I found this kinda funny. I don’t support one over the other, but if you’ve ever read some of the comments on a social media site you know where I’m coming from.

So far I’ve only attended one session. It was regarding Universal/Blended Search.
Moderator:

• Chris Sherman, Co-Chair, SES San Jose

Speakers:
• Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR
• Sherwood Stranieri, Search Marketing Director, Catalyst online
• Bill Slawski, Director of Search Marketing, Commerce360

Q&A Speakers:

• Erik Collier, Director of Product Management, Ask.com
• David Bailey, Engineer, Google
• Tim Mayer, Vice President of Product Management, Yahoo! Search

Mostly, the various search engines discussed how they see the future of blended search evolving. Obviously the engines want to include more and more content (video, images, etc) to keep users in front of their ads.

Some stuff to look for:
• Google News currently only provides text and images. Video should be available soon.
• Google Universal search will begin to shuffle features in the SERPs. For example, (as of 8/20/2007) a search for “Alex McArthur” returns 3 pictures of the actor and 10 standard web results. If a video or blog post about Alex McArthur became popular in the future, then a Google Onebox result may be added to the first SERP page.
• Third party videos showing up in blended search results.

Erik Collier, from Ask.com, reported a 30% drop of searchers going to second page as a result of blended search. Also, a 15% drop on searchers performing more than 1 query. According to Erik this means that people are finding what they want quicker.
*2nd page just won’t cut it any more. ;-)

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Take a look at this image.

The HTML tips (mouseover text) show the link from “companies-of-interest” directing to http://www.google.com/searchhistory/lookup?q=label:%22companies-of-intereset%22. Interestingly enough, “companies-of-interest” is one of my bookmarks. Hmmm … those search junkies out there will probably catch on to the relevance.

My latest site “enhancement” is my Ban That widget you can see on the top of my sidebar. It’s a fun site to tell the world about things you hate and why.

If my wife had a pet name for me I definitely wouldn’t tell millions of people. Way to let it slip Big G.

Is this a misspelling or an attempt to be cute with a pet name?
I’m not sure if the strawberry stem is meant to represent the “L” or not.

Oh, and while I’m in the mood to complain please prohibit Bruce Clay from advertising more than once a year on the podcast. Their ads nearly explode my speakers.

Where is the next generation? Did Nerds finally build the time machine or warp beam that would free them from this world?

According to some research (my highly tuned skill of observation) I’ve come to a more realistic conclusion. THEY ARE AMONG US. WE ARE THEM. Nerdom has evolved and dare I say become cool. Knowing the latest websites or how to program a functional website or app won’t get you stuffed in a locker anymore.

In the entertainment world shows such as LOST and 24 have taken over for the lack of Star Trek. These shows are more hip and appeal to more of the population, but still draw in flocks of those utilizing the power of the pocket protector. However, I wouldn’t rule out that this guy led the Nerds to paradise with his new time machine.