Over the next few weeks, I’ll feature all this schwag on my Schwag Addict site. Until then, here are the contenders for best schwag of SMX West 2008. By the way, only exhibitors with schwag available to all conference-goers were considered for these awards (unfortunately, that means that the eVisibility shirts, which totally rocked, were not valid for entry).

Without further ado, here are the best shirts of SMX West ‘08:

The SureHits shirt is stylish and cool. I saw one person wear it at the airport, and my husband wore it out to lunch yesterday. In other words, people aren’t embarrassed to take it with them, and you can’t blame them. This shirt is hot.

SEOmoz has shirts! And I saw another guy at the airport wearing one!

The RankSense shirts were clever.

While I think supplies were limited, MatchCraft had an awesome colored shirt.

You can never have too many pens. However, one pen stood out in creativity above the rest:

At first glance, the WideMile pen looks like nothing but a pen with a lot of plastic. But in the dark, it becomes a pen that lights up blue!

And other winners of obvious prizes include:

SmartSearch Marketing wins the award for “Most Edible” Schwag with the M&Ms inside this little case. DoubleClick comes in a close 2nd with their mints.

Idearc ties for the “most useful” schwag award with this cool LED keychain.

Tied for “most useful” is the WebTrends MarketingLab magnets, which are extremely powerful fridge magnets. I like.

LookSmart wins the “most colorful” award with this sweet set of highlighters.

ABCSearch wins the “most fun” (or “most annoying,” however way you look at it) award for the coolest magnets that you can play with. These things click and make a ton of noise, but they’re super addictive.

Another “most fun” award goes to Bruce Clay for the colorful tanglers. You can’t go wrong with these toys.

Finally, in honor of my friend Curtis at Superb Hosting, this is his choice of “most fun” schwag (and I’d be inclined to agree if I didn’t actually spend 10 minutes with those little darts on my fingers. Beware; they actually do stop circulation!).

Last but not least, the Sphinn and Search Engine Land stickers rocked. That’s my laptop you’re looking at, and there’s room for other stickers. (I like stickers.)

Thanks for playing and hope to see you at SMX Advanced in Seattle this coming June!

Tamar Weinberg is a social media enthusiast who blogs about Digg and other social news sites and services on Techipedia. She is also a huge schwag addict.

At 5:12 pm PST, about 7 1/2 hours after Babblin5 submitted the post Two Diggs One Cup made it to the front page of digg. It took 156 diggs with 33 comments for the article to make it, something it would have taken less than 100 to do a week ago.

In response, Kevin Rose used the Digg Blog to announce that yes, Digg implemented a recent algorithm change. Immediately, the Digg community reacted strongly to these changes. Digg’s “unofficial” podcast, The Drill Down, which is led by the the top three Digg submitters, went into emergency mode on Ustream and people began offering their thoughts on the implications of the change. The top users were ready to propose that nobody use Digg at least until Monday.

The involvement on the podcast was so strong that it ultimately came to the attention of Digg founder Kevin Rose and its CEO, Jay Adelson. Both called in late at night (11PM Pacific, 2AM Eastern) to voice their reasoning behind the changes and to address other user complaints. I ended up staying up nearly all night to “liveblog” the event and summarized the reactions of the Digg staff in a post entitled Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson Respond to Digg Complaints. The takeaways:

• The Digg algorithm is still working itself out. We’re not seeing what will be the norm on the site right now, but in a few days, we will.
• Digg’s algorithm has been implemented to get a diverse crowd to vote upon any specific story.
• Digg is paving the road for a recommendation engine that will suggest stories for users to vote upon based on their past voting habits.
• Users being banned from Digg was also a concern. Jay says that there are typically TOS violations that account for these bannings. Obviously, additional information is not available.
• A concern also arose about an unspoken-about “autobury” list that would prevent certain domains from getting exposure on Digg’s front page. Neither Jay nor Kevin explicitly denied the existence of such a list. The tools available at the present time capture only a fraction of user data and cannot accurately pinpoint whether a story has been buried or not.

While I appreciate that Kevin and Jay came out to talk to the community on such short notice, after my story was submitted to Digg, it got buried within an hour, which makes Digg’s denial of the autobury feature still hard to believe. Meanwhile, two similar stories (that aren’t nearly as in-depth) are still on Digg’s upcoming list. Also, I’ve done my own observations using Digg Spy (Digg’s tool that records user activity on the site) and it has never missed any of my frequent activity, so while it’s believable that Digg Spy may not capture all data, it certainly does a pretty accurate job at capturing mine, and many people know that I’m a very heavy Digg user.

Is a Digg revolt still on the horizon? Quite possibly, yes. Concerns are still not being appropriately addressed. In the mass exodus that almost occurred, a Revoltnation website was erected to announce plans to revolt on Digg. Mashable and TechCrunch provide their own take.

Other Digg “revolt” coverage follows:

• Digg: New Digg Algorithm Angers the Social Masses, Valleywag
• An Open Letter to Digg from Top Digg Users, Valleywag
• Digg: New Algorithm Changes, Techmeme
• From Revolt to Revolution in 12 Hours or Less, Muhammad Saleem
• The Digg Community’s Concerns with Digg, The Drill Down
• Digg Algo Changes, SEO Wife
• Digg Revolt, Cornwall SEO

Tamar Weinberg is a social media enthusiast who blogs about Digg and other social news sites and services on Techipedia.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Kristen Wareham of Yahoo who told me a little more about the contest and its impetus. With the launch of Panama in February, the company decided to bring awareness to the new advertising platform in May and invited Yahoo small business owners to write an essay about how Yahoo could help them achieve success. The winners, who were selected by Yahoo! and Ivanka Trump, each received a trip to New York, a $25,000 budget from Yahoo! Search Marketing to be used towards a keyword ad campaign, access to a Yahoo! Search Marketing mentor throughout the year, and a website makeover from FastPivot.

In blistering 90+ degree heat and low visibility into New York City, the YSM team made strides with a great event. The Power Lunch in the Sky, as this was called, was literally a table held up by crane and suspended above the New York harbor.

Take off:

One hundred and feet in the sky:

As you can tell, I did not go up in the table, though they were kind enough to invite me.

This is a picture that was taken by Jim Larsen from the adjacent crane reserved for photographers—and no, I didn’t go in there either!

This contest was a great and successful way to help small businesses connect with customers. Great job, all, and thanks to Kristen Wareham and Dina Freeman of Yahoo, and Stephanie Luttringhaus of Voce Communications for your help and accommodations.

More pics follow.

The Yahoo Search Team, Ivanka Trump, and the winners:

Ivanka Trump and the presentation of awards:

Winners’ products:

Kids’ Crooked House by Glen Halliday (Yahoo! branded):

The Alpha Grip by Mike Willner:

Melissa Belland’s “Made in Heaven by Missy” Handmade Fairies:

You can read more about the contest and winner bios on the official page of the Ultimate Connection Contest.