Giles Martin was conjuring spirits, or perhaps summoning gods. The tools for this ritual included a pair of omnidirectional microphones, a digital mixing console and a hastily-procured set of teacups and saucers, but the magic was in the room itself. Studio Two at Abbey Road in London has changed very little since 1969, when Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison recorded together for the last time.

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In recent weeks, some big-name tech execs have said that they think the economy has hit a bottom. On Wednesday and Thursday, some smaller–although still pretty large–software companies reported earnings, and their CEOs were a little less rosy about the end of the recession.

Salesforce.com (CRM) on Thursday reported a 23 percent increase in revenue from the year-ago period. But the company lowered its full year revenue outlook from between $1.3 billion and $1.33 billion to between $1.25 billion and $1.27 billion.

Marc Benioff, CEO of the online-software maker, didn’t sound like a man who believes the worst is over. He said during a conference call that new customers are taking longer to make decisions and that existing ones aren’t expanding the way they historically have. And he balked when asked if the company’s month-by-month performance indicated any trends: “I feel most comfortable really just delivering these aggregate results right now,” he said.

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Yahoo (YHOO) isn’t just selling, it is looking to buy, too.

The Internet web search and ad company’s chief technology officer, Ari Balogh, told the Reuters Global Technology Summit that Yahoo is looking to buy companies that will enable it to become a bigger player in social networking and revamp its family of products.

Balogh’s statements shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Social networking remains a growth business, albeit one that has been hard to monetize. Yahoo has had it shares of stumbles trying to enter the space. In the past few years, the company has shut down or essentially shut down two of its previous forays into the business–Yahoo Mash and Yahoo 360, according to paidContent.org. Yahoo also fell short in its attempt to buy Facebook for around $1 billion three years ago.

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This week’s column carries what in the news business is called a dateline, signifying physical presence. Physical presence? Isn’t this the digital era, when we’re all happy to be cocooned in our own online worlds, no longer requiring human interactions?

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When it comes to the widget ecosystem, lavishly funded companies like Slide, Clearspring and RockYou hog the limelight. But it is Userplane, now a subsidiary of AOL, that seems to be revving up the money engine without much fanfare. The company that started out offering a Web-based chat system has now morphed into a many-faceted business, including owning what might just be one of the largest widget ad networks out there.

At the D6 Conference this week in Carlsbad, Calif., I ran into Userplane founder Mike Jones, who sold his company to AOL in 2006 and now works for AOL. During our conversation, I marveled at the amount of money being pumped into the widget ecosystem while at the same time fretting about the paucity of revenue opportunities. My skepticism about the sector was outlined in an earlier post that focused on Clearspring’s latest round of funding.

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