Neel Shah got his scandal-phone returned; Kevin Marks got retweeted by ghosts and Al Yankovic was surrounded by nobodies. The Twitterati were haunted, in a good way.

Jennifer 8. Lee sought a "20something architect... construction worker... rapper," presumably for her Village People tribute band ; Elliot Holt ran into two squirrels and snapped a money shot; and Marissa Mayer mulled literature. The Twitterati were definitely seeking something.

Ever wonder how Technorati actually works? (Or how charming engineer Kevin Marks's accent sounds?) Some friends of the blog search company videotaped Marks (pictured) and fellow Technorati employees Ryan King, Tantek elik, Liz Dunn, and others explaining inbound links, tagging, how a blog gets ranked, and other technical intricacies.

What's a little startup to do when it's invited to two schmoozetastic parties in one night? Send the CEO to one and the marketing director to the other, natch. Yes, more than one startup actually did this (and several others hit both parties despite the hour commute) last night with Palo Alto's Stirr Mixer and Om Malik's GigaOM party.

Valleywag's first SloshCon at the House of Shields was so successful that my hangover's having baby hangovers. Remember the live-audience interviews and speeches on the game plan? Scrapped. We didn't want to ruin the vibe (half the crowd had arrived in the first 20 minutes), so we all kept on drinking and bullshitting one-on-one. (Top photo by Jeremiah Owyang)

Deep into the quest to make actually attending the ETech conference unnecessary, attendees recap everything for the rest of us:

ETech 2006 rolls on, and Scott Beale keeps photographing the folks who make the Internet. Tuesday's highlights include Tim Bray's Indy outfit, Esther Dyson's spelling, and Jen King's primal scream.

The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (or ETech for the impatient) is in full swing today, after a rousing start on Monday. The event sold out ages ago, but through the magic of Scott Beale's photography, we can pretend we made it in. (If you want to pretend you met Cory Doctorow and he loved your sci-fi story idea, have that fantasy on your own.) Here are highlights from Scott's meticulous Monday photojournalism.