Conference paraphernalia is normally comprised of useful but boring office supplies and t-shirts. Except, it seems, at Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis's TechCrunch40 conference. Rafe Needleman of CNET blog Webware is shocked by one giveaway from "natural-language" search engine Powerset — test tubes of cranberry juice and vodka. We're not shocked, of course. We just suspect Powerset CEO Barney Pell is pulling the usual bar pick-up trick of buying drinks for the person you're trying to seduce. Everyone knows you're prettier when they're drunk.

Contact information for this author is not available.