Is anyone else out there absolutely flabbergasted by how much is going on this week? For starters, we are in Day Two of OMMA East, MediaPost's kickass online marketing, media and advertising conference which has, so far, provided a really diverse group of speakers, lively debate, and interesting vendors.

The Internet hasn't just transformed how people communicate, find information or access media, said Peter Weedfald, senior vice president, consumer electronics and North America corporate marketing at Samsung Electronics, Inc., speaking at OMMA East in New York City this morning. The transformation is far more fundamental.

Right back where we started from. Okay, you know the mobile segment's hot when a games publisher says it will market the Fox hit "The O.C." as a mobile video game.

Dios mio! Are you going as crazy as we are? Advertising Week kicks off Monday, and for MediaPost, that means our annual Forecast 2006 conference, where we expect lively debate -- and for Jack Klues, CEO of Starcom MediaVest, to make some news.

This week, the day after The New York Times started charging readers for online access to its most popular columnists, the newspaper's parent company also announced it would shed 500 employees, or 4 percent of its workforce. By the end of the day Wednesday, the company's stock was trading at just $29.96 -- a new low for the year.

Now here's one to blog about. CNET's News.com broke a story on Monday regarding Google's upcoming partners forum, eerily dubbed "Zeitgeist '05." But get this: Google has issued a gag order on the participants.

While users of Really Simple Syndication are frequently considered early adapters, new data issued by Nielsen//NetRatings suggests that many who use RSS technology do so inadvertently.

A new survey finds that 50 percent of bloggers blog as a form of self-therapy. Go figure. In fact, according to a survey conducted by AOL and Digital Marketing Services, a research firm specializing in Web-based surveys, therapy is a big motivator for bloggers, more so than politics, news, and/or gossip.

Life won't ever be quite the same for people who live on the Gulf Coast, as daily online and TV footage reveal. Now we have online aerial pictures to compare the before and after, courtesy of MSNBC.com, which scrambled to put together some really cool block-by-block interactive maps.

In a summer of consolidation rumors, today's New York Post reports that one of the biggest deals in the industry is in the works. The paper's saying that Microsoft is in "advanced" talks to buy a stake in America Online from Time Warner.