While CEO Steven Marder was out hobnobbing with the Next Net 25 crowd on Thursday, I snagged the chance to finally present at a conference. The format of the Under the Radar conference was very dancing-with-the-stars-for-internet-startups. 32 startups brought together under one roof in the Microsoft Mountain View campus to duke it out in friendly beauty-pageant presentations.

Photos on flickr

The compaines were further subddivided into groups of 4, and Eurekster was assigned to the "Search 2.0" category held in the afternoon. We had 8 minutes to present our product. I went first, followed by Dion Lim of Simply Hired, Dave Pell of Rollyo and Wink's Michael Tanne. Then a set of 3 panelists (David Cowan, Managing Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, Bradley Horowitz, Director of Technology Development at my former employer Yahoo!'s Search & Marketplace Group, and Michael Arrington, Editor of TechCrunch) took turns commenting and questioning us on our design, technology and business models after which the audience asked questions then voted for their favorites.

Wink won the panelists vote for our afternoon "Search 2.0" category (Wink recently release "Wink Answers" which ties up to Wikipedia - very cool if I do say so myself), and we won the people's vote. I guess that confirms my suspicion that people like us (or at least the three little dudes who guard the community-raked result listings).

Meanwhile, Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive lobbed a bone to the bloggers watching the fireside chat, claiming News Corp had bought "a company in the room" that day. Of course, that spawned a surreal wave of 2.0 hyperchatter across the blogosphere, with every blogger worth their salt, voting for one startup or another. Of course, I know who it is - but I'm not saying. ;)