Apple issued strong first quarter earnings on Wednesday, boosted by sales of the iPhone, particularly overseas, BusinessWeek reports. The consumer electronics giant sold almost 3.8 million iPhones in the quarter, more than double the number from a year earlier. Nearly half of these came from overseas, BusinessWeek notes, as AT&T on Wednesday reported 1.6 million iPhone subscription activations (AT&T is the iPhone's exclusive carrier in the U.S.). Total iPhone sales have now passed 21 million worldwide. Apple also saw strength in its iPod digital music players, selling 11 million units in the quarter, a 3% increase from a year earlier. …

In a lengthy post, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis offers 10 things the next MySpace CEO needs to do to revitalize the site. "That's a long version of me saying 'this is what I would do if I was CEO of MySpace' -- something I'm not prepared to say (at this time)." Indeed, Calacanis has been linked with the post, which was officially vacated on Wednesday, although many reports now say former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta is considered the frontrunner. Calacanis thinks the struggling social networking giant should buy a search engine, focus on mobile and global expansion, invest heavily …

Michael Arrington says that News Corp. is looking to replace MySpace CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe, whose contract with the company expires in the fall. Jonathan Miller, News Corp.'s new CEO of Digital Media, is understood to be leading the charge. "We've confirmed that things are actually moving much faster than we first understood, and that a decision has already been made to terminate Chris DeWolfe's employment with MySpace," Arrington says. "We've also been told that the core MySpace executive team will follow." This includes President Tom Anderson and Chief Technology Officer Aber Whitcomb. "Removing any more of the team …

Google has become something of a de facto public record for people looking for other people. However, frustratingly, we have no control over what pops up when people search for us. Now, Google aims to change all that, with a new product released yesterday called Google Me. As Read Write Web's Marshall Kirkpatrick notes, Google Me comes with a price, but "not a monetary one." When searchers type in the word "me" in the search box, they will now be given the opportunity to set up their Google profile. When searchers type in a name that matches a Google profile, …

The Associated Press wants to handle the problem of third party aggregators borrowing or even stealing its content "by aggressively going after anyone who even borrows a headline," notes TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld. Publishers are unquestionably angry and perplexed by this issue, but a group called The Fair Syndication Consortium is taking "a more measured approach," he says. Founded by Attributor, a startup that tracks the reuse of text and images across the Web, the group seeks to address the proliferation of splogs (spam blogs) and other sites that republish content from news sites and blogs, often failing to provide links …

Why did Wenda Harris Millard step down from her post as co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia? According to the New York Post, the digital diva was forced out, and her departure was foreshadowed by last week's departure of Jacki Kelley, whom Millard recruited as executive vice president of media sales of MSLO in 2007. Millard, former chief sales officer of Yahoo, was named co-CEO of MSLO last June following the departure of former president Susan Lyne. Her exit comes just 10 months after being promoted. The Post first reported a rift developing between Millard and Stewart in October, claiming …

Yahoo execs have been talking up APT, the Web giant's new service for selling display advertising, for a while now. As The Wall Street Journal's Jessica Vascellaro notes, Yahoo managers have "trumpeted" the new platform for several quarters now, saying it will "change the game" in online advertising. As former CEO Jerry Yang said during APT's official unveiling last year, "Building APT was a tremendous effort and we're very proud of its early success." However, Carol Bartz, Yahoo's new CEO, struck a decidedly different tone when APT came up during yesterday's first quarter earnings call. Instead of referring to it …

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is counting on her top technology executive to fix the list of products on the "wall of shame" she created last month. Ari Balogh, recruited as chief technology officer last year, added product-management duties in February after the most recent reshuffling of the Sunnyvale, Calif. Web giant. As Bloomberg notes in a special report, Balogh now needs to chart the future of Yahoo's more than 50 products, from e-mail to online dating to search."The biggest challenge is just the explosion of products that they offer to consumers," said Yankee Group Analyst Carl Howe. "It's a lot …