Tripharbor.com and Tripharbour.ca are both live as of last night. Initial response is very postive. See more over on the Tripharbor blog.

What a great feeling...

Just happened across this:

"TripAdvisor also recently announced the acquisition of smartertravel.com, bookingbuddy.com; SeatGuru.com; TravelPod.com; and Travel-Library.com. TripAdvisor also recently announced the acquisition of smartertravel.com, bookingbuddy.com; SeatGuru.com; TravelPod.com; and Travel-Library.com"

Wow. They're buying everybody that could control consideration and reach at the very early stages of travel planning. Not a bad idea, as long as you don't prostitute yourself (as TripAdvisor itself has done, in my opinion). Keeps the cost of reach down in the long haul, and keeps them from being meaningful sources for suppliers.

Neat to see TravelPod in there - they are an Ottawa-area based travel blog roll-up site.

 

Congrats to former Hotwire (Expedia-purchased) colleague Gregg Brockway on the launch of TripIt.com (http://www.tripit.com) at the TechCrunch40 event happening this week in California.

TripIt is a kind of pull-it-together travel itinerary tool, whereby you can make reservations in multiple locations and still end up with a single itinerary. In Gregg's words:

"TripIt helps you organize your travel plans. You simply forward all your travel confirmation emails to TripIt and we automatically create a master itinerary with your combined plans plus daily weather, local maps, directions and more. Then you can expand your master itinerary and share it with your friends"

It's not hard to see other possible revenue sources via affiliate relationships, meta search or advertising. As more of the US market's vanilla air / hotel / car business continues to move from third parties to suppliers, this type of a service starts to make a lot of sense.

(via BlackBerry)

 

Congratulations to my former Expedia Europe colleagues on the launch of TVTrip.com, a bilingual (so far) video rich travel comparison site. The team, including Marc Ruff - former head of Expedia France, Anja Keckeisen - former head of Expedia Germany, and Fabien Bourdier - Marc's Number Two at Expedia France, are some my favourite, and among the most talented, members of the original Expedia team (I actually interviewed Marc and Fabien Back In The Day), so I am very pleased to see them getting back in the saddle.

More comment about the service itself once I have had a chance to spend more time with it. It looks pretty solid from a content perspective for a beta, though. They have been busy.

 

At long last, mesh 07 is Go for take-off. And what an event it is looking to be. When Mike, Mathew, Rob, Mark and I decided to do this for the first time last year, our sincerest wish was to create a venue that would cast some light on "What's next online?" Well, It looks like we are getting that done.

Our keynotes are stellar: Richard Edelman, Jim Buckmaster, Michael Arrington, Tom Williams and Austin Hill each bring their own viewpoints and experience to "What's next online."

Our Presenting Sponsors are stellar: Windows Live, Edelman, Yahoo! and JLA Venture Partners have humbled us with their support, and we are very thankful.

Our Supporting Sponsors are also an illustrious group: eBay, ITAC, Expedia.ca, Canada News Wire, gwp brandengineering, Cisco, Chapters-Indigo.ca, MaRS and MCC Planners have all said that this is an event that matters. Thank you.

We are still working on the rest of our content and schedule, but we are really excited about how it's shaping up. Mark, Mathew, Rob and Mike have more, as does Mathew on the mesh blog.

All that's missing is you.

Register now.

In the past two weeks (or so) I've done interviews with PROFIT Magazine, Canadian Business and VISA's Small Business Resource website. Topic? Broadly speaking, Web 2.0 or elements of it and what the heck it's all about. That's right. It's November 2006, and leading Canadian publications (or more specifically, their Editors) are just now starting to ask "Soooo, what's this Web 2.0 thing?" To which some might say "Where've you been the past 4 years?" But, if you believe this stat from Zoomerang reported by BusinessWeek that 79% of marketers have never even heard the term Web 2.0, you'd be getting closer to the truth.

All of the "is Web 2.0 over and done with?" chattering is simply completely right. If the Regular Folk are now tweaking to it, Web 2.0 as The Next Big Thing simply has to be close to having run it's course, and the bleeding edgers had better get on with figuring out the NEXT Next Big Thing. For the rest of us? Well, let's get ready for the party to...start.

What, you say? But Stuie, you just said it's over. Yup. As New Shiny Orb, it is close to done. But, as Real Thing it might be just starting. And zowie that could be big.

I mean, c'mon, remember when people used to talk about "e-commerce" as a special thing? I used to chuckle then - it's not like people ever called having a call centre "phone commerce" or a store "brick commerce" - it was just new and the leading edgers got there first. Eventually, most people understood that these were all just part of "commerce" and got over it. Bank machines, DVD players, mobile phones, digital cameras. Categories mature and eventually go mass. And maybe we are seeing the start of that happening here, too. If so, that means that the real innovation (and at scale, maybe, too) and real money are still ahead of us.

Web 2.0 won't be a New Shiny Orb indefinitely, just like nothing ever is. Elements of it will just become part of how stuff is done. Big companies and governments will start to use parts of it (like mashups, web services, blogs and wikis), folks who never joined the computer club will find themselves using elements of it without realizing (like adding a comment, reading a user generated review or sharing a photo), and yet another wave of technological change will have washed over us.

Future users will likely never know that there ever was something called Web 2.0, but their lives will be better for it anyway. And that's just fine, I think. It's not like it's anything new.

 

As Rob Hyndman and Austin Hill mentioned yesterday, they, together with David Crow and myself are spinning up StartUp Camp here in Toronto. The concept is to apply the unconference concept to the business side of the startup world, as the StartUp Camp folks in the US have done so successfully.

It's all TBD at this point, but the place to keep tabs on developments is the wiki. If you have startup aspirations, plan to be a part of it.

Also, a reminder that the mesh meetup goes off next Wednesday, November 15th, at the Irish Embassy pub in Toronto. Let's us know you are coming via the event page on Upcoming and plan to be there for a general mix and mingle starting at around 6pm.

The Embassy is located at the northeast corner of Yonge and Wellington, in downtown Toronto. Google map here.

Hope to see you there next week.

Tags: mesh07, startup camp

It's not often that you can say "back by popular demand" and mean it, but in this case that's absolutely true. Your feedback (and our enjoyment, frankly) was so all positive that we are doing it again. mesh is coming back, next Spring, here in Toronto.

More details are to come, but in the meantime please save the dates and plan to join us. Registration (which we are working hard at keeping affordable) and keynotes will be announced soon.

In the mesh spirit, we are also hosting a meet-up after 6pm on November 15th at the Irish Embassy Pub in Toronto, for anyone involved in the online technology, media, financing or any other vaguely connected web-type. Or if you like Guinness :) It's just a chance to get together and share some web-by conversation.

Check out the mesh blog for more, including links to the podcasts of last year's keynotes (finally...I know, I know) and more from Rob, Mike, Mark and Mathew.

And see you at mesh07.

Tags: mesh, mesh07

Okay, so I know that the to-do over Rocketboom is frankly silly and tiny, but I still find it remarkable that, with all the interest in this story and where Andrew is taking it next, they are a day late putting their next show up there.

As they say, "enquiring minds want to know" (extremely apt saying on this occasion, as that's about the level of importance this thing has) and from a business perspective, I'd say missing the hugely-anticipated re-launch is likely not a good call, no?

Update: Rocketboom 2.0 beta ;-) is up, and I have to say I found it quite entertaining. And the interim host, Joanne Colan, is pretty strong too. Congrats!

Tags: rocketboom, goatrodeo

I can't help but have this really sinking feeling that we are entering the twilight of the current online boom(let). The froth feels like it is hitting a rolling boil, and I fear the end is nigh. Why? Well, there are a bunch of examples:

~ Lots of the glitterati of the current boom(let) are punching out to "do their own things".

~ The enormous row over the whole "Web 2.0 TM" thing.

~ The seeming gobs of new VC money looking for a home, any home, in the absence of any really compelling exit opportunities and atop crappy track records to boot.

~ Gawker laying off staff to get out ahead what they fear as a coming crash.

~ Conferences, conferences, conferences!!!

~ The current Rocketboom firestorm.

~ And, most definitely the growing hum that "it's different this time."

Well, you know what? It ain't different this time. Like it wasn't different last time. It's just smaller.

I fear it's time to roll up the tent and await Web 3.0. This party is smelling like it's winding down.

(photo credit: http://www.lightbox5.com/likeitmatters/50100138_76bd65c296-2.jpg)

Tags: web20, jumptheshark

My friend Mark has a post up riffing on the whole "we don't need your bloody marketing" thing that web 2.0 types tend to wax poetic on. And the post sorta makes me want to scream and shove sharp objects in my eyes.

Why? Because Marketing is, and near as I can tell always has been, the basis upon which virtually any good business has been built, and it misses the point completely. For the record, a-gain: Promotion is only a part of Marketing. An important part to be sure, but jeez louise people, it ain't the whole thing.

When I read things out there in the big world like "to be successful you have to have a product that meets a need, regardless of the marketing" or "the marketing was good, but they didn't get the distribution they needed" or "they had great marketing, but it was too expensive" it drives me batty. Marketing is all of those things. Anybody who thinks that somehow you can create something and then foist it on an unsuspecting public with enough ads and it will work must have a penchant for making their lives a living hell.

Marketing is, at its' core, recognizing a problem and then doing everything to profitably solve it. The best businesses stay completely focused on solving that problem in a way that resonates with their market. So for you webby startups out there, that's the thing to remember. It's not whether or not you can avoid spending money on advertising, it's how well you are making your customers' lives better.

Fact is, if you are doing real Marketing well, everything will be easier.

Tags: marketing

Congrats to the Farecast gang for moving out of private to public beta today. Though, with mentions on TechCrunch and BoingBoing, among others, it's not like my little heads-up here matters. That's some serious b-sphere coverage. Nicely done Mike and team.

Now their challenge is to prove that the whiz-bang, P.R.-friendly airfare predictor feature is more than the flavour-of-the-month, and to continue to build on the solid start of their metasearch tool. Oh, and to move into hotels because that's where the cash is. No small task.

Tags: farecast

 

...these things, which I will dive into more later.

1. Is it the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end? With all the people jumping off to "do their own things" (Tara, Scoble, Om) it sure feels like one of those.

2. Some other former Expedia folks are a part of a team which has launched a group travel site called TripHub. I am going to check it out and report back.

3. A good friend and the former President of Expedia Corporate Travel, Matt Hulett, is now doing a shopping start-up called Mpire. Another one to check out and report on.

4. There are a lot of Canadian online travel sites starting to advertise. I was driving along and heard 3 radio jingles in a row. Great that they are promoting themselves. But too bad they still suck.

Tags: tara, om, scoble, triphub, mpire

Tara Hunt, one of the keynotes at mesh, announced that she is leaving Riya, her employer, to do her own thing to grow her Pinko Marketing brand.

While I certainly wish her well and think she's tremendous, I have to wonder about the wisdom in leaving a hot pre-IPO start-up where she has been instrumental in pulling in boatloads of users and heading off on her own, child in tow and TN-1 visa in hand (yikes).

She says that she and Riya have grown apart, and that sure does happen, but I hope she knows what she's doing.

Break a leg, Tara.

Tags: tarahunt, riya, mesh06, web2.0

Sorry, but with due respect to the folks behind this now-defunct AJAX homepage (uhh...and the world needed another one of those, why, exactly?): When you chose that name, um, what did you expect?

See also Mark Evans.

Tags: fold, goatrodeo

There's certainly enough been written on this, and by people far better informed than me (check out Rob's great post, or Mathew's, for more on that) but for the record, I certainly get why O'Reilly's management company would try to protect their mark and agree with the logic of Battelle's response.

Was the way it was handled silly? Yup, a PR disaster waiting to happen. And happen it did. Do they really have a right to these words as they relate to a conference? Heck, I don't know. Didn't we fight this battle years ago with "Xerox"? I mean, these types of things get fought about all the time. That's for the lawyers (and depending what they say, we will likely change how we describe mesh in future).

But in principle, I'm with the theory of protecting the mark, in the context given, if it's theirs. If not, why ever invest in creating something that develops meaning, which is in and of itself valuable?

Tags: web20, oreilly, trademark, bunfight

I'm on with Leo and Amber doing "Inside the Net" tonight. It was great. Thanks, you two.

Tags: mesh06

I'm still both tired and buzzed from mesh, but I wanted to put some cogent thoughts out there, while they're still fresh, before coming with a bigger, deeper thing.

I think that the key take away for me is in those four words inside the logo up there. When we sat down and came up with the idea for this thing, and then went through the whole process of deciding what we wanted to "be," those four words best summed it up: mesh, connect, share and inspire. Help shine a light towards the future, and begin to create a platform to showcase the best ideas.And here in Canada, Toronto specifically.

Take a look at that logo and let the words rattle around inside you a bit. Then,  imagine what an event represented by that would look like. Got that picture?

Well, I think if you were there on Monday and Tuesday of this week, you'd say that's what we did. It feels damn good.

Tags: mesh06

Posting via 'berry, but just had a Queen's student, Alexandra Skey, say "thanks" for the fact that we did a student deal. She is having a wonderful time and getting a lot out of it.

That really means a lot.

Maybe next time, we can offer more student tix (heyyyyy, sponsors :-)).

It's today. Rock 'n' roll :-)

Thanks for your continued interest in snagging a ducat, but we are really, really done. No spots remain, no tickets at the door, no, uh, nothing.

Thanks to all for your incredible support. See those of you who are registered tomorrow.

Tags: mesh06tags, web2.0, conference, toronto

Congrats to Jay, David and Tara for a great BarCampTDot event today. I wish I could have been there longer and participated more, but last minute mesh-prep tied we mesh-ies up all afternoon.

I got there at the end of dinner and there was still a great turn out. There were apparently 130 Camp-ers at the peak - and a beer keg to boot :-). It is so great to see the Toronto tech community really coming together in lots of ways these days, and I am pleased to have been able to support it. Rob, Mike and mesh did, too.

I got there late, what with that last minute mesh stuff, which likely broke the un-rules, but I hope they will forgive me. Nice work, folks.

Tags: barcamp, barcamptdot

We are done, as of a few minutes ago. Thanks to all - sponsors, speakers, suppliers and participants.

I just posted a whack of niggly details about mesh, this coming Monday and Tuesday at MaRS in Toronto. Check it out, and if you haven't done so, register now.

The old "book early to avoid disappointment" adage actually applies here. It's selling very quickly, with just a handful of spots remaining - don't miss out.

Tags: mesh06tags, web2.0, conference, toronto

For the past 50 or more years, advertising has been based on one basic concept: yelling at people via the television, works. You could get enough of them in one place, nice and passive, and if you delivered the right message enough times you could create awareness. From that (and I simplify) awareness led to trial, trial led to preference, preference led to loyalty. At the heart of this process were the assumptions that (a) you could get enough people in one place to allow for scale and (b) the message was for the marketer to control.

Fast forward to 2006, and that past starts to feel like a trip to Never-never Land. Companies are spending 50% or more of their ad dollars on things like paid search, the money that's left is being cast across extremely fragmented markets, PVRs and Tivo are at long last making commercial-skipping "Me TV" a reality in a way that VCRs never really did.

Clearly, for marketers with a job to do and agencies and networks who would like to keep their jobs, this is a challenge of the first order. So what is the answer?

As we sit here today, I don't think anybody knows. People talk about micro-tactics and multiple small efforts, but how does that work when you need to reach tens-of-millions of people? This is not clear. You hear about "conversations" being important, but how do you control your message in that environment? Feels to me that you just don't. And on top of that, you have an agency and broadcast community that seems to want to wish these changes away and keep doing what they have always done. I've seen *that* movie: travel industry in around 1998, anyone?

At mesh we are tackling these topics with some of the smartest people in the field, and today Mathew, Rob, Mark are joining the discussion, too. I have a bit of a different take on the mesh blog, and Mike has a good post about how we are putting these principles to work promoting the conference.

If you care about this topic, you can't afford not to be at mesh. Register today.

Tags: marketing, media, mesh06tags, web2.0

I spent the afternoon with a few hundred other Canadian digi-types at the first-ever  Sympatico-msn Digital Ad Summit. First off, props to those mesh-sponsoring msn kids for pulling off a very strong event (nice work, Patrick - and thanks for the invite) and for attracting a very tech-savvy crowd. As a co-founder of mesh, and other big events in past lives, I have a deep appreciation of the, um, challenges of event production and this one came off very well.

Also kudos for presenting a very strong line-up, though I must say that Bob Garfield was a disappointment. I was actually really looking forward to hearing the whole Chaos Theory he espouses (and I subscribe to) regarding the implications of the turmoil in mass media, broadcasting and advertising. Unfortunately, he likely should have been stopped at the border. His talk, while rich in good stuff, was overshadowed by a condescending tone, out-of-touch Canada vs. US quips and punch lines which fell tortilla-flat. He seemed tremendously out of touch with the fact that his audience were among the most tech with-it folks in Canada. As opposed to those in, oh I don't know, North Korea, who might have been more likely to marvel at his digi-smart pronouncements. Shame.

That said, Steve Rubel kicked it (he's back in 2 weeks at mesh) as did Jeff Cole (whom my wife and I will have the pleasure of dining with tomorrow night. Oh boy, talking 'net future with the man presiding over all that data, while enjoying a nice bottle of Rioja? I'm like a kid with candy :-)). The gentleman from France who discussed mobile and media was fascinating, and while they are clearly miles ahead over there, I still can't get past thinking that we are at least three years away from it really taking off here.

Mark was there with me and shares his thoughts on Cole's talk. In all,  it was a great and thought-provoking event.

Tags: msn, sympatico, steverubel, jeffcole, bobgarfield, mesh06tags

One of the things we will be exploring at mesh is the impact that social media and the interaction that web 2.0 is enabling is having on politics and society.

In the US, for instance, political blogs have almost become mainstream, with some sporting weekly reach and unique visitors numbers which exceed all but a handful of major newspapers. The Huffington Post, Captain's Quarters...the list goes on and on, and the influence grows.

Not to mention the role that the web has played in political party politics Stateside. Dean for America, (now Democracy for America) Howard Dean's site during his last, ill-fated run for the Democratic nomination, has become viewed as the model for how to use the web efficiently for engagement and fund-raising. At it's peak, people were *paying*  to watch Dean eat a hotdog. Yup, really.

Canada is far away from that. In fact, you could say that there is huge evidence that Canadian political parties, steeped in senior back-room leadership who still might well have people print their emails for heaven's sake, are far out of that loop, despite superficial attempts to look like they aren't. Personally, I think unless that changes, they will have their communal butts handed to them online within two years.

In any event, politics and society is up for discussion at mesh. I have a post up on the mesh blog, and Rob Hyndman who is running that stream has some thoughts here. Mark and Mathew  also chime in. Mike just added a nice post about how his Dad is prime for taking his political thoughts online.

Hope to continue the conversation with you at mesh.

Tags: mesh06tags, politics, web2.0, blogging

In case you didn't really "get" this whole global technology / world-is-flat thing, you should check out Tara's BarCamp Bangalore pics on Flickr.

Technorati tags: barcamp, barcampbangalore

Well, maybe not. But certainly worth aiming for, no? At least that's the hope we have for mesh, the little shin-dig me'n the boys are pulling together for mid May here in Toronto. I am frankly pleased to see some pushback from Euan Semple on the whole unconference meme that has been floating around of late. Not to say that an unconference is a bad idea, but rather that saying it is the only way is as bad as saying *anything* is the only way.

Mathew seems to be of the same view, and Mark has a nice laundry list of what he's like to see. We are trying for a lot of that. My comment on the mesh blog here. Also, seems that mesh-er to-be Stowe Boyd is in the Euan camp (or should that be "Camp" as in "XxxxCamp"?).

Us? Well, we are trying for balance and thoughtfulness, being structured enough for newbies to be able to "get it" while being flexible and conversational enough to be engaging.

Will it be a spectacular train wreck? Hope not.

Technorati tags: mesh06links, web2.0, conference

Lots of talk today about the money going into the current wave of next-gen start-ups. Fair enough I guess, but I still come back to first principles:

1. Is it profitable, or can it be without much squinting?

2. Is it sustainable, within a reasonable expectation?

3. Does it matter to customers?

Some of these things do hit those three filters, but many of them? Hardly, and they stand a strong chance of being filed in the feature-not-business pile, or the that-was-cool-once pile.

As Om points out, there should be a difference between the "do it" boom and any potential investment boom. The ability to "do it" - lean, mean and smart - is what has made this go-round that much more exciting.

And as Mark says, it sure does feel like this is becoming a lot like Bubble 1.0.

If this rebirth of online suffers the same fate as the first go-around, well, that would be a shame.

Technorati tags: web2.0

I've thought a lot about Google taking a serious run at the Travel category over the past few years. Mostly because that's part of what I was paid to do, and also because it makes a lot of sense. So I was interested to see Mathew Ingram's piece in today's Globe and Mail (which seems to have spun out of this blog posting) where he talks at length about the prospect. For the most part, I think he got it right.

For one thing, Google certainly has designs on being a portal, if their recent moves with Finance and Real Estate are any indication. Beyond that, their competitors are already there in Travel, sorta, with Yahoo!FareChase leading the way and msn Travel (in typical Microsoft fashion) representing a half-step towards a fully integrated travel "thing". As well, there is a lot of money at play, both from an ad and a distribution cost perspective, and they have reason to want to maximize it. Finally, if they have been nervous about upsetting the ad-revenue apple cart in the travel category (huge numbers) that nervousness has likely been reduced by things like IAC's purchase of Ask.com. IAC maintains a controlling interest in Expedia, and with this purchase is both a big customer of, and a direct competitor to, Google.

However, I think that there is a big difference between Google ramping up their travel "experience" and them actually fully taking on the OTAs. In terms of them having some multi-site search experience and sending traffic from that to an OTA or a supplier (airline, hotel etc.). that seems like a pretty obvious thing. Suppliers would love it, and the competitive gauntlet has already been thrown down.

But actually selling travel? Yikes. Why would they? Call centres, rules and regs, etc. etc. Easier to just further solidify their role as gate-keeper, and take advantage of the lack of loyalty and brand meaning that these guys have to crank out the ad money.

Also, worth noting that most of this applies less here in Canada. For a bunch of reasons, the OTA and Supplier landscape is different and it is less likely that the existing dominant players here (Expedia.ca, AirCanada.com and WestJet.com) would suffer or benefit much from such a move by Google. Why? Well, the competition is lighter here, they often have exclusive inventory, offer pricing of global inventory in Canadian dollars, work better and have brand meaning that brings a lot of business direct.

Technorati tags: google, yahoo, travel, expedia, travelocity, orbitz, aircanada, westjet

I just wrote the following over on the mesh blog. I sort of liked it, so I thought I'd add it here, too:

Lots of talk today about whether money can be made from blogging, with the WSJ publishing a story on it (just the type of story to get the often-inward-looking blogosphere fired into a navel gazing frenzy. But I digress :-)).

I guess it sort of depends on who and how you ask, right? I mean, if you were to ask many of the folks coming to speak at mesh, who happen to blog, whether "blogging makes money" many of them would likely say "Not directly, but indirectly? You better believe it."

I mean, think of the untold millions spent on traditional advertising and PR to create just the type of profile and voice that some people have built for themselves and their businesses via blogging and social media. How can you tally the value of creating your own soapbox? In traditional media, I guess overall marketing efficiency metrics are viewed as the most important gauge of the effectveness of spend, but can one really say, categorically, that traditional PR "makes money"? It's tough. But when put in that context? Wow, blogging "makes money" in spades.

Does it do so directly? Not often. Just like only PR practicitioners, by a tight definition, are the only ones who directly "make money" from PR. But indirectly? Bloggers, their organizations and PR firms Clients, without question.

That's the way to look at it, I think.

Dave Winer comments here, mesh speaker Paul Kedrosky here, and mesh speaker Scott Karp here. Mark thinks aloud here, Mathew has some great points here.

Certainly food for discussion in the marketing and PR streams at mesh.

Technorati tags: blogging, wsj, web2.0, mesh06links

This is something I want to get into more deeply, but for now Steve Rubel has a great wrap-up on a session he attended this morning with a bunch of US broadcasting, advertising and marketing execs. The gist? In the US, some of the biggest TV execs still can't wrap their heads around the idea of micro-markets - not really, anyway - and some big marketers are getting ready to take a leap.

All by way of putting the challenge that all these media changes are creating for those who need to deliver a message and those who, historically, have been paid to do that in quantity into yet more perspective.

Hopefully this is something we will dive into more deeply when Steve joins me on-stage 1:1 at mesh on May 15th and 16th in Toronto.

Technorati tags: marketing, media, web2.0

More coolness from my buds at Zillow.com. My friend Lloyd Frink, Zillow President and my former Expedia.com colleague, announced that they are now offering close-to 3-D images, using MS Virtual Earth and Pictometry technology. Picotometry, apparently, is flying Cessnas above the USA taking these very cool pictures.

Always fun to read the Zillow blog, and see all the familiar names. And hey, when the crew who helped change how millions plan and purchase travel decide to turn their hand to real estate...? Giddy-up.

More discussion on TechCrunch and Search Engine Watch.

Keep it up, Lloyd, Rich, Spencer, David, Stan, Theresa, Amy, Mike, Garrett...phew. Man, is there *anybody* left in Bellevue? ;-)

Technorati Tags: zillow, web 2.0

From the look of most blog trackers today, you'd think that Larry and Sergei had finally developed the ability to walk on water and part the seas. Um, no, though they have launched an online Calendar tool which Om says is "quite capable." But, as my friend John Battelle says, the real deal here is that Calendar is further evidence of the portal-ization of Da GOOG. It's all coming together: The Pack, Base, Earth, Local, Google Finance, Google Real Estate. And, dare I say that my take on the aol deal is further evidence, too. Google needs to diversify revenue streams, and be in a position to hoover up more of the ad dollars that are heading their way as mass media continues to falter.

So I doubt that Calendar is The Answer, but it is part of the puzzle being solved before our eyes.

Mark Evans' thoughts ("part of a bigger picture") here, Steve Rubel's ("it's great") here.

Amen and hallelujah, I say.

Update: Paul Kedrosky has a good highlight/lowlight roundup here.

Updated Gratuitous plug: Om and Steve and Paul are all keynoting at mesh, Canada's next-generation web conference, of which I am a co-founder.

Technorati tags: google, calendar, mesh06links

News today on the Yahoo! blog of the new-and-improved Yahoo! FareChase. I just checked it out and have one word: Wow.

The hotel integration is tremendous. They are pulling from snazzy tools like Flickr and various user generated reviews, are shoveling reach to multiple possible sellers, snapping in some very cool satellite imagery, and are even managing to maintain good integration with their legacy "partner," Travelocity. Lots more revenue potential for Yahoo!, more selling opportunities for others including the supplier, and a richer customer experience. A win all around.

So, where oh where is Troogle? Calling Mountainview! Jane? Hello?

More discussion here and here.

Tags: yahoo, yahoo farechase, travelocity, google

Just blogged about this cool thing we are doing at mesh. Each day, we will have three people take to the stage for five minutes each, to talk about the cool thing they are doing, pitch for VC money - whatever. All the details here.

Mathew blogs it here, Mike here, Mark here.

You don't want to miss this. If you haven't done so, register today.

Technorati tags: mesh06links, web 2.0, conference, toronto