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I’ve been trying to find a way to illustrate just how screwy Microsoft’s $6 billion bid for aQuantive is, and here it is: For $6 billion in cash, Microsoft could have hired, in a single day, 60,000 engineers and salespeople (plus managers to make sure they earn their pay) - paying each one of them a $100,000 salary.

Of course, if Microsoft did that in one day everyone would think its executives had gone mad. After all, it already employs a modest 71,000 people around the world. Instead, it’s paying out $2.85 million for each of the 2,106 employees who work for aQuantive. Which, no matter how hard as people labor to rationalize this deal, is at the very least slightly more mad than that, if not good old-fashioned American bat-shit insanity.

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Put this in the “what took them so long to figure this out” category. Nokia is introducing a new phone, Nokia 3109 Classic which is a phone first, and everything later. “We recognize that a sizeable number of people just want a mobile phone to stay in touch on their own terms,” said John Barry, Director, Mobile Phones, Nokia.

No Shit. After using N-Series phones and my E-Series devices, I have been yearning for a simple phone, that can store all my contacts, lasts three days on standby and is able to take input from my calendar. Some days it good to have just the voice - good clean crisp voice and of course good battery life.

Web Worker Shoot Out: Google Calendar vs 30Boxes: in a bit of a David vs. Goliath match, let’s set an appointment to pit these two calendar applications against each other and see who’s left standing. Continue reading.

Under the Hood of The Pirate Bay’s New Video Site: YouTube could get some unusual competition soon: The operators of infamous Swedish Torrent site The Pirate Bay have announced that they are going to start their own streaming video platform soon. No details, but we do a little digging and come up with some surprising findings. Continue reading.

Go Ahead Push The Red Button or don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good: Marketing guys like me are the worst for the development stage because we deal primarily in words and ideas. What I didn’t understand was the importance of allowing the initial push of development to happen. Continue Reading.

There is a lot of discussion these days in the Congress about broadband, with some legislators openly criticizing FCC’s definition of broadband (200 Kbps) and clamoring for faster connections for consumers. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) says that 2 Mbps is what should be deemed as broadband - something the Cable guys will like and DSL guys won’t.

All this posturing on part of the politicians aside, the question is an important one - and we have discussed this before. I wanted you, the readers to define what is the bare minimum speed threshold that qualifies as broadband for you.

Every so often we hear about Chicago-based FeedBurner, the RSS remixer/syndicator is getting bought by someone. This morning, Sam Sethi pointed out that Feedburner was in talks with Google. Valleywag says they have a confirmation and the price range is in the $100 million ballpark. Is it true?

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In 2006, according to Internet Advertising Bureau, the advertising revenues reached an all time high of $16.8 billion. In comparison, $11 billion has been spent by various players in buying out ad networks. Don’t be surprised if this number rises even higher. Welcome to the mad-money phase of the eyeball boom!

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How do I deal with board member whose priorities seem to be diverging from mine and my co-founder’s at a critical time in the startup’s life?

My co-founder and I have our hands full dealing with things like a) a product upgrade and b) a big sales push to get us over the hump. It’s a critical time for the business, and we’re pusing our team really hard. We’re confident that this will work, but we have a particularly difficult board member who doesn’t seem to share our attitude.

We’re not sure why, but nothing seems sufficient to meet his expectations for revenue (some of which I feel may be unreasonable for a young startup). We hear the word “results” a lot. I am beginning to fear that his attitude might have more to do with his own investment portfolio (need for an exit?), and less to do with our company. More pressing: we worry that his attitude, or lack of patience, will taint others on our board — insecurity breeds insecurity, and after a certain point, I’ve observed that many investors will opt for unloading a startup that represents a troublesome situation. (Ditto for a founder who represents same.)

The director is a well-connected investor, so we can’t afford to alientate him, or anyone else. And I figure if we go head-to-head with him we’ll lose. (Money talks.) So short of fostering more confrontation/conflict before the board, what can we do? The more time we spend assuaging his concerns, the less time we have for the real work.

The single most important issue of our time – global warming – is being empowered by the greatest communication revolution of our day. In other words, the fight against climate change will be waged by the new tools of the web — social networks, collaboration software and community sites.

O.K., so maybe I just made two really broad arguable statements, but I’ve spent quite a few hours at the Climate Summit in New York this week. And when Microsoft and The Clinton Foundation speak up, you tend to listen.