This month I accepted a part-time consulting project working with an up-and-coming Internet company here in Los Angeles. For me it is a chance to work with a great team getting experience with online fashion retail and e-commerce, try out some new restaurants and bars in downtown L.A., and keep some cash coming in while [.].

Yesterday, after returning from my trip to the Bay Area this weekend, I qualified for a free Rapid Rewards trip on Southwest airlines and received a confirmation email with the award codes. Yet the email did not include a link to post an announcement to Facebook or any other element of social interaction or social [.].

It has been over 40 days since the BP oil rig explosion and blow-out that has been spewing 15K-20K barrels per day into the Gulf and there is still no end in sight. Aside from the media coverage of the potential devastating impact on the environment and way of life of the people in the [.].

This week we are starting the KlickFu private beta. For those who don’t deal with the details of making software every day, a private beta means we are starting to distribute KlickFu to a small group of users to have them try it out and give us feedback, such as: do you like it, did [.].

For a lot of the time my co-founder Rod and I have been working on KlickFu, we have often had the feeling the area of the business we have been focusing on–enhancing the experience working with the Windows desktop–is maybe not the coolest part of the industry. Yes, Windows 7 is an excellent product and [.].

One of the topics that came up in my post Mobile Internet Apple Facebook was around open vs. closed platforms. This issue comes up at the start of almost every new startup company in a variety of forms. m constantly struggling with trying to figure out the best way to pull together solutions, especially with how fast things move. That’s it.

I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies. In December 2007, I described how I commonly take on an Acting CTO Role in a Start-up. used an image from Roger Smith that describes the varying roles of a CTO as the company matures. Gap closed, right?

A post by Fred Wilson pointed me to Dave McClure's Startup Metrics presentation. This is a great presentation and one that I'm going to point out to startup / early stage company CEOs. This kind of a simple model also helps: Define the early proof points for the company. You only build what you need to prove that model. Great stuff.

I generally am working as an acting CTO for about 3-4 start-ups or other companies at any one time. was just talking with someone who asked me to define how that could work and what they meant. Great question. Roger Smith ) This helps explain where I normally play. During Stabilization, often the focus is transitioning to a full-time CTO.

Because I was the Acting CTO for eHarmony at it's start, I quite often get introduced to people who have an idea for a startup company that is based on some kind of matching algorithm. They describe the company as the eHarmony of careers, clothes, jobs, college, tutoring services, doctors, service companies, investments, etc. That feels powerful.