Happy #RoyalWedding day! Here’s what you need to know:

• Amazon explains and apologizes for their huge crash disaster. The crash not only brought many websites down but also permanently destroyed many customers’ data.

• Microsoft reported “OK but not spectacular” earnings, and the stock is down. Our full analysis →
• RIM slashed its outlook, the stock is tanking. Investors thought they would announce a sale, but no.
• Logitech’s earnings provide more evidence that Google TV is a dud.
• PayPal buys a mobile payments startup.
• The long and sad story continues: everybody at Yahoo is jumping ship.
• Samsung counter-sues Apple, which sued it for ripping off the “look and feel” of the iPhone.
• GPS maker TomTom sold customer data to law enforcement.
• Hot ad software startup MediaBank buys startup AdBuyer
• BONUS: Our live-blog of the royal wedding.

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PayPal has bought a mobile payments startup called FigCard, PayPal announced on its blog.

FigCard had an interesting model: it makes a USB stick that merchants can stick into their cash registers and take payments from smartphones if the customer has the FigCard app. Obviously this creates a chicken and egg problem that will be much easier to overcome with PayPal’s huge installed base and mobile API.

Mobile payments is a huge opportunity and companies big and small are scrambling for it. Google is rumored to want to include contactless payments in Android phones, as is Apple. And Square has a disruptive plan for mobile payments thanks to its dongle.

Don’t Miss: 14 Ways Your Phone Will Replace Your Wallet →

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If you include iPads, Apple is the number 4 PC manufacturer by volume.

But if you look at profits and growth, Apple is clearly number one. Apple doesn’t break out margins by segments but with an overall 40% gross margin, it’s likely its margins in the PC business are around 35%, which puts it way ahead of its rivals.

And thanks to the iPad, between Q1 2010 and Q1 2011, Apple had staggering 187.9% growth last year.

(Via Michel de Guilhermier in French)

Don’t Miss: Facts About Apple’s Business That Will Blow Your Noggin →

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• THE APPLE INVESTOR: Apple Could Survive On Its Current Cash Until 2018 Without Generating Any Revenue
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Cloud technologies power some of Internet’s most well-known sites—Picasa, Gmail, Facebook, and Zynga, just to name a few—and cloud companies are striving to make the computer processing behind these sites as energy efficient as possible.

With that in mind, Facebook, Dell, HP, Rackspace, Skype, Zynga, and others have teamed together to form the Open Compute Project to share best practices for making more energy efficient and economical data centers.

To kick-start the project, Facebook unveiled its innovative new data center and contributed the specifications and designs to Open Compute. “Cloud companies are working hard to become more and more energy efficient…[and] this is a big step forward today in having computing be more and more green,” explains Graham Weston, Chairman of Rackspace.

A small team of Facebook engineers has been working on the project for two years. They custom designed the software, servers, and data center from the ground up.

One of the most significant features of the facility was that Facebook eliminated the centralized UPS system found in most data centers. “In a typical data center, you’re taking utility voltage, you’re transforming it, you’re bringing it into the data center and you’re distributing it to your servers,” explains Tom Furlong, Director of Site Operations at Facebook.

“There are some intermediary steps there with a UPS system and with energy transformations that occur that cost you money and energy—between about 11% and 17%. In our case, you do the same thing from the utility, but you distribute it straight to the rack, and you do not have that energy transformation at a UPS or at a PDU level. You get very efficient energy to the actual server. The server itself is then taking that energy and making useful work out of it,” he said.

To regulate temperature in the facility, Facebook utilizes an evaporative cooling system. Outside air comes into the facility through a set of dampers and proceeds into a succession of stages where the air is mixed, filtered and cooled before being sent down into the data center itself.

“The system is always looking at [the conditions] coming in”, says Furlong, “and then it’s trying to decide, ‘what is it that I want to present to the servers? Do I need to add moisture to [the air]? How much of the warm air do I add back into it?’” The upper temperature threshold for the center is set for 80.6 degrees Fahrenheit, but it will likely be raised to 85 degrees, as the servers have proven capable of tolerating higher temperatures than had originally been thought.

The servers used in the data center are unique as well. They are “vanity free”—no extra plastic and significantly fewer parts than traditional servers. And, by thoughtful placing of the memory, CPU and other parts, they are engineered to be easier to cool.

Now that these plans and specifications have been released as part of the Open Compute Project, the goal is for other companies to benefit from and contribute to them. “The idea of Open source, crowd sourcing, Wikipedia—these are all part of a new era of thinking enabled by the same force,” explains Weston, “which is that when things are open, there’s more innovation around them.”

More info:

Facebook announcement: http://tinyurl.com/4×67au9
Open Compute Project web site: http://opencompute.org/

This post originally appeared on Building43.

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European hardware maker Logitech reported earnings yesterday and they weren’t good, with poor sales across the board. But a striking number highlighted by Giga OM is the sales of their Google TV set-top box Revue: $5 million, far below expectations of $18 million.

For comparison, they sold $22 million of them in the previous quarter (admittedly a holiday quarter).

It’s increasingly obvious that the reason you don’t hear so much about Google TV anymore is because it is a dud.

Here’s the most optimistic way to look at this: the TV market was always going to be a very hard nut to crack, even with Google’s cash, market power and ambition. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has said that there’s no good go-to-market strategy for created connected TVs.

But, perhaps more importantly, if Google is serious about TV, it doesn’t really matter what it does this year. Google is a web company after all, and what you do on the web is release a “minimum viable product” and keep improving it and improving it and improving it. Google TV was slammed by critics when it came out for being confusing and not very useful. But, in a way, that’s fine.

The goal is to get the software in the hands of consumers and keep refining it and improving it until it’s great. It’s what Google did with Chrome, which is a runaway success, and it’s what they’re doing with Google Docs, which is an increasingly viable alternative to Microsoft Office with every passing day.

The bear’s case, meanwhile, goes as follows: regular people just don’t care about connected TVs. TVs that behave like internet-connected computers is a geek fantasy, because geeks see a big square screen and think it should behave like their favorite big square screen. But they overlook that even though the two look similar, they’re used very differently: TV is a fundamentally “lean back” experience while computing is fundamentally “lean forward.” They don’t do the same things and you don’t use them for the same things. People have been talking up connected TVs for going on 20 years now (remember CD-i?) and regular folks just, don’t, care about that stuff.

Related: Forget About Google And Apple, The Future Of Television Is Facebook →

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Before RIMM announced its ugly earnings outlook, the stock was halted for news.

And since this is coming on the same day as Microsoft earnings, and since there’s been a lot of talk about Microsoft possibly buying RIMM, for one brief moment longsuffering investors thought they might finally be getting their lifeline.

Here’s what a few twitters were praying for.

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• Mobile Industry Is Turning Attention From RIM To Microsoft
• THE APPLE INVESTOR: Apple Could Survive On Its Current Cash Until 2018 Without Generating Any Revenue
• CHART OF THE DAY: Android’s App Store Will Be The Same Size As Apple’s This July

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For all attendees, Startup 2011 promises a day of education and inspiration, but for one lucky person the experience will be like none other. Business Insider is offering the chance to be a Startup 2011 VIP. The VIP package includes:

• One ticket to Startup 2011 (valued at $495)
• Behind-the-scenes access
• $100 gift certificate to a restaurant of your choosing to continue networking after the event.
• Exclusive invitation to the after-party so you can rub shoulders with the industry’s top leaders
• ZAGGsparq 2.0 (valued at $99.99) which carries 4 off-line charges for power-hungry gadgets so you can stay connected all day.

More about Startup 2011:  NYC’s premier business plan competition and entrepreneurship conference, is taking place Tuesday, May 10, 2011, at New World Stages in NYC.

The day begins with keynote speaker Fred Wilson being interviewed by Henry Blodget and continues with top entrepreneurs and VCs taking the stage to share the secrets to hiring tech talent, raising piles of money and cashing out, managing growth and corporate culture, and much more. You’ll also see seven aspiring startups present their business plans for a chance to win $100,000. If you are a serious entrepreneur, this is an event you can’t afford to miss!

Startup 2011 VIP sweepstakes is open to all newsletter subscribers and will run until May 1st. We will announce the winner on May 3rd. Good luck.

Note: You must be a newsletter subscriber to win. So if you have not already subscribed, make sure to choose a newsletter that you’d like to receive before submitting your entry. 

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• Business Insider Is Giving Away THREE Boxee Boxes - Only Five More Days Left To Enter!

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Microsoft just reported earnings for the March quarter (Q3 of its fiscal year 2011), and Windows sales were off 4%. That’s almost exactly in line with IDC’s numbers for PC unit sales, which were down 3.5%.

Investors are selling the stock after hours — it’s down about 2%.

That’s probably because they were expecting Microsoft to echo Intel last week, which saw 17% revenue growth in its PC business despite the slowdown.

In a call, Microsoft investor relations head Bill Koefoed gave three reasons for the discrepancy.

• Intel moved its netbook business to a different segment. This allowed Intel’s PC business to escape the dramatic slowdown in netbook sales. Koefoed said that Microsoft saw netbook sales drop 40%. Microsoft didn’t blame the iPad specifically, but it’s a reasonable assumption that low-cost computer buyers are turning more to tablets.

• Intel benefited from an inventory buildup by PC makers as it introduced its new Sandy Bridge processors during the quarter.

• Intel was reporting a 14-week quarter as it realigned its fiscal year to the calendar year. Microsoft’s quarter ran on 13 weeks.

• Intel’s average selling price went up, while Microsoft kept prices the same from last year.

Intel also supplies chips for the Mac, which showed year-to-year sales growth of 25% during the quarter. Microsoft doesn’t get the same immediate benefit from Mac sales, although it does sell Office for the Mac.

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SUBSCRIBE TO THIS PODCAST ON ITUNES HERE >>

Apparently, a lot of tech companies are tracking your location, but who cares? Also, does it matter that TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is investing in startups despite his position at AOL?

The SAIcast discuss these things and more!

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Apple passed Microsoft in market cap last May. It passed Microsoft in revenue in the third quarter of 2010.

And now it’s passed Microsoft in profit as well.

Apple’s profit for the quarter ended March 31 was $5.99 billion.

Microsoft’s profit was $5.23 billion. Not even close.

Half of Apple’s revenue came from the iPhone, a market where Microsoft isn’t competitive — and even if Windows Phone sells tens of millions of units after the Nokia deal, Microsoft will only earn $15 or $20 on each handset, compared with several hundreds of dollars per iPhone for Apple.

There is one financial metric where Microsoft is still ahead: margins.

Microsoft’s net profit as a percentage of revenue was 32%.

Apple’s was 24%. That’s unbelievable and spectacular for a hardware company, but software has much lower cost of goods — once you’ve recovered your R&D investment, every sale is pure profit — and Microsoft is still primarily a software company.

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• Microsoft Expected To Crush Earnings Tonight
• Microsoft Antitrust Oversight Ends In May, But Don’t Expect A Return To Its Old Ways
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How bad is the culture at Yahoo these days?

Consider this:  Yahoo bought content farm Associated Content for $100 million one year ago next month. In the eleven months since, every single one of the Yahoo executives who championed that deal has quit the company.

M&A guy Greg Mrva left before the deal was made.

EVP Hilary Schneider got the boot.

Yahoo media boss Jimmy Pitaro left for Disney.

The M&A chief who closed the deal, Andrew Siegel, is now at Condé.

Yahoo Local boss Matt Idema – who, you may recall, did “did 95% of all the heavy-lifting” to get the deal done – just quit for a job at Facebook.

Associated Content CEO Patrick Keane never went to Yahoo at all.

In fact, the only guy left at Yahoo is Associated Content founder Luke Beatty. Based in Denver, he’s now in charge of Yahoo Local, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Answers, and, weirdly, Flickr. Meanwhile, we understand that Google’s recent algorithm changes dealt a serious blow to Assocated Content’s traffic.

Who wants to bet Luke doesn’t stay a month longer than he has to for his retention bonus?

This story reads differently than it did a year ago:  The Inside Story: How Yahoo Bought Associated Content

Don’t miss: Here’s What Your Facebook Photo Says About You

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Motorola Mobility just beat earnings estimates, sending the stock higher by a few ticks.

Of interest in the company’s release, it says it shipped 250,000 Xoom tablets.

Previously, we saw analyst estimates of 300,000 for the quarter, which suggests sales are coming in much lighter than expected.

(Of course this blows away the absurd estimate of 25,000 Xooms sold to date.)

For some context, Apple sold 300,000 iPads in its first ever opening weekend.

Apple shipped 4.7 million iPads last quarter, and COO Tim Cook said Apple sold every iPad 2 it could make.

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Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting (or FAM as they called it) used to happen one week to the day after the company reported its fiscal year-end earnings in July. It was always one of the most interesting events on the Microsoft calendar for press and financial analysts.

But the company just announced on its earnings call that the FAM as we know it is dead. Instead, it will be combined with the larger Professional Developers Conference happening in mid-September in Anaheim, California.

That’s a shame.

FAM wasn’t just about finances. It was the one time of year when Microsoft gave outsiders a glimpse into the intangible things that make the company special.

First, the timing showed off the Pacific Northwest and the Microsoft campus at its absolute best. Seattle doesn’t get nice very often, but when it does there’s no more beautiful natural setting in the world — 200-foot-tall evergreen trees, glacier-capped mountains, dark blue water. Seattle natives got to hear all the analysts complain about the sweltering heat in New York. (My answer to them: Seattle gets about 10 days of blue sky from November through March. It’s not worth it.)

More important, it was the one event per year where top-level Microsoft executives would mingle freely with financial analysts and invited press. Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates (back when he was a full-time Microsoftie) would wander the halls followed by satellite clusters of onlookers, all pestering them with questions. Everything outside the formal sessions was off the record, so Ballmer could answer with the full force of his personality. “That’s cra-a-a-zy!” was not an uncommon response.

Tier-two execs — who still controlled thousands of employees and businesses worth billions of dollars — were often totally accessible. Friendly. Happy to talk. (Off the record.)

It was also the one time of year when Gates, Ballmer, and the leaders of Microsoft’s product units would reassure the world that Microsoft had competent managers and a companywide vision for the coming fiscal year. Products were unveiled. The research group got a chance to show off what it had been working on.

There were always a few groaners– did Microsoft really expect to make billions from online advertising by 2010? — but how many other companies were so open about all their plans, even once a year?

Plus they had macaroni and cheese with truffle oil on the lunch buffet. Every year. 

There always seemed something a little symbolic about that truffle oil. Microsoft may have ruled the world, but the analysts talking to institutional investors who controlled millions of Microsoft shares? They were special too.

But last year, the company changed FAM dramatically. Only four leaders spoke — Ballmer, COO Kevin Turner, CFO Peter Klein, and CTO Craig Mundie. There was no news. No opportunity for business leaders to speak. A much smaller press list.

There will still be a FAM this year, but putting it way after the end of the fiscal year and moving it to Anaheim changes its character entirely. It won’t be about the company’s plans for the fiscal year. It won’t be a five-minute walk for any Microsoft exec to drop by from his or her office. It won’t show off Microsoft’s campus in all its glory. It won’t give any sense of what the company is REALLY like.

Truffle oil? We’ll see.

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• Microsoft Expected To Crush Earnings Tonight
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Microsoft just turned in strong earnings, but once again, there’s a big ugly blotch on the report in the online division. Microsoft had a $726 million loss from online operations, the second biggest lost since March 2006.

Follow the Chart Of The Day on Twitter: @chartoftheday

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Bad news for defenders of Research in Motion.

The Blackberry maker just slashed its forecast for Q1 to $1.30-$1.37 (from $1.47-$1.55), saying that sales of its smartphones will be in the lower range of previously guided forecasts of 13.5-14.5 million.

Update: The stock has reopened after a halt, and is now down 8%.

Not only that, but the tilt is going to be towards the lower end of its product range, confirming that the iPhone is killing them at the high end.

The good news? They’re not slashing Playbook forecasts just yet (though there are absolutely no details about what those forecasts were).

The company will hold a conference call at 5:30 to give more details.

The whiff comes just days after the company received horrible reviews for the Playbook.

Addendum: What’s perhaps the most absurd part of the whole thing is that the company has set its full year guidance at $7.50, which is well above the street. Coming at this time seems absurd, and the management is blowing its credibility.

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• THE APPLE INVESTOR: Apple Could Survive On Its Current Cash Until 2018 Without Generating Any Revenue
• RIM Buys Tungle
• CHART OF THE DAY: Android’s App Store Will Be The Same Size As Apple’s This July

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