, and irrational behavior usually involving guns and car chases. 

– How to be a TechStar, Part 1: What I wish I had known at the beginning: This year’s TechStars program officially started yesterday.  I was at part of orientation last (including the what do you suck at part) and am psyched to work with this year’s crop of TechStars.  Rob Johnson – the founder of Eventvue – tells what he wishes he had known a year ago.

– Grandpa: My partner Seth has a lovely post up about his grandpa, career paths, and letting life take you where it will.  My grandfather also passed away about five years ago and I miss him dearly whenever I think of him.  He was the first entrepreneur I ever knew and I learned an enormous amount from him, especially about seizing the moment and doing what you want to do.

Now – would someone tell all the clouds and rain in Boulder to relocate back to Seattle?

I love three day weekends – there is something magical about the complete change of pace a three day weekend has on the United States.  I really wish we’d take a page from some other countries and turn these into four day weekends (that go from Friday to Monday) but I’ll savor my delicious three day weekends anyway.

I’m getting ready to head out for a two hour run but thought I’d leave you with some interesting reading from my morning (yes – even when I’m enjoying a three day weekend I go ahead and do my morning routine, albeit a little later then the normal 5am slot.)

– What’s The Greatest Software Ever Written? – an oldie but a goodie via Tim O’Reilly via Twitter!  Microsoft, Apple, and Google only have one each in the top 12.  IBM has two, Bell Labs has one, and Sun has 1.5.  Great, provocative list.

– Why can’t you create a calendar from your email? – Pete Warden’s rants and thoughts on email are super.  We tried this once in the late 1990’s with a company called Neomeo which wasn’t successful as a standalone, but it was acquired by Postini shortly after our investment in Postini, which subsequently became a huge success.  It’s insane that it’s 2008 and I’m still dragging emails onto a calendar icon to manually create a calendar entry.

– How to read a business book – Even though I find all business books to be 50% to 75% too long, I still read some.  Seth Godin has some fantastic tips for how to actually read a business book and get value out of them.  As a special bonus, Seth tells you how you could have a chance to be on the cover of (his) new book.

– Business Development in a Web 2.0 World – Micah Baldwin has been kicking ass running business development at Lijit.  His ideas are worth reading.

If you are in the US, happy memorial day.  Don’t twitter to much – make sure you go to a bbq instead.  If you are running the Bolder Boulder, I’ll see you there along with 52,998 of our friends.

Yeah – that was one of my favorite movies of my youth – I’ve always loved Mork.  I guess that’s part of the reason I moved to Boulder.  The title of this post is nonsensical – I just wrote what came to mind because this is going to be another of my "here’s what I found interesting on the web this morning" posts.  I’ve got six for you today instead of five.  Going forward, these will be categorized as "Daily Reading" although of course you can search for magic words that you remember via my Lijit Search Wijit on the sidebar.

– Starting a High-Technology Startup: While it’s not a terribly exciting title, it’s a great article by Ben Casnocha for eJournal USA about starting a company.  I adore Ben and think he’s an extraordinary young man.  It’s an article.

– Angel Financing: Todd Vernon, the CEO of Lijit, nails how an angel financing works.  I get asked questions about angel financings all the time.  Todd’s post is going to now be one of my standard "go read this" things.  If you are raising an angel financing, thinking about it, or just want one entrepreneurs very thorough view about it, here it is.

– Doing Business with the Semi-Permeable Corporation: Greg Cohn of Yahoo has a comprehensive post on his view of the challenges "of doing external relationship development in the current tech environment from inside the walls of a public company."  I’ve known Greg for a while, have great respect for him, and think he accomplishes this really well.  It’s also a good counter article to all the snark going around the system about Yahoo right now.

– The Art Market’s Stealth Correction: If you collect art like Amy and I do, you know that there has been massive value appreciation (inflation?) in a wide range of art, especially post-impressionism stuff.  Well – what goes up can go down and the Art Market might be more tightly linked to the Housing Market – just more quietly.  Pop?

– Publisher Spotlight: Go2Web2.0: I am a shameless pimp promoter of my portfolio companies.  Lijit is one of my favorites (although I love all my children equally).  Lijit regularly profiles some of its publishers (taking a page from FeedBurner’s playbook).  Orli Yakuel – who writes Go2Web2.0 has a good overview of why she likes (and uses) Lijit.  Yeah – I know – I snuck this one in – but hey – if you have a blog and don’t yet use Lijit you can’t get one of their cool stickers yet.  Try it.

– WallStrip: 5-7-08 Yahoo and Microsoft… the Postmortem: Apparently when you wander around the streets of NY, everyone you run into is an expert on tech M&A.  I like Julie Alexandria, but I sure miss Lindsey and Howard’s walks around NY.

Good morning.

If you are a loyal reader of this blog, you know that Amy and I take a week completely off the grid every quarter.  Well – I missed my Q1 vacation so we took it early in Q2.  We spent five days on the big island in Hawaii, hosted by college friend David Cowan.  When I was at MIT, David was my best "Harvard friend." (ok – I didn’t have too many, but he was the best.)  Amy and I hadn’t spent an extended period of time with David and his wife Nathalie since the early 1990’s – it was awesome to reconnect.  I assumed that David was in a good mood because we were around, but I’m sure the Tuesday $1.25 billion Bessemer Hat Trick didn’t hurt.

In addition to being in a splendid place, completely off the grid, hanging out with old friends, running and playing tennis, eating some great food, and sleeping a lot, I read a few books.

Hold Tight: I love Harlan Coben – he’s one of my top five mental floss writers.  Once again, Coben produced a twisted and complex page turner.  He’s becoming a little formulaic, but that’s ok by me since I dig the formula.

Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism (Turning Points in History: Whenever I read a great biography, I think to myself "I should read more biography."  I’m totally on an Ed Murrow kick after watching Good Night, and Good Luck.  The evolution of broadcast journalism is fascinating, especially against the backdrop of the Internet, user generated content, and the transformation of "old" to "new" media that we are currently in the middle of.

Being Human – Human-Computer Interaction in the Year 2000: A puff piece summary from Microsoft from a conference they hosted on HCI in March 2007.  Books like this encourage me that there are massive opportunities in the HCI arena – no new ideas for me, but plenty of support for existing thought vectors.

The Runner: A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James Hogue: The subtitle of this book is "A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James Hogue."  Whew.  I once had a running coach who ended up in jail for fraud.  This book could have been about him.  It cut a little too close to home.

The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems (ACM Press): Jef Raskin created some fundamental innovations in user interfaces and human computer interaction.  Even though this book was written in 2000, it had some superb sections on HCI and several chapters that had entirely new ideas for me when considering how user interfaces work.  A little dated, but good stuff.

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey.  By far the best of the bunch.  Micah Baldwin dropped this off for me the day before I left for vacation.  He warned me that my brain would explode.  It took about 50 pages to get into the rhythm of the book – once I got into it I could not put it down.  Chuck Palahniuk brought us Fight Club; with Rant he’s brought us Party Crashing (and a rabies epidemic).  Great great stuff.

Ahhhh.  What a nice break.  I’m back in Boulder for a few weeks before my Q2 vacation.

I haven’t been reading much lately – I just haven’t felt like it.  I’m usually a two to three book a week person so my dry spell has been a little odd, but I’ve rolled with it. 

Today I snuggled into the couch with my dogs, my Kindle, and Stuart Woods latest book – Beverly Hills Dead.  Woods is one of my top five "mental floss" writers.  I was finished it a couple of hours later and am pleased that my reading drought is over.

In Beverly Hills Dead Woods winds the clock back to the 1940’s and post-World War II Hollywood.  The book works through the story of the early days of Woods’ characters Rick Barron and Vance Calder.  The story and intrigue is good, but I especially liked the Hollywood anti-communist theme that the book was built around as it nicely complimented Good Night, and Good Luck.

While there is nothing special here if you aren’t a Stuart Woods fan, if you are looking for mental floss, give Woods a shot.

In my book review of Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes, I said "This is a chewy and long but if you are looking for an exhaustive, comprehensively researched, and completely negative view of the history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes is the one for you."

Nicholas Dujmovic does not agree with me.  In his book review on the CIA web site he systematically tears it apart after asserting that "Legacy of Ashes in not the definitive history of the CIA that it purports to be."

I enjoyed Dujmovic’s review as much as I enjoyed the book. I took Weiner’s credibility at face value based on his history as a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the NY Times.  Dujmovic makes me question it.

After all, that’s part of the CIA’s job, isn’t it?