Filed under: After the bell, Earnings reports, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Intel (INTC), Marketing and advertising

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) today reported better-than-expected second quarter results, allaying fears that the economic slowdown would injured the world’s largest chipmaker.

Net income rose 25% to $1.6 billion, or 28 cents and sales jumped 9.1% to $9.47 billion, beating analysts’ expectations of profit of 26 cents on revenue of $9.33 billion. The company even gave robust guidance of $10 billion to $10.6 billion. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expected sales of $10.01 billion. Shares of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company rose in after-hours trading along with other tech bellwethers such as Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG).

“Intel had another strong quarter with revenue at the high end of expectations and earnings up substantially year over year,” stated Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO, in the earnings release. “As we enter the second half, demand remains strong for our microprocessor and chipset products in all segments and all parts of the globe.”

Some skeptics, including me, wondered whether Intel would be hurt by the economic slowdown that’s hurting everyone else. After all, are people and companies willing to shell out huge bucks for fancy notebook personal during these uncertain times? Well, judging from the company’s earnings, the answer appears to be “yes.”

Both the mobile and microprocessor units set records. Gross margins rose to 55.4% from 53.8% in the first quarter and 46.9% a year earlier “as growth in demand for lower-priced notebook Computers resulted in a lower-than-expected microprocessor average selling price. In April, the company predicted a gross margin of 56% plus or minus a couple of points,” the Wall Street Journal noted.

So it looks like reports of Intel’s decline were overblown.

“If the slowdown were that pervasive, then Intel would have already seen it,” Raymond James analyst Hans Mosesmann told Bloomberg News.

Good point.

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Filed under: Productivity, Web services, iPhone

We love to see iPhone apps that are designed with phone users in mind. Ports of desktop apps — chat clients, games, etc. — are all well and good, but the mobile-specific stuff really shines. Take Gifter, for example. It’s an app that lets you buy and send gifts from your iPhone.

Can someone please write Gifter into a romantic comedy? We could absolutely see Tom Hanks frantically ordering flowers from his iPhone on the train. You can send more than flowers, though: Gifter is hooked up with vendors for books, movies, jewelry and even teddy bears. Now when you see those birthdays in your iPhone’s address book, you can do something about them. It might not be the app with the most geek cred — hey, they didn’t drop any vowels from the name! — but it works.

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Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Productivity

URL-shortening services are plentiful these days, but they’re not all equal. There are a few key features we’re looking for in our best URL-shrinker. We want a bookmarklet, to avoid needless copy-pasting. We want a short base URL for easy Twittering. There’s also the capability to custom-name your URLs, so you can tell them apart and they make sense to the people you’re sending to. Bit.ly has all of this and more.

Bookmarklet? Check. Short base URL? Check. The only shorter one we’ve seen is is.gd. Custom naming? Sure thing. But the real kicker is Bit.ly’s very special feature: it tracks how many clicks your link gets, and shows you the referrers those clicks are coming from. If someone else has made a different Bit.ly address for that same URL, you can see that, too. Don’t be surprised if you see more and more Bit.ly links popping up soon, it might be the best out there right now.

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