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TheInterviewr is a new mashup that makes it super, super simple to record telephone interviews online using your existing telephone. It is a dream come true and for now at least - it's free.

The system uses APIs from Twilio and Box.net to let users schedule interviews with contacts, enter notes for the interviews and upload associated files to a central place. Then, when it comes time to do the interview, both parties are sent an SMS to remind them it's about to begin. The person performing the interview clicks a button on TheInterviewr website and both peoples' phones are called automatically. Have a conversation, refer to your notes and documents, then click the same button to end the call. A recording will be available to listen back to immediately. It's like magic.

One of the best part of my jobs as a technology journalist is getting to hear founders' stories. I have some really great, memorable experiences of talking to entrepreneurs - not just about what they're building, but why. Sometimes these are stories that, in turn, end up in the articles I write. Sometimes they're not - off topic, off the record, and what have you. But I feel pretty lucky that, as a journalist, I get the chance to hear so many great ones.

Not everyone is in that position, of course, due to occupation, geography, or time. For his part Matthew Wise wondered what it would have been like to hear stories from founders like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates during their early years. As he told me, while Larry Page and Sergey Brin were building Google in Silicon Valley, Wise was a Marine combat medic in the Southeast Asia.

Wise has taken that interest in stories and created a new media project that will help me sure more of this founder lore is indeed documented. FounderLY launches today as an open source platform for entrepreneurs to share their stories through short form interviews.

"What the last 10 years has taught me, the main lesson, is to first give someone the benefit of the doubt."

Heather Armstrong is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her trailblazing blog Dooce this week and there aren't very many people who can claim that kind of longevity online. It's a new media world and Armstrong is on the short list of people who have advanced that sea change the most. She's spent the last decade opening up possibilities for self-expression that the rest of us are just the beginning to take advantage of.

I spoke with her last week by phone about how blogging has changed, about Facebook and about what she's learned from the last decade of leadership in online self publishing.

From knowing who to hire next, to ethical and legal concerns, to how to interview the best candidates, to how to evaluate them once they're hired - startups have their work cut out for them when it comes to hiring.

If you can afford to hire a trained professional, someone who's skilled in evaluative testing, do so. But if not, you need to learn as much as you can about how to hire the right people. Here's our contribution to your endeavor.

Every entrepreneur will tell you that recruiting the right candidate is important. While startups are constantly trying to find programmers that mesh well with their culture, team and work-style, one article suggests that companies still struggle finding candidates that know how to program at all. Jeff Atwood published a post this morning entitled, The Non-Programming Programmer with a stunning look at how many interviewees misrepresent their abilities.

U.S. government agencies can now officially use YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, and blip.tv, using special service agreements that comply with federal terms and conditions. Today, the General Services Administration (GSA) announced that, after nine months of negotiations, the government has signed agreements with these companies that will allow federal agencies to officially post content to these sites. The GSA is also negotiating special terms and conditions with MySpace and Facebook, and it has already determined that Twitter's service agreement is in line with federal requirements.

Google has announced that the company now offers a secure way for third party websites to access any user's list of friends, with their permission, and based on a proposed new industry standard. No more giving away your GMail password and then having random services you want to try go into your account and scrape the information there.

Called Portable Contacts, the technical spec offers a standard, interoperable way for social networks to serve up your friends lists to anyone you give permission to access them. This should allow application developers to innovate on top of your social connections much more efficiently.

YouTube launched a handy new page last night that aggregates all the videos from more than 100 institutions of higher education around the US. YouTube.com/edu now serves up campus tours, free lectures, research and other college news all in one place. Search queries can be limited to the Edu part of the site as well.

This is a great idea and we expect that young people who discover it will appreciate it. At first glance it looks better to us than iTunes University. This could genuinely help young people make more informed decisions about what schools to apply to. There's also a lot of great content on the site for anyone to learn from.

If cookies were the multi-billion dollar magic for much of the web's first iteration, tiny technologies to power conversation could play a similar role in the future of business online. More fun than that, though, is the innovation we hope to see in the technology of conversation.

Comment and review plug-in suite JS-Kit announced today a new round of funding and the hire as an adviser of one of the web's most forward looking innovators, Data Portability Working Group co-founder Chris Saad. Though JS-Kit has a funny name, the company has a big installed base. In addition to being very easy to install, it recently partnered with red-hot content sharing service ShareThis and acquired the early market leader in plug-and-play commenting, Haloscan. What does the future look like for JS-Kit and how might that relate to the web at large? We asked Chris Saad for his thoughts this morning.