It’s an all-stock transaction, and the companies won’t disclose how they are valuing the deal. But the numbers should get out sooner or later, as 33Across plans on raising more money soon, pitching itself as “the largest social and interest graph in the world.”

You have to do some weird mental gymnastics to make that claim work, so ignore it. The combination of the two companies is sort of interesting, though.

Here’s the logic: 33Across makes money by tracking Web users’ social connections, and using the data to serve them targeted ads. Straightforward enough.

Tynt has its own very big data set, which it accumulates by letting publishers use its services for free, while it collects its own information. So, say, the New Yorker can see that you shared a portion of that Mitt Romney/Bain Capital story with your cousin, and Tynt can also keep tabs on where the story migrated around the Web. (Tynt, like lots of ad services, has a small but vocal group of detractors — in this case led by prominent Apple blogger John Gruber, who finds the service “annoying.”)

Put the two together, in theory, and you have an ad tech company that knows a lot about how people interact on the Web, and what sort of stuff they like to read/share (all that stuff is theoretically anonymized, etc.).

The next step, says 33Across CEO Eric Wheeler, will be to approach some of the 500,000 publishers that use Tynt’s service, and offer to sell their ads via a private exchange. That’s the newly popular concept that’s supposed to let publishers sell off some of their unsold inventory without moving it to lowest-common-denominator ad networks.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Angela Waye)

However, the numbers illustrate just how much sales have continued to grow. Sales have risen from three million or four million units per quarter in the first two quarters of iPad shipments to 9.25 million last quarter. That’s more than the company sold in last year’s holiday quarter and appears to be vastly more than any rival has sold in total. Even Android phone owners tend to buy iPads, rather than an Android tablet.

This lends credence to the philosophy that there isn’t a large tablet market nearly so much as there is a large iPad market. While some expect (and may yet be right) that the iPad will lose share over time, just as the iPhone did to Android, others see the iPad as more akin to the iPod. It was a luxury item, as opposed to a phone, which is something of a necessity in the modern world. And when an item is a luxury, more people are likely to go for the luxury brand, if they decide they want the product at all.

There are other parallels to the early days of the iPod. Remember that when Apple’s iPod came out it was not the first hard-drive-based music player. Indeed, there were devices like the Nomad Jukebox. However, Apple did have the early exclusive on Toshiba’s tiny 1.8-inch hard drive, the component that gave the iPod its significantly smaller shape.

While Apple doesn’t have a stranglehold on any one component with the iPad, it does seem to have shored up enough supply, and at favorable enough prices, that competitors can’t really compete much on price. To match or slightly beat Apple’s price, it would seem hardware makers already have to forsake profit margins.

Nonetheless, one recent study did show that Apple may be losing some of its total command of the tablet market.

However, as Daring Fireball points out, those numbers reflect shipments into the channel. One of the key questions that will only be answered in the coming months is whether any of the competitive tablets can continue to sell well beyond their initial shipments needed to fill retail shelves and inventory.

Plus, the field of Android tablets is growing ever more crowded, presumably putting pressure on prices as well as on device makers to continually upgrade their models. While Motorola had the first Honeycomb tablet with the Xoom, it has since been followed by ones from LG, Acer, Toshiba and Samsung, to name but a few. Meanwhile, Lenovo just announced two new models and Sony is offering up two Honeycomb tablets of its own later this year.

And HP and Research In Motion are hoping to grab share with tablets based on their own operating systems.

Then, of course, there is the question of apps. Apple has surpassed 100,000 programs that are optimized for its tablet. The number of apps for Android appears in the hundreds. Neither HP nor Research In Motion are anywhere close to the iPad when it comes to breadth and depth of tablet-specific apps.

The biggest wild card could be Amazon. Unlike Apple’s other rivals, Amazon doesn’t have an announced tablet in the market. But also unlike the others, Amazon has some of the assets needed to compete, including its own music and video storefronts as well as its own app store, not to mention the Kindle book business. The company also has a track record of knowing how to use content to subsidize hardware, something no one in the industry has really been able to successfully do in their effort to take on Apple.

That’s as close as the Seattle-based e-commerce company has come to revealing its sales numbers–ever.

In the past, it’s spoken in broad strokes, claiming that the device was “the fastest selling ever” or that the “Kindle is far and away our bestselling gift item.”

CEO Jeff Bezos also predicted that sales of electronic books will surpass paperback sales by next summer or fall, and sometime after that they will surpass the combination of paperback and hardcover sales.

Truth be told, that’s likely the more important figure for Amazon, rather than hardware sales. With an app virtually on every portable device, including the iPad and several smartphones, its electronic book distribution reaches way beyond the number of Kindles in the wild.

However, with increasing competition from Apple’s iPad and other devices, like the Barnes & Noble’s Nook, there’s still plenty of competition.

For context, the Kindle team says the number of Kindles sold this holiday season is more than the number sold in all of 2009. The sales figures were first mentioned and reported by Daring Fireball.

In September, Barclays’ Douglas Anmuth guessed that Amazon will sell about five million Kindles this year with the help of the latest redesign and more appealing $139 to $189 price points.

Last night, I tweeted: “Good god, pls stop egregiously using this poor lost iphone dude for cheap traffic…sadly, I have to link to explain: http://bit.ly/cK28zb.”

The link led to yet another post on the Web site Gizmodo, owned by Gawker Media, which bought a stolen prototype iPhone 4G from a still unnamed man who filched it after an Apple (AAPL) engineer left it in a Silicon Valley bar by accident.

This short post, one of many taking advantage of the engineer’s mistake, noted it was his birthday and included the obnoxious line: “Of all the days that you can lose Apple’s secret iPhone…”

Or, to put in a way the maturity-challenged crew at the gadget site might understand: So funny I forgot to laugh.

While people can debate about how Gizmodo behaved related to breaking of the story of the phone, there’s no good argument to be made for the site continuing to make hay from this unfortunate guy in the process.

As I also posted on Twitter: “I love how they act like they are on that poor dude’s side, as they flay him for public consumption. Fascinating if it were not so appalling.”

Daring Fireball blogger John Gruber pretty much summed it up best in a post yesterday when he wrote of Gizmodo’s hypocrisy:

“…Publishing the name, photographs, and personal information of the Apple engineer who lost the phone is irrelevant to the story. It was the dick move to end all dick moves. Gizmodo is, ostensibly, a gadget site. The interest of their readers in this saga regards the phone. Publishing his name did not clarify in the least bit how they obtained the phone. The people whose identities I’d like to know are those who obtained and then sold the phone, not the guy from Apple who lost it. There is no interest served by outing him other than taking sociopathic glee in making a public spectacle of someone who made a very serious but honest mistake.

This, I’m deeply offended by.”

Me too.

Of course, such a thing would not even register with Gizmodo, given that it is the same fact-challenged crepe hanger that was lowering Apple CEO Steve Jobs into the grave before he was, you know, dead.

So to expect it to stop the relentless focus on the engineer seems too much to ask, even if it is the decent thing to do given that this man might lose his job and has definitely lost his dignity.

In any case, of course, this debacle has morphed into fodder for late-night joking on television this week, as in the video below of David Letterman reading his “Top Ten List” on “The Late Show.”

Here’s one plus: At least Letterman is funny.

If Daring Fireball’s John Gruber is correct in parsing Apple’s new developer agreement, then Apple (AAPL) is preventing Adobe (ADBE) from using a tool that will port applications created in Flash to Apple’s iPhone and iPad operating systems.

Adobe has been pointing to that workaround as its answer to Apple’s anti-Flash campaign, arguing that developers could create programs that work on most of the Web as well as Apple’s platforms. Now it appears that Steve Jobs and company are forcing developers to choose: Our way or no way.

If true, it’s yet another blow to publisher Condé Nast’s efforts to build tablet magazines with Adobe’s help. Last year, the publisher seemed confident that its effort with Adobe would allow it to create a single digital format that worked on all kinds of iPad-style tablets. But by the end of February, it was rethinking that and began pulling back on plans to work with Adobe.

Caught in the crossfire: Condé’s Wired Magazine, which is supposed to be the first title produced by Adobe that works on the iPad. On the flip side, the other path that Condé has been pursuing–creating less ambitious versions of its titles directly for the iPad, like the GQ app it started selling last weekend–now looks very smart.

I’ve asked Apple and Condé Nast for comment. Here’s Adobe’s response, via spokesman Russell Brady: “Can’t say that much at the moment other than that we are aware of the new SDK language and are looking into it.  We continue to develop our Packager for iPhone OS technology, which we plan to debut in Flash CS5.”

“AT&T does not manage or approve applications for the App Store,” the company said in a statement. “We have received the letter and will, of course, respond to it.”

A flat denial, and one that would seem to throw Apple (AAPL) under the bus for denying iPhone owners access to Google Voice. Though just why Cupertino would take issue with an an iPhone application that offers free text messaging and allows users to make calls, routed via the Internet, for free in the United States and for a small fee internationally is unclear. After all, it’s not Apple’s domestic and international calling business the app is potentially encroaching on.

And AT&T (T) is being somewhat disingenuous here since it acknowledged this past May that it had SlingPlayer for iPhone black-holed from the App Store because of concerns over bandwidth.

So while AT&T may not directly “manage or approve applications,” the carrier is clearly capable of influencing management and approval of them.

Could it be that Apple is contractually bound to reject apps that might compete with AT&T’s service? An agreement like that would certainly make it easy for AT&T to adopt the hey-don’t-look-at-me stance it has taken with the FCC.

That said, it’s entirely possible that the Apple’s rejection of Google Voice apps had nothing to do with AT&T and everything to do with its increasingly complicated relationship with Google (GOOG).

As Daring Fireball’s John Gruber notes, “Google Voice is a mobile phone service provided by the maker of one of the biggest competitors to the iPhone OS. What if Google Voice were instead Microsoft Voice? And what if Windows Mobile were as modern and competitive as Android? Would you be as surprised then that Apple is discouraging iPhone owners from using the service?”

“AT&T does not manage or approve applications for the App Store,” the company said in a statement. “We have received the letter and will, of course, respond to it.”

A flat denial, and one that would seem to throw Apple (AAPL) under the bus for denying iPhone owners access to Google Voice. Though just why Cupertino would take issue with an an iPhone application that offers free text messaging and allows users to make calls, routed via the Internet, for free in the United States and for a small fee internationally is unclear. After all, it’s not Apple’s domestic and international calling business the app is potentially encroaching on.

And AT&T (T) is being somewhat disingenuous here since it acknowledged this past May that it had SlingPlayer for iPhone black-holed from the App Store because of concerns over bandwidth.

So while AT&T may not directly “manage or approve applications,” the carrier is clearly capable of influencing management and approval of them.

Could it be that Apple is contractually bound to reject apps that might compete with AT&T’s service? An agreement like that would certainly make it easy for AT&T to adopt the hey-don’t-look-at-me stance it has taken with the FCC.

That said, it’s entirely possible that the Apple’s rejection of Google Voice apps had nothing to do with AT&T and everything to do with its increasingly complicated relationship with Google (GOOG).

As Daring Fireball’s John Gruber notes, “Google Voice is a mobile phone service provided by the maker of one of the biggest competitors to the iPhone OS. What if Google Voice were instead Microsoft Voice? And what if Windows Mobile were as modern and competitive as Android? Would you be as surprised then that Apple is discouraging iPhone owners from using the service?”

For all the noisy hubbub over should-we-or-shouldn’t-we-publish confidential documents hacked from password-protected accounts of Twitter employees, as well as a Twitter spouse, it is actually pretty simple.

Stolen equals stolen.

But, because this is a “hot” issue and it concerns an even hotter Web 2.0 company–Holy traffic-gooser, Batman!–the debate will surely go on and on, even as the stolen information inevitably leaks its way out.

Still, let’s not pretend what it is and is not.

It is most definitely not, for example, one of those great dramatic moments in journalism.

Thus, comparing the ruminations over whether to publish egregiously obtained information–however true–to the debate over a major event like the New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers is pathetic.

It is, though, a tempest in a Silicon Valley teapot.

In point of fact, my colleague Peter Kafka, who works from New York, wrote me tonight:

“Was at a fancy schmooze tonight packed with digital media bigwigs: Viacom, NBC, News Corp, plus lots of start-up guys. TwitterGate was on *no one’s* lips. I talked to one guy who has a stake in the company and he pretty much shrugged about it–several people had no idea about it at all. Total non-news.”

It is not, however self-righteously (and pompously) put forth, much of a dilemma.

As the very clever John Gruber of Daring Fireball put it: “What you may ask, is the dilemma, since it is clear that any decent human being would simply refuse to have anything to do with something so lurid?”

Indeed, it is unequivocally wrong to publish documents you know or think were stolen or hacked, because it is aiding and abetting that theft.

In this regard, then, there should be no difference between “Web” journalism and the old-fashioned journalism–acting as if the former gets a “process journalism” (what a crock!) pass at standards and ethics that should be eternal and unwavering, no matter the medium.

And it is a little like pitting “gay” marriage against marriage, in order to create a false dichotomy, designed only to obfuscate the issues.

So, it also isn’t kosher to try to take focus of your own wrongdoing by pointing to other practices, which is almost always an obnoxious reach by the willfully immature.

While comparisons to leaked company documents have been made–and BoomTown knows from leaked corporate memos–this is a lazy-man’s argument, since it simply does not track.

The Twitter docs were stolen from personal accounts, an obvious pilfer, which immediately changes the equation completely.

While you certainly can have a lively debate about whether Yahoos should pass along some widely distributed memo that CEO Carol Bartz penned to the company, it is not even close to the same thing.

And, more to the point, if someone sent me emails jacked from Bartz’s own email account, I would not need even a second to know I would never use such information.

As I tweeted earlier today: A credible source a reporter knows giving accurate info is clearly different from a thief rifling through someone’s sock drawer.

That is especially true when you use material from a person you do not know. For the record: When I post a company memo, for example, I know and check out exactly who’s giving it to me and I don’t publish stuff just because it happens to land in my email box.

And, a minor beef, blaming victims for the theft by saying they have weak or inadequate passwords is also pathetic. It’s kind of like blaming people for being robbed because they had crappy locks.

I suppose there is a point in there, but the real finger of blame should always be firmly pointed at the burglar and those who fence his nicked goods.

That brings me to my final point–thinking you can handle dirty material and then act as if your hands are clean.

How hands get dirty is a concept even my children understand.

And if my kids ever said: “Hey, this stolen stuff is going to get out anyway, so let me be the one to ladle it out as I see fit”–I’d ground them for life.

And if you are that kind of person, chances are you’re interested in the new phone’s “tethering” function, the ability to plug it into your laptop and use it as a modem. But you’re going to have be patient–and affluent.

If you’re an AT&T customer, you’re not going to get the chance to do this in the near future. The wireless company has announced that it’s going to offer tethering, but hasn’t said when. Meanwhile, it has said that it will offer MMS, the ability to send videos and photos from the phone without using email, this summer. So reading between the lines, it’s reasonable to assume that tethering won’t be showing up for the next few months at the very least

And if you’re an AT&T customer, chances are that when you do get the chance to tether, it’s going to be very expensive. Like most carriers, AT&T (T) has said it is going to levy an additional charge for tethering, but hasn’t said how much. Web reports out today suggest that AT&T plans to charge $55 a month. on top of its $30-a-month iPhone data plan. As Daring Fireball’s John Gruber notes, that’s much more than wireless customers outside the U.S. pay for tethering. But it’s cheaper than the rates other AT&T customers already pony up: Blackberry owners currently pay the carrier an additional $60 a month for tethering. UPDATE: Thanks to reader Rob Campbell for catching my error: AT&T charges Blackberry users an additional $15 a month for tethering. So if AT&T really does charge tethering iPhone users $55 a month, it’s likely to be an all-in-one charge that includes the phone’s $30 data plan. We’ll see when the company finally announces pricing, whenever that is.

For what it’s worth, I’m not in the chorus of those who think that’s outrageous: I currently pay Sprint (S) $60 a month for a (pokey) wireless EVDO card with a 5GB data limit, on top of the $100 I pay for an unlimited voice/data plan for my BlackBerry.

ANOTHER (!) UPDATE: Earlier in the day AT&T refused to comment on the $55 pricing plan. Now, via their Facebook page (!), the company confirms that tethering will not cost $55 on top of standard data plans. But it doesn’t actually say how much tethering will cost. So we’re back where we started.

[Image credit: PR 1001]

Apple (AAPL) rolled out updates to QuickTime and iTunes on Monday, presumably as preface to iPhone 3.0. Both iTunes 8.2 and QuickTime 7.6.2 include support for the next iteration of the iPhone’s firmware, which is expected to debut at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), which kicks off next week in San Francisco, Calif. Also addressed in iTunes 8.2 are “many accessibility improvements and bug fixes.”

Just what Apple means by that is unclear, although one wonders if it might be a clever euphemism for the Palm (PALM) Pre’s recently disclosed Media Sync feature, which allows the device to synchronize seamlessly with iTunes, essentially by masquerading as an iPod. Certainly, it seems unlikely that Apple would allow this to persist.

As Daring Fireball’s John Gruber notes, “If you’re still holding out any sort of hope that Palm is using some sort of heretofore sanctioned, semi-sanctioned, or even maybe-sorta-kinda-sanctioned-if-you-squint-your-eyes means for a third-party smart phone to sync with iTunes via USB, note that the Pre, when connected to iTunes, is labelled as an “iPod.” If you think Apple would ever allow the use of “iPod” to describe anything other than an actual iPod, you’re nuts.”