Please know that these notes are in raw format. Some may not make sense to you, but they do to me. This is a recap of last weeks events.

Keynote Conversation
with Steve Berkowitz, CEO and Director of Ask Jeeves

Has reduced ads with acquisition
Working on new innovative products
Not just a Q&A engine
Name is probably changing
Working on evolving products
The butler is safe for now (not going away)
Smilie Central is an Ask site
Toolbar privacy important. No spyware or adware
Sponsored search program on the 15th of August
Likes Google relationship / partnerships OK
Increased innovation for 2006 / a better search and my jeeves
If you work for Ask you work with 44 different companies and you can move around in any of them.

I just merged my Yahoo account and Flickr account. What’s that mean? Now my Yahoo ID is my login and password for Flickr and that’s about all. Or so I’ve seen so far.

Tags: Yahoo, Flickr

Just a week ago I was off to my first Search Engine Strategies Conference and as I look back, it was a great time.

There was so much information floating around that it was hard not to miss some pieces here and there. From the new definition of RSS - Really Simple Stealing - go the explanation of some of Google’s patents, there was a little something for everyone.

Some of my favorite sessions were on blogs, RSS and website usability. I got to hear from people at Ask, MSN, Yahoo, Google, Technorati and many other major search engines. I even talked to people from MSN, Yahoo and Google during lunch or after sessions. It was a great opportunity to get to know a few folks.

It’s still a rumor, but a big rumor. Could Google and Apple be partnering for a web version of the iTunes Music Store? How cool would that be?! Not sure the reasoning behind it, however it could allow Apple to drop support for older operating systems and still have the store available via the web. Could be very cool if it actually happened.

Source: Download Squad

Tags: Google, iTunes

It seems that my RSS extractor code on my homepage isn’t working well at the moment. I’m looking into it though.

[update] I figured it out. Took me a few trys, but I checked the box in WordPress that says “WordPress should compress articles (gzip) if browsers ask for them” and that caused feed errors within the feed. Not sure if it’s a WordPress error or what, but I assume so. Thanks to FeedValidator for helping me out.

I’ve added a plug-in so that I can upload some of my images from Search Engine Strategies and other events. This is just a test so that I can learn how it works. If it’s successful, I’ll get more images up later in the week.

Google has posted the official 2005 Google Dance pictures. I looked and didn’t see myself. Do you see yourself?

I made it home safe and sound, barely. I found myself cutting it close getting to the airport once.

I have so much information to share but the weekend is filled up with family stuff so I’ll try to post it as the week goes on. All in all it was a good conference and I learned a lot.

I got to meet Todd Malicoat aka Stuntdubl tonight and Justilien Gaspard (I think that’s right as I don’t seem to have a business card) from WeBuildPages.com. Both are really nice guys and I enjoyed talking with and getting to know the business from their point of view. Both gave me some great information and tips that I’ve already started using.

I also got some good information from today’s sessions. How to ‘pimp my site’ was very enjoyable and so was one on site usability. It was great to hear from all the major search engines in the keynote on where they’ve been and where they are going too. Hopefully I’ll get around to posting my notes in the next week.

It was my first GoogleDance and it sure was a lot of fun. Google gave us free pop, water, beer and wine to drink. There was everything from hot dogs to shrimp, soft pretzels, beer nuts and some cheesy potatoes to eat. For desert you could grab a root beer float, cookies, bars or Cold Stone ice cream. All was free and unlimited. I sure wish I had some cookies now.

I was expecting a lot and it didn’t disappoint. You could go dace with the live band or play volleyball, video games, get your picture taken in a photo booth, talk to Google employees or just walk around. Lots to do and lots of fun.