It would seem a dangerous gamble for Huffington to intentionally affect the brutality and off-the-wall demands of, say, Anna Wintour. It's not clear that a website like Huffington Post, bookmarked rather than subscribed to, will ever be able to comfortably lock in readers and advertisers like a Vogue, or to offer the same sort of glamor as a perquisite to staff.

Right on, Ryan. Owen and I have, like, 20 years of magazine work between us. If there aren't supermodels or at least Al Gore traipsing through the place daily, you're only going to drop off your boss's dry cleaning so many times.

• Steve Ballmer
• Mitchell Baker
• Jeff Bezos
• Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt
• Jeff Clavier
• Paul Graham
• Arianna Huffington
• Joi Ito
• Steve Jobs
• Jonathan Kaplan
• Loic Le Meur
• Jack Ma
• Matt Mullenweg
• Rupert Murdoch
• Craig Newmark
• Gabe Rivera
• Kevin Rose
• Sheryl Sandberg
• Jon Stewart
• Peter Thiel
• Maria Thomas
• Anssi Vanjoki
• Jimmy Wales
• Evan Williams
• Jerry Yang

1) Fox News, please let us post clips instead of threatening to sue.

2) Adopt a Digg-like voting system to let the audience choose the questions.

The first demand seems as easy as the second is sure to be rickrolled. (Photo by The Fun Times Guide)

Speaking of which, the crowd included Chuck Phillips, the president of Oracle; Accel Partners' Jim Breyer; Google angel investor Ram Shiram; Gavin Newsom; former California governor Jerry Brown; Jessica Guynn of the Los Angeles TimesBarron's; AllThingsD's Kara Swisher; former Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein; MarketWatch's Therese Poletti; Craig Newmark; and renowned San Francisco socialite Denise Hale, who rather liked my tie.

Zittrain's book is about the tradeoffs between freedom and control, security and creativity. New devices like the iPhone provide a safer, smoother experience than the uncontrolled Web — but at the cost of having a gatekeeper, Apple, dictating what can and can't run on the device. That kind of chokepoint, in turn, makes it far easier for government regulators to get involved. The alternative, though, is not particularly attractive: an Internet ruled by spammers and hackers.

Like his counterparts in politics, Zittrain is seeking a third way. I couldn't help but think this impulse is driven by an early experience he related at the party: Getting beaten up in high school. (He thanked the hostess, Melanie, "for not beating up on me.") Having been bullied, Zittrain doesn't want revenge: He just doesn't want anyone to bully, or be bullied. This moderating impulse is seen in a passage where he discusses how neither governments nor citizens ought to be able to wholly circumvent the law through technology:

Perhaps it is best to say that neither the governor nor the governed should be able to monopolize technological tricks. We are better off without flat-out trumps that make the world the way either regulator or target wants it to be without the need for the expenditure of some effort and
cooperation from others to make it so.

And yet Zittrain's career could well exceed Lessig's. That he was able to fill a room — an impeccably furnished, tastefully modern room in one of San Francisco's wealthiest enclaves, at that — speaks to his draw. Liberal San Francisco politicans, self-made entrepreneurs, and the Web's wacky fringe can all find things they agree on in his work.

The danger for Zittrain is that his work might be nothing more than a justification for compromise and tradeoffs. Will he find a third way for the Web — or just point out the middle of the road? His calls for a "generosity of spirit" are reminiscent of the assumptions that turned eBay, a marketplace of strangers, into a very profitable community of traders. Hoping for the best really can pan out, as it happens. But the answers Zittrain will have to find, or inspire, are far more complicated than asking someone to be on their best behavior.

• Yahoo News and Huffington Post have had a syndication deal since launch; buying HuffPo, as it's affectionately known, would boost Yahoo's blogger cred.
• AOL may be looking to augment its Weblogs Inc. stable with some good political commentary. HuffPo cofounder Ken Lerer was a bigwig at AOL back in the day — though that may not help him much with Time Warner's current leadership
• HuffPo's pseudo-namesake, the Washington Post, already has a syndication deal with them and a number of WaPo columnists blog for Huffington. The New York Times — heck, aren't they just a fancy blog already?

Really, any media company would be interested in the company that Lerer and Huffington have built — as a cheap add-on, mind you, not at a frothy IPO price. But why sell?

Even if HuffPo had any shot at an IPO — and, as Schonfeld's readers have hastened to tell him on TechCrunch's comments, it doesn't — it's not like its founders need the money. Huffington is a successful writer and got a fat divorce settlement. Lerer was a top executive at AOL and Time Warner and started his own PR firm in New York. This is their pet project and I can't see them selling anytime soon. Huffington — like Michael Moore — has world-changing aspirations. With plenty of money in her pocketbook, she doesn't have to worry about cashing out.

(Disclosure: I consulted for Huffington Post briefly in 2005.) (Photo by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images)

It's particularly painful to watch someone become a vicious cornered little nobody — the kind of cracked-out mess of a man that you see pushing a shopping cart and squalling at strangers — when the victim wasn't that sane to begin with. So it's not fun to write this history of Loren Feldman, who's turned himself from a mildly entertaining jester into the horrible little child you knew in grade school who would grow up beating on younger children to make himself feel powerful.

Feldman made his name in the tech blogging circle by acting out and getting sillier than anyone else dared. I loved one of his early shows, "Jason's Place," in which he parodied self-important entrepreneur Jason Calacanis by wearing a diaper and riding a hobbyhorse:

Months later, Feldman would find himself sucking up to Calacanis, pretending his startup Mahalo is more well-known than Facebook.

Once Feldman had made nice with those he previously mocked, what was left? Feldman turned to the enemies of PodTech, the company he'd mocked in the video above before they became his publisher. I'll admit it got a bit personal when he responded to my articles about the company (I've been a vocal critic of the site) by recording a puppet show with a two-year-old's ass:

But I was at least glad someone was trying to be funny. Unfortunately, Feldman has recently abandoned even this pretense.

This past Friday, Feldman posted a video titled "Where are the Black Tech Bloggers?" In this video, after explaining his question ("I mean black guys love technology. Car stereos, cell phones..."), the white male dressed as a dated caricature of a do-rag-wearing, pot-smoking black gangster hosting a site called "TechNigga."

Click To Play

This screw-up was particularly ironic for Feldman. A couple of months ago, he had physically threatened Guy Kawasaki, calling the entrepreneur a "stupid motherfucker" for saying he learned about selling from his Jewish friends in the jewelry industry:

Click To Play

Now Feldman had resorted to offending entire races. The reaction to "TechNigga" was swift and negative. Unfortunately for Feldman, black tech bloggers do exist, such as Lynne Johnson. The Fastcompany.com editor called the video "bad black face."

Feldman has recently been doing work for the Huffington Post; owner Arianna Huffington told Wired writer Adario Strange about "TechNigga," "I found it both offensive and unfunny."

The next day, Feldman posted a seemingly sincere apology to all he had recently offended in this and other videos, including tech bloggers of all races and Valleywag publisher Nick Denton and myself. He announced he would soon enter one-day sensitivity training at a rehab clinic.

But this now looks like a ruse; during his supposed treatment period, Feldman posted videos such as the following, which includes a soundtrack with the refrain, "My niggas."

Click To Play

Note that the more offensive videos have appeared using Blip.tv, an independent video distributor that any publisher can use without editorial permission, while the more appropriate-seeming clips use the PodTech player and appear on PodTech.net.

Feldman then apologized once more:

And released a rather funny parody of the boring gnaw-your-own-leg-off tech shows at sites like PodTech:

Before ruining everything with a final nasty strike at all who dared criticize his creative genius:

It is here that he questioned the testicular fortitude of everyone in the videoblogging community who had criticized him, as well as copping out with a "Sorry black guys, it could've been the chinks."

The obvious question is why PodTech is still in business with this insensitive, racist, bad-for-business videoblogger, and has not even criticized Feldman. The usually vocal PodTech owner John Furrier has remained silent, despite many calls for his response in a forum he frequently visits. As far as the company's behavior speaks for itself, PodTech and John Furrier apparently support Feldman's racist and hateful messages. This is one Don Imus who won't get fired.

Digg has had difficulty expanding its core market beyond tech and pop culture content while the Huffpo is popular amongst the politicos. Although there is overlapping content, the audiences are largely distinct. And Huffit is unlikely to draw a new audience; it may not even see broad adoption within its base. It mostly serves to improve the ranking of news within the existing Huffpo community. (And provide Huffington a new opportunity to brand her own name. Who else has their own verb? Trump doesn't count.)

When Kevin Rose debuted Digg, it was novel and drew upon a rabid base of geeks, but now the functionality is easy to replicate. Expanding the content and audience beyond the base is the fundamental challenge. Where does Rose find that audience if other communities can mirror Digg's features? The Digg community will not abandon the popular news aggregator, but Huffpo readers are unlikely to become diggers, they're likely to prefer "huffing" instead.

Thanks for reaching out to us and glad that Gawker was able to participate in the live chat with Arianna yesterday. Unfortunately, after discussing this with counsel and given the relationship with Huffington Post, they are uncomfortable with releasing any of the proprietary video from the chat for external purposes at this time.

It's every boy's wet dream: get topless with Martha Stewart. At any rate, that guy in the shades looks jealous.

Al Gore, confused by the scenery, spent the whole time asking when the shuttle would blast off.

"I never attend a conference without my Wubby."

J. Peterman: "Elaine, you may call it Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me."

"Ahahahaha, ahaha, aha...yes, yes, I am the love child of Steve Rubel and Tucker Carlson."

After host Kara Swisher was pried out from under the statesman's body, Mossberg wrote, "Lesson Learned: Don't offer Al Gore cake."

My god, Blodgett, you don't have to say yes to every conference invite.

Sandwiched between Al Gore and a big techie journalisty guy, Esther Dyson can't help but make an "I am cute and tiny!" face.

A moment of silence for the Guy Who Forgot to Bring Collared Shirts. (Don't be that guy.)

"No," says blog publisher Arianna Huffington, "I don't have any spare change. Now move away, you're standing in front of my Prius."

Walt Mossberg: "Whatever you do, let's please not make Marissa Mayer giggle."

Photos: D Conference [Dan Farber on Flickr]