ETech is over, so I'll take a look back on some of the meta-trends of the conference, gender balance in the attendees and covering topics Dick Cheney style.

Meridith Patterson's presentation on her Query By Example extension for Postgres showed how to make Postgres support advanced features for selecting and ranking data according to a given example. And even selecting and ranking data that is unlike a given example.

Danah Boyd takes a look at g/localization, a nasty term used to describe cultural clashes between global and local cultures. What happens when a local culture with one morality clashes with another culture of another morality in an global online space? Danah studied this problem and suggests a few courses of action to avoid these problems.

Have you wondered what the term Web 2.0 means? I have, and here at ETech Tim Bray offers a more solid definition.

Are you wondering what the Attention buzzwords at ETech are all about? I certainly did and wasn't able to make heads or tails of it until I had a chance to talk to someone immersed in the field. I think I understand the basic concepts and am now ready to take in more ideas on this topic. Read on for my initial take on the attention buzz.

Day two of ETech started off with a powerful demonstration of future user interfaces. The Multi-Touch display screen demonstration showed how using touch screen displays with more than one finger opens up the the world of user interfaces. This exciting innovation will require us to reconsider our core assumptions of user interfaces.

On the first day of ETech, Marc Hedlund shared a load of valuable proverbs with geeks aspiring to become entrepreneurs. Rather than going back to school to get an MBA, Marc suggests a number of things to consider if you have a tech background and are thinking of starting your own company.

As the Web 2.0 conference starts wrapping up I take a look at the various recurring conversations here in San Francisco. Read on for thoughts on VCs, staying small, business models, betas and AJAX.

The conference schwag at the Web 2.0 conference is awesome -- take a look at this bag of goodies!

Jason Fried presented five deliciously paradoxical points on how to make do with less. Less people, less time, less money, less this, less that to give you the competitive advantag