The market involves hundreds of small and large companies that help advertisers reach consumers and help website publishers, mobile-application developers, search engines and other digital destinations generate revenue through advertising.

Kawaja, who runs boutique investment firm LUMA Partners, spent months putting together six new graphics that show how 1,240 different companies fit into the following categories of online advertising: display, video, search engines, mobile, social, and commerce. (See slides below, or click here for the LUMA site.)

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On Wednesday, U.S. Reps. Edward Markey and Joe Barton sent Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a two-page letter with questions about a security flaw that gave advertisers a way to access users’ personal information.

On Tuesday, security firm Symantec reported that it found some Facebook apps shared with unauthorized advertisers and other third parties access tokens that could be used to read or post information on a user’s account. On Tuesday, Facebook said it fixed the problem, and that accessing such information would violate its policies. Its own investigation found no evidence of the issue resulting in private information being leaked.

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Yesterday, from the back of the official All Things Digital minivan, BoomTown donned the official ATD Ray-Ban Aviators to talk on WSJ.com’s “Digits” online news show about the $300 million acquisition of Kosmix by Wal-Mart announced earlier this week.

The deal for the Silicon Valley site, which has built a social media platform that organizes content by topic, will be interesting to watch, since the retail giant has tried a number of digital moves in years past that seem to have had negligible impact.

Such as its Vudu movie service, which Wal-Mart bought last year for $100 million, as MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka also noted on the program.

(By the way, it goes without saying, I do not pontificate and drive–at least not on a Skype video connection.)

Here’s the video:

The online marketplace has offered to pay people for the broken Apple devices through its Instant Sale program, which launched in October and which allows people to trade in used electronics and immediately get money for it. EBay said Monday that as part of an Earth Month promotion, it is boosting the trade-in value of these products through April 30.

A broken iPad will fetch up to $150. Impaired iPhones are worth as much as $100 and incapacitated iPods will net up to $50. People who trade in these products will also get a $5 eBay gift card and matching $5 donation to an environmental organization.

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According to research firm Gartner, at least through 2015.

Analysts at the firm estimate that Apple’s iOS operating system will be on more than half of tablets in the world for the next three years, although Google Inc.’s Android will grow steadily. By 2015, they say, iOS will be on 47.1 percent of tablets, with Android on 38.6 percent and Research In Motion’s QNX tablet system on 10 percent.

Any projections that look so far in the future should be taken with a grain of salt, especially when they concern such a rapidly changing industry. Apple Insider pointed out recently that Gartner has radically revised its predictions about the smartphone market over the past couple of years. But the predictions offer some interesting theories about how the tablet market will pan out.

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An organization called Palindrome Advisors thinks so, and it launched a program Wednesday that aims to match executives in technology and other industries with nonprofits that need their help.

“In technology terms, think of Palindrome as a ‘match.com’ for industry leaders and the boards of nonprofits,” the group’s founder, Zaw Thet, told Digits in an email.

Palindrome has 100 executives signed up already–including Twitter’s president of global revenue, Adam Bain; Apple’s director of iPhone apps, Dag Kittlaus; and Ellen Siminoff, a founding executive and former senior vice president at Yahoo. The list of advisers is mostly from the tech world, but there are some outliers, including those in government, the energy business and even nightclubs.

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“2:46 Quakebook,” a Twitter-sourced collection of personal accounts of the quake and its aftermath that will soon be available for purchase here, is one group’s response to the disaster initiated by the local blogging community that aims to raise money for relief efforts (the title refers to the time at which the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck on March 11). All proceeds will go to the Japanese Red Cross.

The e-book, which has gone from conception to completion in around a week and a half, is a case study in the collaborative power of social networking, a vital tool for many in the immediate aftermath with cellphone communications and transport seriously disrupted. Over 200 people—both Japanese and non-Japanese, but mostly living in the country—submitted their experiences and reflections to the project through written accounts and photography, while the editing and design was handled by an international Twitter-based network of bloggers, writers and designers.

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Distracted driving is a big worry for many parents, but one start-up is betting that its technology will help alleviate some of those concerns. California-based Location Labs is selling a tool that detects when the phone is in a moving car and limits the owner’s ability to make calls and texts.

The system locks the driver’s cellphone screen, redirects calls to voicemail, blocks text message alerts and lets parents log on via the Web and see what is happening with the device while the teen is driving. In case of emergencies, parents can set three key contacts who are allowed to get through. And teens can override the system if they’re a passenger rather than a driver, but Location Labs will alert their parents when that happens.

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At least one researcher thinks so. Arthur O’Connor, a doctoral student at Pace University in New York, is testing whether social-media popularity–as measured by Facebook “likes,” Twitter followers and YouTube views–is correlated with stock prices.

In a pilot study, Mr. O’Connor found a “statistically significant” correlation, although he tested only three brands–Starbucks Corp., Nike Inc. and Coca-Cola Co.–over a 10-month period. The more social-media fans a brand had, the better its stock was likely to do, even accounting for general market conditions.

The finding held true even though the three companies studied had very different returns. During the test, Starbucks stock increased 29 percent, Nike grew 14 percent and Coke fell by nearly 6 percent.

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“Our view is that that’s an industry discussion,” Erich Andersen, deputy general counsel for Microsoft, told Digits. “We’re trying to take a leadership role in helping users send a signal of their intention. But the key thing is that a definition of ‘tracking’ needs to happen.” Microsoft Advertising serves ads based on users’ browsing behavior as well as on Bing searches and sites like MSN.

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But people who click on those links activate malicious code that is embedded in their personal computers. According to Satnam Narang, a threat analyst with Internet security firm M86, the code not only turns the infected computer into a drone that can be used by hackers to send more spam in the future, but also tricks people into paying $49 for fake anti-virus software.

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They’ve been working on this particular scam for many months. Jeff Horne, director of threat research for anti-virus vendor Webroot, says an email account he set up to attract and study these types of email has received over one million phony tax-related messages since November.

These cyber-crooks also begin publishing malicious sites early in the tax season, with pages that allow people to download IRS forms for filing. “They automatically deliver the malware without you even realizing it,” said Horne. Whether delivered via email or a visit to a malicious site, the viruses lurk on your hard drive looking for keywords related to tax filing, such as social security numbers, street addresses, employer names and income, and then sends it back to the cyber-crooks.

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Google has said 58 malicious apps were uploaded to Android Market and then downloaded to around 260,000 devices before Google removed the affected apps last Tuesday evening. It isn’t clear how many users activated the applications, a Google spokesman said. But users who did activate the apps, which included Super Guitar Solo, Advanced Barcode Scanner, Bubble Shoot and many others, ran the risk of having their personal data stolen from their phone and sent to a remote computer server.

One potential clue lies in the server used to help carry out the attack. John Hering, CEO of mobile security provider Lookout, said that as part of his company’s investigation of the incident it found that the attack’s “command and control” server, which received the stolen data from the smartphones, traced back to Hurricane Electric, an Internet service provider based in Fremont, Calif. Mr. Hering said his company contacted Hurricane Electric on the morning of March 2 soon after it discovered the server’s role in the attack, and asked the company to shut it down.

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You can’t turn it off because the service will capture your license plate whether you like it or not. But to receive virtual fist-shaking, finger-pointing, or flirty messages from fellow motorists, or the “special offers” from merchants that Thrower hopes will pay his company for access to your in-box, you actually do have to sign up and identify yourself as the owner of your license plate.

The service works by using images of license plates snapped by other people using their cell phone cameras, or by license plate numbers people can send via telephone, a special email address, or a smartphone app. The company has already captured more than 250,000 license plates from a combination of messages sent by beta testers and publicly-available video feeds like cameras at toll booths, according to Thrower.

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Executives discussing their companies’ plans for managing fleets of smartphones, laptops, tablets and other mobile devices at a technology conference in Palm Desert, Calif. this week said they are either testing or implementing policies for having employees bring their own technology, and then reimbursing them for part or all of the associated costs.

Kevin Summers, the chief information officer at Whirlpool, said that, eventually, the appliance-maker expects 60 percent of such equipment to be employee-owned.

Some, like insurance company USAA, will provide employees with stipends to cover their expenses, with any overages being the employees’ responsibility, while others, like pharmaceutical research company PPDI, will allow employees to charge a portion of their expenses back to the company. Brad Wright, vice president of global communications technology for international engineering firm Jacobs, told Digits during a break at the conference that his firm gave employees a one-time raise to cover the cost of acquiring this equipment.

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