Getting Wild And Weird At The Web 2.0 Expo

ALL ROADS LEAD TO TOM

Steve Pearman, SVP of product strategy at MySpace, discusses the launch of the social networking site's MySpace Application Gallery during his keynote Thursday at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. The gallery features some 1,000 new widgets for the MySpace base of more than 100 million users to add to their profiles.

If the MySpace user-base was a country, Pearman noted, it would be somewhat smaller than Japan, but with slightly greater per-capita consumption of badly drawn manga.

TWEET HOME ALABAMA

ZOMG! It's Twitter, the micro-blogging platform that's sweeping the globe! This display updated Web 2.0 attendees with the latest Tweets from users all around the world -- just over half originating from Robert Scoble alone.

HOPE THIS DOESN'T HURT OUR PAGE RANK ...

Google's Shawn Shen mans the search giant's Web 2.0 Expo booth. Inquiries as to whether the inflated structure was a metaphor for Google's share price went politely unanswered.

WORKSPACE COLLABORATION ON THREE BREAK!

Andy McLoughlin, co-founder of UK-based workspace collaboration platform Huddle.net, chats with Google software engineer Brett Slatkin at the Web 2.0 Expo. On Wednesday, Huddle.net launched its first major channel program in Britain and the US, offering VAR partners 30 percent commissions on resales of Huddle packages.

Resellers will also receive full training, access to online support and participation in quarterly Webinars, according to McLoughlin. Huddle.net was a featured presenter at January's DEMO exhibition of new technology in Palm Desert, Calif. and counts large UK retailers such as Boots among its customers.

THE MORE YOU SIT, THE MORE YOU TWEET

What would the Web 2.0 Expo be without beanbags? Yoono's Yann Landrin-Schweitzer, foreground, Twitters the hours away while colleague Nash Lincoln looks on in his own comfy chair at the social search engine's booth on the show floor.

POLLY WANNA HACKER?

A San Francisco original totes his tropical birds in unique fashion near Moscone West, home to the Web 2.0 Expo through Friday. Pirate regalia is totally 1.0.

MICRO-SCHWAG BONANZA

A crowd gathers at Microsoft's booth to grab assorted freebies like this pile of Silverlight-branded t-shirts. The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant collected the lion's share of Web 2.0 Expo buzz Tuesday with the debut of its Live Mesh software-plus-services platform.

DOWNTIME 2.0

'Dude, have you ever this is going to sound weird ... it's just, did you ever get the feeling that you've been transported into the middle of a really boring example of Business Metaphors clip art? Anyway, let's meet up later for a close-up of our hands shaking in front of a cash register or, you know, a climbing stock arrow or something.'

MIND MAPPING THE WHAT NOW?

Spinscape of Troy, Mich. pulled out all the stops with a small army of bewigged booth barkers promoting the start-up's node-based organizational tool for collaborative brainstorming.

WHILE MY INNER MONOLOGUE GENTLY WEEPS

Cheesy puns aside, Spinscape.com offers a pretty clever and intuitive brainstorming tool for pulling a ton of diverse online content into buckets and mapping it in an accessible, non-linear interface.

THE SAAS IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE, MY MASTER

A Salesforce.com employee touts the marvels of Force.com, the San Francisco-based Software-as-a-Service company's new 'platform-as-a-service' offering for developers. Midi-chlorians not included.

DOWN IS THE NEW UP

Later that day, many would be chagrined to discover that circumstances again required their presence on the floor they had just vacated.

ANOTHER PUZZLER FROM DISNEY

The Walt Disney Internet Group, on hand to promote its job listings site at Web 2.0, handed out Rubik's Cubes to booth visitors. We found our cube to be almost as tough to decipher as Disney's seven-figure deal for a 15-year-old's 'memoirs'. Both of which, coincidentally, are likely to result in severely damaged plastic.

ONE-THIRD OF THE UNIVERSAL SYMBOL FOR MOONSHINE

It's eXpresso Man, the mascot-logo of spreadsheet-sharing Web site eXpresso.com and hero to actuarially gifted children everywhere! Perhaps not coincidentally, the shape of eXpresso Man also means 'fresh water, safe campsite' in the symbolic language of hobos.

INSERT 'MONKEY BUSINESS' JOKE HERE

The Remy Corporation, an IT employment agency, presents Monkey Mountain at their Web 2.0 Expo booth. The message is clear -- given infinite time and infinite resources, 1,000 temps are going to steal your job.