Someone named Beauregard H. Montgomery has invited the Minute to a showdown of sorts tonight--an eating competition, to be precise. We were invited to attend the challenge via a wireless text message with a secret code. We assume we will be apprised of the venue for the event via a text message later today.

And the Internet land grabs just keep coming... MTV Networks snapped up IFLM, a provider of short films and video content for the Web, for a cool $49 million. We assume that MTV needs to go beyond its well-honed reality show formula and hokey TV programming and offer something new on the Web. Picking up IFILM can only help make MTV cool again, maybe even edgy.

Google and Comcast seem to mean business about buying an interest in America Online. Today's Wall Street Journal reports that the search giant and cable provider reportedly are talking with Time Warner about paying $5 billion for a minority stake in AOL.

Wire reports today have Yahoo! and MSN teaming up on instant messaging. The AP is reporting that the two Internet giants will make their IM programs compatible with one another, which might prove a threat to America Online. Of course if rumors prove true and Microsoft acquires AOL, what difference would this make?

This week, one month after Google launched a blog search engine, Yahoo!'s search engine for news has started returning blog entries alongside news stories. The move, which comes just days after America Online purchased the blog company Weblogs for an estimated $25 million, leaves no doubt that large media companies have taken an interest in the blogosphere.

A week goes by and the news piles up in this Minute's absence. Strange how that happens, isn't it? Rewinding to last week's events in the Minute's addled brain ain't easy, especially on a misty gray Monday, but let's take Yahoo!'s acquisition of Upcoming.org for starters.

America Online's decision to purchase Weblogs for $25 million is the latest example of the if-you-can't-beat- em-join-em attitude that, these days, established media companies exhibit toward consumer-generated sites.

The majority of people who use the Internet at home (53 percent) now have high-speed connections, up from 21 percent in 2002, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

To date, much of the entertainment readily available online has consisted of music videos--Web-friendly because, at just a few minutes long, they don't require a huge time commitment either to watch or download. But, in the last few months, it appears that sports have also become hot Web content.

Google, flush with more than $7 billion in cash from a stock offering last month, has just submitted a plan to provide free Wi-Fi to all of San Francisco. And it doesn't look as if Google intends to stop with the City by the Bay.