"Never underestimate journalists' desire to read about themselves," said Ana Marie Cox, editor of Wonkette.com, who took pains to examine why blogging is different from traditional media and how it isn't.

Ms. Cox called herself the person in the center of a happy media orgy.

She compared blogging to the self-renewing tumult of punk rock: People at the top will get commercialized, but "there's always someone in the garage."

Should this tech thing not work out, Bill Gates might have a future in the movie business. Mr. Gates's latest video incarnation, shown at the D: conference Monday, cast him in a send-up of "Napoleon Dynamite," with Mr. Gates tagging along with the movie's vertically haired title character (played by Jon Heder) and playing straight man to his rambling questions about Microsoft technology (no teleporting either of mice or men), listening patiently to Napoleon's Dungeons & Dragons-style ideas for Microsoft Bob, and weathering Napoleon's scorn that the powers that come along with Mr. Gates's knighthood are decidedly limited. (No, Mr. Gates does not lead centaur armies, though Napoleon does warn a co-worker that "he's a flipping knight -- he can like joust and everything.")