• Best. Party. Ever: At Jangl's bash tonight at San Francisco club Mighty, not only is there a menu including filet mignon and salmon mousse (longer menu after the jump), a hosted bar, and a live jazz performance by members of the company, but thanks to Jangl's service — an ID you can hand to strangers instead of your phone number — you can flirt without consequence!
• CANCELLED: Artificial Intelligence superstar Marvin Minsky, co-founder of MIT's AI lab, gives an "intimate conversation" at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Ten bucks at 6 PM. [Eventful]
• Hey there hard charger, before you try a polyphasic sleep schedule, better learn how sleep works at this lecture by a fellow of the Stanford Sleep Clinic. [Eventful]
• Dogster celebrates its 300,000th user tonight from 6:30-9 at its offices in Potrero Hill. Expect milkbones and tummy rubs, if you've been a good boy. RSVP to russell (at) dogster (dot) com.

Get a Jangl ID in Advance

A key part of the experience will involve having your own Jangl ID. . .and to have that, you should sign up now (if you haven't already).

Why? At the party, we'll have some Jangl "social cards" available that have spots for your name and your Jangl ID. They're designed in standard business card format, and you can take your own stack of cards with you when you leave. Then, later, you can hand them out as desired, and help spread the word about Jangl.

If you haven't signed up, just visit Jangl and click on "Register" (or click here). Don't worry about the "closed beta" notification — you'll promptly get an email invitation at the address you supplied. Click on the link in that email and sign up, and bring your ID to the party so you can grab your Jangl social cards.

Food & Drinks

Along with a hosted bar from 6 - 8 p.m., we'll have some seriously good food available. See below (and yes, this probably beats anything else you'd eat on a Wednesday night in October). This is only a partial listing.

• Vegetarian Mini Samosa with Mango Chutney
• Mint Marinated Lamb Skewers with Tahini Sauce
• Beef Filet Mignon Slice on Mashed Potato Beignet
• Steamed Asparagus with Italian Dip
• Vegetarian Roasted Raviolis with Soy Cream
• Home baked Baguettes
• Cajun Chicken Bites with Toasted Cashews
• Smoked Salmon Mousse served in Vol au Vent
• Gorgonzola & Caramelized Asian Pear served in Sugar Mini Cone
• Scallops & Shrimp Ceviche

The blogger's main premise was as follows: The Semantic Web, a logic-based version of the Internet (and an old idea), could render Google obsolete with an artificial intelligence system that provides real answers instead of keyword-based responses.

Sure it could, if Google didn't plan to innovate for the next decade. Google has five advantages that will keep all but the most determined innovators from beating it to artificial intelligence.

• Google knows semantics. Its entire business drives it toward pulling meaning from context. Better semantics make better ad placement and more precise search results. That's the reasoning behind contextual ads, topical search results, and the closely guarded and ever-changing search algorithm.
• Google has the smartest people in the world. Or damn close to it. Google's increasingly discriminating hiring process weeds out all but the top engineers — executives are fond of saying that Google only hires people smarter than half its employees. As one tech exec said, "Yahoo's morning bus may have wifi, but it doesn't have any PhD's on it."
• Google has Marissa Mayer. All "Marissa is a robot" jokes aside, Senior VP Marissa Mayer, one of the most powerful Google executives after founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, is a titan of artificial intelligence. For her Bachelor's and Master's at Stanford, she specialized in A.I., and she holds several patents in the field. Her knowledge will not be lost in her role as Google's product gatekeeper — it's Marissa who decides what products are ready for release.
• Google is filthy rich. And don't think clickfraud will bring them down — today, Google launches GBuy, a payment system that trumps pay-per-click advertising with pay-per-sale, meanwhile bringing in the dollars of would-be buyers who don't trust vendors, but do trust Google. All this income gives Google a lot more room to play than its most ambitious competitors.
• Google says it's working on AI. The co-founders already said that they're building a sharper artificial intelligence. Their new ambient sound translator can already identify a TV show from five seconds of computer-captured sound. Google plans to use the system for even more contextualized ads and content. Why this isn't the biggest tech news of the year is a mystery.
• Google is not distracted. The company's major competitors are Microsoft and Yahoo. The former is plagued by unwieldy plans for an operating system, software suite, and struggling media network. The latter is approaching media company status with an expanding network of original and outsourced content. While both Microsoft and Yahoo are making valuable progress in other fields, neither is innovating in search anywhere near the rate of Google. That's why over the past year, Google is the only engine with a growing market share in the U.S., and why Google could soon become China's top engine as well. And Google will stay on top — by beating everyone else to the world's first global A.I. system.

Refuted: Wikipedia 3.0: The end of Google? [Evolving Trends]