Before we get back to the daily grind, I owe thanks to a few more people than those I mentioned yesterday.

First, I got this awesome package in the mail courtesy of the Ask.com team today.

I love it! Thanks so much, Erik, Patrick, Gary, and Jennifer!

Second, I wanted to thank the guys who helped me score some schwag at SES San Jose. I only featured people in my last post, but look what was inside my suitcase once I got home! Can you believe I managed this? I really don’t.

The individual photos have a lot of Flickr notes on them in case you were wondering who was giving out what.

In other news, I’m fortunate to have joined the Gawker team writing for probably one of my favorite blogs of all time, Lifehacker. It’s an incredible privilege to be part of such a wonderful team. Thanks for taking me on board!

And finally, as you may know, three of my pals started a tech-oriented podcast and I’ve been a guest on two of the shows. If you are interested in tech and social media news, check out The Drill Down. You’ll find me in episodes 3 and 6, but the others are pretty good too.

(Note: It will soon become evident that I started this on the plane. However, it’s Wednesday and I finally wrapped it up.)

As I write this post on the plane, I am already beginning to miss SES San Jose 2007 (August 20-23), which was one of the most successful search conferences that I was fortunate enough to be able to attend. Not only was it educationally enriching, it was also an extremely successful and exciting networking event. And this flight, which actually is running early, was by far the easiest check-in and take-off in my entire life of traveling. Even though my seat is broken (the seat back flung backwards as soon as the plane lifted into the air), life is good.

During the day, life was all about business, and the intellectual stimulation began. Seventeen (!) sessions were liveblogged by yours truly, and Search Engine Roundtable covered a whopping 64 of the 74 sessions. The evenings were filled with a little more laid back fun, from an Ask.com dinner on Monday night to an incredibly awesome Google Dance on Tuesday and a pretty crazy WebmasterRadio bash on Wednesday night. I have to say that it was great. Thank you Barry.

David Dalka from Chicago tagged me in a relatively recent meme, and although I’ve already answered this question once before, I decided that I’d do David a favor and oblige.

It took me a good deal of time to find eight things that people don’t really know about me, but I think I have it…

1. When I was young, my mother always said I was going to be a lawyer. I guess I always had a disposition for playing devil’s advocate (or fighting for something I firmly believed in). I still do try to make strong arguments, but I’m not an attorney. The closest thing to that was being a private investigator post-college.
2. I used to read books. A lot. Then, at age 12, I got my own computer. Reading was put on the back burner for about 14 years. I only started picking up books again recently after a close friend suggested that I read some good books.

How many times has a private beta piqued your curiosity? How many times has it turned you off because of the nature of it being “private?” What about both?

While the notion of an exclusive crowd joining a social networking site probably does frustrate you (as it did for me on many networks where it took a bit of time for me to score an invite), private betas are still very smart. The buzz surrounding the brand new piece of software is complete word of mouth marketing, and it works quite well in the favor of those who opt-in for such private tests.

Pownce is still in private beta. I compared Pownce to Twitter over a month ago, and people have consequently asked me to invite them (I still have some invites in case you’re wondering). Mashable was able to get a sneak peek of Notifir. I now want in. Donna Fontenot gave me a Grand Central invite last month. My good friend Muhammad Saleem is always giving away invites. And of course, there’s also InviteShare, which was recently acquired by TechCrunch.

Just a few months ago, I had a love-hate relationship with Digg. Now, after acquainting myself with the system and learning more about what works and what doesn’t, I’m one of the top users of the service. Do I still hate Digg? Occasionally. After all, Digg is a social network that unifies individuals with different opinions. You can definitely expect the unexpected here. Additionally, there are a few fixes I still hope to see for the Digg experience to be improved for all users. But do I still love Digg? I think that answer is self-evident. I find most of my interesting news from Digg, and I consider my knowledge of everyday news to be a lot more comprehensive now that I am an avid user of the service.

On Monday, I celebrated my one-year anniversary as a Digg member. After using Digg quite regularly lately in the latter part of my membership at Digg, I’ve gotten acclimated to the service and to the likes and dislikes of others. Granted, I don’t know everything, but I feel that I’ve gotten a pretty solid feel for what works and what doesn’t. Here are some tips that should help you get the most out of Digg too.