All Things Digital

When the economy cratered last fall, even mighty Google was forced to pull back on spending: The company stopped growing its workforce and put several big expensive projects on hold. But that’s likely to change, predicts Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay. He says that while Google is on track to shell out $1.4 billion on capital expenditures this year, that number will shoot up up more than 40 percent next year, to $2 billion. And if Google doesn’t get a grip on YouTube, that number could keep growing.

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Still waiting to get your hands on the new iPhone 3G S? Here’s something that should occupy you for a few minutes while you wait: A side-by-side-by-side-by-side comparison of four iterations of iPhones going through various speed tests, performed by Pali Research analyst Walt Piecyk. And as a bonus, a clip of the new iPhone vs. the Palm Pre, featuring a surprise twist.

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Did you wait in line this morning to buy a new iPhone 3G S? If you want to take advantage of its “tethering” feature and use it as a modem, you’re going to have to wait a while longer. And you’ll have to pay–though it’s unclear how much that’s going to cost.

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I’m a Sprint customer, so the wireless company knows where I live, how to find me online, what kind of phone I have and what I spend each month. And it knows my contract expires at the end of the month. So why isn’t it trying hard to keep me from the clutches of AT&T and its iPhone?

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The promise of “virtual goods”–pretend things you buy with real money in cyberspace–has lured entrepreneurs and venture capitalists for years. Same goes for mobile payments–using your iPhone instead of your Amex to buy stuff. But what if you combined the two? You’d have a market that barely exists yet is worth fighting over. At least that’s what Zong and Boku are doing.

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We all know tomorrow’s newspapers won’t be printed on paper, but delivered via the Internet. The question for today’s publishers is whether consumers are going read them on iPhones or Kindles. But it shouldn’t be a question–smart phones like Apple’s are winning this one hands down.

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The Palm Pre debuts this week. Next week, we should hear about a big update for Apple’s iPhone. And by the end of the summer we’ll have new phones running Android platform. So who’s going to emerge as the winner? Easy, says Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney: It’s Google. But Mahaney isn’t talking about Google’s smartphone platform. He’s talking about Google’s core search business, which he thinks is finally about to see significant lift from mobile users.

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Publisher Condé Nast gets plenty of well-deserved criticism for its slow embrace of technology and the Web, but some of its individual titles do some interesting stuff. To wit: This video, which depicts how artist Jorge Columbo created this week’s cover art in an hour, using an iPhone and an app called Brushes.

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I actually got to fondle Amazon’s newest Kindle DX at its unveiling earlier this month. So I can confirm that it really isn’t that big. But you can see where these guys are going with this.

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Mystery solved, sort of: AT&T is taking the blame for crippling the SlingPlayer iPhone app. The company’s rationale: The iPhone’s too powerful, and our network isn’t powerful enough.

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The SlingPlayer iPhone app–software that lets you watch programming from your own TV on your Apple handset–will go on sale at iTunes sometime after midnight Eastern tonight. But it’s missing a crucial feature–the ability to work over AT&T’s network. What happened? “Ask Apple,” says a SlingPlayer rep.

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Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users have downloaded one billion apps for their devices in nine months. Someone other than Steve Jobs and co. ought to be able to make money from that, right? That’s more or less the logic behind Medialets, a start-up that serves up ads on Apple’s mobile applications, and to a lesser degree, programs designed for Google’s Android mobile platform. The New York-based company, founded last June, is announcing a $4 million Series A round led by Foundry Group. DFJ Gotham and angel investor Bobby Yazdani also participated.

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Apple says its customers have downloaded one billion apps for the iPhone and iPod touch from its iTunes store. You can learn more by reading one of the many stories about the milestone or by visiting Apple’s site. Or you can visit the homepages of big Web publishers like the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or CNET.com, all of which have once again handed over prime real estate to Apple for another intrusive/interesting ad.

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Next to no news from the Apple earnings call this afternoon, which is just the way Apple execs like their earnings calls. Once again, the company provided no information about CEO Steve Jobs’s health except to note that he is still scheduled to come back to work in June. And the company continued to pooh-pooh the concept of netbooks–supercheap, supersmall laptops with very little horsepower that are the hottest part of the PC business right now.

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First quick look at Apple’s earnings: Tim Cook and company have beaten the Street’s expectations. Apple earned $1.33 per share on revenues of $8.16 billion, beating the consensus of $1.09 and $8 billion. It also outperformed estimates for sales of the Mac, iPod and iPhone. At first glance, a strong quarter. But guidance for the next quarter may be a bit less than what Wall Street was looking for.

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