DISQUS

I'll let you know if the Indians climb out of dead last in their division.

I also use Tweetscan for some searches that have some obscure terms for which results are few and far between. Granted, it's a little old school to rely on something hitting my inbox, but it seems to work. Except...when it doesn't (good ol' Twitter!).

I like the suggestion of Christopher S. Penn to run multiple Twitter search feeds through Yahoo! Pipes for further filtering/cleanup. Although, with some of my past pipes, I'm never super-confident that the app is doing what it's set up to do.

Agreed. Don't even THINK about taking that truck!

Yep. I bit. Grrr...

Great summary! I did not attend -- actually bolted out of Austin just as it was getting rolling -- but I had a number of co-workers attend and I kept one eye cocked to Twitter for a bit of vicarious consumption.

The *one* little bit I'll take a minor issue with is: "You have to launch a blog, join Twitter, get your profile up on Facebook and any other social site and become active." Specifically, "You have to launch a blog." Both my own company and many of our clients feel like they have to have a blog. But, increasingly, it seems like a number of the smarter minds in the world of social media are pointing out that: 1) DON'T have a blog if you're not "ready" to embrace social media, and 2) there are scads of ways to engage (to even "be loud and proud") without a blog.

I'm increasingly finding myself mounting a soapbox telling people to NOT launch a blog until they've been engaging in the blogosphere in other ways for a month or two: read other blogs (and comment!), Facebook, Twitter, and the catch-all "any other social site."

When you start finding yourself leaving comments that go off on tangents -- but that you feel are making good, somewhat original points -- and that's happening a lot, then you might be blog-ready.

Other than that, I love the summary!