Apple unveiled the iPhone 3G S on Monday, offering more speed, more storage, longer battery life, and a better camera that shoots video, for $199 for 16 GB or $299 for 32 GB. Sounds like a no-brainer of an upgrade for iPhone users, right? Not exactly, says TechCrunch's MG Siegler. For starters, current iPhone users who are one year into their two-year contracts with AT&T will have to pay $399 and $499 to upgrade. Why? Because AT&T subsidizes the iPhone down to $199 based on a 2-year agreement with its customers. This way, AT&T doesn't have to eat the cost …

Every time Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz talks about how Yahoo competes with Google and Microsoft, "I feel like she's digging the hole even deeper for Yahoo's prospects in search," says Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan. Why, because instead of communicating a clear search strategy, she's sending mixed messages about what the company is and what it's focused on. As Bartz said at the D Conference last month, "We're the place where people find relevant contextual information about things they care about." To which Sullivan replies: "Relevant contextual? Huh? Buzzword buzzword. Things I care about? Like is my email relevant, contextual …

A whopping two-thirds of businesses are unaware that they will be able to use their own name in place of domain extensions such as .com, .org, .net, or .edu, according to a new survey. Reuters points out that the change will allow companies like Kraft and Nike to control their own domain and better exploit their brands, and also counter cyber-squatters who buy variations of brand names inside the 280 or so existing domain extensions. "If you have '.nike', for example, you can create real and specific branded Websites, like 'running.nike' or 'runlondon.nike'," Joe White, chief operating …

Ad Age's Rita Chang takes a look at the new iPhone 3G S from a marketer's perspective. The new device, which is faster and has more storage capacity, also comes loaded with a brand new operating system. A 16 GB model will retail for $199 with a two-year contract. For marketers, speed is key, Chang says, allowing for faster downloads, while the phone's greater memory and processing speed will allow advertisers to create more complex ad units. "People are already using their phones as mini-computers," said Tina Unterlaender, account director, AKQA. "But the faster speeds will change user …

The specter of live television on cell phones direct from broadcasters is another of the tangled issues raised by the digital TV switch happening Thursday. Companies will be able to use the newly vacant analog spectrum previously used to broadcast television to now send signals to cell phones. According to Nielsen, approximately 13 million people, about 6% of all mobile subscribers, used their phones to watch video content, but that's a 50% jump year-over-year. Mobile TV services such as Qualcom's Flo TV, MobiTV and Transpera are all competing to serve this relative sliver of …

83 Degrees is launching a new service called Super Chirp that lets Twitter users get paid for their content stream. This is great news for celebrity tweets, says Michael Arrington; Britney Spears, for example, has 1.7 million Twitter followers. "How many of them would be willing to pay $1, or $10, per month to see a premium stream of her content?" Good question, actually. Super Chirp works through direct messages, Twitter's private messaging system, which means that publishers can leverage their existing Twitter accounts to promote paid streams. Users subscribe to the content on the Super Chirp …

The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg reports that a new site "with a novel approach to journalistic entrepreneurship" is opening its doors. Called True/Slant, the site, a mixture of journalism and social networking, aims to develop new forms of advertising. It is run by former news executives at America Online who worked at a number of different publications, including The Wall Street Journal. True/Slant is launching in "OpenAlpha" with 65 journalists, or "knowledge experts," assigned to specific topics, including politics, culture, sports, business, health, science and food. According to Mossberg, each of these contributors gets a page …

A few days ago, TechCrunch and other blogs reported that new data from StatCounter showed that Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, had bypassed Yahoo as the No. 2 search engine in the U.S. According to the data, on June 4, Bing had over 15% of the U.S. search share, compared to Yahoo's 10%. On the following day, June 5, Yahoo had almost 11% while Bing had fallen below 10%. On June 6, Bing fell to 6.68% while Yahoo rose to 11.33%. Google, meanwhile, had seen its search share dip to 72% on the day that Bing shot up to No. …

Fox Interactive Media, which has recently completed a massive management reorg, has decided not to move into its new office building in Playa Vista in Los Angeles, according to an email sent out by News Corp. digital chief Jonathan Miller. FIM reports directly to Miller, who assumed the top digital role two months ago. Last year, the Los Angeles Times reported that the company had committed to a 12-year, approximately $350 million lease at Playa Vista with the idea of consolidating all of FIM's 2,000 employees, who are currently scattered across the company's LA area offices. The …