Do you Yahoo?

Well, if you do - Yahoo! has revamped and the new My Yahoo! page allows you to add RSS feeds to your page. Any RSS feeds, not just the ones in their list. The only downside is that you have to add them one by one instead of being able to import a list. Oh well. It’s still pretty cool. Take that MSN!

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If you currently use Outlook to check your MSN hotmail, you will soon have to pay for that privelege. Starting this week, that feature will not be available to new subscribers. Current users will have to move to paid service sometime in the next few months, and by April of next year, everyone will be paying for it. According to Microsoft, this isn’t being done to increase the paying numbers of Hotmail users, it is an effort to cut down on spam. Spammers are apparently abusing this feature. According to Brooke Richardson, lead product manager for MSN at Microsoft: “Essentially what spammers do is create scripts so they can rapid-fire e-mail from Outlook or Outlook Express and pop off a hundred e-mails from each of those Hotmail accounts in rapid succession,” Richardson says. “On certain days we have seen tens of thousands of Hotmail accounts set up and spamming in this matter.” Hmm. What do you think?

I just love Google. They keep coming up with new things, tweaking old things, and generally making the internet a better place. Meet the new and improved Google Local, a site to find local businesses on the web. It has a cleaned up design, new features, and more precise results than before (if you ever bothered to even use it before). It even has a map displaying the locations of your results. Did you know there are 6 pages of info if you query “wi-fi coffe” and “Tampa”. As Nicole Ritchie would say, “That’s HOT.”

Last night was awesome! Getting to meet everyone IRL was very cool. I was surprised at how many people actually came! I was thinking that a lot of people were going to end up blowing it off, but that was not the case at all. It was so nice to put a face with a blog…I found myself introducing people as "this is Gypsy Girl, I mean, C.J…..this is Dave Dorm, I mean, Dave." I can’t wait to get the blogroll of everyone who was there so I can check out their sites. There were just a few that I couldn’t place off the top of my head, though it’s highly likely I had been there before and just forgot. I thought Splitsville was a fun venue, but maybe just a little loud for decent conversations. And with our centipide-like string of round tables, it was impossible to chat with anyone at the far end. You’d have to yell. (So, good idea, whoever came up with the seat-swapping game!) But Bill said that "next time" SoHo Tampa wants to sponsor the event, and promises to find us a place more suitable to our needs. And yes, Tyler, we’ll try to make sure it has 802.11.

Highlights from the TBBF:

1. Everyone screaming for the audblog
2.Ruthie’s gi-normous drink
3.Lewis’s run-down of his crazy referrers
4. "Everyone move 4 seats down to your right!"
5. Bill and Rachel meeting for the 1st time after so many near misses
6.  Young and old getting along just fine
7. Learning about Flickr from Branille
8. A promise of an invite to Orkut via Dave
9. Better late, than never! Even people who couldn’t make it at 6:30 did a drop-by
10. Knowing that we’re going to do it again!

See the pictures at the Tampa Bay Blogger Fest website and see my pictures from my camera phone. Branille promises pics soon! And Luka has pictures galore. Melissa uploaded a pic of THE balloon at Flickr (among other photos), and, thanks to Branille’s invite, I joined Flickr as well.

Be sure to stop by SoHoTampa and leave a comment about what you would like the next event to be like.

It’s not good to wake up hungover on the day of the Tampa Bay Blogger Fest. What was I thinking last night? I should have left that bar a lot earlier than 2 AM. Ugh. My head hurts and my stomach is quesy. But I’ve got 6 hours to feel better before the big event tonight. I think I’ll make it. I am really looking forward to it! Can’t wait to see everyone there!

Would you like to see the map? This very interesting website has lots of statistics on spam, among other things. (Did you know 10 out of 13 email mesages are spam?) They also list the top 10 sources of spam activity. #1 on the list is 207.69.200.69….hmm…can’t we ping them to death or something?

This is pretty cool. Maybe you already know about it, but I just found it and thought I would share. The Google Zeitgeist is the website of “search patterns, trends, and surprises according to Google.” Meaning, it’s the website (maintained by Google) where you can go see what everyone is Googling. It has the top 10 searches in all the categories, and it also has the top 10 Gaining Queries and the top 10 Declining Queries. A virtual who’s “hot or not” of the internet itself. Neato. I was sad to see that the #1 search last year was “Britney Spears.” C’mon, people, we can do better than that, right?!

P.S. Speaking of Google, I still have Gmail invites. You want?

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image from http://branille.net