Indeed, people do seem to be separating their online professional identities from their personal identities more than they used to, now that the tools are available. Web users increasingly use LinkedIn to sign in to business-oriented sites, according to the social toolmaker Gigya.

LinkedIn started offering its credentials as a Web sign-on system early last year, and many business-oriented sites now offer users the option of authenticating using their LinkedIn account in addition to other options like their Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Gigya has seen a major increase in LinkedIn log-ins to sites it identifies as business-to-business. Twenty percent of social logins on such sites used LinkedIn credentials in January 2011, up from three percent in July 2010.

LinkedIn accounted for 26.6 percent of social sign-ons in January on the stock market news site Seeking Alpha, 20 percent on the Harvard Business Review and 14 percent on the Internet Advertising Bureau site. (The rest of social sign-ons were through Facebook and Twitter, mostly.)

To be sure, LinkedIn is still a minority share of social sign-ons on such sites, and these numbers don’t include users who register for a site without the help of a social network, or users who visit without registering.

Plus, the trend may be headed in the other direction. Many people propose that our personal and professional identities will increasingly merge, especially for younger generations. That’s the theory behind the legion of LinkedIn 2.0 start-ups like BranchOut and Assetmap.

LinkedIn is the first major U.S. social networking site to file for an IPO. It hopes to raise $175 million.

Offline instant messages and group video chat services remain offline, he said.

Bates said Skype now knows what caused the crash, but he didn’t disclose it. He ruled out the possibility of some kind of malicious attack, and said it’s conducting a detailed postmortem.

This would probably be the worst time for Skype to experience a high-profile outage. Though the Skype service is working today, lots of people who might have used it to call family members heading into Christmas may have made alternate plans.

However, the failure, whatever its cause, is also a reminder that Skype isn’t always in charge of its own ability to stay online. In 2007 an otherwise routine Windows security update issued by Microsoft forced an abnormally high number of PCs running Skype around the world to restart at roughly the same time. A software flaw prevented the Skype peer-to-peer network from compensating properly and the service crashed for two days.

This incident will also hurt its reputation with two key constituencies: Prospective business customers and potential investors. Business customers will rethink plans to deploy Skype. And potential investors will question whether this company has its act together, hurting the potential benefit from its forthcoming IPO.

To its credit, Skype did manage to restore service much faster than it did in 2007, as SkypeJournal notes here.

System failure is one of the risks that Skype admits to in its S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Of the 2007 failure, Skype says in its filing:

“We experienced significant adverse publicity and lost net revenues as a result of this outage, and any similar outage in the future would likely harm our business. As we increasingly introduce products particularly targeted at business customers, any system failures could have a significant impact on our ability to attract or maintain our relationships with business customers.”

Bates’s video message to customers is below.

Yep, Google.

Turns out that in France, 90 percent of Internet searches are conducted via Google. And while that might be concerning from a competitive standpoint, it doesn’t constitute a breach of law and Google is in no danger of sanctions. Right now, anyway.

“This dominant position is not reprehensible: it results from a great deal of innovation, supported by significant and continuous investments,” Autorite de la Concurrence concluded. “Only the abusive exercise of such market power could be sanctioned.”

That said, the agency’s findings will undoubtedly invite further scrutiny of Google abroad. Certainly, it adds a bit more heat to the European Commission’s investigation into allegations that Google abuses its dominant position in search.

Google, for its part, argues that just because it’s dominant in search doesn’t mean search and search advertising isn’t competitive.

“Search ads are one of many options for advertisers,” the company said in a statement. “If the price of search ads rises, advertisers can and do switch to other formats, both online and offline. That is the sign of a competitive and dynamic industry.”

Same terms and conditions apply: You can stream all the music you want to your phone for $9.95 and buy individual songs for downloading. That $9.95 price tag seems to be the new going rate for mobile subscription services: Rhapsody recently priced its offering at that level, and MOG will do the same once its mobile option rolls out.

One relatively important distinction between Thumbplay’s BlackBerry option and the one it offers for Android and iPhone: The former offers an offline/caching mode, which means you can stream a certain number of tunes, store them on your handset, and listen to them when you’re on an plane, in the subway, etc.

Thumbplay doesn’t explain why that option isn’t available for Android and iPhone, but promises it’s “coming soon.”

Nielsen says 13.3 percent of Americans who watched the Oscars also used the Web during this month’s telecast and that 14.5 percent of those watching last month’s Super Bowl did the same thing (see table below; click to enlarge).

These numbers are both up from last year, and the only surprise here is that they’re so low. But remember: Not everyone spends as much time on the Web as you do–a third of the country still doesn’t have broadband.

Nielsen says that online/offline viewers spent the majority of their Web time at Facebook, Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO), which isn’t surprising. It’s a little bit interesting that Twitter.com doesn’t crack Nielsen’s list of Top 10 domains for simultaneous viewing. But perhaps most people who Twitter during TV time are doing so from their phones.

Speaking of which, many thanks to all of you who have refrained from Twittering during and immediately after “Lost” this season–my stream has been nice and quiet so far. Or perhaps no one’s watching “Lost” anymore. I wouldn’t blame them; this season has been frustrating even by the show’s frustrating standards.

Google (GOOG) stock has lurched five percent lower in the first few minutes of after-hours trading, as investors digest the news. If you want to anthropomorphize the market, you might speculate that it’s bummed that CEO Eric Schmidt and company didn’t show a higher revenue lift. But if you’re keeping track, revenue is up 17 percent compared with last year, and up 12 percent from the previous quarter.

Here is Citigroup (C) analyst Mark Mahaney’s “cheatsheet” for those playing at home (click to enlarge):

And you can see the company’s profit and loss and balance sheet here.

Google will be using YouTube to livestream its earnings call, but I’ll be providing some annotation here starting at 4:30 pm Eastern. You can also check out the company’s accompanying slide presentation here, and here’s a chart it’s particularly proud of (click to enlarge):

I’m trying out a promising new liveblog tool, but please bear with me if there are bumps along the way.

On the call: CEO Eric Schmidt, CFO Patrick Pichette, product guy Jonathan Rosenberg, sales boss Nikesh Arora. No Larry or Sergey.

Schmidt declares that he’s very pleased with Q4: “An extraordinary end to a roller coaster year.”

Schmidt: Clearly, we were right to start ramping up investments and will continue to do so. We’re investing in people and investing in tech based on our “70/20/10″ rule: 70 percent in core products, 20 percent in new business like mobile/Android, and 10 percent in “long view” initiatives like commerce and social.

And of course, more mergers and acquisitions. We’re continuing on a pace of roughly one M&A per month, some small, some big.

Pichette runs through the numbers in the release above. He reiterates Schmidt’s line about continuing investments.

Jonathan Rosenberg has a cold, but gets his message across: “We made some very hard decisions” to shut down some products to focus on winners. It’s our “more wood behind fewer arrows approach.” We’re focusing on DoubleClick integration, Android expansion and the Chrome OS. “YouTube, is in fact, monetizing well,” and we hope our partners make money, too.

Obviously, going forward, we’re going to plow resources into search. But other stuff too. Social, for instance. Not just social networking, but all of our products should be “social.” This can apply to search, local search, etc. We’re also focusing on commerce, whether people are making their purchases online or offline.

More Rosenberg: Mobile is important, and so is moving enterprise to the cloud.

Arora: We improved throughout the year, and Q4 was strong. Large companies like Staples (SPLS) and Volvo are directing an increasing portion of spending online [as they're supposed to do].

Arora: Search ads are always a value in December! Costs go up but they get more effective because people buy more.

Arora: Brand marketers are increasing their spending too. YouTube has had many successful brand campaigns. Have you seen Fox’s “Avatar” ads? They’re great. Other shoutouts for Sony (SNE) and American Express (AXP).

Arora: Most of the top networks have signed onto AdX ad exchange since we launched it in the fall.

Time for Q&A.

Google’s U.S. revenue had a big jump, but international revenue did not accelerate as quickly. What gives?

Arora: In the U.S., we saw large advertisers shifting offline to online. Other markets have different issues; hence, the different growth rates.

Are we back to normal in regard to seasonal patterns? Also, can you talk about “materiality” of mobile?

Pichette: We won’t talk about mobile revenue in any concrete way.

Arora: There is some different performance by vertical. Finance, obviously, isn’t as strong as it used to be.

Another question about mobile: Is Google trying to push revenue? Profitability? Also, please talk about China.

Rosenberg: Advertisers are starting to figure out what works on mobile. For instance, adding a phone number or an offer for mobile helps a lot.

Pichette: Regarding mobile, we want to drive innovation that in turn drives people to the Web, which is better for us. That’s the core engine of mobile.

Schmidt: “China stuff has been well-covered in the press,” the CEO notes before recounting the China story. “We’re in conversations with the Chinese government,” and our business has remained unchanged. “But in a reasonably short time, we’ll be making some changes there.” That said, we’d still like to be in China.

Missed a question. Apologies.

Please talk about outperformance of network business vs. owned and operated. Also, what accounts for higher marketing costs?

Pichette: Nothing to talk about re: network versus O&O. Re expenses, we said we were going to ramp up investment and we put in more there because we can track the results and the return on investment.

Arora: Yep, some of that money was to support consumer launches.

You said search increased five times on mobile. So what does that mean for revenue per search? Also, please talk more about increased spending on marketing.

Pichette: We’re really pleased with the marketing experiments we’re running.

Rosenberg: Regarding mobile, the new formats, targeting tools and reporting we’re giving mobile advertisers is making a huge difference. But I won’t answer your question about revenue.

Missed another question here.

YouTube monetization: Can you give us some metrics on how much inventory you’re selling?

Arora: Nope. But it has “gone from being a nice-to-have” to essential.

Pichette: The Youtube homepage nearly sold out in Q4. Hope that’s useful.

Can you break out ad spending by advertiser size?

Arora: Large advertisers are moving online, which is good. Retail was strong in Q4. We’re working with smaller advertisers to “bring them into the fray.” But the discrepancy so far has been mainly seasonal.

Can you rank your core businesses in terms of growth potential? Also, what’s up with you and Apple (AAPL)?

Schmidt: We’ve been saying for a while that display is a big opportunity. One story you haven’t seen so far is how successful we’ve been in display, but that will come out in 2010. [Note to PR staff: Start pitching!]

And obviously, mobile is small now but will grow quickly.

“With respect to Apple, it’s probably better to say”…that as a former board member “I have a special spot for Apple in my heart.” They’re a very well run company and “they have some very good stuff coming” strong competitor, etc.

Schmidt on Nexus One: What it is really about is a new way of buying a phone. Nexus One itself is the first in a series of examples where you can buy the phone online and pick your carrier.

Is Bing having an impact on cost per click?

Rosenberg: We think out CPCs are generally not affected by competitors. Prices are set by buyers.

Can you talk about Nexus One’s impact on margin?

Pichette. Not really. We want to innovate, etc. Nexus One will have its own margin and that’s how we’re focused on building the business.

We’ve seen third-party data on mobile projecting that iPhone could account for 50 percent of mobile traffic. Does that make sense to you? Also, you have said that the Apple relationship is “stable.” So what are the odds that you’re going to continue to provide search on the iPhone?

Schmidt: We won’t talk about the market share of Apple. And we won’t “speculate about any deals of any kind–true, not true, rumored, not rumored.”

Given that new display products are so great, is there any notion that people are moving dollars from search to display?

Schmidt: Advertisers “don’t shift, they add.” They might maximize search to maximize revenue and they might spend on display for long-term growth, branding, etc.

Pichette thanks Googlers listening for all their hard work. There’s an auxilary call at 6 pm Eastern with Pichette and Rosenberg, but I won’t be able to cover that one.

The above is an article of faith among a certain kind of Web publisher. And some of them are even paying for studies to prove that display ads–basically all the ads you see that aren’t part of search results–really do work on the Web.

Except when they don’t. That’s the unsettling conclusion that some research funded by Yahoo (YHOO) recently reached, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The study was produced by the Web giant’s Yahoo Labs, which has been getting new attention in the Carol Bartz regime and beefing up its staff of social scientists by “adding highly credentialed cognitive psychologists, economists and ethnographers from top universities around the world.”

One of the new hires, economics professor David Reiley, tried to track the benefits of a Yahoo ad campaign on behalf of a retail chain. He found that the ads did work, but only for people born before Woodstock:

The research, conducted in partnership with an undisclosed national retailer, sought to accurately measure the impact of Internet display advertising across online and offline sales, by tracking people who had registered with both Yahoo and the store. The research found an approximately 5 percent increase in spending among those who had seen the ads–with 93 percent of those sales occurring in stores.

The potentially worrisome thing, however, was that among those under 40, the percentage was nearly zero. That could reflect the unpopularity of the particular retailer among that demographic. Or it could underscore a growing immunity to display advertising among the Web-savvy younger generation.

Yikes. I asked Yahoo for its take on the study and the company sent me a (not surprisingly) sunnier summary of the research. Some of its highlights:

Major Findings:
By combining a controlled experiment with panel data on purchases, we find statistically and economically significant impacts of advertising on sales.

We estimate the total effect on revenues to be more than eleven times the retailer’s expenditure on advertising during the study.
93% of the effect was on offline (in store) sales.

Persistence: The effects of the campaigns were persistent over time, meaning that the sales impact could be tracked for a period of time after the campaign ended.

Demographics: there was no significant correlation or differences w/r/t location (by state) or gender.

But there was a significant difference w/r/t to age: customers over the age of 40 were significantly more responsive to the ads in terms of sales. The largest effect came from senior citizens (65+).

Clicks versus non-Clicks: Though clicks are a standard measure of performance in online-advertising, we find that online advertising has substantial effects on those who merely view but do not click the ads.

We find that 78% of the effect in sales comes from those who view ads but do not click them, while only 22% can be attributed to those who click.

Count me among the group disposed to think that brand ads on the Web do work, by the way. But then again, I have a vested interest in this being true since it’s what’s supposed to keep me clothed and fed. I’d hate to see scientific proof that it’s all a pipe dream.

For a contrary perspective, funded by people whose interests align with mine, check out this study funded by the Online Publishers Association.

[Image credit: pedrosimoes7]

People resort to all sorts of time-consuming methods for doing this. Some email the items to themselves. Others copy them to USB thumb drives and manually transfer them to each machine. Still others use Internet-based, or “cloud,” storage, uploading all their photos to a service like Flickr or Facebook, or using Web-based productivity programs like Google Docs (GOOG). And some use Web-based backup, storage or synchronization services.

Each of these methods, even the cloud-based ones, has limitations and frustrations. Some are complicated, or work only with certain kinds of files. Others work only when you have a Web connection, or don’t replicate your preferred folder structure. Still, others work OK with standard files and folders, but have trouble with specially arranged content, such as music that is organized in a jukebox program.

I’ve been testing a cloud-based service that attempts to solve these problems. It is called ZumoDrive, and it comes from a small company called Zecter Inc. A new version is due out this week that aims to add some capability and make the task simpler.

ZumoDrive mimics a standard physical hard disk, which can contain numerous folders and files. It works on Windows, Macintosh or Linux computers, and also comes in a more limited version for the Apple iPhone. It presents itself as a standard hard-disk icon on all your computers. But it’s actually a single, identical virtual hard disk that lives on the company’s servers, not on the computers themselves. The files it contains are rapidly streamed down to your machines when you need them.

I tested the service on a desktop Windows PC, a netbook, two Mac laptops and an iPhone. I generally liked ZumoDrive and found it easy to use, and pretty fast. But I ran into a few glitches, and it can be pricey. The new version will offer 2 gigabytes of storage free, but will cost a monthly or annual fee for more storage, ranging from $30 a year for 10 gigabytes to $800 a year for 500 gigabytes.

Also, like all cloud-based storage, ZumoDrive isn’t fully accessible when you’re offline. It caches, or automatically downloads, some recently used files, making them available offline. But you may want to open a document or play a song that is available only when you are online.

There have been online storage services for years, including some that could appear as desktop icons. In particular, ZumoDrive competes with somewhat similar services such as SugarSync and DropBox. But it’s different.

Unlike DropBox, it doesn’t require you to remember to place files in a single, special folder. You can link your existing folders to the ZumoDrive. And, unlike SugarSync, it doesn’t copy all your shared files to the hard disks of all your computers. It keeps the files in the cloud.

Compared with SugarSync, which I also like, ZumoDrive uses much less of your hard disk space, and does a better job with iTunes libraries. But SugarSync doesn’t require you to be online to use the files it synchronizes, though it also keeps a backup copy that you can access from the Web.

You don’t need to learn any special techniques to use ZumoDrive. Your computer sees the ZumoDrive as if it were a physical hard disk, so you can add and delete files to it in the normal ways. A program like Microsoft Word (MSFT) also sees it as a normal disk, and can open files from, or save them to, a ZumoDrive without a second thought.

And, because a ZumoDrive can be large without taking up much space on your local drive, it is especially nice for netbooks, which may offer relatively little storage. It also allows you to share folders with others, and encrypts the data you store on it, for security.

To use ZumoDrive, you first upload all your key stuff from your main computer. Then, once you install the small ZumoDrive program on your other devices, all those file names show up on your screen and can be fetched from the cloud when you like. You can add files and folders from the other computers as well. And you can also access your files via a Web site or an iPhone.

You can link folders on your computers to identical folders on your ZumoDrive, and they will stay in sync, so you can keep using the folder structure you’re used to, and it will be up-to-date on the ZumoDrive.

ZumoDrive understands how to handle and centralize your iTunes music library. In my tests, I uploaded an iTunes library of about 900 songs from a Mac at my home, and was able to play the songs on a Windows XP netbook that had no music stored locally.

I ran into some glitches and limitations, all of which the company says it is fixing. For instance, at first my netbook didn’t fetch all the iTunes songs.

But, all in all, ZumoDrive is a harbinger of the new world of cloud computing, and it is worth a look.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Which is saying something. Because as you might recall, in 1999, Nasdaq was soaring on the back of the dot-com bubble to levels never before seen.

And here we are amid the worst recession since the 1930s. Haven’t even entered that “all important holiday shopping season” yet, either.

Things are looking pretty good for Amazon (AMZN) right now. Sure, there’s renewed competition from retailers like Wal-Mart (WMT). There are potential sales tax issues and income tax liabilities and a raft of Kindle-killers headed to market. But Amazon’s stock is up 131 percent this year, brokerage firms are upgrading their ratings on the company, and analysts are saying it’s only going to go higher.

Said Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney: “Near-term outlook very positive as AMZN heads into holiday season fully armed against shrinking/de-stocking offline retailers, with one of the must-have gadgets of the season (Kindle), a significantly strengthening International presence, and soon-to-be closed Zappos acquisition.”

Yeah. Things are looking pretty good right now. But we said that back in ’99 too–when Amazon had a similar P/E.

But investors are going to be pleased with the non-GAAP earnings number: $5.16 share, up from $5.10 per share in the previous quarter and way, way above the $4.90 per share consensus. Bottom line: Google (GOOG) has cut back on its expenditures, and that’s boosted profits.

Here’s how: “Operating expenses, other than cost of revenues, were $1.52 billion in the first quarter of 2009, or 28% of revenues, compared to $1.65 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, or 29% of revenues. The operating expenses in the first quarter of 2009 included $774 million in payroll-related and facilities expenses, compared to $890 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.”

And here’s one way to keep “payroll-related expenses” down: Stop hiring people. “On a worldwide basis, Google employed 20,164 full-time employees as of March 31, 2009, down from 20,222 full-time employees as of December 31, 2008.”

Meanwhile, Google is still moving its sales team around following Tim Armstrong’s departure.

Earnings call starting now. I’ll update as we go.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt: “We’re still basically in uncharted territory… users are still searching, but they’re buying less… advertisers are still spending, but they’re spending less.” That’s all appropriate, he says. Google’s auction model is working. Ad dollars are still moving from offline to online.

Apologies: I now have three Google stories breaking simultaneously, and I’m going to have to duck in and out of the live call.

Sorry for the gap. Here’s Schmidt talking about getting long-form content on YouTube: Initial focus will be on advertising, but will add in micropayments and other schemes down the line. Will be announcing additional things in that area “literally very very soon.”

Schmidt asked about Twitter: “It proves that innovation is alive and well in Silicon Valley… it is an incredibly useful thing. The question here is how would you make some money on that… and the logical conclusion would be advertising, and we’d happy to work on that with them.”

[This essay to attendees of the sixth D: All Things Digital conference is from the program book and is written by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg; D6 starts tomorrow night.]

As it turns out, creating a start-up is kind of hard.

And, trying to be entrepreneurial 24/7 is definitely challenging.

And, attempting to drastically shift your paradigm and move into new arenas with even newer rules and lots of uncertainty? Let’s just say, we are very tired these days.

Still, it is safe to say that we are also flatly exhilarated, riveted by our work as never before and pretty much hooked.

But did we mention the really tired part?

In all seriousness, it has been just over a year since we and our hardy little team launched AllThingsD.com, our earnest effort to take the D conference we created six years ago and give it another life on the Web.

When we were designing D we had one idea in mind–to create the kind of conference we wished we could attend. It would have the best speakers, it would cover serious topics, it would treat its audience with respect and intelligence and it would offer content that was valuable and bracingly true.

As to pointless and insufferable panel creep and PowerPoint double-talk–we would banish them.

So in creating AllThingsD.com, our goal was to take the spirit of the D: All Things Digital conference itself, the amazing community and connections, the no-holds-barred style, the rich content and great writing, and add a key ingredient–a staunch commitment to accuracy, ethics, standards and a notion that online readers want quality tech news and analysis in a transparent and honest way.

We hope you think we are well on our way to achieving that. And we are excited by all the possibilities ahead for the site as we move into our second year of trying to take all the many virtues of mainstream media and marry them with the excitement and energy of the blogosphere.

To say we think a lot about change these days is an understatement.

And, in a way, although we tend to shy away from themes at D, the ever faster pace of change in the tech and media world has turned out to be one of the hallmarks of the speakers we have invited to share the stage with us, and their insights with you.

Beginning with Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, we could not have a better pair to talk about forcing dramatic change, even when running one of the most successful and enduring tech companies in the world.

From its bold and quite unsolicited offer to buy Yahoo (YHOO) this year, to its efforts to transform its core software business, to the symbolic passing of the torch as Mr. Gates moves away from his day-to-day role at the company in July, Microsoft’s leaders have sought out change aggressively.

So, too, have our other speakers.

Michael Dell is trying to reinvent Dell (DELL) again, even though it was his company that reinvented the computer business. Howard Stringer has been facing the same issues at Sony (SNE) in consumer electronics, while Time Warner’s (TWX) new CEO Jeff Bewkes has been handed a media giant he must shift even more dramatically into the digital age.

Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos, one of the Internet’s true visionaries, is at it again this year, trying to make the dream of an e-book a mainstream reality.

And Barry Diller of IAC (IACI)? As usual, he has been right in the middle of a brawl about what direction the interactive company should take.

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook has, of course, been the youthful face of change, bursting on the scene with his upstart social-networking site and upending all the apple carts in Silicon Valley as the leader of the Web 2.0 army. In this fight, he has recently been joined by former Google (GOOG) exec Sheryl Sandberg, who knows a thing or two about disruption.

Tom Glocer of Thomson Reuters (TRI) must take a global information powerhouse and make it even more digital, as challengers pop up everywhere. And Tom Rogers of TiVo (TIVO) is seeking to take the groundbreaking concepts the digital video-recording company pioneered and make a lasting business out of it.

Bobby Kotick of Activision (ATVI) has merged his offline game company, whose “Guitar Hero” is one of the mightiest brands in the sector, with one of the most powerful online multi-player games makers.

And Lowell McAdam of Verizon (VZ) has been trying to react to the sweeping shifts in how wireless technologies are delivered to consumers, as true change finally comes to the cellphone industry.

Nathan Myhrvold, former research guru at Microsoft, has always been about figuring out what’s behind the next corner, while FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has to puzzle over what role the government has to play in this fast-moving space.

And Melinda Gates is changing the world, which is a pretty big job.

And, of all the many luminaries we have on stage at D6, probably no one has had a more eventful year than Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang. From suddenly taking over the reins at the company he launched while a student at Stanford University, to having a tough year of trying to revive Yahoo, to coping with an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft, Mr. Yang has had the ride of his life. He will appear with Yahoo president Sue Decker, who has become the No. 2 exec at the company, and has been charged with carrying out Mr. Yang’s vision amid much turmoil.

Finally, the long and storied career of News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch has been all about constant transformation. It is also not an understatement to say that the new owner of Dow Jones (and also AllThingsD.com and this conference too) is probably one of the most game-changing business leaders around.

And we hope to be equally disruptive in quizzing him and all the speakers about what it all means. Even the demos we picked will display the same forward-leaning and game-changing ideas all our speakers represent.

So, hold onto your seats for D6, as it’s going to be a bouncy ride.

And, as it turns out after our first full year as Web entrepreneurs, we would not have it any other way.

Except, of course, it would have been nice to get a little more sleep.

Find out what’s happening at D6 by reviewing these posts and video clips that will be posted live during the conference this week.

This week, I tested a free Web site called Mint.com that serves as a Web home base for account information from credit cards, credit unions and bank accounts. The site securely and automatically logs into those accounts, fetches the latest data and presents the information in easy-to-read and useful ways.

Mint.com lets users track their expenses via pie charts (top) and offers alternative savings options (bottom).

Mint hopes to help users get a better handle on where their money is going, how much is in each account, and what can be done to budget that money more efficiently. It sends automatic alerts about account data or when you exceed your budget. It can even translate a bank’s often odd rendering of merchants’ names into plain-English versions of your financial transactions.

Starting May 6, the site will let users add investments, such as individual retirement accounts and 401(k) plans, to their accounts, though Mint isn’t designed for serious investors. Today, readers can get sneak peak access to this Investments feature via www.mint.com/wsj. In June, Mint will add auto loans, student loans and mortgages.

Mint won’t work offline because it’s completely Web-based, and can’t be used to pay bills or move any money around, meaning people will still need to visit separate sites for bill payments and money transfers.

Talk of money-related software programs often brings to mind the old reliables: Intuit Inc.’s (INTU) Quicken and Microsoft (MSFT) Money. But some of these programs can cost close to $100 and require intense bookkeeping. Stripped-down versions of these products are available, but these still include fees. Geezeo.com is a Web service that’s more comparable to Mint.com, but it incorporates social-networking tools like introducing users with like interests.

Mint was created for 20-somethings like me who want to pay more attention to their finances but aren’t interested in taking hours each week to do so. This Web site worked ideally for me, and its clean interface integrates Web 2.0 features in a way that makes it a pleasure to use. I think it will appeal to a broad range of people who want to feel more in control of their money, but don’t want to spend a lot of time updating their information.

I set up my information on Mint in minutes, not hours, and used it to track five accounts. In seconds, Mint used data from my accounts to automatically generate colorful pie charts that illustrated where my money was spent — and most expenses were accurately labeled. I was pleased to find my local bank in a list of Mint-supported companies. And the site even encouraged me to look at my 401(k)’s progress online for the first time in a while because I didn’t need to dig into an out-of-the-way, unfamiliar Web site.

Security is important for a site like Mint.com, so it teamed up with online banking-service provider Yodlee to make secure connections to banks. This involves using encryption that the company claims is the same as what banks use. Mint also says that because it requires nothing more than an email address, password and ZIP Code from each person, registration is anonymous. And the company claims that it never sees or stores password information, nor does it ever see account numbers.

When setting up an account, Mint acknowledges nicknames for companies, like Amex for American Express (AXP), making it easy to find specific banks and credit-card companies. If you’d like to sign up on Mint, but don’t already have online accounts set up, Mint will give step-by-step directions on how to do this — whether via a company’s site or by phone.

The site suggests alternative companies that will save you more money than those you’re currently using. Some, but not all, of these companies are sponsors of the site. After entering my savings-account information, I learned about a high-yield savings account that would potentially allow me to earn hundreds more in interest each year. Some of these suggested alternatives were familiar, while others — like Bank of the Internet USA — weren’t.

I found Mint’s automatic alerts to be especially helpful. Each alert can be personalized to notify you via email or an SMS message on your mobile phone when something happens in an account. Account summaries, for example, can be sent via email and text message every Friday, the first of every month or never. Alerts can be adjusted to tell people that their credit-card bill is due within a certain number of days; if a pre-set budget is exceeded; or if a bank charges extra fees.

Mint’s new Investments section showed me details about two investments. A handy graph showed the status of my account earnings and compared them with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq and the S&P 500. Individual stocks can be added into your account, though I could see only the balance of a trust holding one of my stocks.

In the Trends section, I learned what my most frequent expenditures were, as well as the total amount of money spent per month, which was interesting to see since I don’t usually add up all of my expenses. Trends can show you how your spending stacks up with everyone else — that is, people in the U.S. who use Mint. My account showed I ate at a Chipotle (CMG) chain restaurant once in February and once in April, spending the exact amount each time. (I like their barbacoa fajita burrito.) But I spent about $4 to $5 less than the average Chipotle customer.

If certain expenses are mislabeled, they can easily be renamed and reassigned to different categories. Pie charts and graphs can be altered with one mouse click to become more or less specific, and budgets can be set after looking at spending history on an easy-to-understand bar graph.

Digital conveniences like online bill payments and Web transactions can lead to people putting less thought into their finances. But the value of knowing specifically where money is and how it is spent is a tool that will likely encourage better financial planning and habits. I only wish Mint had a way to incorporate online bill payments so I could do all of my financial work in one place on this site. Otherwise, Mint is a real boon to people who want to tell their dads that they’re on top of their finances — and mean it.

• Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com.

There are two models for this legal Internet distribution. Some shows and movies can be purchased or rented from services like Apple‘s iTunes or Amazon’s Unbox. You pay a fee for these downloads, which don’t have commercials, and you can keep any videos you buy to watch repeatedly even without an Internet connection.

The other model, common on the Web sites of the TV networks, is free, ad-supported streaming directly within a Web browser. In this approach, you pay nothing, but you have to watch commercials that can’t be skipped. You must be connected to the Internet while watching, and you don’t get to keep the video.

This week, the ad-supported, streaming approach took a big leap forward with the launch of a Hollywood-backed service called Hulu, at hulu.com. Hulu aims to be a legal, one-stop shop for streaming of TV shows and movies from numerous networks and studios. It’s intended as an attractive antidote to pirate sites and to Google‘s YouTube service, which has angered the media companies by allowing users to post all or parts of movies and TV shows without permission or payment.

Hulu is a joint effort of two big media conglomerates, NBC Universal and News Corp., each of which operates multiple networks and studios. (News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal and the Web sites where this column is published.) But Hulu contains programming from other companies as well, including Sony and Time Warner. All told, it offers full episodes or clips from about 400 TV series, plus 100 feature films.

I’ve been testing Hulu, and I am very impressed with its design and ease of use, and with the fact that it allows users to edit and re-publish its content on their own sites. Despite some drawbacks, it’s the first Web property I’ve seen from mainstream studios or networks that shows a real understanding of both modern Web design and the Internet’s culture of sharing. In my view, it’s far better than the typical network or studio Web site.

Even though Hulu lacks programming from ABC, CBS and many cable networks, it has a fair selection of popular shows, such as “30 Rock,” “The Office,” “The Simpsons,” “Battlestar Galactica” and “Saturday Night Live.” Its movie catalog includes old favorites like “The Usual Suspects,” “The Big Lebowski” and “Sideways.”

The site is organized in a clean, elegant manner. You can browse shows alphabetically, by genre or by network, or you can use an excellent search system. The search system even brings up links to videos of shows on other sites, such as ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” that are missing from Hulu’s own collection.

Watching the material is a pleasure. You can view it in a fixed window or in full-screen view. You can also “pop out” the viewing window so you can place it anywhere on your screen and resize it to your liking. A feature called “lower lights” grays out everything on the computer screen but the video itself.

Even the advertising is relatively painless. TV shows contain just 25% of the commercial time that’s on regular TV. And Hulu allows you, in some cases, to choose the advertisers whose commercials you see, or else to opt to watch a movie trailer at the start of a video in exchange for seeing no further ads during that viewing.

In a break with Hollywood’s past rigidity, Hulu makes it easy to share, even edit, shows and clips. You can repost an entire video, or any portion of it, on your own blog or on social networking sites.

But Hulu also has some major downsides. Most important, Hulu lacks depth. Even with TV series from its owners’ own networks, Hulu typically contains only a small number of full-length episodes, and mainly offers short clips. In some cases, episodes expire after a while. For some shows, such as “Saturday Night Live,” there aren’t any full episodes, only clips. And the wildly popular “American Idol” isn’t in Hulu at all, even though it airs on News Corp.’s Fox network.

This stands in stark contrast to the depth offered on iTunes, where you can find multiple seasons of full episodes of many shows. And it doesn’t begin to compete with pirate sites, where you can find nearly everything.

Also, Hulu requires a decent broadband connection — a speed of at least 1 megabit per second is recommended, and even higher speeds are needed for some content. That means that using Hulu over the slowest DSL lines or cellphone modem cards will likely provide a poor experience.

Another problem is that, unlike iTunes or Amazon Unbox, Hulu can’t be used via a TV set-top box or a portable player. And shows can’t be saved for offline viewing, such as during flights.

Still, Hulu is a good start for Hollywood in finally providing a better experience for Internet streaming of TV and movies. If the service can add a lot more content and make viewing possible in more scenarios, it might strike a real blow against piracy.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080313/hulu-is-a-good-site-for-online-shows-but-fare-is-thin/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080303/compete/ http://allthingsd.com/20080303/compete/#comments Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:16:06 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080303/compete/ Compete must have used a fair bit of the $43 million in VC funding it’s raised since 2000 on marketing, because market research outfit Taylor Nelson Sofres is acquiring it–despite the “digital intelligence” company’s reputation for inaccurate Web site traffic measurements and its loss of $4.5 million on $14.9 million of revenue in 2007.

Under the terms of the deal, TNS will purchase Compete for $75 million in cash and another $75 million in performance-based earn-outs over the next two years.

Compete, which has long been overshadowed by metrics verterans like comScore and even newcomers like Quantcast, was overjoyed to be among the early acquisitions in the consolidation beginning in the Web-traffic analysis sector. After all, TNS might have bought Alexa. “Why are we excited about becoming part of the TNS family,” Compete execs wrote in a post to the company blog. “Because it means joining our click-stream data with TNS’s massive consumer panel operations, consumer research capabilities and ad-measurement databases on a global scale. Marrying online and offline consumer data with media spending and exposure is the holy grail of marketing. All of our marketer, agency and media partners will benefit from access to new consumer, brand and media research that will revolutionize how they plan and measure their performance. It’s a big, exciting vision that neither company could do on its own.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080303/compete/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080219/ddv20080219/ http://allthingsd.com/20080219/ddv20080219/#comments Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:00:40 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080219/ddv20080219/

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080219/ddv20080219/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080131/ddv20080131/ http://allthingsd.com/20080131/ddv20080131/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:00:03 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080131/ddv20080131/

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080131/ddv20080131/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080131/piratebay/ http://allthingsd.com/20080131/piratebay/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:47:02 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080131/piratebay/ The cheeky folks at the Pirate Bay may need a peg leg or two when Sweden’s legal sharks are done with them. A Swedish prosecutor filed charges today against the popular BitTorrent tracker’s proprietors, accusing them of “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws.“

“The operation of the Pirate Bay is financed through advertising revenues,” said prosecutor Hakan Roswall. “In that way it commercially exploits copyright-protected work and performances. … [This case is] a classic example of accessory–to act as intermediary between people who commit crimes, whether it’s in the physical or the virtual world. [The Pirate Bay] is not merely a search engine. It’s an active part of an action that aims at, and also leads to, making copyright-protected material available.”

Pirate Bay’s defiant operators, predictably, disagree. Though they acknowledge the site maintains an index of BitTorrent files, they say no copyrighted material is stored on their servers. They colorfully describe the charges as “idiotic,” and have so far refused to take the site offline. “In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site,” they wrote in a recent post to the site’s blog. “The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We’ve been here for years, and we will be here for many more.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080131/piratebay/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20070920/digitivity-denizen/ http://allthingsd.com/20070920/digitivity-denizen/#comments Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:01:23 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070920/digitivity-denizen/ Internet addiction disorder may not be a classifiable mental disorder, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a marketing demographic, right? According to an online survey conducted by advertising agency JWT, many U.S. adults feel they can’t make it a week without Internet access, with one in three choosing online activities over sex and time with friends.

“It is taking away from offline activities, among them having sex, socializing face-to-face, watching TV and reading newspapers and magazines. It cuts into that share,” said Ann Mack, director of trend-spotting at JWT. “I don’t suppose their partners are too pleased about it.”

Unless of course, their partners fall into the same marketing demographic for which JWT has concocted http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070920/digitivity-denizen/ Internet addiction disorder may not be a classifiable mental disorder, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a marketing demographic, right? According to an online survey conducted by advertising agency JWT, many U.S. adults feel they can’t make it a week without Internet access, with one in three choosing online activities over sex and time with friends.

“It is taking away from offline activities, among them having sex, socializing face-to-face, watching TV and reading newspapers and magazines. It cuts into that share,” said Ann Mack, director of trend-spotting at JWT. “I don’t suppose their partners are too pleased about it.”

Unless of course, their partners fall into the same marketing demographic for which JWT has concocted http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070816/skype-outage/ What’s most surprising about today’s Skype outage is not its 12- to 24-hour duration, but the fact that it’s the first such outage we’ve seen in years. In its relatively brief history, Skype has rarely gone offline. The service’s last reported outage occurred in October 2005.

So while today’s event is certainly annoying for fans of the widely used VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) service, it’s likely not indicative of some lurking infrastructure problem. “This is the most significant outage for the service in years, yet we already foresee scores of headlines trumpeting the flaws of VOIP communications based on this outage alone,” writes Ken Fisher at Ars Technica. “That’s unfortunate because we think Skype network performance has been spectacular on average, given that it’s free and heavily used. In fact, it would appear that the Skype P2P network is indeed in fine shape, it’s just that the authentication system (which authenticates but also provides location services for routing purposes) is hosed.”

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