This was a strange earnings season. But it has been a remarkably strange economy. But when you look at the big names in tech, including Intel (INTC), IBM (IBM), Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), eBay (EBAY), Microsoft (MSFT), and the big names on Wall Street, there was a bizarre disconnect over what was expected, and what was realized.

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Allen & Co.’s Sun Valley, Idaho, media fest got off to a gloomy start Wednesday, with downbeat panel discussions on the economy (getting worse) and the digital future (looking murky).

Erin Burnett of CNBC opened the conference by moderating a discussion between investor Wilbur Ross, MIT professor Simon Johnson and American Express (AXP) CEO Kenneth Chenault.

The prognosis for the economy from the experts was bearish, according to members of the audience. “It was interesting but gloomy,” said Ken Auletta, the New Yorker writer who attended the meeting, closed to press.

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Does Liberty Media (LINTA) want to own AOL?

CNBC’s David Faber raised the question this morning at the tail end of a long interview with Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei. And Maffei indicated that Liberty, the media empire controlled by billionaire investor John Malone, actually does have some interest in the Time Warner (TWX) unit, which is currently on track to be spun off as a separate company via an IPO.

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Here’s Sony’s Jack Tretton, speaking to Chris Morris at CNBC, on leaks:

People don’t respect confidentiality in this industry. It’s tough enough to keep a secret within your own company, much less when you speak to third parties.

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Well, everyone else is in the phone business, so why not Microsoft (MSFT)?

There are several reports suggesting that the company may soon do exactly that.

On Friday, tech news site TheInquirer.net reported that the company is developing a phone that will use an Nvidia processor called Tegra. The phone supposedly will be launched at the 3GSM conference this coming February.

Today, CNBC offered a slightly different version of the Microsoft phone rumor, asserting that the company will create a Zune-based phone code-named “Pink,” which could be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. There have been rumors about the nature of the company’s “Project Pink” going back at least a year; back in May, ZDNet reported that Pink consists of a set of consumer-focused premium mobile services, including some from its Danger acquisition.

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Just last week, J.D. Power made headlines when it released a study showing that Apple’s iPhone was the top mobile device among business users. It was a surprise since Apple was clearly trying to create a consumer-oriented smart phone to fill the gap created by the business-centric BlackBerry from Research in Motion. As if that headline wasn’t eye-opening enough. Now I’m getting word from the folks at Citrix Systems that the company is designing virtualization software specifically for the iPhone and it will be coming soon to the Apple App Store. Why is that significant? Because it could jumpstart Apple’s nascent iPhone enterprise business in a big way, which has already enjoyed some pretty, rip-roaring success so far.

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Google (GOOG), one of the nation’s great growth engines for employment, has essentially stopped hiring for the last month, according to several executives at the company. A spokesperson at the company says there has been no freeze on hiring, but several executives I have spoken with who have hiring responsibility said it was made clear to them one month ago they were to make no new hires, including at the secretarial level and they were directed to fill all vacancies with internal candidates. In effect, they term it an unofficial hiring freeze.

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If Electronic Arts’ unsolicited bid for Take-Two Interactive sounds a lot like Microsoft’s unsolicited play for Yahoo–complete with both EA and Microsoft ultimately walking away–think again.

It’s only a little bit surprising that EA walked, mostly because Take-Two was in a far stronger negotiating position than Yahoo.

EA announced Sunday that it would cease discussions with Take-Two, capping nearly seven months of back-and-forth between the two gaming titans.

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Michael Phelps who? In what is probably the greatest moment in this Olympics, Usain Bolt of Jamaica won gold in the 100-meter dash in 9.69 seconds, a new world record–and he didn’t even have to try after the first half of the race. But you wouldn’t know it if you were here in the U.S.–well, if you were not online actively searching for a video clip of it. NBCOlympics.com has a lame text story online, with a lamer Getty Images-supplied photo slideshow. Not that we were expecting anything different from NBC today, but it does add up to the growing frustration with the “bottled-up” (not my phrase … Jeff Zucker used it in a CNBC interview yesterday) coverage by the network.

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Hard to know what to get excited about regarding David Faber’s report on CNBC this morning alleging that Sprint Nextel (S) is in talks with various parties that are “not informal”–in Faber’s words–to sell its struggling Nextel unit. Faber says private equity funds (remember them?) “aligned with telecom” are among interested parties, as is the Nextel International affiliate, better known as NII Holdings (NIHD).

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A funny thing has been happening to Google lately. Have you noticed? It’s going up!

And I’m not talking about the one-day pop it got from those surprisingly good earnings, which shocked just about everyone on Wall Street and sent Google shares soaring.

I’m talking about the day-to-day creep-up, the steady momentum, the renewed interest in a company that never deserved to be on the outs to begin with.

The parallels to Apple are pretty striking.

Yes, the two are in decidedly different industries, but the status they enjoy in their respective industries is pretty striking. They are each the single, exciting brand, doing innovative things, controlling their markets, owning the buzz.

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I’m skeptical. Let me just say that right out of the gate. I’m skeptical that Apple Inc. and Apple Corps have signed a deal to put the Beatles’ 255 song catalogue on iTunes. Don’t get me wrong, I see the economies here and I know that everyone involved sees $$$ in their eyes. And believe me, every fan I’ve talked to, including Steve Jobs himself, wants to see a deal get done.

I’m just skeptical that one is imminent.

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Investors lined up two hours before the Apple shareholder meeting began here in Cupertino, Calif. It’s a little unusual for them to be here so early, and I thought it might be related to the company’s 40% plunge since the beginning of the year. Instead, I found that euphoria had given way to cautious optimism, but optimism nonetheless, that Apple would continue to rely on innovation to recapture its stock market magic.

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