When I brought Scott Shambarger in as the first person to help run ONElist back in 1998, we made a bet. If we ever sold the company for a decent amount of money, we’d shave our heads. A little more than two years after that, the company threw a party on a boat on San Francisco bay to celebrate the closing of the Yahoo acquisition of (the now called) eGroups. Michael Klein was instrumental in making that happen.

The title says it all. Reports are that Mike Klein, who I hired as CEO of ONElist and who later oversaw the acquisition of (the renamed) eGroups to Yahoo, is missing after a plane crash on Sunday in Panama. Mike owns a resort off the coast of Panama, and the reports say he was flying with his daughter, a friend, and the pilot. Their destination was the Chiriqui volcano, but they never made it.

I just wrote a new post over on Startupping about two items related to databases and Internet services. I talk about SSDs and the launch of Amazon’s new SimpleDB, which I think is a very big deal.

I’ve been playing around with Twitter for awhile. To follow along, see my Twitter page.

“A nerd needs a project because a nerd builds stuff. All the time. Those lulls in the conversation over dinner? That’s the nerd working on his project in his head.” A great post explaining us nerds.