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Following is a roundup of topics discussed repeatedly at Etech 2005. It is an entirely subjective, non-comprehensive listing of the stuff I heard about in multiple contexts, with pointers to session descriptions, transcripts, reactions, and blog items. I’ll be updating this list over time, so if you have corrections or additions, please send them, but please note that I’m filtering, not simply aggregating.

• Search engine improvements: Several search engine companies were present. Most of them announced new tools and features.

  Sessions: Google’s AdWords, Yahoo Web Services, Ask Jeeves Alpha, Microsoft Research Labs, Yahoo! Research Labs, Google Research Labs, Bezos on Vertical Search

  Related sites: research.yahoo.com (Yahoo! Labs), next.yahoo.com (Yahoo! Technology Demos), developer.yahoo.net (Yahoo! Web Services Developer site), labs.google.com (Google Labs), code.google.com (Google Web Services Developer site), google.com/apis/ (Google Web Services signup), Ask.com Search Tools, A9’s “Vertical Search” plug-in index

  Coverage and Transcripts: Daniel H. Steinberg on “From the Labs”, MIT Tech Review on A9’s “Vertical Search”, my piece on A9, John Battelle on OpenSearch, Dare Obasanjo on YSDN, Gordon Gould on Yahoo! tools

• Ontologies and tags: Etech played host to a number of big-brained technologists waving their hands about ontologies, taxonomies, and tagging (aka “folksonomies), the latter being a new spin on an old concept (keywords) but suddenly relevant as demonstrated by the success of Flickr, del.icio.us, and Technorati.

  Sessions: BOF: From Trees to Tags, Ontology is Overrated: Links, Tags, and Post-hoc Metadata, Folksonomy, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mess

  Coverage and Transcripts: David Weinberger on “Ontology”, Cory Doctorow on “Folksonomy” and a partial transcript of the session, Mark Taylor on “Ontology”, David Weinberger on “Folksonomy”, Eric Benson on tagging, Alberto Escarlate on “Ontology”, Tim Oren on “Ontology”, Jeff Clavier on the BOF, Audio Transcript of Shirky’s Ontology is Overrated Session

  Related: Cory Doctorow on Metacrap, Clay Shirky on the Semantic Web and on folksonomies, Weinberg, post-Etech, on broad vs. narrow folksonomies

More to come…