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Sales of iPods and computers helped boost Q2 profits 73.3 percent for Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) to $818 million from $472 million, as revenues came in at $5.41 billion, a 23.8 percent rise over last year. No word on how many iPhones it shipped in the last two days of the quarter (exclusive carrier AT&T said it activated 146,000 iPhones in Q2, as we reported Tuesday), but here's some of what Apple did say: -- Apple shipped 1.7 million Macintosh computers, representing 33 percent growth over the year-ago quarter and beating the previous company record for quarterly Mac shipments by over 150,000. -- The company also sold 9.8 million iPods, a 21 percent growth over last year. -- Looking beyond Q2, Apple expects revenue of about $5.7 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $.65. More to come. Earnings release | Webcast Update: Apple did not recognize payments related to the iPhone from AT&T in Q2. It will begin recording those payments in the next quarter. It hopes to sell the 1 millionth iPhone by September.

New York Times Company announced its Q2 results today, and on the earnings call, Janet Robinson, CEO and president, talked about the company's mobile initiatives: One of the areas of strategic focus is centered on building what Robinson called "an innovation capability to anticipate consumer preferences and creates ways to satisfy them. Mobility is at the heart of the group's activities." The Times' mobile website has seen page views more than triple in Q2. Robinson: "We expect growth to continue next quarter, when research and development rolls out a mobile messaging platform for the company. All of our operating units are planning to launch new mobile products built off this new competency." The company is also working on developing an idea for a mobile RSS and RFID mashup that grew out of the Yahoo/BBC Hack Day competition and will be released next year.

Crediting demand that led to the shipping of 65 million CDMA chipsets during the quarter, Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) posted higher income for Q2 of $798 million, up 24 percent year-over-year and 10 percent sequentially. The company took in $2.33 billion in revenue, a 19 percent gain over last year and 5 percent over Q107. The San Diego-based company has been joined by other cell phone makers and wireless carriers in an attempt to overturn the June 7 ban on Qualcomm phones by U.S. International Trade Commission last month after the product's chips were found to infringe upon a Broadcom patent.  Qualcomm is also engaged in other legal disputes with Nokia, including litigation over what Qualcomm says is Nokia's obligation to pay royalties for the use of certain patents. MediaFLO: R&D expenses increased 20 percent year-over-year. The costs were related to spending on development of low-cost phones, multimedia applications, high-speed wireless internet access as well as support for its Qualcomm Strategic Initiatives MediaFLO subsidiary. It had $95 million in operating expenses, primarily related to MediaFLO. Earnings release | Webcast

Apple posted a higher quarterly profit as the company saw strong sales of its Macintosh computers and sold 270,000 iPhones.

Apple’s shares fell 6 percent after AT&T said the early surge of iPhone buyers starting service on its network was smaller than some analysts had anticipated.

Qualcomm's net profit rose to $798 million, or 47 cents share for its fiscal third quarter ended in June, from $643 million, or 37 cents a share in the year-ago quarter.

E-Trade reported a slight increase in its second-quarter profit that topped Wall Street’s expectations though revenue fell short of what analysts had been expecting.

Yahoo will use Novarra's Vision platform so that web pages accessed through its oneSearch service are optimized for different handsets. The Register notes that this is the same technology that Vodafone UK took up recently which caused some problems which web sites that tried to do their own optimization. At least with Yahoo people will be able to bypass it by going directly to the site… (release) Related

• Vodafone Live Changes Break Web Pages
• Amp'd Goes With Novarra For Web Browsing

Hewlett-Packard said it had agreed to pay $1.6 billion for software maker Opsware, giving a hefty payoff to Opsware founder, Marc Andreessen.

Alltel has made the MyWaves mobile video services available on certain handsets for a fee of $3.99 per month. The MyWaves video service is free to sign up for (and it claims to have more than 1 million users sign up globally since it launched last December) so I assume the fee provides an all-you-can-eat option for data charges. This is the first carrier deal for MyWaves. Alltel customers with the right phones can download the application from the Alltel Axcess Shop and then customize content from different genres—comedy, sports, health, business, music, technology and so on. They can also bookmark their sites and opt to recieve text messages when new programs are added. Alltel hopes the short-form video content will appeal to the youth market. Related

• MyWaves Offers "Free" Mobile Video
• NBC Universal Signs Content Deal With Alltel
• Alltel Launches "Day Pass" For Web Access

This Thursday evening, we have our blockbuster ContentNext Mid-Year Digital Media Review Panel & Mixer, being held at the Writer's Guild Theater in Beverly Hills. We're sold out on the tickets....those of you who registered are already part of the mini-social net. The panel, which starts at 6:30 PM sharp, will cover the deals and other activity in the industry, both online and mobile, primarily focused on the entertainment industry. The speakers for the panel: -- Deanna Brown, President, Interactive, Scripps Networks -- Greg Clayman, EVP Digital Distribution & Business Development, MTV Networks -- Mitch Lasky, General Partner, Benchmark Capital -- Ross Levinsohn, former president, Fox Interactive -- Brian Weinstein, CAA Our generous sponsors: Platinum: DeSilva & Phillips; Gold: 4Info Mobile Search and Nixon Peabody LLP; Silver: Anystream.

Verizon is allowing subscribers to record video with their phones and upload the clips directly to YouTube via a shortcode once they've registered their mobile numbers with the site. The service is free except for messaging charges (how nice of them) reports RCR News. This is such an amazingly obvious service it's unclear why it wasn't offered earlier… RCR also describes this as "another exclusive deal" between the two companies, which is absolutely crazy. It would be far better for YouTube and no big loss to Verizon if the service was offered regardless of carrier. I suspect there are third party companies/applications which do this. Update: According to Kinoma Notes it's possible to upload videos from phones by e-mailing them—the "exclusive" part is the shortcode.

The BREW solution supports the highest quality mobile games for wireless, mass-market handsets.BREW Gaming - The Game Has Changed.

A new white paper published by the industry group 3G Americas gives a big plug to fixed-mobile convergence (meaning merging of landlines and mobile phones). Chris Pearson, president of the group, says that seamless wireless/wired services will be "nothing short of revolutionary" when they come to market. By 2012, the total number of fixed mobile subscribers in the Americas will be 271 million, according to the research, conducted by ABI. The research notes that even if people have talked about FMC for some time, it is only now that all the important tech pieces have been put into place to make services a reality. These include SIP, Voice over IP (VoIP), IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), and fixed and wireless broadband. One technology that ABI notes will play a major role in FMC in the future are Femtocells. Femtocell-based solutions will account for 56% of all FMC offerings, with 24% and 20% respectively for UMA and VCC/SIP. "2007 and 2008 represent the incubation period for what is expected to be a rapidly growing market which will hit its inflection point in 2009." That's the technology Google invested in, by the way, recently. But although the U.S. market has only just now started to see its first FMC products --most recently T-Mobile's Hotspot@ Home—those that have been around for a while have yet to gain massive traction. In the U.K. BT Fusion, which was launched in 2005, reported 40,000 customers in June 2007 (no improvement over April 2007, according to Connected Home News), versus over 3 million for its broadband products and tens of millions for its fixed phone service. And even if there are potentially great possibilities in what FMC could mean to the entertainment industry, the white paper also makes note of some of the obstacles that may still lie on that path, including the ongoing struggle between content companies and operators over who gets control of the customer relationship. 

On Thursday, July 19th, the House Agriculture Committee passed a new Farm Bill for the United States. This new bill continues to perpetuate many of the inequalities of the 2002 Farm Bill, and still needs to address many issues before it can be voted on by the House of Representatives, most likely before the end of the month. NOW IS THE TIME to contact your local Representative, to let them know that WE NEED A FAIRER FARM AND FOOD BILL! Some details of the current Farm Bill: • Maintains harmful “commodity programs that have had devastating effects on rural communities and small farms in the U.S. and abroad, as well as on the health and sustainability of the food system as a whole.” (California Food and Justice Coalition)

The companies cited robust demand for consumer electronics, though Matsushita, the maker of Panasonic products, said plasma TV sales dipped on sliding prices.

The social network site named former YouTube Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu as its new C.F.O., replacing prior finance chief Michael Sheridan.

Microsoft said it will pipe advertisements into a slate of popular sports video games from Electronic Arts, including its best-selling "Madden" football franchise.