I got up this morning to find the world going crazy about the new Twitter iPad application – see this glowing Engadget review and the Techcrunch titled Twitter Just Killed Something Else: Their Own Website – the title gives a hint of where I’m going with this post. (Apologies for the fact this link is to the shortened post on TC – the full one seems to be currently unavailable).

So I installed the Twitter iPad app on the iPad I have in my kitchen at home, and  – I loved it too.  I won’t go into the features here (check out the Engadget review for that), but I will say that I got lost clicking around my timeline, user profiles and the tweet history of individuals in a way I haven’t done for a while.  Put simply, the Twitter iPad app is a much more engaging way to use the Twitter service than any other interface I’ve seen.

AuthorsGlobe, an award-winning MIT venture, connects thought-leading authors with a global community by hosting live virtual master classes in partnership with professional organizations (trade, industry, and alumni), subscription-based magazines, and Web communities and bloggers. AuthorsGlobe is playing in the high-growth online education market at the forefront of publishing, online education, e-commerce, and digital media with a very unique metric-driven and customer centric model.

I don't have an MBA, but I have earned my SIlicon Valley MBA.  Let me explain. When I was a few years out of college, I considered going back to get an MBA.  I liked working in the valley and knew that I wanted to spend my career in tech and ultimately around startups - at that point I had only worked for Apple.  So I asked around to a lot of people I knew well and respected.  People who I thought had been successful in their careers and whose path I wanted to learn from.  Many of them had MBAs and some did not.  I wanted to hear their perspectives on the value of a traditional MBA.

Cooliris has created a portfolio of free and easy-to-use products that provide consistent content experiences across different screens. The company offers a unique value proposition to consumers, website owners, content providers, and advertisers. Cooliris for the desktop is a browser add-on that is the fastest and most stunning way to browse, search, and discover Web and desktop media, using the immersive and cinematic Cooliris 3D Wall.

Fluffy Spider Technologies has been developing embedded software since 1995. A pioneer in the industry, FST has a background in real-time systems, defense, and telecommunications. Between 1995 and 2000, FST translated this fundamental knowledge into producing outstanding solutions for some of Australia's leading process monitoring and control installations (BHP), defense subcontractors (GEC), and later within the emerging mobile telecommunications industry (Vodafone, Optus, and Telstra).

The AlwaysOn X fund portfolio was nearly flat at -0.1% for the week, the while NASDAQ was down 1.2%, and the S&P 500 was down 0.7%. For the year, the AO X Fund portfolio is up 3.2%, the NASDAQ is down 5.1%, and the S&P 500 is down 4.5%.

Guess? reported 12.5% EPS growth and 10% sales growth in Q2, beating expectations by 4 cents. Same store sales rose 1.7% in local currency and 3.5% in U.S. dollars. Management guided below expectations for the year and sent shares down for the week 14.8%.

Reading this Techcrunch piece on Chomp, a provider of search and discovery for iPhone apps, prompted me to explore a question that has been circling in my mind in a somewhat unstructured fashion for a couple of weeks now – namely what is the difference between an app store and a portal?

We’ve got a few new investments in our human computer interaction theme that we are in the process of closing so HCI has been on my mind lately.

I just watched a great video from our first HCI investment, Oblong. It’s a 30 minute presentation by Mary Ann de Lares Norris, the Managing Director of Oblong Europe, that is an excellent overview of Oblong’s technology.

Here are two keynotes you cannot miss. In the first, our very own Tony Perkins gives us ten graphs to describe the past and help us gaze into the future. Then, after an excellent introduction by Jamis MacNiven, Jaron Lanier, named 2010 Time Magazine top 100 most influential people, gives a talk entitles You Are Not a Gadget that is guaranteed to leave you thinking something. Check out one of the best...and most bizarre set of keynotes below.