My first impression from the first-ever Austin Blog Meetup was that people who blog, or at least people who blog enough to decide to attend such an event, seem to make bookmarking a way of life.

Everyone has their own unique bookmarking behaviors. Some of us made notes in spiral notebooks, flagging portions of the conversation. Some of us snapped digital photos at interesting moments. Some of us stylused contact information into sleek little digital gadgets. But we all spent the evening listening to each other, and silently marking things for possible future comment.

Bookmarking Technologies

The venue for our meeting, Ruta Maya Coffee House, had been replaced or reincarnated as "Halcyon", an air-conditioned repository of hip urban furniture more in keeping with the increasingly über-trendy style of its Warehouse District location.

Unfortunately, the coming of air-conditioning to the venue formerly cooled only by Mother Nature's breezes was a harbinger of its decline and fall. The music was too loud to allow for conversation with anyone not sitting directly next to you, the drinks were of inconsistent and often disappointing quality, and the clientele showed a strong bias toward the "beautiful people" of Austin.

My turkey brie panini sandwich was decent, though, and it proved to be the catalyst for our discovery that at least a few things haven't changed yet.

We were joined by a quiet, wary, soft-spoken girl (not pictured) who apparently was not a weblogger, but one of the somewhere-between-broke-and-homeless travellers who were among the regulars at Ruta Maya. She asked for some food and accepted half of my half-sandwich, and later rather more boldly asked for half of the other half, too; bummed some cigarettes; chatted a little early on about her travels to Mexico; and eventually wandered away, evidently overwhelmed by our geekiness at last.

For the rest of us in attendance—six of the twenty-one registrants on the site—it was an evening of good, rambling conversation and delight in our various similarities and differences.

We managed to go a good long while before talking about blogging, but we did eventually discuss what our various blogs were about before returning to topics as varied as electronic music, the power of creative melting pots, board games, HBO television shows, and the ages-old never-ending question of high art vs. pop art vs. folk art.

Eventually we tired of the intrusive ambiance of Halcyon, so we said goodbye to Rob and Josh, and the rest of us repaired to the least-trendy spot remaining on 4th Street, the impeccably mundane Spaghetti Warehouse. We ate heartily as the kitchen closed before parting as new-found friends, in unanimous agreement that the venue for the next meeting will not be the same.

In Attendance: Prentiss, who also has an account of the evening. Jonathan Josh Sharon Rob, whose blog is still under wraps, and yours truly.

Remember Blogchalking?

It appears that Daypop has disabled the "blogchalk" keyword. All blogchalk searches now come up empty.

I rather suspected the search engine sites might not take kindly to this sort of direct manipulation of their engines, however well-meaning. It still works on Google, but we'll see how long that lasts.

07-16-2002 UPDATE: The blogchalk keyword appears to be back in action over at Daypop, so maybe it was just a bug, or maybe they have reversed their position and taken a sunnier view of the blogchalking phenomenon. We'll see.

I still think this practice will eventually be rejected by most search engines, though, or if not, it will eventually become useless, for the reasons so succinctly expressed by Kenan in the comments on this post.

I just like having the cute little wild-haired icon. It looks like a lemming.