Michael Arrington certainly knows how to throw a party! I was lucky enough to make it on the guest list at last night’s TechCrunch 8 NYC party at Bed where there was plenty of cool schwag, an open bar, and tasty snacks. I was already a fan of Eurekster and was happy to see them there talking about some new developments with Swicki. I was also interested to see Compete there chatting about Snapshot, its new Web analytics product which offers up some of its data analysis to the public, similar to Alexa. There were many more 2.0 companies there, but my favorite of the night was partyStrands which provided the night’s rockin’ tunes according to the guest’s preferences.

If you store your photos online with Flickr, you may want to check out a little company out of the U.K. called Moo. They will print out rectangular slices of your photos into tiny little business cards which they call minicards. I just got my moo cards in the mail and couldn’t be happier, they are printed on thick paper stock and are just adorable! As a matter of fact, they are so nice, I don’t know if I’ll be giving any of them away, hmm..

This past Monday night I was thrilled to be invited to speak to Pratt’s Beta Phi Mu Theta chapter about Web 2.0. While only a few participants had heard of Web 2.0 before the session, everyone was very open-minded and extremely quick to catch on. We went through an hour-long whirlwind of 2.0 applications and concepts in an interactive tour which I really enjoyed. Although it went fast, the students have the wiki and the account passwords to practice and play around with later. I really like the idea of teaching from wikis, not only because of the “eat your own dogfood” principle, but because students then walk away with a resource from which they can continue to learn. Thanks to everyone who came and participated, and thanks to the Theta chapter for having me.

I don’t usually list news items, but I just couldn’t resist this one. I have mentioned sites such as Rollyo before, websites where users can go to create custom search engines without any technical expertise. I think that librarians and information professionals are the perfect filters for Internet searching, and with tools such as this they can recommend online resources in a searchable format. Rollyo is holding the “Great Searchroll Roll-off”, in which the winner will be awarded a video iPod, and an “extreme sense of well-being”. The contest runs between Nov. 9-16. What’s involved? You can check out all the details here. And if you’re interested, you can check out my latest creation here. Get rolling!

I had a great time on Friday giving my latest workshop at the New York Metropolitan Library Council. The session was a two-part workshop about online community with the first half discussing ways that libraries can build community through their website, and the second half focused on ways to go where the users are and offer services within other communities. We had some lively discussions and really spot-on comments. I love it when people share! Thanks everyone for coming.