The initiative began in Mountain View, then expanded into places like Santa Monica, Chicago, New York and Boston.

About a month ago, Google announced that it was kicking off its North American tour for the series, with dates in Portland, Victoria, New Orleans, and Albuquerque.

Today, Google announced a more global initiative for the series. Events will be coming to Amsterdam, Bogota, Melbourne and Vienna.

“There’s plenty more to come in 2012 as well, when we’ll be visiting Auckland, Berlin, Buenos Aires, London, Mexico City, Paris, and Sydney, just to name a few,” says Arlene Lee of Google’s Inside AdSense team. “Members of the AdSense team will share the latest product updates and offer 1-to-1 optimization consultations, and you’ll hear from experts on areas such as DFP Small Business, Mobile, YouTube, and Webmaster Tools. You’ll also have the chance to meet other local publishers during the day to share your experiences.”

If you need an invite to an event, Google has a form here you can fill out to request one.

The “solve for x” conference continues to be really interesting. Today we have had talks on transforming education, 5x improvements in agriculture through better decision support, synthetic biology and carbon-negative biofuels.

The “solve for x” YouTube channel and web site with all presentations will be up by Monday.

Hat tip to 9to5Google, who provides a more detailed bio for DeVaul, which says he is a member of the “Google [x] Rapid Evaluation Team” and that “he works in a secret Google lab that may or may not be filled with roving robots, space elevators, and talking refrigerators.”

You may recall back in November when reports came out about Google operating such a lab called “Google X”.

In an earlier post, DeVaul, who used to work at Apple, described the event as a “fascinating, invite-only gathering of global innovators” driven by “short, technology rich presentations on topics ranging from low-energy, low-cost water desalinization to stretchable silicon biosensors.”

The description on the Solve for X site says:

Solve for X is a place where the curious can go to hear and discuss radical technology ideas for solving global problems. Radical in the sense that the solutions could help billions of people. Radical in the sense that the audaciousness of the proposals makes them sound like science fiction. And radical in the sense that there is some real technology breakthrough on the horizon to give us all hope that these ideas could really be brought to life.

We can’t wait to share what we discover.

The site is not actually open to the public yet, though you can give them your email address to be notified when it opens up.

There’s a YouTube channel, but there’s only one video up so far:

DeVaul says more videos will be up this afternoon.

Following are some tweets from DeVaul:

Given all the talk about Google X and robots, this might be the most interesting one:

That’s a long trip for those of us in the states (or for those in many other parts of the world for that matter), so if you were unable to attend, you could hardly be blamed. But that’s what makes the Internet great. Attendees and presenters have shared info and commentary about the event for everybody else to see. I’m sure it doesn’t quite match actually being there, but it’s better than nothing. And it’s free.

Some presenters have shared their presentations online. Here’s one from Aviv Manoach:

Here’s one from Mark Ginsberg:

Dixon Jones shares one here.

Ben Druce offers a live-blogged account of SMX Israel here.

“The SERP (search engine result page) scene from Google has always been changing – so their updates such as Search Plus Your World and Panda are not necessarily spoken of with resentment – Panda specifically is a good wakeup call to many for remembering that real people like fresh and real content,” he says, in a separate “highlights” piece. “However, the notion that Google is being unfair in their current practices is now coming to the forefront. The most common claim is that Google SERPS are showing Google Plus results on top of the far more relevant traditional organic sites, or even Facebook or Twitter results. The general feel was that Google is here to stay, and if we don’t like it, we still have to deal with it.”

Nichola Stott has her own summary of the event, concluding that the speakers “seemed to be very much in agreement on the following points:”

• There is a very clear chronology of events, which gives a clear directional guide as to your future search strategy. Know your search history and you know your search future
• It is getting harder and harder to fake it – plus why bother? If you can’t deliver then what’s the point of trying to rank a mediocre page anyway? (Mediocrity doesn’t convert so well)
• “Treat Google well” to continue to succeed and you can’t go far wrong. {Quote is from Eli Feldblum, though I have paraphrased.]

Gil Reich compiled a list of the “best lines” from the event, which includes:

Roman Zelvenschi: Nobody knows how to pronounce my last name, but that’s OK, I rank number 1 for it.

Michael King: When you interact with people on Twitter don’t use the same account that you use to Tweet SEO articles. That’s like trying to pick up a girl while holding a book called How to Be a Pickup Artist.

Reich has a more complete round-up of the event here.

It’s also interesting to see conversations that transpire in the aftermath of these conferences. For example, this one on Google+ including one of the presenters, Miriam Schwab, about the necessity of using Google+ for search marketing. Schwab said in a post, “Welcome to all my new followers since SMX Israel yesterday. Oh the hilarious irony that after bashing Google+, my community here grows. Love it ”

Aaron Zakowski responded, “Hi Miriam, I enjoyed your presentation yesterday. But despite many people’s feeling about G+, all of us marketers need to be here b/c Google is making G+ a necessary component for online success. I predict that within a few months, G+ will be more important to most us than Twitter.”

Schwab replied, “Aaron, I don’t disagree. Google has made Google+ necessary. My problem is that they are forcing us to join, and promoting Google+ results over other networks, even when the relevance is questionable. They are acting like a big bully, and that is not the right way, and maybe even not the sustainable way, to build community. We will be here because we have to, but will there be activity here? Will non-marketers join too? Possibly not, since they’re all comfy on facebook.”

A pretty timely discussion, given the regulatory scrutiny Google is getting.

Sigh.

Well, whether you’re of the can’t-beat’em-so-join’em group or if you actually expect/hope the world to end this year, some prophetic Facebook users have created an event page about the pending armageddon just for you. The concisely titled event, The End of the World, is currently accepting RSVPs for those planning to attend the annihilation of humanity or, if you’re still on the fence about attending, you can simply check yourself as a maybe. The event is slated to take place on “Planet Earth, Every Street” and the additional information provided on the event’s page is appropriately simple:

INVITE EVERYONE!!!!
This might, or might not, be the biggest thing since sliced bread so don’t let your friends miss this possibly life changing experience. I want to everyone on Facebook at this here shindig so don’t disappoint.

It’s become commonplace for people to create farcical event pages for disasters. Some of you may recall the Post-Rapture Looting event from last year before the apocalypse decided to call in sick. If the comments on the event’s page are any indication on the quality of party animals you can expect to encounter on the ubiquitous Every Street – and, more importantly, be stuck in the company of post-armageddon – you might wanna take a pass on this global catastrophe and wait around till the next cataclysm:

The End of the WorldI can’t wait!! OH WAIT, YES I CAN! *heh* *heh* 20 minutes ago · Like · 0 comments

The End of the WorldI’ll bring the pot. Lol 24 minutes ago · Like · 0 comments

The End of the WorldThere with Apocalyptic Bells on!  5 minutes ago · 1 like · 0 comments

The End of the WorldEven the end of the world couldn’t keep me away! 9 minutes ago · 1 like · 0 comments

The End of the WorldPARTY IN THE STREETS. 22 minutes ago · Like · 1 comment

Yes, I agree with what you are likely already thinking: the apocalypse will be attended by no one above the age of sixteen. Great party, guys. Really. So in the absence of any competing apocalypse get-togethers that might actually sound like a bit of fun, I suggest everybody roll over and hit the snooze button on this Facebook anti-party and get your nap on until the world burps up another armageddon worthy of your attendance.

Either way, you can expect a whole lot of tech news in the coming week. In the meantime, here’s an infographic from Sortable, providing a brief glimpse of the history of the event, which began in the 60s.

Sortable The Consumer Electronics Show Infographic

All Things D first reported the event, and Tech Crunch later added their own confirmation, saying that the announcement would take place in New York City and would revolve around the iBooks platform. The announcement was also said to be “minor” in scale.

Fox News’ Clayton Morris is now reporting that his sources have revealed that the announcement will be “small in size but large in scope; a big announcement in a demure space.” He says that he expects two fairly large announcements to occur that deal with Apple’s role in the education space.

MacRumors has received some information that might corroborate reports that Apple is planning on throwing their weight behind digital textbooks.

Adding to the speculation about textbooks perhaps playing a role in the upcoming announcement is information we’ve received from a source indicating that Apple last month filmed a series of short interviews with textbook industry executives. The interviews are said to have been of the type that would be used in one of Apple’s promotional overview videos for a new product or service.

Our source cautions us that there is no direct evidence tying the interviews to the upcoming media event and that Apple frequently films promotional video segments and commercials that never see the light of the day, but the timing of the filming seems to be in line with possible preparations for the media event.

Of course, Steve Jobs biographer and bestselling author Walter Isaacson has said on multiple occasions that Jobs wanted to do something about textbooks – to make them an important feature of the iPad.

The second part of the media event could focus on self-publishing, according to ereader site goodereader.

Apple is going to be holding an exclusive event in New York city later this month to possibly launch a new program for their iBooks and Publishing platform. Sources close to the matter have told us that they intend on launching a new digital self-publishing platform to get peoples content into the iBookstore. This is a huge step forward for Apple to compete with Amazon (DTP) and Barnes and Noble (Pubit).

This program would utilize EPUB 3, the IDPF’s open standard for e-books.

So, part one: Textbooks, and part two: self-publishing. Certainly two announcements that could be seen as small in size but large in scope.

Together, all of these reports give us a look into what Apple could be planning for the end of the month. While this is all still a bunch of speculations from various sources, one thing everyone can agree on is that the event will probably have nothing to do with any new hardware.

Zvents has over 3 million events, generated from 140,000 local marketers in its catalog. It gets 14 million monthly unique visitors.

eBay’s Richard Brewer-Hay writes on the eBay Ink blog, “StubHub currently offers around 30,000 events for discovery whereas Zvents users have access to 600,000 events on any given day and over 3 million during the course of a calendar year. Essentially, with this new acquisition (and after integration), StubHub users will eventually have access to 100x more events than the present.”

That’s a lot of events.

The Zvents Team says on its own blog:

Joining StubHub is an exciting next phase in our evolution to be the world’s premier provider of event and entertainment content. Since launching Zvents in 2005, our team has worked tirelessly to build a strong product line for our users, advertisers and partner network. Zvents boasts over 14 million users via its various channels – Zvents.com and its media partner network of over 300 major sites, including Microsoft, AT&T and over 280 major newspapers.

StubHub’s industry-leading service and platforms provide the ideal launching pad for us to accelerate our growth and expand our mission. We are dedicated to enabling our users to find fun and interesting things to do in their lives by providing the best events and entertainment information across our products and network. StubHub shares our passion and we will work together to drive a new vision for live entertainment.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

If you’ll notice the images in this article, StubHub is displaying results for Louisville. That’s because it doesn’t have Lexington as a market. Zvents does. Presumably, this means StubHub will feature a significant amount of new markets.

For those in the West, that’s 10 pm Eastern on October 18th. There will be a live stream of the event available on Android’s YouTube Channel.

This unveiling was supposed to take place on October 11th at the Unpacked event in San Diego. But just 4 days before the event was set to take place, Google and Samsung postponed it, saying that they agreed “it is just not the right time to announce a new product. Of course, it was widely believed that the two companies delayed their big event out of respect for the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Here’s the invitation, which confirms that Android’s brand new OS Ice Cream Sandwich is going to be the star of the show:

Also expected to make an appearance at the event is the first device launching with Ice Cream Sandwich – the Nexus Prime (Galaxy Nexus), the new Google phone. This phone has a huge amount of buzz surrounding it, as Android fans are looking for the next great phone to compete with Apple’s just-launched iPhone 4S.

According to Ars Technica, PR photos from the cancelled October 11th event in San Diego suggest that the Nexus Prime was definitely a part of the big launch. However, we have yet to hear any official word on the phone

Are you excited about the new offerings in the world of Android? Let us know in the comments.

The bad thing about Facebook is that it’s a ridiculously easy way the advertise and spread the word about your events.

And events that aren’t set to private can wind up attracting more attention than the creator ever imagined. Numerous reports have emerged in the past couple of years about public events gaining thousands of confirmed attendees. Many of these event are shut down before they happen but some, like the birthday party of a German girl earlier this year, wind up getting out of hand.

It appears that the power of Facebook was at work again this weekend at a Colorado State University party got a tad out of control.

Police estimate that somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 people attended the annual back-to school party being held at an off-campus apartment complex. Over 3,000 guests were confirmed on the Facebook event page.

Videos have surfaced on YouTube of the party –

Although it looks like the majority of the students had a good time at the giant bash, police say that 10 people were hospitalized and four people were arrested as a result. apparently, some students suffered from alcohol poisoning while others were involved in fights.

“When I got in there it was total chaos,” said one student. “One woman was hit in the face with a bottle and she was gushing blood.”

The police said it was one of the biggest parties they had ever seen.

Although some students got out of hand, I’m sure many students at CSU see the party as a success. In one regard, I guess, Facebook helped them throw one hell of a party while it lasted. But you’ve gotta admit, 4,000 people is a little much, isn’t it?

Facebook says the event will be spent exploring topics including:

• New Products: We have some exciting product announcements that enable a new class of social apps
• Building Social Apps: Engineers and entrepreneurs share their best practices and strategies for building great social apps
• Open Q&A: Facebook’s engineering and product teams answer your questions

The event is being held at the Concourse Exhibition Center at the San Francisco Design Center. The capacity is limited, the company warns, and it’s expected to sell out quickly.

Attending costs $400 if you’re able to do so, but it will also be broadcast live on the web at f8.facebook.com.

The last f8 took place in Spring 2010, and unleashed Facebook’s Open Graph and social plug-ins across the web. It was a pretty big deal.

So what’s in store this time around? Facebook isn’t saying yet, but there is plenty of speculation.

As we’ve heard before, the company is expected to announce some new music-related features. InsideFacebook also speculates that we may see the launch of an iPad app and/or HTML5 mobile gaming details, as well as mobile photo enhancements.