A good time was had by all at the Yahoo! hosted Search SIG last night. I got there a little late to hear the entire first panel, but the gist of it was that Podcasting will kill the radio star.

I was mostly there to meet some of my favourite bloggers in the flesh, anyway...and the mingling time at the end of the presentations didn't disappoint:


Niall Kennedy and his new Nano. I don't know if he was more excited about playing it or just looking at it. I don't blame him. It's quite a piece of art.

Niall and I chatted about the recent Google blog search and I told him that, even though Technorati really ticks me off sometimes, I love that they were there mapping the conversation before there was a real profit to it.

Then we all had a little fun taking shots of a very abandoned Yahoo! hotrod in the garage....

Oops...who did THAT? ----------------------->

Munjal and I also had the pleasure of finally meeting Ho John Lee, who has some amazing ideas. I'm looking forward to having his feedback on the invite alpha...when it happens.

Other parts of the night to note:

Some cool new startups coming to a url near you: Loomia...personalized podcast page where you can tag and interact with other's tags to create a great resource. All Ajax. ODEO...slick little podcasting site where you can use their phone-in feature, create podcasts online (editing in - or mashing up - other portions of other podcasts, soundbites, music, applause, whatever to enhance it) as well as organize your faves. It's still in private beta.

And Audioblog has added Vlogging to their mix. Eric Rice gave a great demo of how he could send a video from his mobile and instantly publish it to his blog here (updated: thanks Eric!). I really should start doing both. Soon...

Some other sites to check out via the 30 second spots at the end: StanleyMusic.org, YorZ.com, Podornot.com, VoiceIndigo.com, Truveo.com and Feedblog.org.

Some advice for future gatherings...

- When you are having a gathering for geeks, you have to order double the pizza. For some reason, nobody feeds them at home. I've been to more functions where the food runs out in 10 minutes than in any other industry.
- Next time I would love to see something organized for going out afterwards. Everyone sort of went on their separate paths.

Technorati Tag: SearchSIG