Times might be tough on the whole, but spending on Internet advertising is growing by leaps and bounds anyway, with total revenues up 23.9 percent in the first quarter of 2008, said an IDC analyst.

According to an IDC report released today, Internet ad revenues jumped from $5.7 billion in Q1 of 2007 to $7.1 billion in the most recent quarter.

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Confirming months of speculation, Apple has announced that it will begin shipping two 3G versions of the iPhone. A 16 GB version will feature your choice of black or white backing, and will sell for $299 through AT&T.

To raucous applause, Apple CEO Steve Jobs debuted the 3G model of the iPhone, which he said is thinner than the previous version while sporting all metal buttons and a black plastic backing, much like the rumored specs had shown.

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The 3G mobile TV market will skyrocket from 6 million subscribers worldwide to 42 million by 2012, and Europe isn't necessarily ahead of North America right now in this space, according to an analyst for In-Stat Research.

In an interview today with BetaNews, Michelle Abraham, an In-Stat analyst, estimated that 3G mobile TV services will evolve into a $5 billion market worldwide by 2012. But exact penetration rates for mobile TV are hard to figure right now, since carriers tend to focus more on sales of devices than services in their reports, Abraham contended.

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With the spotlight growing every time Apple puts on a major show, many feel it would be nice if the company would leave some real estate open for some Mac-related innovations. The keynote came and went, and the Mac was absent.

There was a time when Apple's World-Wide Developers' Conference spotlighted a little device that used to be all the rage, called the Macintosh. But for the entire two hours of CEO Steve Jobs' keynote speech at Moscone Center in San Francisco this morning, the attention was on the 3G iPhone and the iPhone SDK 2.0.

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After Starbucks pleased its customers by announcing it will give away two hours of AT&T Wi-Fi access per day, former Wi-Fi partner T-Mobile took exception and has filed a lawsuit.

T-Mobile last week filed a lawsuit claiming Starbucks and AT&T colluded to offer free Internet to Starbucks customers, even though most Starbucks retail locations are relying on T-Mobile network infrastructure. That forces T-Mobile to bear the cost and burden of the free Internet offering, while reaping none of the benefit.

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HP has announced that its Blackbird 002 will be made available for the first time through select retail channels beginning June 29.

Offering in an "exclusive configuration" for retail, the Blackbird 002 will be sold through Amazon.com and Newegg.com, as well as through Best Buy, Circuit City, J&R, and Micro Center both in brick-and-mortar stores and online shops.

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As some see it, Samsung's forthcoming Windows Mobile 6.1-based Omnia smartphone will act as a retort of sorts to Apple's new 3G iPhone. Although the Omnia isn't slated for full rollout until June 17, Samsung prereleased some details today.

Samsung's new Ommia will indeed offer new features not available on Samsung's existing Instinct smartphone. Both the Omnia and Instinct provide digital video and audio recording, along with 3G wireless, an FM radio, and GPS. Unlike the Instinct, though, the Omnia will offer Wi-Fi. Moreover, Samsung has boosted smartphone camera capabilities to 5 megapixels from the 2 megapixel camera in the Instinct.

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Calling it "Exchange for the rest of us," Apple debuted MobileMe, which allows users to push e-mail, contacts, and calendars directly to devices.

The new service will apparently replace .mac, and will work much the same way. However, now the iPhone and PC have been added to the mix, enabling personal information to be exchanged in a network consisting of an iPhone and a Mac or PC.

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs began his keynote at WWDC at Moscone Center in San Fransisco, with a discussion on the new firmware for iPhones, complete with enterprise support, the final release of the SDK, and new end-user features.

To a packed hall, Jobs said that the iPhone 2.0 beta program has been a huge success: In the 95 days since the SDK was first released, it has been downloaded some 250,000 times. About 25,000 applied for the beta, however Apple only accepted 4,000 of them.

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Engaged in patent-infringement lawsuits in three federal courts, and under two US International Trade Commission investigations for well over a year, HP and Acer summarily ended their battle on Sunday.

HP threw the first punch in March 2007 in the US District court of the Eastern District of Texas, calling for monetary compensation for- and an injunction upon Acer's computers which supposedly infringed on five patents (referred to in the original suit as "the '721, '697, '211, '933, and '759 patents") held by HP, three of which it obtained when it acquired Compaq.

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In a wave of apparently unrelated PC thefts, workers at Stanford University, the University of South Carolina (USC), and AT&T have been warned by their respective employers that their personal data might have been compromised.

A laptop stolen from Stanford contained the personnel records of 72,000 current and past employees, all hired before September of 2007, according to information posted on Stanford's Web site.

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CBS-owned social Internet radio service Last.fm once had content from all four major labels, but now Warner Music Group, which had been licensing to Last.fm on a month-to-month basis, has pulled its catalog from the service.

As first noticed by Silicon Alley Insider on Friday, it appears the main impetus for WMG's withdrawal from Last.fm's streams is, of course, money. The major label simply wanted more money from CBS, and was reportedly "disappointed" that a Last.fm premium subscription service was not opened as was anticipated.

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A new round of petitioning by movie studios to the FCC has triggered a renewed debate over whether studios and content providers have the right to send signals to consumers' DVRs, disabling their ability to record certain programs.

As a result of public debate that took place in early 2004, the US Federal Communications Commission under then-Chairman Michael Powell adopted a set of rules that prohibited the carriers of digital TV programming from adopting any kind of control over viewers' rights to record those programs, or to reduce the quality of programs they might happen to have the ability or means to record. Now those regulations are under review as the result of a petition from the Motion Picture Association of America, which argues that such controls would be vitally necessary to the existence of the successor service to "premium cable."

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Data protection company PGP says that increased usage of the Mac platform has prompted it to deliver a port of its pre-boot authentication scheme for those users.

PGP cited analyst data that shows a marked increase in enterprise adoption of Apple systems. Long a sector where the Cupertino company has struggled, support from a software maker like PGP certainly goes a long way.

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Part of the plan for rediscovering profitability for the troubled Tribune Co. of Chicago involves fishing for revenue -- somehow -- from a thus-far-undeveloped social networking platform, according to a memo to employees from their new CEO.

The dismally performing US economy is but one of many factors threatening the future of this country's print media industry, which nearly everyone directly involved believes must transform its business model if it is to survive unscathed.

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