I had a great time at Etech last week and want to thank Marc Hedlund and Tim O’Reilly for the opportunity to speak. I think my presentation went over well, and being that it was the last session of the conference, I was pleasantly surprised at the packed room. Several people asked for a copy, so here it is. Here’s some coverage of my talk:

• Bloglines Founder - Tips from Startup Life
• Andrej Gregov’s Weblog: ETech - Bloglines
• reemer.com: Lessons from Mark Fletcher
• Mike Rodriquez

Tomorrow morning I’ll be flying down to San Diego to attend ETech. I’m also giving a presentation Thursday afternoon, titled “From the Garage: Lessons Learned Birthing and Building Web Start-Ups”. I’m still putting together the slide deck, but I’m looking forward to it. This is the first time I’ll be giving a technical presentation, and I think it’ll be more fun than the normal “business” presentations I’m used to giving. Plus there’s the bonus of being in San Diego again, which is one of my favorite cities. One of the great things about San Diego is the restaraunts. I hope to have dinner at Spices Thai Restaraunt, which has the best Thai food I’ve ever had. But due to the lack of time, I’ll probably only get to make it to Pizza Port, a terrific microbrewery/pizza place. I most likely won’t get to eat at Cass St Bar and Grill, even though it has terrific specials every day. And one can’t forget the great Mexican restaraunts all over town. Anyways, hope to see you there.

Last night I was awarded the Tech Innovator award as part of the 6th Annual Wired Rave Awards. This is a tremendous honor and I want to thank everyone from Wired, especially Chris Anderson for his kind words. The awards ceremony consisted of a dinner for the winners at the Plumpjack Cafe in San Francisco, and then a party at The Fillmore. Both events were top notch. I met several of the other nominees and winners, and everyone was very nice, even the famous people. The photoshoot for the magazine was done at my house in early December. It was a surreal experience having a professional photographer, with his assistants and equipment, taking my picture. But again, everyone was great, and it was an enjoyable experience. btw, while I think my interview in the magazine is good, I don’t remember saying “Bring it on” in response to the question about Microsoft entering the market. That certainly doesn’t represent my attitude. Other than that minor quibble, I think the spread is great. For another, funnier, take on things, check out Jim Lanzone’s post on the Ask Jeeves blog. While I will do my best, I cannot guarantee that this award will not go to my head. Consider yourself warned.

Bloglines is looking for help as we continue to innovate and lead the news aggregation space. We’re looking for a Senior Product Manager, several Software Engineers and several Senior Software Engineers. All jobs will be based out of the Los Gatos, Ca office of Ask Jeeves. To apply, you must fill out the on-line application. Other jobs with Ask Jeeves are available here. The environment is fast paced; we’re looking for self-starters who thrive in an environment where they have a lot of freedom along with a lot of responsibility. We’ve got a lot of exciting things planned; help us continue to innovate!

This past week has been hectic. I’m gratified by the overwhelmingly positive response to Bloglines’ acquisition by Ask Jeeves. As I’ve said, we’ve got great plans ahead, and once the dust settles a bit, we’ll be able to start rolling out new features again. We will start hiring in the next couple of weeks. As a first step, we’ll be hiring a couple of engineers and a product manager to augment our existing team. I’ll post a pointer when that happens I’d also like to extend thanks to everyone that emailed me congratulations over the past week. I’m sorry if I haven’t responded, I’m suffering email overload at the moment. So if you don’t hear from me, please know that I do appreciate the emails.