The Engadget Meetup was a blast last night 300 folks, 200 shirts, and a ton of give aways!

What really impressedafter OQO giving away an $1,900 handheld computer and Sonos giving away a $1,200 systemwas how passionate the audience was about Engadget. Peter and Ryan did a Q&A session that lasted half an hour or so, and it was clear the audiece was really into the site.

At one point Ryan asked, by a show of hands, how many people listened to the podcast80%+ shot right up (and to prove it was true some folks complained about the audio quality of past showsZING!).

Yesterday was an insane day I got on the red eye from L.A. on Tuesday and thought I would sleep on my way to an 8AM breakfast speaking gig @ CondeNast. Of course, that was before I started watching the almost four hour documentary No Direction Home: Bob Dylan. As most of you know I’m a huge Dylan fan (been to 20+ shows, own tons of boots, etc).

It’s a great documentary, and even at close to four hours it only gets up to Dylan’s motorcycle accident. It doesn’t even touch the 70s and 80s when Dylan did some very interesting work, let alone the past 15 years of constant touring.

The highlight of the documentary is a very lucid Dylan talking about his life. It’s scary, you can actually understand 90% of what Dylan says. Most of his interviews are, well, odd. He doesn’t answer questions in most interviews, and when does say something it’s either meaningless or a riddle.

Now, the breakfast at Conde Nast was amazing. I learned that the secret to blogging was not bathing and working in your robe/PJs till lunch at a minimum. Ken Auletta did a great job, including asking me who was going to buy Weblogs, Inc. I decided I would pull a Bob Dylan and make the Q&A as absurd as possible. So, when he asked who we were selling to I rambled off every major player in the space quickly, paused as he looked to me to see if I was serious, and I dropped it: “in that order.” Of course, some folks picked that up thinking it was serious hahahaha. I love this game. I then said, “but hey maybe we can add another person to that list” and motioned to Steve Newhouse and Norm Pearlstein. It’s becoming clear to me that being a totally up front, transparent CEO is either a brilliant marketing strategy or I’m the total laughing stock of the media industry doesn’t really matter to me either way, since like Dylan (with .1% of his talent) I’m just persuing my muse and letting everyone else paint the picture of who I am.

Now, on to the good stuff

Nora Ephrona really cute blogger for the Huffington Post liked how I was dressed. I thought this was pretty cool since I was going for a Tom Hanks over-confident, yet lovably flawed executive in “You’ve Got Mail!” vibe and she totally took the bait!!!

(Side note: I knew she was important when she was the only person in the room wearing sunglasses. In L.A. half the room would have had sunglasses on, and none of them would have been important. however, in NY you only get away with that look if you really *are* important, otherwise someone would come up to you and say “take those off, you’re not famous”).

(Side note two: Nora seems to be a huge flirt during the talk I was sure she was making goo-goo eyes at me while playing with her glasses and hairdropping in a raised eyebrow or sultry smile at just the right time. What a let down to read in her column/blog post that she was probably flirting with Ana Marie Cox! Can’t say I blame her Ana’s “I’m just blogger in my pajammas drinking all day long while poking fun at the world” is much more appealing then my “hungry media mogul from the streets of Brooklyn” vibe.)

Anyway, I can just see it now in a couple of more days Norah’s people will call and explain that she wants to make me a character in a new romantic comedy based on blogging. It’s the story of a dotcom blog publisher who learns to love his softer side by trading barbs with a hard ass female blogger based on Ana (who really does hate me). She constantly sticks it to him for being a sell-out blogger-turned-capitalist, he keeps trying to hire her. Finally she gives in and takes the job to put her daughter through private school, but she makes a point of making his life a living hell. It backfires HE LOVES IT!!! She’s the first person to put him in his place!

After clashing with each other for months they realize that they actually have a lot to learn from each other. She’s putting money into her 401k and he’s started blogging again!!! Plus, his dog loves her *and* her daughter loves him! (Insert a montage of him taking the daughter to the park while she gives the dog a much needed bath.. cue a foot taping, cheesy 80s love song). She reshapes his media empire and he learns to let go of some control. They both starting taking showers before 9AM! He also provides her with a private jet and a 24-hour driver, teaching us all that it’s possible to have everything: integrity, the spoils of selling out, andof courselove!

How great would it be if I could leverage this blogging thing into a movie career?!? I mean if Nora can use her movie career to get into blogging it’s possible right??! Hello?! Is this thing on!??! Did anyone make it to the end of this post?! Alright, I’ll shut up now and go back to work.

OK, this is probably the craziest travel thing I’ve every done. I’m getting on the red eye tonight from Los Angeles to New York’s JFK. I land at like 6:30AM, at which point I’ll race into the city for a speaking gig at Conde Nast with Huffington, Ken Auletta, and Anne Marie Cox of Wonkette. That goes from 8AM till 10:30AM.

I’ll then race to Newark airport and get on an 11:50AM flight to go to San Francisco for the Engadget Meetup (deets here: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000993060593/ ).

Thankfully I’ll stay over in San Fran before coming back to Santa Monica I’m trying to figure out if I should take a nap now or try and sleep on the plane. ugh.

The worst thing about the CEO slot is that you have no choice but to be at everything. Once I get this trip done I’ll be doing the EXACT same thing next week: flying to NYC on the 4th, speaking at We Media (with Al Gore on my panelwhich is very cool of course), then getting a flight to San Fran to spend two days at Web 2.0 (although I’m not speaking at Web 2.0 I tired. Maybe next year!).

Some bulldog love for everyone in NYC who misses Toro!

Another great theme day over at Slashfood Pizza day got a ton of great post on and OFF Slashfood

Check out all the good stuff on Slashdot:
http://www.slashfood.com/category/pizza-day/

… and the great stuff going on OFF of Slashdot related to Pizza Day!

• The Traveler’s Lunchbox
  

• Thought For Food
  

• The Revecess Blog
  

• Pizza County – Pancetta Pie

• Pizza County – Pesto Pie

• Mel’s Kitchen

• Chief Family Officer

• Stephen Cooks

Don’t forget to check out grilled cheese day:

http://www.slashfood.com/category/grilled-cheese-day/

I really want to get the Sirius S50… anyone got a hookup who can.. umm. hook me up? I think it’s out in October at some point. Willing to pay for it

This made my day. Joystiq readers buy 2-3x more games per year!

Another day, another series of amazing changes in our industry. Today Microsoft got into Google’s Adsense business, Yahoo finally admmitted they are in the content business, and Google is getting into AOL’s brand new video business.

Of course, I look at the world in terms of does the company create content or not.

[ Note: Creating tools like Blogger.com does not mean you make content, it means you make software that allows other folks to create content. ]

Clearly not in the content business:
Google
Microsoft/MSN
Interactive Corp (except for CitySearch)

In denial about being in the content business:
Yahoo

Clearly in the content business:
AOL
CNET
Fox/Newscorp (i.e. IGN)
Yahoo

Now, if you look at these two lists and ask yourself who have the most features in both the content business and the web services business it’s ranked like this:

Yahoo – Tons of services (My Yahoo, email, YPN), lots of content.
AOL – Tons of services (IM, email, My AOL), some content.
Fox – Some services (My Space), some content (IGN)
CNET – Few services (Download.com?), Tons of content (everything else).

Clearly the folks in the content business have no fear of having services as well, in stark contrast to the web services companies.

Microsoft has been in the content business on and off for over a decade, but it’s clear with the sale of Slate and their new offerings (Start.com, search, Adsense knockoff) that they want to be a pure Web service provider like Google. InterActive Corp is all about the transaction, with some web services bolted on (Bloglines, Ask Jeeves) in an effort to drive transactions.

I don’t see Google and Microsoft changing their position any time soon. Being a pure service provider gives them the advantage of being the “friendly partner” to media companies out there. If you’re Viacom/CBS, Newscorp, or even a small publisher you have to be looking at Yahoo’s content activities as highly threatening to your business.

Using Overture/YPN or My Yahoo is viewed by many content owners as funding your competitor. For example, if Yahoo Finance is hiring 30 finance writers is Dow Jones (with CBS MarketWatch, WSJ, etc) going to be a big supporter of My Yahoo, Yahoo News, and Overture on a go-forward basis?

(note: I sold Dow Jones my last company, and my brother still works there but I have NO idea what is going on over there. Really, no idea.)

You can do that test all the way down the line with each Yahoo content category, and Google is *loving* it (and I’m sure Microsoft will love it too). Microsoft and Google can come to Dow Jones and with a straight face say “we’re here to support you!” Yahoo walks into that same meeting and the have to explain why seven of their 30 staffers (making that up) used to work for a Dow Jones property.

Now, if Google and Microsoft make a play for AOL then things get really interesting. Two major things would happen:

1. Google would be in the content business overnight (even if it’s at arms length)
or
2. AOL would have their own search and Adsense business (i.e. Microsoft’s search and Adsense knockoff).

No matter how you look at all this content is still king. Every one of these players is dependent on content to drive their businesseither their content (Yahoo), licensed content (Yahoo, AOL), or content partners (AOL, Yahoo, Google).

What a great time to be in the content businesseveryone needs you!

That’s the real difference between today (2003-present) and the the dotcom era (1995-2000). Back then content companies were alone in the wilderness and it was a fight for survival. Now you’ve got huge companies who’ve built their business around either syndicating your content to their portal or syndicating their advertisers down to your websiteand in Yahoo’s case both!

Sometime I think Google has it all figured out and Yahoo is trying to serve to many masters. Then I look at our company and say “gee, we would love to syndicate our content up to Yahoo and sure we would love to try out YPN.” So, I’m open minded about their offerings right now. I’m sure if they launched a car, video game, and gadget blog I would think otherwise.

This business is like one huge chess board with dozens of active players and constantly changing rules. Every day things get more interesting.

God I love this game!

This is why you SHOULD call out main-stream media outlets who steal your scoops (and props to the WSJ for doing the right thingNOW START LINKING TO BLOGS!!!):

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112726286663446848,00.htm

Corrections & Amplifications:
News of the talks between Viacom and IFILM was reported earlier on the Web site paidcontent.org. The initial version of this article didn’t credit the site. http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2005_09_22.shtml#051498

Wow the guys @ Engadget have the new Treo 700w!

I take it as a compliment when people build off of our ideas but this person lifted our HTML exactly!!! http://www.bbqreport.com/

That’s just sad. Compare to www.tvsquad.com or http://www.autoblog.com/