Media and technology executives are meeting Wednesday and Thursday in New York City at a conference hosted by private equity firm Quadrangle. Note the word private.

When they meet at the Plaza, they will talk about a ton of different things that their customers, their investors and other readers want to know. I have to apologize for them because they’re not letting in any riff-raff. And that includes reporters who get paid to spend all day figuring out how these people decide what kind of entertainment you want, what kind of technology you pay them for and what deals they pursue with the money that you give them when you buy their stock. This event always excludes press, but that’s no reason not to highlight what you probably are missing because of this. After all, who wants to wait for the 8-K filing?

Some press will be allowed, but it will be an assortment of celebrity journalists who will moderate panels and, according to Peter Kafka, author of “MediaMemo” at News Corp’s AllThingsD blog, will not write about the event (I’m talking about Maria Bartiromo and David Faber of CNBC, The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta, etc).

Peter wrote two posts about this, here and here. He also issued me a challenge to sneak into the conference, but horror of horrors, I’m on a deadline that I can’t shirk any longer. So consider this an invitation from me to you to go to the Plaza and catch these guys on the way in and out of the building. It’s a fun way to spend the day, and maybe you’ll learn something interesting.

Here is the agenda, courtesy of Peter Kafka. Below that is a list of speakers. Outrage breeds corrections: I have to amend the record: The list I had posted here of topics is last year’s agenda. My mistake. The list of speakers appearing THIS year still appears below.

2009 SPEAKERS
EMILIO AZCÁRRAGA President, Board of Directors and CEO, Grupo Televisa
DENNIS CROWLEY Co-Founder, foursquare
BARRY DILLER Chairman and CEO, IAC; Chairman, Expedia, Inc. and Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc.
BRIAN DUNN CEO, Best Buy
CHARLES FORMAN Founder, OMGPOP
REED HASTINGS Founder, Chairman and CEO, Netflix
REID HOFFMAN Executive Chairman and Founder, LinkedIn Corporation
CHAD HURLEY CEO and Co-Founder, YouTube
JEFF IMMELT Chairman and CEO, GE
PAUL JACOBS Chairman and CEO, Qualcomm Incorporated
OLLI-PEKKA KALLASVUO President and CEO, Nokia
JASON KILAR CEO, Hulu
LESLIE MOONVES President and CEO, CBS Corporation
ANNE MULCAHY Chairman, Xerox Corporation
JAMES MURDOCH Chairman and Chief Executive, Europe & Asia, News Corporation
BRIAN PHILLIPS CEO and Co-Founder, Thread
DAN PORTER CEO, OMGPOP
BRIAN ROBERTS Chairman and CEO, Comcast Corporation
PAUL SAGAN President and CEO, Akamai
ERIC SCHMIDT Chairman and CEO, Google
IVAN SEIDENBERG Chairman and CEO, Verizon Communications
BIZ STONE Co-Founder, Twitter
HOWARD STRINGER Chairman, CEO and President, Sony Corporation
BEN VERWAAYEN CEO, Alcatel-Lucent
DAVID ZASLAV President and CEO, Discovery Communications

MODERATORS
MARC ANDREESSEN General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
KEN AULETTA Author and Writer, “Annals of Communications”, The New Yorker
MARIA BARTIROMO Anchor, Closing Bell; Host & Managing Editor, Wall Street Journal Report, CNBC
JAMES CITRIN Co-Leader, Board & CEO Practice, North America, Spencer Stuart
DAVID FABER Anchor, Reporter, CNBC
MICHAEL HUBER Co-President and Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group
BECKY QUICK Co-Anchor, Squawk Box, CNBC
GEOFFREY SANDS Director & Leader, Global Media, Entertainment & Information Practice, McKinsey & Co.
JOSHUA L. STEINER Co-President and Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Anchor, This Week; Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News

(Photo of Barry Diller, who will remain away from prying eyes at Quadrangle’s confab: Reuters)

Brace yourself for the next salvo in the battle of the ebook readers (or electronic reading devices, or e-reader, or whatever you want to call them).

Barnes & Noble is planning a “major event” next Tuesday in New York to announce a mystery… something.

The bookseller won’t say exactly what it will announce, but we’d be surprised if its NOT a digital book reader, to compete with Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader series.

In fact, Gizmodo says it has the goods on the device — which it says has “a multi-touch display like an iPhone” — and picture of the device. Click the link and take a look.

What do you think of this device (which may or may not be the actual product)? For that matter, what do you think about e-readers? Are you ready to buy one?

Let us know in the comment area.

I was rather surprised yesterday to see an e-mail from Ogilvy PR pitching an interview with Dave Booth, the Chairman President of Global Sales and Marketing at Computer Sciences Corp, only a couple of hours after Xerox announced its $6.4 billion planned purchase of Affiliated Computer Services.

After all, CSC — an IT services company that competes with ACS, and has a market value of $8.1 billion — was the first company that came to bankers’ and analysts’ minds when I asked them who else could be in play, as tech companies look to buy into new growth opportunities.

Given how market sentiment works, any comments from the chief senior executive of a potential acquisition target like CSC could easily move the stock. As a rule, that’s why, companies typically don’t comment on rumor or speculation about themselves. So naturally, an on-the-record interview with the CSC chairman executive wasn’t something I could pass up.

The e-mail offered:

…(T)he opportunity to hear comments from Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC). As you might know, CSC is a marketplace contrarian that can offer a POV on the other side of the coin - staying independent.
CSC anticipates greater interest from those clients that value the objectivity of a technology-independent approach. With one less independent firm in the marketplace, CSC’s position is strengthened as a global, technology-independent option for clients.

I let Ogilvy know of my interest, and waited, and followed up, and waited. By the late afternoon, I figured the pitch was too good to be true because CSC had thought the better of it. Sure enough, the e-mail that eventually turned up in my inbox, said: “CSC now prefers not to comment.”

Wonder if that was a PR learning experience.

(Photo: CSC.com)

Update: A CSC spokesman called on Tuesday to say Dave Booth is not chairman, but president of global sales and marketing at CSC. I have updated this post to include the correct title.

Look out nerdy-cool Apple guy, the empire is striking back. And it’s got Eva Longoria Parker, Tony Parker, Pharrell Williams and Deepak Chopra on its side.

Microsoft is launching (another) new commercial campaign Thursday night. It takes aim at Apple’s “Mac vs. PC” campaign that has portrayed personal computers running Windows as clunky and uncool.

The commercial starts with a real-life Windows engineer who looks eerily similar to John Hodgman (the comedian who plays the role of “PC” in Apple’s commercials), saying “I’m a PC and I’ve been made into a stereotype.” After that is a montage of celebs and normal folk, saying “I’m a PC.”   Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, along with the aforementioned celebrities, makes an appearance in the ad.

The new commercial is easier to understand than the first series of ads from Microsoft that featured comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Microsoft said the Seinfeld ads were meant to be an “ice breaker” and get people taking about the company and Windows. (Although it could be argued that there was already a conversation about Windows, just not the one the company wanted.)

Microsoft Senior Vice President Mich Matthews , who heads up the company’s marketing efforts, said  the goal of the $300 million advertising push is to “take back the PC brand” and its new commercial is meant as a “bear hug” to the PC stereotype being defined by its competitors.

The television commercials will also be joined by billboard, online and newspaper ads pushing the theme of “Windows vs. Walls” — the concept that Windows allows for a life without walls.

Update: here is the ad.

Co-Founder and President Larry Page used his platform as final keynote speaker at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show on Friday to speak out in favor of a variety of his pet scientific projects and to address issues concerning his company. He made the following comments during the speech, the audience question-and-answer session that followed and a subsequent news conference with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

“TWENTY PERCENT TIME:” FREEDOM FROM MANAGERS
Page was asked by reporters to further define the company’s so-called “20 percent time” project rule, under which Google engineers have the option to spend one-fifth of their work week on side projects of their own choosing.

“The important thing is that it really let’s you say ‘No’ to your manager if you are bright and passionate” about your work,” Page said from an employees perspective. “Nobody can tell you that you can’t experiment” under the rule, he said.

“I don’t think the percentage (matters) at all,” Page said of whether a Google employee spends 10 percent, 20 percent or 80 percent of their workweek on side projects. “Other people don’t do it at all. And it balances out.”

These side projects must still have business justification in order to receive company resources, he noted. “It doesn’t mean it (a 20 percent time project) gets a lot of resources. This is where we have issues in the company.”

GOOGLE PC
CEO Eric Schmidt strongly denied months of rumors that the Web search leader was preparing to offer its own, low cost personal computer for around $100.

“We have tremendous partners in the PC space and there is no need for us to do this,” CEO Eric Schmidt said in response to reporters’ repeated questions.

“We will do whatever it takes to get that (information) in peoples’ hands,” Schmidt later said. “What we tried to say is we don’t need to do that (build or market our own PC),” he said.

UNIVERSAL CONNECTORS
In his talk, Page spent the most time decrying the lack of standards in the hardware industry, specifically, the proliferation of incompatible plugs and cables, network “ports,” adapters, audio and video protocols, displays, indicators, storage, keyboards and input/output devices.

“I am just going to plea to you: Let’s get all these devices talking to each other and I think you will have just amazing innovation,” Page said, directing his comments to the electronics industry at large.>

“Why not instead just standardize the power supply?” Page asked. “Why (are) there no standards for those keyboards and little devices? One wire should be able to do everything possible,” Page argued.

“I don’t think there is much of anything that is needed besides standards. I think standards are best done by universities,” said Page, who was a Stanford University graduate student and the son of a Michigan State computer science professor.

“I am amazed we don’t have devices like this and the reason for this is that we lack standards to do it,” he said. “If one in a thousand power adapters start to catch fire and you have one of them, it starts to become an issue,” Page joked. “It is just silly,” he added.

VIDEO PIRACY
Page announced several new products, including the Google Video Store, which allows video owners to charge whatever they decide for individual episodes or segments. Shows ranging from professional basketball games to “Star Trek” to “Rocky and Bullwinkle” cartoons to Charlie Rose interviews are available to rent or own.

“A lot of the way to deal with these issues (of potential piracy) is to have legitimate ways for people to buy things that make sense like Apple iTunes,” Page said. “(We need to) get a positive economic system going,” he said.

Speaking of Google’s new video player and copyright protection system, Page said that, “We are going to make it hard enough for people to pirate (videos for sale)” — in part through the ability to constantly upgrade the video player because it must be connected to the Internet to operate.

GOOGLE PACK
Google Pack is a new assortment of software designed to give users a variety of basic software applications while also providing essential computer maintenance functions. Google Pack is available for free.

“There has been no software package that has been organized around user needs,” Page said. Instead, most software is developed to meet the business priorities of software companies, he argued.

Google executives responded to several questions over whether Google’s move to introduce a broad package of software was designed as a replacement for Microsoft products. A reporter also asked whether the world’s largest software company could use its market dominance of the desktop to retaliate against Google.

Schmidt argued that the structure of the industry had changed and that these questions may no longer be relevant.

“A lot of this has to do with defining the competitive structure in terms of past battles,” Schmidt said in downplaying comparisons to past computer industry battles involving Microsoft.

“(Competitively) there is going to be a lot more than the three (which) everyone always talks about,” he said, apparently referring to the rivalry between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

“This is a very, very large space. It is so much larger than that,” he said in downplaying the rivalry with Microsoft.

“The Pack is a tactic to solve a problem that is an ‘end user’ problem,” Schmidt said, referring to the computer wonk jargon the industry uses to refer to customers. He contrasted this to Google’s continuing strategy, which remains “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Read the full Reuters story here

Gadget industry giants came out swinging this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, unveiling sleek designs and tiny portable digital music players in hopes of ending the dominance of Apple Computer Inc.’s iPods.

From Samsung to Sony to Sandisk, everyone wants a piece of Apple’s pie in the portable digital music player market, where the iPod reigns.

Sandisk Corp. expects to make it a “two-horse race” in the chip-based memory segment of the market, led by the iPod Nano, and XM Satellite Radio Inc. ran magazine advertisements for its Samsung Electronics-designed MP3 player that said: “It’s not a Pod, It’s the Mothership.”

Tough talk, for sure. But in launching salvos, most acknowledged the marketing might of Apple in the $4.5 billion arena.

“We have been playing in the basement, guarding our future,” by failing to match Apple’s marketing spend, said Peter Weedfald, a senior vice president at South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which introduced new MP3 players boasting long battery life. “For 2006 (however) you are going to feel a launch; you are going to see and hear our products.”

Like its peers, Samsung has kept a low profile in the MP3 market, spending a relative pittance on marketing MP3 devices in North America versus an iPod budget of more than $100 million. Apple has keenly turned the relatively simple gadgets — computer memory married with music-playing software — into status items and fashion accessories.

Read the full Reuters article here…

If consumers find the brewing battle between next-generation DVD technologies — HD DVD versus Blu-ray — a headache, they are not alone. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, top U.S. electronics retailers, called the issue “nightmarishly unfriendly” and “stupid.”

Stores like Best Buy, Circuit City and CompUSA may sell millions of devices, either HD DVD or its rival, Blu-ray, and some day one version could be obsolete, drawing the ire of their customers. What’s more, many will chose not to buy any device, instead waiting for one format to win.

Blu-ray is backed by Sony Corp. and HD DVD is championed by Toshiba Corp. The two technology camps failed to reach a unified technological front that has set the stage this year for a formats war like the costly VCR vs. Betamax battle of the 1980s.

“We are frustrated,” said Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson, on the sidelines of a panel discussion at the Consumer Electronics Show on Friday. “We are going to wind up with some number of consumers probably buying a format that dies and we are probably going to wind up having to selling it to them. They are not gong to be happy with us.”

Both Blu-ray and HD DVD hope to spark the sagging home video market with new high-definition DVD players and discs, offering greater capacity and interactive features. A single-layer Blu-ray disc has a capacity of 25 gigabytes of data, which is enough to hold a two-hour high-definition movie, or 13 hours of standard television programming. Rival HD DVD has a single-layer capacity of 15 gigabytes, but its backers argue it is cheaper to manufacture.

“The problem is that what you want is huge penetration into homes as quickly as possible,” said CompUSA chief executive Larry Mondry. “The Beta-VHS wars lasted 10 years. We are doing it again and we are just stupid as an industry.”

Starting this year, it is likely that electronics retailers are going to have to make space in their stores for both sundry devices related to both formats, including the players, the movies and other programming that play on them, and accessories.

Decision on what to stock will have to be made by the retailers sooner, rather than later. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Toshiba and Thomson each announced plans to sell in the next few months high-definition DVD player in the U.S. priced at around $500.

Meanwhile, Sony Corp.’s Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox and Lionsgate , all of which are exclusively supportive of HD DVD rival Blu-ray, released names of titles for the Blu-ray format.

Following Google’s founder Larry Page’s keynote speech at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, Fred Katayama interviews Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer about Google Video Store and Google Pack.

The line of celebrity appearances this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, where media companies were once sidelined, tracked deals by Time Warner’s AOL, General Electric’s NBC Universal, Viacom’s MTV, note Reuters reporters Kenneth Li and Daisuke Wakabayashi.

Media companies, have “always been observers in Las Vegas,” said Leo Hindery, managing partner of InterMedia Partners, a private equity firm specializing in media, and former CEO of cable operator AT&T Broadband, referring to programmers’ outside status at the gadget show. This year, media’s “credentials are just as important as Google’s and the guys who make the devices,” Hindery added.