1000 Flowers Bloom

The Unsung Photographer of Web 2.0

I have really been enjoying Scott Beale of Laughing Squid's photos since I discovered them over the last year. He goes to nearly every tech event and shoots terrific pictures. You can see his photos from ETech 2006 here.

For some reason though, I don't think he gets the respect from conference organizers that he deserves though. The reality is that having Scott at your event means that a lot of high quality pictures will get taken, posted up on Flickr and seen all around the tech community. This is a big deal and it's real.

I hope more organizers recognize the value that he brings - if you're willing to give passes to speakers for free you should do the same for your photographer.

Launching Aggregate Knowledge

I'm proud to announce that we are officially launching Aggregate Knowledge today.

Our goal is to deliver the best content to people based on the aggregate behavior of everyone who has gone before them. We think that the wisdom of crowds can help people get at the best of all the information that’s out there.

It seemed fitting that we launch at ETech 2006 since the theme here is the Attention Economy. Our Recommendation Engine uses attention information to provide relevant content and products.

We're live on Zvents, an events search engine, youcan see an example here about how we power their related events. Notice that this is a chocolate festival so you will see a fancy food show at Copia but  you will also find that because it's at a winery many of the recommendations are for wine tastings.

We're talking to some retailers and other website owners about powering related content on their sites. If you're interested in trying it out please drop me a line and I'll hook you up with a free trial.