Startup Weekend is a project founded by Andrew Hyde, who came up with the idea to connect a "highly motivated group of small business entrepreneurs to build a community and company in a weekend."  Basically, Startup Weekend groups together web developers, designers, marketers, and entrepreneurs for a weekend to see what kind of Internet company they can come up with.  Groups have a weekend to complete their project from start to finish, which includes deciding on a concept and launching the actual project. 

From the various Startup Weekends that have been held throughout the country recently, it seems that the answer to my initial question, "Can an Internet Company be Built in a Weekend?", the answer is yes.  Most Some of the Startup Weekends have resulted in the launching of a website.  The more important question might be, "Can a viable business be built in a weekend?", to which the answer, judging from the sites launched by Startup Weekend, is probably no.

Here's a list of some of Startup Weekend's results:

VoSnap -Boulder team
Favoreats -NYC team
TipDish -Houston team
ScrollTalk -West Lafayette team
DeskHappy -Boston Team
Hola Neighbor -DC team
WorkPerch -Chapel Hill team 

These websites range from confusing without a clear purpose (TipDish and ScrollTalk) to founded on good ideas, but lacking in capabilities (HolaNeighbor), to just plain bizarre (DeskHappy).   

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I'm at the New New Web conference in Reston and just listened to Tim Ferriss of 4 Hour Work Week fame speak during our chicken lunch.  His whole pitch is worth listening to but I was particularly interested in an anecdote he gave about how he came up with the name of his book.

4 Hour Work Week was originally titled "Dealing Drugs for Fun and Profit."  For a variety of reasons this wasn't going to fly with publishers or retailers.

Ferriss and his team came up with twelve alternative names and were pretty much deadlocked. 

Ferriss decided on the name by running a Google Adwords campaign.  He bought ads for relevant keywords for all twelve potential book titles and tracked which titles performed the best.  The clickthrough rate for 4 Hour Work Week was by far the highest, so that is what his book is called.

I think this is a smart and novel approach to naming.  Google Adwords as a cheap and real time focus group.