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Click here for full coverage of the D: All Things Digital conference.

Colleague Dan Farber offered his thoughts about how they did, while Webware’s Rafe Needleman posted a live blog. But I think the video itself is worth checking out to give a full view of what things look like on that very warm chair.

And here’s part two:

Here’s part one:

CARLSBAD, Calif.–While all big CEOs are under scrutiny, the attention focused on Jerry Yang has been particularly intense. That intensity was on evidence during Wednesday’s appearance at the D:All Things Digital conference here.

A sample piece of American Apparel ad inventory.

So where does American Apparel chuck its ads: On the social networks that its young customers fill up with photos of themselves. Fox Interactive Media, which owns MySpace, is American Apparel’s top advertiser, making up nearly a quarter of the retailer’s ad impressions. Facebook was next with 18 percent, followed by AOL (which owns Bebo) with 12.5 percent, and Photobucket with 6.1 percent. Less than 2 percent apiece were each devoted to Yahoo, Google, Amazon, eBay, creative community DeviantArt, and Time Warner’s non-AOL sites.

A total of 483,389,000 American Apparel ad impressions were seen across the Web in April, reaching a whopping 48,887,000 unique visitors according to ComScore. That’s far ahead of the No. 2 advertiser, sports-duds manufacturer Under Armour, which chalked up 311,528,000 impressions. No. 3 was SnorgTees, an online t-shirt retailer known for having a really cute girl modeling its creations.

Sports-related retailers and t-shirt outlets make up the bulk of the rest of the list, with Nike, BustedTees, Skechers, and NFLShop.com all making ComScore’s list of the top 14 apparel advertisers.

Not encompassed in ComScore’s stats: American Apparel’s racy print and billboard ads that have caused quite a stink.

In other words, that means their ads, many of which feature nubile young models clad in just about nothing, are freaking everywhere on the Web.

It’s no surprise to anyone who reads blogs about celebrity gossip, nightlife, indie music, or pretty much any other niche of pop culture: American Apparel, the Los Angeles-based retailer infamous for bringing back the ’80s aerobics look, has been named by ComScore as the top apparel outlet in the online ad world.

Bumpy start for China’s homegrown 3G

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Google’s translation center: humans helping the search machine?

Legendary video game designer Will Wright’s new game Spore, which has been in the works for years, is almost out. But just how well will it fare in the wild? CNET News’ Daniel Terdiman explains.

Sony Ericsson’s newest secret agent–the C902

Corporate giants push into clean-tech venture investing

Can ‘Spore’ meet its lofty expectations?

If you build it, it appears they will come…eventually. That’s what CNET News’ Ina Fried wrote earlier today–and she examines why, only now, this technology is coming into its own.

If you’re a James Bond fan–and c’mon, who isn’t?–there are lots of high-tech toys you can buy. But how about one that also offers real-world applications: (And no, it won’t explode if it falls into the wrong hands.)

I’m hoping this is the start of a trend. Last week we had a 22-inch Soyo LCD monitor for $179.99 shipped, no rebates required. On Monday, Buy.com has a 22-inch AOC Envision LCD monitor for $179.99 shipped, and it’s even better: Unlike the Soyo, it supports HDCP. That means if you plug it into a PC equipped with a Blu-ray drive, you’ll have no trouble watching movies.

(Credit:
Buy.com)

In other respects, the AOC stacks up nicely. It has a native resolution of 1,680 by 1,050 (not quite 1,080p, but more than sufficient for a monitor of this size), a 5ms response time, a 170-degree viewing angle, and built-in speakers. In addition to its HDCP-lovin’ DVI interface, it offers a regular old VGA input.

In short, it’s slightly more killer than last week’s killer LCD, at least in the spec department. CNET hasn’t reviewed this model, but does have more specs and an overview. If you already own this model, hit the Comments and let everyone know if it’s a winner.

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

There are 12 sessions for the TechCrunch50 pitches spread over three days. Here are my top picks for the ones to watch for this conference, based solely on the write-ups in the conference program. Hopefully the pitches will live up to, or surpass, the blurbs.

Rafe’s 10 to watch from TechCrunch50

Shyrk is making a platform for building demographically targeted online banking systems. Why I like it: Handling OPM (other people’s money) is always a good business, if you can find the code. This arms merchant to other OPM businesses is a level above that. LiveHit is a “social discovery platform” that promises to help users pull in information they should like from social networks they participate in–Friendfeed with more proactivity, perhaps. Good idea, hope it works. Yammer is Twitter for workgoups, based on the “What are you working on?” question. It’s like Socialcast, which I recently covered, but even simpler. Imindi says that it will learn to understand what you like and will suggest other people to you based on that. Lofty pitch. Can’t wait to see it. Me-trics plans to aggregate highly personal data, like financial and health care information, and feed it back to users with recommendations for smarter or healthier living. Fascinating. Terrifying. Fitbit needs to talk to Me-trics. It’s making a wireless, wearable sensor to monitor your physical activity all day. Postbox is a new desktop e-mail client that’s supposed to automatically categorize and tag your messages based on content and attachments. Likelihood for success in this business is low, but I would sure like to see a truly better e-mail client emerge. Note: Last year at TechCrunch40, another clever e-mail product, Xobni, was introduced. Fotonauts is a digital photography solution for consumers. It handles uploading, sharing, and social commentary around photos. Best way to grok it: It’s Wikipedia for your photo libraries. Clever and attractive. Tough market, though. Playce is building 3D virtual worlds for gaming based on mapping the real world, giving users what they call a “mirror world” for their playtime. Should make immersive gaming more casual, since users will already be familiar with the playground surroundings. Bad Spock not included. Birdpost is a social network and mapping service built for birders. Why I like it: The birding community is large, rich, and could really use better technology platforms to support the hobby. Only potential downside is that the demographic skews older, which could limit uptake.

Bonus: the Jargon Award goes to DotSpots. First sentence of the blurb in the pitch book: “DotSpots brings the power of Wikipedia–the wisdom of the crowds–to every mem on the Web, and leverages automatic semantic match to distribute each contribution to every instance of that mem across the Web.”

Although not every session gets a pick from me at this early stage, TechCrunch50 looks like it will be a very good launch conference. There are some creative ideas being presented here.

For the full lineup of TechCrunch50 presenters for day one of the conference, go here.

Bonus No. 2: Redundant Award goes to Otherinbox. It’s a tool for setting up extra in-boxes for when you sign up to Web sites or for commerce. Gmail already has this feature, and it’s free.

Should Yahoo hit the low end of its range, especially in light of Google’s financial results, Microsoft may have a stronger argument for keeping its offer where it is, say Wall Street soothsayers.

Yahoo earlier told Wall Street that it expects to post revenue within its previously forecast range of $1.28 billion to $1.38 billion.

The question on investors minds is whether Yahoo on Tuesday will report results that are on the low end of the range, or the high end. Expectations for hitting the upper end may have just increased, given Google’s performance for the quarter.

As he addressed a crowd of nearly 2,000 people at a Seattle technology conference Thursday, he asked the group how many relied on Yahoo as their main search engine, according to a Reuters report.

Based on a consensus of Wall Street analysts, Yahoo is expected to report net income of 9 cents a share on revenue of nearly $1.33 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

And as has been reported a number of times, if Yahoo hits the high end of its range and issues a strong forecast, it may bolster its argument that Microsoft should pony up more than its initial cash-stock bid, valued at $31 a share. (For full coverage, see “Microsoft’s big bid for Yahoo.”)

Microsoft has hired Bryan Cave Strategies to lobby its case with federal regulators, according to an Associated Press report. The software giant is hoping lobbyists will aid its efforts in getting regulators to give a nod to a Yahoo merger, proxy fight or no proxy fight.

Although Google’s share soared as much as 12 percent in after-hours trading to tip past the $500-a-share range, Yahoo climbed less than 1 percent to $28.26 per share. In regular market hours, Yahoo ended the day down slightly at $28.03 a share.

While it’s not clear whether Yahoo has taken similar action and hired lobbyists over the Microsoft bid, Google is not resting on its laurels, according to the AP story. Google has hired the Franklin Square Group to aid with “competition issues in the Internet industry,” the AP cited from a disclosure form Franklin filed with the Senate public records office.

While waiting for Yahoo to decide whether it will enter into a friendly merger or tempt fate with a proxy fight, Microsoft has not been sitting idle.

And as the parties next week head toward the last leg of a three-week deadline Microsoft issued to Yahoo to do a deal, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hasn’t lost his sense of humor.

With Google blowing past Wall Street’s numbers for the quarter Thursday, expectations may rise for Yahoo, which reports its first-quarter results next week.

When only a handful of hands went up, according to the Reuters report, Ballmer quipped: “Wow! We offered 31 bucks a share.”

“When you look at the likelihood that Microsoft is going to make their progress in advertising, we think that’s higher than Google making inroads into the enterprise,” he says.

Smith says he’s not convinced Google is trying to make much money off Google Apps, and he predicts that while the effort may be a distraction to Microsoft it won’t seriously threaten Microsoft’s enterprise business anytime soon.

Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo plays into this strategy, and would make the combined company the clear No. 2 in advertising, Smith says.

In the other corner is Google, the search engine that has turned pay-per-click ads into a cash cow. The company is looking to take advantage of (and promote) the move to cloud computing with its Google Apps, which are free for consumers but have a per-user yearly charge for the premier edition targeting businesses.

And now, onto the next round.

Microsoft is looking for growth after failing to see big payoffs from investments in areas like mobile, games, and online services, says David Mitchell Smith, Gartner research vice president and fellow, who authored the “Google vs. Microsoft” report that will be presented at the Gartner Symposium/ITExpo 2008 in Las Vegas this week.

“It doesn’t mean that Google won’t make some progress,” Smith adds. “But the use we’ve seen thus far in businesses is almost exclusively bottom-up, end-user driven. There are not a lot of executives of enterprises who have made a strategic decision to use those products.”

Microsoft can give Google a better fight in online ads than Google can compete against Redmond in enterprise software, a Gartner analyst concludes in a new research report.

Not to mention that the future of the licensed software market, which is already flat, feels more at risk than the world of online advertising, despite the economic slowdown. It’s really hard to argue with free.

In one corner is Microsoft, the leader in enterprise software and PC-centric applications. Microsoft’s eye is on the prize–a bigger slice of the $75 billion in online ad revenue that is forecast by 2011.

But Google does need to figure out exactly how it’s going to make money off cloud computing, especially in the short term as software-as-a-service gains momentum. They did it with search; they could do it with apps too.

Then there’s the fact that Google’s got a huge head start in online ads over Microsoft and even if Microsoft acquires Yahoo the gap wouldn’t close.

To play devil’s advocate here, Google Apps could wind up being widely adopted within corporations just like instant messaging and Linux spread virally through workforces and engineering teams. And Google has been addressing the security concerns that are the primary concern for corporate execs, and adding offline access.

Former Verizon executive Mark Rupp is part of an effort to complete and improve the $17 million project that was built but abandoned last week by EarthLink, according to a report Tuesday in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said during a news conference Tuesday that no public funds would be used to complete or operate the project, although no further financial details were released.

EarthLink, which had filed a proceeding in federal court to start removing Wi-Fi radios from city streetlights and cap its potential liability at $1 million, reportedly welcomed the announcement and said it would work with the new owners on a smooth transition.

After the death of EarthLink CEO Garry Betty in early 2007, the company began wiggling out of several contracts with cities such as San Francisco and Houston. Early this year it announced it was abandoning the business altogether, and it started negotiating with five cities in which networks had already been built or partially built.

Local investors have rescued Philadelphia’s citywide Wi-Fi network.

EarthLink announced on June 10 that it was abandoning the project after being unable to find a buyer for the network, which has been 80 percent completed. It also claimed that after months of negotiations with the city and a nonprofit group interested in running the network, it was unable to close the deal.

EarthLink, which won the contract in 2006 to build what was at the time to be the largest citywide Wi-Fi deployment in the nation, said earlier this year that it’s getting out of the Wi-Fi business.

The group plans to create an ad-supported service that would be free to residents, but businesses would be charged, according to the investment group.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Like top ten lists? You might like SmashBuys, a link aggregator of the best selling items on the Web. Sites included are Amazon, iTunes, VGchartz, and Downloads from Webware’s sister site Download.com. There are nine in all, and clicking any link will send you straight to the product page. You can also hover over any item to learn more about it.

Track what's hot all over the Web with Smashbuys, a single page aggregator for products.

It was pitched to us as a PopUrls for products, which is very true, although Smashbuys users have the added benefit of seeing how popular each link is with the community. Items that get more clicks get their own form of promotion, making it pretty simple to see two layers of data at once. Go give it a spin.

However, from various sources CNET News is hearing that Apple is gearing up its engine for something the week of September 8, so the September 9 date is likely more accurate than the rumors so far of what will be delivered to the
Mac and iPod devotees. Stay tuned as the build up to the next appearance of Steve Jobs and the unveiling of Apple’s latest wares continues.

Per usual with the cone of silence that encapsulates Steve Jobs and the Apple troops surrounding new product announcements, it’s uncertain what will actually be unveiled next month.

Several blogs (see Techmeme) are reporting that Apple will roll out new products on September 9. As previously rumored, starting with missive from Digg’s Kevin Rose, Apple may be revamping the
iPod Nano and tweaking the iPod Touch with new software, as well delivering iTunes 8.0 with a recommendation engine and selective price cuts.