I returned from Tokyo on Friday and am now somewhat back on West Coast time. Which is just great, as I’m hoping on a plane in a couple of hours to NYC for the Syndicate Conference, where I’m moderating a panel on Wednesday. The rest of my time in Tokyo was great. I can’t wait to return; luckily enough I’ll be back there in late June. For another post on our Tokyo trip, along with some pictures, see Jim Lanzone’s post over on the Ask Blog.

Yesterday we had the big press conference. It was a very interesting experience. We were at the auditorium at 9:30am, even though the press conference didn’t start until 1pm. We did a couple of walk throughs and met with the translators to go over our presentations. Soon enough it was time for lunch and soon after that the press conference began. I would say close to 100 reporters attended, and I think it went very well.

I arrived in Tokyo Saturday afternoon (It’s Monday afternoon as I type this). I’m more or less over the jetlag, which actually wasn’t that bad, and I’ve been playing tourist. I’ve never been to Asia before, and Tokyo is an amazing city. The Yamanote train line circles the city, so it’s easy to get around. Yesterday, I did the full circle on the train, walked around Shinjuku and then walked around Shibuya, where my hotel is.

Apologies for the lack of posting. In no particular order, things that I have done recently or will be doing in the not too distant future: I was part of the Recent Innovations in Search and Other Ways of Finding Information panel presented by BayCHI. I appreciated the opportunity to participate. I’ll be in Tokyo next week, participating in a couple of Ask Jeeves Japan events. I’ve never been to Asia, so I’m very excited.

It’s been a busy few weeks; here are some quick highlights: Early this week, we hired Garrett Rooney. Garrett’s super smart and we’re really excited to have him join the team. And most importantly, he’s another Sony PSP player, and we need fresh meat for our Ridge Racer and Wipeout Pure games. On Wednesday, Bloglines announced the ability to track UPS, USPS and FedEx packages. We were working on this when the Askquisition happened, and I’m really happy that we’ve finally been able to release it, as it’s my favorite new feature.

I had a great time at Etech last week and want to thank Marc Hedlund and Tim O’Reilly for the opportunity to speak. I think my presentation went over well, and being that it was the last session of the conference, I was pleasantly surprised at the packed room. Several people asked for a copy, so here it is. Here’s some coverage of my talk: Bloglines Founder - Tips from Startup Life Andrej Gregov’s Weblog: ETech - Bloglines reemer.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be flying down to San Diego to attend ETech. I’m also giving a presentation Thursday afternoon, titled “From the Garage: Lessons Learned Birthing and Building Web Start-Ups”. I’m still putting together the slide deck, but I’m looking forward to it. This is the first time I’ll be giving a technical presentation, and I think it’ll be more fun than the normal “business” presentations I’m used to giving. Plus there’s the bonus of being in San Diego again, which is one of my favorite cities.

Last night I was awarded the Tech Innovator award as part of the 6th Annual Wired Rave Awards. This is a tremendous honor and I want to thank everyone from Wired, especially Chris Anderson for his kind words. The awards ceremony consisted of a dinner for the winners at the Plumpjack Cafe in San Francisco, and then a party at The Fillmore. Both events were top notch. I met several of the other nominees and winners, and everyone was very nice, even the famous people.

Bloglines is looking for help as we continue to innovate and lead the news aggregation space. We’re looking for a Senior Product Manager, several Software Engineers and several Senior Software Engineers. All jobs will be based out of the Los Gatos, Ca office of Ask Jeeves. To apply, you must fill out the on-line application. Other jobs with Ask Jeeves are available here. The environment is fast paced; we’re looking for self-starters who thrive in an environment where they have a lot of freedom along with a lot of responsibility.

This past week has been hectic. I’m gratified by the overwhelmingly positive response to Bloglines’ acquisition by Ask Jeeves. As I’ve said, we’ve got great plans ahead, and once the dust settles a bit, we’ll be able to start rolling out new features again. We will start hiring in the next couple of weeks. As a first step, we’ll be hiring a couple of engineers and a product manager to augment our existing team.