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)

For a couple of reasons:

• Apple has already told us it will be about education, which is both an interesting and potentially giant market. But for lots of people, that’s not nearly as exciting as, say, an Apple TV could be. (Not a lot of hype about e-textbooks at CES this year. Plenty of Connected TV chatter.)
• People who know things about Apple have made a point of tamping down expectations. For starters, note that it’s in New York, not Apple’s Bay Area backyard, where it puts on its really big shows. Also note that Apple media boss Eddy Cue is supposed to be front and center, not CEO Tim Cook.

So, with a bit of air let out of the event in advance, the big remaining question is this one: Does Apple plan to blow up the textbook business, or just help it evolve a bit?

If you have time this morning, you can read two takes by professional Apple-watchers Philip Elmer-DeWitt (who’s in the “evolve” camp), and John Gruber (why not blow things up real good?).

We’ll know shortly. As I mentioned yesterday, the key thing to watch at the Guggenheim is whether Cue brings up reps from the big textbook publishers like Pearson and McGraw-Hill onstage, or whether the focus is on letting educators and others build their own books, so they can bypass both the publishers and the antiquated textbook procurement system.

A lot more fun to write about if it’s the latter, but AllThingsD will be there, regardless. Check back here around 9:45 am ET for a link to live coverage.

Which doesn’t mean that it’s true. Just that there’s a lot of drumming going on.

Still, for the record: Apple blogger John Gruber reports that Apple is doing advanced testing on a CDMA version of the iPhone–the kind of testing it would need to bring the phone to Verizon’s (VZ) wireless network.

Even if you take Gruber’s word for it, the existence of CDMA test units doesn’t make a Verizon deal a foregone conclusion. It’s possible, for instance, that the phones are designed with other CDMA carriers in mind–like Sprint (S), China Telecom or SK Telecom (SKM).

But the story does fit nicely with other reports pointing to an impending iPhone/Verizon launch, perhaps in January. Stories we’ve heard all year long, but have been hearing more frequently in the past few days.

I’ve asked Apple PR reps for their take. I’m not planning on hearing back, but if I do I will dutifully update. UPDATE: Apple declines to comment.

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.

This is supposed to be a win-win-win: Reader finds a place to buy something they’re interested in and the e-commerce company gets an interested customer. And if the sale goes through, the blogger gets a little cut.

Apple (AAPL) pays out five percent of revenue from any transaction its affiliates generate, while Amazon (AMZN) pays between 4 and 15 percent. Unless you’re a very popular blogger selling very expensive stuff–like Mac whiz John Gruber, who made several thousand dollars by steering his readers to Amazon last fall to buy Apple’s Leopard operating system for $129 a pop–it’s not going to amount to much.

But it’s not too small to escape the attention of the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC, which is prepping new guidelines about the kinds of disclosures bloggers should make when they endorse a product on their site, also wants bloggers to give readers a heads-up when they use affiliate links.

I understand the FTC’s impulse here: It’s trying to clamp down on pernicious “pay-per-post” setups, which are basically advertorial networks. They want bloggers who get get free trips or products from a company to acknowledge the freebies when they write about said company. And they want “street team” members, who are paid (or compensated in some form) to leave comments on message boards talking up certain products, to acknowledge that they’re getting paid. Etc.

This sort of stuff is standard on some TV shows, but not on all forms of media (disclosures aren’t standard in magazines, for example). I guess there’s no harm in trying to port the disclosure practice to the Web, but I don’t see why affiliate links need to be disclosed; they are, after all, just links.

So I called up Rich Cleland, the assistant director in the FTC’s division of advertising practices who was quoted in the AP story about the move, to make sure he hadn’t been misquoted. Did the FTC really want to spend time making sure that people who make a five cent commission on the sale of a 99 cent MP3 spell out that relationship to their readers? Answer: Yes. Yes, they do.

“Affiliate marketers are covered, and the stress there is on ‘marketers,’” he told me. “You can put a different name on it, but you’re still a marketer….We really want people to distinguish between advertising and nonadvertising.”

The new rules won’t take affect for a while, likely this fall, Cleland said. So bloggers, be warned! Your hobby may  require a little more work going forward.

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.”