So, BoomTown–who cannot be unplugged from the matrix for very long without breaking into a cold sweat–was pretty excited to have free Wi-Fi on my Virgin America flight to Washington, D.C., early this morning.

Lots of Web companies are footing the bill for people to use wireless for free, in an attempt to boost use and, of course, their brand.

While that should be a given in this country, I won’t look a digital gift horse in the mouth.

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Google has a Web page up about today’s acquisition of AdMob for $750 million in stock, which includes this lovely image of the differences between what the Silicon Valley companies do in the mobile advertising space.

Here’s the quick translation: The Web search behemoth has been slower than molasses in the space, sticking with boring blue links of death, especially compared to the innovative and nimbler start-up, which is rocking the pretty ads.

So, we ate it.

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Google has acquired AdMob for $750 million, a huge price for an innovative start-up that hass pioneered online ads on mobile and now smart phones.

BoomTown visited AdMob last fall and posted about how it was likely to eventually be acquired by…Google!

The move is a major one for the search giant, which has been pushing hard into the mobile advertising space as it seeks to grow its already considerable Web business. AdMob is arguably the fastest out of the gate in the nascent arena.

Plus, here’s AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui in a video interview with me last November, as well as the official press release on the sale.

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This week, BoomTown decided to mash up two different and interesting surveys, both from comScore, about the search market.

When you do this, you find that while the new Bing search engine from Microsoft is showing some impressive growth–up a half-point in July from June to an 8.9 percent share–the software giant still has a long way to go to get some true love from the consumers.

Obsessive love, actually.

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One of my favorite “world-of-the-future” videos recently has been one done by Microsoft Office Labs, because it does not seem ridiculously fanciful or impossible to imagine actually happening sooner than much later.

But, of course, the folks at IGN.com’s Sarcastic Gamer managed to find the perfect way to poke fun at the video in a spoof that hit the target deftly.

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As a new weekly feature, BoomTown is calling all those who make cool graphs about tech to send them to me pronto.

I am–truth be told–a secret stats fanatic. A bargraphaholic. A closet pie-charter.

(I also love pie.)

Thus, here are a few comparing some stats about development for the iPhone from Apple and the Android from Google, from Flurry Analytics.

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As President and CEO of Nokia, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo runs the world’s largest mobile phone maker, a hard won and enviable position. But new rivals like Apple and Research in Motion are gaining market share with innovative touchscreens and apps, features that Nokia has been late to the smartphone party with.

Kallasvuo talks about all this and more in an interview with Walt Mossberg at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

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We kick off the week of full posts of the onstage interviews at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference with Mike Lazaridis, president and co-CEO of Research in Motion, which is best known as the maker of the BlackBerry.

Lazaridis has been key to developing the BlackBerry smartphone, which means he is directly responsible for the CrackBerry problem too. And it means he’s in the thick of the new handheld platform wars.

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Oh, Scooby-Don’t…

You could not be more wrong in your post last week–titled, “Why Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg are wrong about naming Web 3.0 ‘Web 3.0′”–about Walt and I being wrong about naming Web 3.0 “Web 3.0″ in an essay we posted at the start of our D: All Things Digital conference, which took place last week.

I know writing “Kara Swisher,” “Walt Mossberg” and “Wrong” is well-nigh irresistible, but your solution of calling the digital era we are in the “2010 Web” is equally confusing and incorrect.

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Tellme, the voice services subsidiary of Microsoft, is announcing “one-button” voice access for Windows-enabled mobile phones, as well as some new technologies to improve call automation for customer service centers.

Aiming at smartphone users who might prefer to use voice commands over the Apple iPhone’s popular touch, tap and swoosh features, Microsoft is trying to differentiate its mobile offerings.

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Earlier this week, BoomTown chronicled my parenting conundrum concerning the fact that my almost-seven-year-old son hijacks my iPhone at every opportunity to play games and more.

Titled “My iKid iJacked My iPhone: A Geek Parenting Tragedy,” it describes the Apple smartphone’s strange hold over him and how it was freaking me out.

That was until I saw this do-NOT-miss video, sent to me by an Internet entrepreneur whom I know (and who shall remain nameless), about his even younger son’s iPhonaticism.

Or as this apps-crazy toddler puts it rather strongly: iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiyiiiiiPhoooooooooone!

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There was no doubt, given the continuing economic collapse and all the joy that brings, that Demo09 was going to be a much tamped-down and sober affair this year.

But there were still a lot of interesting start-ups being featured in the main ballroom and demo “pit,” such as a cool “touch book” offering, a strange hooking-up-in-a-bar smartphone app and a plethora of ideas that obviously got their inspiration from the iPhone from Apple.

As in: touch, swipe, interact! (Which is the official BoomTown motto, in point of fact.)

Here’s a video I did of Demo09, which ends today.

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Facebook, which has been very busy ferreting away to get a presence on all the big cellphone makers, is in talks with mobile handset giant Nokia about integrating the hot social-networking site on its phones.

Its deals like this–as well as building its popular Facebook app for smartphones like the BlackBerry from Research in Motion and the iPhone from Apple–that are spurring huge market share growth in the arena by Facebook.

And there are more deals to come, with cellphone makers like Palm and Motorola, as the smartphone market keeps heating up.

Too bad for fast-growing Facebook and others that there’s no money to be made yet.

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BoomTown did a video interview with Palm’s sugar daddy investor Roger McNamee at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, after the debut of its Pre smartphone.

Via Elevation Partners, McNamee has invested a total of $425 million in Palm, aimed at reviving the company that pioneered the smartphone market, but lost its step to competitors.

Thus, Palm and the private equity firm have banked a lot on its new product, so McNamee was out in full force at CES in Las Vegas, talking up the Pre.

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With Macworld out of the way, a chunk of the crack All Things Digital squad is now winging its way both east and west to the annual gadgetopocalypse in Las Vegas, a.k.a. the Consumer Electronics Show.

Despite the fact that the show is feeling the pinch of the economy and that there are really no big products to speak of, CES is still one of the biggest and most important gatherings of the tech year.

Las Vegas turns into a geek moshpit every year, as legions of vendors, buyers, press and others converge to be overwhelmed for days by noise, long lines for cabs, keynotes, demos and more (like the Pussycat Dolls).

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