Highlights from the Web 2.0 Conference

It's Friday afternoon and the Web 2.0 conference is winding down. Lots of great info and I have much to digest. But here's a quick collection of my personal highlights from the last three days:

• Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel stating that user-generated content will be a priority going forward.
  
• The debut of robust Ajax apps - in particular, Zimbra, a new email/calendar app.
  
• Yahoo's new Mindset search engine where you can express your search intent using a slider. Moving the slider between shopping and research changes the sort order of the search results in real-time.
  
• Surprise appearance by Google's Sergey Brin. Best comment - when asked whether Google hurts small companies when they roll out a new product, he replied that the same small companies probably get calls from the major portals soon after.
  
• The teen panel where a group of five teens gave some of the best one-liners of the entire conference. Best line: "Burritos and gasoline" when one teen was asked how he would spend $100. Key statements: Google used for school/homework/shopping research, MySpace is all over high school but becomes passe in college when Facebook takes over.
  
• The table next to me at dinner playing a Web 2.0 buzzword drinking game.
  

I'll write a more thoughtful analysis of the conference within the context of our business later.

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