While New York City was largely spared — though Staten Island and Queens were whacked fairly hard — surrounding states, especially Connecticut and New Jersey, got a good thumping. As many as 700,000 people in Connecticut and 600,000 in New Jersey are without power in the wake of Irene, and many will go without for as long as a week.

Power outages in others states, in no particular order: Vermont is reporting another 50,000 residents without power, and at one point or another, every single road in that state, except for Interstates 89 and 91, were closed due to flooding.

Another 700,000 are without power in Massachusetts; 160,000 are without power in New Hampshire; power is out for 171,000 in Maine; and power is out for 284,000 in Rhode Island.

Power outages were still being addressed this morning in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina; another 20,000 or so are without power in the District of Columbia. Delaware has 39,000 without power, and a tornado touched down there; Pennsylvania, including the Philadelphia area, has about 400,000 without power. The total number of homes and businesses without power up and down the East Coast was in the neighborhood of six million.

An estimate of the cost of damage to insurers, conducted by Kinetic Analysis, a firm that predicts storm damage, is about $3 billion, down from an earlier estimate of $14 billion. The death toll so far is 25.

Flooding is by far the biggest threat. The city of Troy, New York, is threatened by a swelling Hudson River and a fragile dam holding it back.

Overall, communications infrastructure held up pretty well — except in those places where it didn’t. In a conference call on Sunday, the Federal Communications Commission said that 130,000 wireline subscribers lost phone service, while nearly 1,400 cellular telephone sites were out of service. Another 1,093 cell sites were running on backup power, and 500,000 cable TV subscribers lost service. The agency warned the tally could get worse, as power outages remain and battery backup systems fail.

All the stock exchanges in New York will open normally, though lots of traders who typically come into the city on Metro North may have trouble getting to work.

Did I say New York was largely spared? By the storm, mainly, but not by slightly panicked officials. The Metro Transit Authority is scrambling to get the subway system back up and running normally. Having for the first time shut the entire system down, it was limping back to life as of 6 am Eastern time. While the Long Island Railroad is running a nearly normal schedule, Metro North is not expected to operate at all.

New York area airports are re-opening as of 7 am Eastern time. Traffic at Logan International Airport in Boston is still snarled, as is Amtrak’s Acela service. Flights into and out of Baltimore and Washington, D.C., were slowly getting under way.

Another casualty: Local public radio station WNYC suffered damage to its AM transmitter because of flooding in New Jersey, and directed listeners to its Web stream, though its FM transmitter was fine.

For all the trouble Irene caused humankind, a more fragile creature emerged unscathed from the storm’s path. USA Today has an interesting story about a rare whimbrel, a type of shorebird, nicknamed Chinquapin by wildlife scientists in Georgia, who tagged it with a radio tracking device and spotted its signal on the Caribbean island of Eleuthera. The bird had flown through the most dangerous northeast section of Irene when it was still a Category 3 hurricane. Whimbrels typically spend their summers in Canada and then fly south to Brazil to breed. That’s one tough bird.

“It seemed clear to us that when targeting youth for STD prevention, we had to use technology to support and advance our efforts,” Philadelphia Department of Health Program Manager Melinda Salmon said in a statement.

Philadelphia is teaming up with iCondom, a company whose signature app helps locate condoms in a number of cities, including New York, Paris and Washington, D.C.. “ICondom Philly will make finding these free condom distribution sites much easier for youth, and ensure that anyone that needs a condom, can get one,” Salmon said.

The first iCondom app launched back in June 2010, according to company founder Morgane Danielou.

“The idea came about because so many of my friends were having funny stories about not being to find condoms at night in Paris,” Danielou said in an e-mail interview. “I checked if an app did not exist and indeed there was not any so I thought that it would be useful for a lot of people.”

Initially, Danielou thought the program would be most useful in Europe, particularly in countries where it is hard to find places to get condoms at night, when many shops are closed. However, Danielou said the company then learned that many American cities have their own condom distribution programs and saw a new market for the app.

The app debuted in the U.S. last Dec. 1–World AIDS Day. An Android app is also planned, Danielou said.

Danielou also designed iCondom to tap into the power of crowdsourcing so that, regardless of their location, people can add and rate their own favorite spot for picking up some protection. Thus far, there have been submissions from places as varied as Brazil and Australia, as well as throughout Europe and North America.

“The launch of iCondom Philly clearly demonstrates that iCondom could become an integral part of all youth prevention programs for safe sex,” Danielou said.

Amy Banse, currently the president of Comcast Interactive Media, is shifting into a job as head of a new Silicon Valley-based equity fund aimed at making digital investments for the television cable giant, as well as its new NBC Universal unit, according to sources with knowledge of the plans.

While most of the attention related to the soon-to-be-completed merger of Comcast with NBC U has been on the musical chairs of its high-profile news and entertainment divisions, this move is potentially significant for the companies by putting a stake in the ground–and a presence–for it on the West Coast.

As part of the shift, sources said, Banse will be charged with combining two existing corporate investment funds: NBC U’s Peacock Equity and Comcast Interactive Capital.

The New York-based Peacock Equity is a $250 million fund that was founded as a joint venture in 2007 by GE Capital and NBC U.

Its investments have ranged from $3 million to $25 million each, including a lot of online advertising start-ups such as Adify and the Rubicon Project.

Comcast Interactive Capital–founded in 1999 and based in Philadelphia, where Comcast’s HQ is–has $500 million under management.

It has focused on broadband, interactive and enterprise businesses.

According to its Web site, “early successful investments” include About.com, CitySearch, Half.com, TiVo, and VeriSign.”

Current investments include SB Nation, BlackArrow and JiWire.

It is not clear how much more money the new still-unnamed equity fund will raise, but it will be aimed at early-stage companies, said sources.

The combined fund will debut by the end of the year or early next year.

Banse’s shift to become a VC comes after many years of leading Comcast’s online strategy, which has included the acquisition of the Fandango movie ticketing site and Daily Candy, an email newsletter.

She has also been in charge of the development and management of Comcast’s many Web sites, including Comcast.net, Xfinity.com and Fancast.

MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka recently reported that the high-profile Banse was moving out of her post, which was being split up into two jobs.

Many thought she would likely depart the company, but it appears she will stay for a while longer at least.

As it happens, Banse will be in San Francisco this week for the Web 2.0 conference, so please be sure to give her a warm welcome and explain “Fear the Beard” to a likely Phillies fan-atic.

And just to get acquainted in advance, here is her bio from the Comcast Web site:

Amy Banse serves as President of Comcast Interactive Media (CIM), a division of Comcast Corporation that is responsible for developing and operating online tools and businesses focused on entertainment, information and communication.

Since founding CIM in December of 2005, Ms. Banse has led Comcast’s online strategy, overseeing the acquisition of Fandango (the movie ticketing site), Daily Candy (the popular email newsletter), Plaxo (the smart contacts site), and thePlatform (the industry-leading provider of digital media publishing solutions) as well as the in-house development and management of, Comcast.net and xFinity.com(Comcast’s portals), Fancast, (a leading tv entertainment site), xFinitytv (Comcast ‘s online video portal), and Swirl (Daily Candy’s sample sales site). In this role, she has grown CIM into an 800 person team with significant digital capabilities and has played a key part in the industry’s development of its TV Everywhere strategy and in Comcast’s execution of that strategy, Fancast/xFinitytv.

Ms. Banse joined Comcast in 1991 as an in-house attorney responsible for programming acquisition. Most recently she served as Executive Vice President of Content Development where she oversaw the development of Comcast’s cable network portfolio including the company’s investments in E! Entertainment Television, The Golf Channel, and VERSUS and the development and launch of G4, PBS KIDS Sprout, TV One and Comcast’s sports networks.

Ms. Banse has represented CIM and Comcast as a featured speaker in venues around the country discussing the rapid evolution of content consumption in a digital world and the opportunities and challenges facing the cable and entertainment industries. She has been named among the “Most Powerful Women in Cable” and the “Top Programmers to Watch” by CableWorld magazine. She has also been named among the Cable 100 by Multichannel News and the Digital Power list, by The Hollywood Reporter. She was honored as a “Wonder Woman” by Multichannel News and Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) in 2004, received WICT’s Geraldine B. Laybourne Fearless Award in 2009 and ProMax’s Brand Builder Award in 2010 Ms. Banse sits on the Board of The Morris Arboretum and Springside School for Girls. In 2007 she received “The Distinguished Alumni Award” from Springside School, and in 2006 she was honored by Girls, Inc. as an outstanding role model for girls during their annual Celebration Luncheon. Ms. Banse is also a member of The Forum of Executive Women, the Philadelphia region’s premier women’s organization.

Ms. Banse received a BA from Harvard University and a JD from Temple University Law School. She and her husband and their four children live in Philadelphia.

You can get it right now, by heading to FilmOn.com, where you can get streams of several local L.A. TV stations, which means you can get whatever NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox are broadcasting. You can also get a few cable channels, like Time Warner’s CNN International, as well as a couple of porn feeds.

It’s incredibly easy, and it’s a very high-quality feed, with very little lag. This screenshot of NBC’s “Today Show” isn’t very exciting, but it is current–I took it a few minutes ago.

You can also get FilmOn via a conventional PC, but that requires a download, so it’s not quite as convenient. But it’s still very easy, and while FilmOn has said it would charge for the service, it’s free for now.

How is this possible? It shouldn’t be, according to the networks, who are suing FilmOn and founder Alki David. They’re also suing ivi.TV, which is doing something similar with feeds from Seattle TV stations.

Both FilmOn and ivi are arguing that they’re within their rights based on an interpretation of FCC rules that allow “secondary transmissions” of broadcast signals.

The networks, of course, will work very, very hard to shoot down that argument, for obvious reasons. Ivi and FilmOn have been out for several weeks, but a note from industry analyst Rich Greenfield (registration required) this morning is going to increase the attention the two companies have been getting.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see how Apple plays this. Steve Jobs has big plans for the TV business, but they generally involve working with the networks and studios so that they can charge money for their shows on his devices.

On the other hand, since FilmOn is getting to the iPad over the free Web, instead of an Apple-approved app, I’m not sure how Jobs could stop the transmission. Even if he wants to.

UPDATE: Ivi’s Hal Bringman wants us to know that in addition to Seattle, his service also offers streams from New York broadcast stations, and will start offering from L.A. this weekend. Up next–Chicago and Philadelphia. Bringman says his company also has an iPad app in the works, but that one will require a $4.95 monthly fee.

The real news here is that DailyCandy hasn’t launched a deals offering up until now.

The 10-year-old company pioneered the consumery newsletter concept, built around highlighting a particular product or service each day, and it would have seemed natural at some point to turn that into Groupon’s crazily successful “deal of the day” offering, which offers a steep discount on said product or service.

But it’s here now. Or will be soon.

DailyCandy Deals launches in November in Philadelphia, where DailyCandy owner Comcast is based, and then will roll out to New York by Christmas, and then L.A. and beyond in 2011. It won’t actually be daily, either–the service will start out by highlighting offers two times a week to DailyCandy’s 3.4 million subscribers.

Unofficially, that is. For the record, GE says that Jeff Zucker and company booked flat revenues and saw operating profit drop by 15 percent. But a year ago NBC had booked a gain after moving around ownership stakes in the A&E TV venture it co-owns with Hearst and Disney.

Strip those one-time benefits out, GE says, and its 2010 Q3 would show a seven percent revenue hike and a five percent bump in operating profit.

That’s better. “A pretty solid quarter,” in the words of GE CFO Keith Sherin.

Here’s GE’s highlight reel for the business, which Comcast will likely own by the end of the year. (Click to enlarge.)

Meanwhile, Zucker, who has a few months left on the job, is much, much more enthusiastic about his company’s performance. Here’s his all-hands letter to employees sent out this morning:

GE reported its earnings today, and I wanted to take the opportunity to congratulate everyone on NBCU’s very strong results. Looking just at our operations, these are our best third-quarter results since the NBC-Universal merger more than six years ago. Truly a record performance.

Although our segment profit as reported by GE shows us down, this is driven by the impact of one-time, non-operating events and transactions that took place in the third quarter of last year (such as the one-time gain from the change in our interest in A&E Networks). On an operating basis, our profit was up 32% versus last year (or 5% excluding the impact of charges taken by certain divisions in the third quarter last year). Given that the economy, although improving, is still far from robust, these are excellent results driven by superior execution throughout our operations.

We had exceptional performances from a number of our divisions, including Cable Entertainment, Local Media, Film, and Theme Parks. Cable Entertainment posted a double-digit increase in operating profit, behind great results at each of our networks. Local Media was up an amazing 87%, as increased revenues from a resurging local ad market hit the bottom line. Film op profit was up 57%, driven by Despicable Me, which performed well ahead of expectations. And Theme Parks had the best quarter in its history, with op profit up 59%, the result of the new Harry Potter attraction in Orlando and the new King Kong 360 in Hollywood.

Here are some of the other highlights:

· USA was the No. 1 cable entertainment network for the 17th quarter in a row, an incredible string of success, and Syfy finished the quarter ranked No. 8 in adults 25-54

· Bravo had its best quarter ever and now has 20 consecutive quarters of ratings growth, and Oxygen had its best 3rd quarter ever

· CNBC posted increases in both revenue and op profit, and MSNBC continues to operate from a position of strength, beating CNN in primetime for the 4th quarter in a row and beating CNN in total day for the first time in a decade, while also launching a very exciting new marketing campaign

· Through the first five weeks of the NFL season, Sunday Night Football is averaging nearly 22 million viewers, the most for the first five weeks of a primetime NFL package in 14 years

· NBC is tied for No. 2 through the first three weeks of the new season, up 4% versus a year ago to make it the only major English-language network to grow year-to-year

· Jay Leno continues to be No. 1 since returning to his old timeslot, and Jimmy Fallon holds a 35% lead over CBS in his time period

· NBC News remains No. 1 across the board and recently hosted a fantastic public-service programming event called Education Nation, an effort that should make us all proud to be part of this company

· Telemundo has the highest-rated novela in its history with Donde esta Elisa, and mun2 had its best quarter in all key demos

There is so much to be proud of! Congratulations and thanks again to everyone, because I know, whether you are part of one of the businesses mentioned above or not, you are working hard to keep this company great, and I truly appreciate it.

At the same time we are notching these business successes, our transition teams are hard at work preparing for the new NBC Universal. We’re on track for a close of the transaction with Comcast, hopefully by the end of the year. As I’m sure you know, the timing will ultimately be determined by the FCC and the Department of Justice. We’ll have a clearer idea about timing as we get into November.

One other thing about the transition. You have received information about your new benefits, and I urge you to pay attention: review the information on the intranet, attend the benefits sessions, and enroll yourself and your family in both the GE and the new NBC Universal benefits plans. I hope each of you give this the attention that it deserves.

The company is really in a terrific place right now. We have a Cable Entertainment group that is on track to record its fifth straight year of record earnings. A Theme Parks division that is on track to have its best year ever. A Local Media division that will likely more than double its earnings from a year ago … and much more. And making it all happen are 15,000 employees who love this company, understand what we do, and are committed to doing it better and better every day. Thank you very much. Your strength of character, and the strength of our operations, will ensure a strong end to this year.

Ochocinco (old-timers may remember when he went by the name Chad Johnson) sent this one out about an hour before a preseason game against the Philadelphia Eagles:

Followed by this one, tapped out during the game itself:

By my count (contractions are tricky), those two missives contain a total of 48 words, which puts Ochocinco’s tab at $520 a word. Which means he trumps Mark Cuban’s $510 per-word Twitter fine he got from the NBA a year ago.

And Ochocinco is sorry. Sort of. Because tweeting is great, but exotic luxury cars are expensive:

UPDATE: Google has now confirmed the deal.
————
Google has indeed bought ad technology start-up Invite Media, I’ve confirmed with multiple sources.

As I wrote last month, Invite is a three-year-old “demand-side platform” designed to help buyers navigate high-volume display-advertising exchanges–like the one Google launched last year.

I don’t have  a price for the deal nailed down, but I believe it’s in the $70 million range. Google (GOOG) declined to comment; I haven’t heard back from Invite Media CEO Nat Turner.

People familiar with the transaction say Google’s plan is to leave Invite running as a standalone unit, which will work at arm’s length with exchange’s like Google’s AdX, as well as competitors like OpenX, Yahoo’s (YHOO) Right Media and Microsoft’s (MSFT) AdECN.

That makes sense, because ad buyers who use Invite, like Publicis’s Vivaki, expect to be able to buy inventory from multiple exchanges.

But over time, Google does plan on investing in Invite and integrating it with DoubleClick for Advertisers, its ad-serving technology. Invite users wouldn’t be required to use DFA, but the two would be designed to match up seamlessly, sources said.

It will be interesting to see what becomes of Invite’s competitors, like MediaMath, Turn and X+1, in the wake of this deal. Venture capitalists have poured money into demand-side platforms in recent years, but I’ve heard increasing skepticism about valuations those investors are seeking. And now the most obvious buyer, with the deepest pockets, is off the table.

Turner and his co-founders started Invite Media when they were still undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania; the company has offices in Philadelphia and New York City. Investors include Comcast’s (CMCSA) venture arm and First Round Capital.

Invite had previously considered selling to Omniture last summer, but that deal went away after Adobe (ADBE) purchased the analytics company.

Could the social group-buying space get any frothier?

Well, yes, it could.

After the recent $135 million funding of Groupon that valued the Chicago start-up at upwards of an eye-popping $1 billion, rival LivingSocial announced to today that it had raised a more modest $14 million in a Series C round.

The Washington, D.C. start-up had raised $25 million in a Series B venture financing only a month ago. And it raised $10 million on top of that since 2008.

Sources estimated the valuation for LivingSocial is several hundred million dollars now.

The newest round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners; Earlier investors U.S. Venture Partners, Grotech Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution are also participating.

Ironically, Case’s former No. 2 at AOL (AOL), Ted Leonsis has been an early investor in Groupon.

LivingSocial said it will use the new pile of cash to expand to dozens of new markets, adding it was launching four new cities now: Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia.

It now operates in 18 cities across the country.

For those in Silicon Valley who do not consider these prices for all these social e-commerce sites high at all, BoomTown is here to tell you that in the real world the figure is not actually modest, except in comparison.

But LivingSocial will need every penny if it is to compete with Groupon and a growing spate of competitors in the local space, much as is also happening in the social status update arena.

The local outcome for most will inevitably be a sale to a big Internet company like Amazon (AMZN).

Or oblivion, especially since so many similar offerings makes the whole market confusing for both local businesses and customers

In general, most offer a daily deal with a huge discount on a wide range of products and services–from spas to skydiving–in dozens of U.S. cities, for large groups of potential buyers on the Web, through email or via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Using social tools, the idea is use collective buying power to get low prices and push customers to local businesses.

If a deal reaches the number of buyers it needs, which can be in the thousands, these services sell vouchers to the consumers and collect a hefty fee for the sale from the businesses it sends customers to.

The plus for many small businesses is to get a crack at a lot of new consumers–think of it as social networking lead-generation.

This kind of thing has been tried before, of course, centering on consumers who group together to get discounts on items by purchasing in bulk.

In Web 1.0, there were many group-buying sites, most of which failed badly. One of the more high-profile ones, Mercata, received $90 million in funding from investors, including Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures.

No matter in 2010!

That’s due to the VC frenzy going on, spurred by winner-take-all theories–Groupon, for example, got most of its recent mountain of cash from champion Russian overspenders, Digital Sky Technologies.

However it turns out, here is LivingSocial’s official press release:

LivingSocial Raises $14 Million Series C Round Led by Lightspeed Venture Partners; Launches in Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia

Company Also Begins Offering Hyperlocal Deals in Seattle Area–Users Can Now Get Deals Even Closer to their Homes

$14 Million Round Comes on Heels of $25 Million Series B Announcement Last Month

Washington D.C., April 29, 2010–LivingSocial, the social commerce leader behind LivingSocial Deals and top Facebook applications Visual Bookshelf and Pick Your Five, today announced that it has completed a $14 million Series C round of venture funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with U.S. Venture Partners, Grotech Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution, LLC participating. Because of the rapid growth, and high user demand, LivingSocial will use the capital infusion to expand into additional markets–bringing Deals to dozens more cities throughout the U.S. in 2010. This additional funding comes on the heels of the company’s recent $25 million Series B round announced last month.

“We’ve known and admired the LivingSocial team for a long time, and I have bought many of their terrific local offers. They’ve done an excellent job of growing their user base through smart media buying and excellent knowledge of social channels and virality,” said Jeremy Liew, managing director of Lightspeed Venture Partners. “With this financing round, LivingSocial is very well positioned to bring their great offers to even more people.”

LivingSocial is also launching its Deals program in four new markets: Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia. This brings LivingSocial live in 18 cities across the country with major plans to expand to dozens of markets throughout the year.

“We’re constantly receiving requests from our users to expand and launch in their markets, and this recent funding round will allow us to do just that,” said Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO and co-founder of LivingSocial. “We’re really excited to introduce LivingSocial to Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia to continue generating huge savings for our users and even bigger returns for our merchants.”

LivingSocial users throughout the country saved an average of more than $32 each in March, and have saved tens of millions of dollars since the launch of Deals in 2009. By signing up for LivingSocial’s free daily online service, people are saving an average of 50-70% at their favorite places, such as the hottest local restaurants, spas, sporting events, hotels, and other local attractions.

Because LivingSocial wants to give consumers more availability to the program, the company is launching hyperlocal deals for the Seattle area. Now consumers in areas like Tacoma and Bellevue will start getting deals targeted to their location, in addition to Seattle proper. Hyperlocal deals not only help more consumers explore new things in their city, but these deals also provide merchants with a greater opportunity to reach local audiences on the LivingSocial Deals platform.

LivingSocial is now live in 18 markets including: Washington, D.C., New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Twin Cities, Chicago, Raleigh Durham, Denver, San Diego, the San Fernando Valley, Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia. Dozens of additional cities are expected to roll out in the coming months. For more information or to sign up your city, go to http://livingsocial.com.

The handset maker asked 300 cellphone users in each of eight metropolitan areas in the U.S., including New York; Los Angeles; Chicago; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Boston and Denver, about where they send text messages.

Atlantans topped the charts when it comes to texting while at the dinner table (44 percent), the movies (48 percent), on dates (27 percent) and at church (15 percent). The city was beaten in only one category, texting while at concerts or plays, with Philadelphia residents indicating that 33 percent of them do it, compared with Atlanta’s 31 percent.

The most restrained SMSers appear to be in Denver, where only 17 percent said they text while dating and 8 percent while praying. Beltway residents were the least likely (23 percent) to text at the dinner table or at concerts, while Bostonians were least likely (51 percent) to text from the doctor’s office.

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For the record: Disney (DIS) says it always intended to move the company, which offers “bite-sized ideas for green living” via email and a Web site, from its corporate strategy group to its interactive division, which will happen later this year. At that point, “it will still continue in some form,” says spokesman Michelle Bergman.

That doesn’t sound good. Disney says it plans to conduct a review of the unit, so it’s not ready to answer some basic questions about the email newsletter company. Like: Are co-founders Heather Stephenson (who lives and works in San Francisco) and Jennifer Boulden (who until this summer lived and worked in Bozeman, Mont.; she’s now in Los Angeles, I’m told) staying on? Will Disney have to take a write-down on the property? Will there be layoffs? “It’s too early to say. I can’t tell you,” Bergman says.

Okay. But If I had to bet, I’d say at least some of the dozen-plus employees will be hitting the job market.

Disney paid a reported $20 million for the property a year and a half ago, and the plan was to create a big green-centered business around it, but that hasn’t panned out, sources said. The company, founded in 2005, is one of the many lifestyle newsletter businesses backed by Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group.

Comcast (CMCSA) bought DailyCandy, the best known of Pittman’s stable, for $125 million a little more than a year ago. That was surely one of the last “pre-Lehman” Web 2.0 M&A deals, but grunts and murmurs out of Philadelphia and Pilot indicate the business has held up during the recession. And Thrillist, a “DailyCandy for dudes” effort that has yet to sell, seems to be booming.

At the Comcast (CMCSA) New Media Exchange conference in Philadelphia Wednesday, he doled out his top tips for effective Twittering. “If you look at anything I’ve ever done, it’s really service 101, search 101,” he said.

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But the iPhone is drawing increasing competition from entrenched smart-phone makers anxious to emulate the upstart. The most significant of these is Palm’s (PALM) impressive new Pre, which is off to a good start with an estimated 100,000 or so units sold since it launched on June 6.

So, like a shark, Apple (AAPL) must keep moving. This week, it is introducing two new products designed to consolidate and increase its position as the leader in this new generation of hand-held computers. I’ve been testing both and I like them a lot, with some minor caveats.

One of the new products is a refreshed model of the iPhone itself, called the iPhone 3G S. It looks the same, but offers more speed, more memory, more battery life, and a few new features, including video recording and a better camera for still photos.

The second is OS 3.0, the third version of the iPhone’s operating system, which comes on the 3G S and also can be installed on all prior iPhones and Touches. It includes a much longer list of added features, some innovative and some long overdue catch-ups to other phones. These include such widely requested capabilities as cut, copy and paste; systemwide searching; a wider virtual keyboard; and a feature called MMS that allows users to send photos and videos directly to other phones without using email.

Apple last week also made a bold business move to complement these new products. It decided to keep making the current model, the iPhone 3G, and to slash its price by 50%, to $99. That’s an unheard-of price tag for a pocket computer of this power and versatility, and gives millions of additional consumers a reason to choose the iPhone instead of a competitor.

In my tests, both the new phone and the new operating system performed well, with a few small exceptions. I believe the two strengthen the iPhone platform, make it likely the iPhone will continue to attract scads of apps, and are good for consumers.

But I also regard these changes as more evolutionary than revolutionary, and I don’t think this latest iPhone is as compelling an upgrade for the average user as the 3G model was last year for owners of the original 2007 iPhone.

Current iPhone owners can get an improved product by merely sticking with their existing phones and upgrading to the feature-laden new operating system, which is free (it costs $10 for iPod Touch owners), rather than shelling out at least $199 for the new iPhone 3G S. And many new iPhone buyers can opt for the $99 3G model, which is not only cheaper, but also greatly improved by the new OS 3.0.

On the other hand, power users will crave the new model’s much-better performance, battery life, storage and other features. And some will want the new model because, unlike the current model, it’s capable of handling a new cellular network feature that, in the next few years, will offer double the current data speeds.

The new, free operating system is available for download starting June 17. The iPhone 3G S will go on sale June 19 for $199 for a version with 16 gigabytes of memory, and $299 for 32 gigabytes of memory. Those memory capacities are double the amounts offered on the previous model last year at the same prices, and far exceed the built-in memory on most competing smart phones.

These prices are for new U.S. customers on the AT&T network, plus current owners who are eligible for what AT&T (T) calls a “standard” upgrade. If you already own an older iPhone, you could pay $200 more to upgrade, depending on how far along you are in your two-year service contract and how much you spend monthly. But AT&T, stung by criticism in recent days, has just decided to offer the lower, new-customer prices at launch to iPhone 3G owners eligible for upgrades at any time up to Sept. 30 of this year, even if they were originally told they’d have to pay the $200 premium.

Before I detail the new features and how they worked in my tests, let me state up-front what the new iPhone and its new operating system don’t deliver. The iPhone still lacks a physical keyboard. It still can’t run more than one third-party app at a time, as the Pre does. Its otherwise excellent Web browser still can’t play videos created in Adobe’s Flash software, which is widely used on the Web. And it still isn’t available on any U.S. carrier besides AT&T.

Also, AT&T won’t enable MMS until late this summer, even though dozens of other iPhone carriers in other countries are doing so immediately. And AT&T hasn’t set a date by which it will offer tethering, a new iPhone feature that allows the device to be used as a modem for a laptop. Other carriers in other countries are allowing this right away.

Here’s a rundown of the most important new features of both the new hardware and software, and how they performed in my tests.

The iPhone 3G S

Speed: To me, this is the most important feature of the new iPhone 3G S. In fact, the “S” in the name stands for speed. During my week of testing, the new model proved dramatically snappier in every way than my iPhone 3G. Its processor is 50% faster than in the prior model, and it sports a new graphics chip.

Applications opened much more quickly. Web pages loaded far faster. The camera was ready to use almost instantly. And I never once saw the occasional, annoying iPhone behavior where you strike a key while typing and it sits there, seemingly stuck, before you can continue.

Cellular-data speeds were about the same, but in repeated testing on different Wi-Fi networks, the 3G S racked up speeds 30% to 50% faster than on the 3G running at the same time on the same networks.

Battery Life: On my 3G iPhone, I usually could make it through the day, but it was often a close call, with the battery indicator winding up in the red. By contrast, the new model did much better, never hitting the red zone and rarely requiring interim charging at the office or in the car, even though, because I was testing it, I was pounding it much harder than usual, making more voice calls, playing lots of videos and music, trying numerous apps, constantly downloading email from two accounts, and syncing two calendars over the air.

Apple claims about the same talk time for the new model as on the old, and about the same Web-surfing time over the cellular network. But it says the 3G S gets about 50% more battery life when playing videos or surfing the Internet over Wi-Fi and 25% more time — an astounding 30 hours — for continuous music playback.

Memory: With the new 32-gigabyte model, I was able to store over 3,000 songs, more than 1,600 photos, 74 videos, 67 applications, 400 emails, nearly 1,000 contacts, months of calendar data, and dozens of documents, and still have 5 gigabytes left over—more than most phones offer out of the box.

Camera: The new model’s camera has a 3 megapixel resolution, up from 2 megapixels, and has autofocus and a feature that lets you tap the screen to change the focus to an object or person in the background of a shot. It still lacks zoom or a flash, though it does better in low light. It also has a macro feature for close-up shots. In my tests, all of this worked, but I didn’t think the pictures it took were dramatically better than those on the old model, and it can’t compete with phones like Nokia’s (NOK) new $700 N97, which has a 5-megapixel camera with zoom.

Video: The new video recorder worked well, even in low light, and lets you post videos directly to YouTube, among other places. You can also trim your videos right on the phone. This all worked well, but the videos aren’t high definition, and pale in comparison to those on the latest HD model of the popular $229 Flip pocket camcorder.

Voice Control: By simply holding down the new iPhone’s home button, you can dial contacts and control music playback by uttering voice commands. The phone will even tell you which song is playing. Like most voice-recognition systems, this one isn’t perfect. But it worked most of the time.

Compass: I don’t consider this important for most users, but it did work when I was walking or driving. It can orient maps in the direction you’re heading.

Small Touches: You can optionally turn on a new battery indicator that shows a precise percentage of battery life left. The screen has a new coating that resists oil and grease from fingerprints.

Downsides: The new phone crashed on me twice during my tests. Once, the voice-control feature killed the sound on the built-in iPod, requiring a reboot. But I couldn’t replicate this problem. Another time, the phone froze while downloading a TV show. Apple blamed this on a prerelease server issue, and it didn’t happen again.

iPhone Operating System 3.0

Copy, Cut and Paste: Apple is late with this common feature, but it’s the best implementation I’ve seen on a phone. In a text page, you just double tap on a word, and it is selected with little handles around it that let you expand or contract the selected area. Then, you just click on a copy icon that pops up over the selection. To paste, you tap elsewhere in the page, or even in another app, and a paste icon pops up. Click that icon, and the selected text is pasted in. It worked well in all my tests.

The feature works a bit differently for some Web pages, where you hold down your finger over an area and it selects a whole block of text, like a paragraph, but still has the handles that allow adjusting the selection. It also allows copying and pasting photos. You can also just select a word or a section or a whole page of text and delete it. And if you want to undo a paste, just shake the phone.

Some Web pages and third-party apps don’t yet support this feature, but most do.

Search: Before, you could search only in the Contacts app. Now, there are search features in Mail, Calendar, the built-in iPod and Notes. And there is a way to search the whole phone at once. You just hit the home button, slowly, twice, and a special search screen appears. Type in any phrase, and it brings up every instance in multiple apps.

This is another catch-up feature, but it works well. For instance, when I searched for the word “Phil,” it brought up songs by Phil Collins, a note about Philadelphia, calendar items mentioning people named Phil or Phillips, emails to or from people with those names, and contacts for people named Phil or Phillips.

In email, the search function will even find messages that aren’t on your phone but that are stored on the servers of certain email services. For instance, I was able to almost instantly find emails from two years ago stored on Google’s (GOOG) Gmail.

One downside — in email, search looks for words only in email headers, not in the body of the messages.

Landscape Keyboard: In older iPods, the only built-in program that supported a wider, landscape keyboard, which is better for thumb typing, was the Web browser. Now, you can turn the phone horizontally and use a landscape keyboard in the Mail, Messages and Notes programs as well.

Find My iPhone: If you belong to Apple’s $99 a year MobileMe service, you can now locate a lost iPhone on a map on any computer, send the iPhone a message saying how to return it to you, and cause it to emit a beep, even if the sound is turned off. I tested this and it worked well. You can even remotely wipe all your data off the phone.

Voice Memos: The OS includes a Voice Memo app that lets you dictate reminders or other messages, and then edit and email them. I found it worked well.

Navigation: Another catch-up feature, turn-by-turn navigation with voice prompts, is also now supported. I tested this with a third-party app called Gokivo, and it did OK, though the developer admits to a prerelease bug I encountered.

Auto-Authentication: In the new OS, the iPhone can remember your log-in credentials for commercial Wi-Fi hotspot services, so you don’t have to enter them again and again. Unfortunately, in my tests with the AT&T Wi-Fi service, this failed repeatedly in several Starbucks (SBUX) shops. Apple blames a glitch in my prerelease phone’s SIM card.

Push Notification: To make up for its lack of multitasking, the new iPhone OS has a feature where third-party apps can notify you of new events, like a sports score, or a new invitation to an online game. I tried this with a game called TapTap Revenge, and it worked fine.

Stocks: The built-in stock application now has much more detailed data, including market cap, news headlines and price/earnings ratio for each stock.

MMS and Tethering: I couldn’t test these useful features because my tests were all done on AT&T, which hasn’t rolled them out.

Minor Touches: You can now move an icon among screens with one continuous motion, instead of stopping at each screen. And there are two more screens to house icons. You can finally synchronize Notes with your PC or Mac. You also can now maintain both calendars and contacts synced wirelessly with online services and those synced via cable with your computer. And you can play games and transfer files wirelessly over Bluetooth with other iPods or Touches that are nearby.

Bottom Line: Both the new iPhone and iPhone OS are packed with features that make a great product even better. But, for many users, the software may be enough of a boost to keep them from buying the new model.

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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090617/new-iphone-is-better-model-or-just-get-os-30/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090213/twittering-inferno-holy-crap-this-is-an-actual-fire/ http://allthingsd.com/20090213/twittering-inferno-holy-crap-this-is-an-actual-fire/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:58:45 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=4244 Nat Turner, the co-founder of Philadelphia-based ad-tech start-up Invite Media, was in a fire Thursday night. How do we know? Because he broadcast the experience via Twitter and documented it on Flickr.

To get this out of the way: Turner says he and everyone else who was in his office, near Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia’s Center City district, is OK. So the story, which kicks off just before 9 p.m., has a happy ending.

8:55pm “Fire at the office. Holy f–k.”

9:01 “Electrical fire.”

9:06 “Everyone’s ok. Smoke everywhere.”

9:15 “Holy crap. This is an actual fire. The piano store next to us is fully engulfed in smoke. Dozens of firetrucks. Crowd gathering.”

9:18 “They just broke down all of the windows.”

9:50 “They just broke the floor down. Flames everywhere. 17th and chestnut. I really hope they play my 911 call.”

10:57 “Can’t go back in the building. Everyones ok. Our floor may have lucked out.”

The upshot, Turner writes via email: “The first floor is gone. We are on the 3rd.”

There’s more documentation now up at Turner’s Flickr stream, which seems to indicate that he and his co-workers didn’t spend much time in the building while it was ablaze. So that’s good. But one of these days, one of these “I’m Twittering live from the scene of something hair-raising or worse” incidents isn’t going to end well. Glad this one did.

Turner, by the way, got his undergrad degree from Penn last year. And his company, funded by First Round Capital and Genacast Ventures, is doing some interesting work with ad exchanges–much headier stuff then your prototypcial Web 2.0 start-up. They’ve been more or less in stealth mode up until now, but that may be harder to pull off in the future.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090213/twittering-inferno-holy-crap-this-is-an-actual-fire/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090204/metropcs-details-its-expansion-plans/ http://allthingsd.com/20090204/metropcs-details-its-expansion-plans/#comments Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:55:44 +0000 Andrew LaVallee http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=8224 MetroPCS’s upcoming expansion to New York and Boston will change the prepaid wireless provider from a regional carrier to one that can compete more with heavyweights like Verizon Wireless (VZ) and AT&T (T).

In an interview with the Journal’s Amol Sharma, MetroPCS CEO Roger Linquist said the company will be building its New York City network–including the five boroughs as well as parts of New Jersey and upstate New York–throughout 2009. MetroPCS ultimately intends to connect that area with Boston and Philadelphia, where it has already begun offering cellphone coverage.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090204/metropcs-details-its-expansion-plans/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081215/coming-soon-national-lampoons-litigation-vacation/ http://allthingsd.com/20081215/coming-soon-national-lampoons-litigation-vacation/#comments Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:44:37 +0000 Eric Savitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=6856 So, this is way off topic, I know, but really, I couldn’t stop myself.

As Bloomberg reports today, the SEC has sued National Lampoon, its CEO Daniel Laikin and three other people for allegedly participating in a plan to fraudulently manipulate trading in the company’s stock.

The SEC asserted in a civil suit filed in federal court in Philadelphia that Laikin paid kickbacks to a stock promoter and a witness cooperating with the FBI whom he believed had connections to “corrupt” brokers. Whoops! Fake mobsters!

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