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Recent stories on Apple's iPhone patent have focused on Cupertino's threatened legal action against Palm, which is launching the iPhone-like Pre smartphone. But a closer examination of the Apple patent yields much more interesting news. Namely, Apple is considering adding a video record feature to the iPhone -- an omission users have long complained about -- and it may soon become a handheld videophone platform, with support for mobile video-conferencing calls.

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I admit it; I love technical books. Give me a cookbook-sized tome from O'Reilly, Addison-Wesley, or even Web access via the great new Safari Books Online service, and I'm there. Sadly, there's never enough time to dive into the platforms and programming tools one wants to learn about. Yet now's the perfect time, because reading is a great way to develop new professional skills while remaining positively focused on the future amid these challenging economic times. Read on for my "I'm getting ready for Web 3.0" list.

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The honest PC user must admit that Firefox is neither as good as widely proclaimed, nor is Microsoft's Internet Explorer as bad. That viewpoint, which is what my personal experience has taught me, has only been reinforced by my recent test of Internet Explorer 8. (I got the IE8 beta by downloading Windows 7, with which it was bundled.

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I periodically find myself "cleaning" my iPhone -- removing old podcasts and apps, rearranging the screen icons -- in an electronic analog of how I de-gunk my wallet. (No dollar-off coupons in the iPod, though.) The only really unpleasant part of the process is dealing with stuff that everybody does but iTunes still refuses to support. Namely, ripping protected DVDs

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With more households going digital, the U.S. Senate's plan to push back the mandated DTV transition date from Feb. 17 to June 12 makes less sense than ever. Hey, if we're supposed to be entering a new age of personal and national responsibility, let's bite the bullet and exercise some technological leadership here.

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It's been a quadruple whammy week for the semiconductor industry, amid Intel's moves to close five factories and cut quad-core processor prices. AMD has likewise pared prices and also is facing another round of layoffs. Some may take these developments as signs of the economic apocalypse. Putting them into perspective, though, what they really show is that the chip industry always has been brutal; these days, it's simply more so.

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My recent post (a rant, really) "More Than Coding Mistakes At Fault In Bad Software," lamented the lack of well-tempered development practices, particularly as regards PC software, among most programmers. Which leads directly to another can of worms -- namely, how do they do things at Microsoft?

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I'm perplexed at all the huffing about the difficulties some people had installing the Windows 7 Beta. If you had patience -- or did the download over the weekend in the dead of night, when Microsoft's servers weren't overloaded -- it wasn't a problem. (I know, I really should get a life.) More interesting is that fact that the beta provides strong hints about Microsoft's release schedule for the operating system.

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I'm glad the SANS Institute released its list of "top 25 most dangerous programming errors" in a bid to raise awareness about the omissions which make software vulnerable to deadly security breaches. However, security-clueless coding isn't the only thing responsible for software that sucks. Sadly, most people in the industry know what the problem is. So why doesn't anyone ever do anything about it?

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The effort to get Congress to push back the television industry's Feb. 17 cutoff to transition from analog to digital broadcasting reflects a shocking lack of nerve for a nation that's supposed to be a beacon of technological leadership. Really, can't we just get with the 21st century, already? Or should we ditch our MP3 files and bring back vinyl records, too?

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The blogosphere is all aTwitter with the news, via a blog post from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, that the social-networking powerhouse has ratcheted up its user base to 150 million people. Whoa! Are those folks doing anything useful or just wasting their time?

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I've been playing around with Aliph's second iteration of its über-cool Bluetooth cell phone accessory -- called the Jawbone -- since I saw it at the CES gadget preview held in advance of this week's big Las Vegas show. Here's my quick review.

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I've got nothing against infrastructure projects as a way to stimulate the economy. However, it's becoming clear that one constituency's argument is being largely ignored in the rush to money-print our way out of the recession. Namely, the technology industry's. Read on for details of how a legitimate "innovation stimulus" could both drive tech spending and create jobs.

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I can't recall a year where the technological center of gravity was more personal-facing -- and less business-oriented -- than 2008. Sure, virtualization, server consolidation, SaaS, and enhanced mobility emerged as offering true enterprise value. Yet many of us spent our days messing around with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, all the while convincing ourselves that we were doing it out of a selfless desire to benefit our employers!

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GNU guru Richard Stallman sent me an e-mail the other day complaining that we erred by saying that the Free Software Foundation, of which he's president, promotes open source software. "We have never supported the idea of 'open source' because that idea denies the importance of users' freedom," he writes. Read on for the dizzying semantics behind Richard's argument, and why I think his obsessive attempts at language control are shooting his own software objectives in the foot.

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I love/hate my iPhone. Enjoy the call quality, Safari browsing, iPod listening, iTunes Store applicationing, and e-mail accessing (especially the Microsoft Outlook sync). But all of that is marred by the constant suspicion -- verified by my obsessive checks of the battery indicator -- that the thing will be fully drained of juice well before my day runs out of work.

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I've never been a huge fan of ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, but I sure admired her performance Sunday on NBC's Meet The Press. Discussing the sinking economy, Carly cut through the clutter -- and put Mitt Romney's won't-let-you-get-a-word-in-edgewise performance to shame -- by succinctly identifying the root of our ongoing problem: It's the unavailability of credit, stupid!

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When Microsoft does something funky -- like CEO Steve Ballmer's infamous Monkey Dance -- the press can't get enough of it. Yet when the folks in Redmond act inspired, the publicity is apparently somewhat sparser. That sure seems to be the case surrounding Windows 7. My early tests of the operating system, which will succeed Vista in about a year, indicate that it's a solid, high-performing, great-looking platform. So why aren't we hearing more about it?

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I went down to my local pizzeria to get a couple of slices and a Diet Coke, and I ended up in a discussion with the owner about Intel's latest quad-core chips. Turns out the pizza guy is building a PC with Intel's new Core i7 processor and Asus's P6T motherboard. Hey, seems you don't have to be an overly-computer-focused engineering guy like yours truly (please don't call me a geek) to put together a hot system on your own. Who knew?

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Barry Diller's my new hero. The media mogul is hammering those companies which are downsizing, even though they don't really need to, simply because now's an easy time to board the layoff bandwagon. Hey, big companies, here's a news flash for you: You're not just laying off your workers, you're canning your potential customers, too.

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How did you get your news 28 years ago, on Dec. 8, 1980, the date John Lennon was gunned down in New York City?

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My argument, 5 Things GM's Bailout Package Must Have, provoked strong reader reaction. Many people took issue with the idea of throwing any more money at Detroit. (Interestingly, as the prospect of bankruptcy looms larger, more folks are favoring a bridge loan; as is Congress, apparently.) Most of my readers weighed with interesting comments on the ideas I floated about tax credits, building roadside recharging stations, and getting the oil companies to pony up some R&D dollars. Read on for a selection from the reader e-mail bag.

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Last month, I argued in favor of the GM bailout package, because I believe Americans should make things -- servers, cars -- that are more technologically complex than cheeseburgers. Now, with Congress apparently poised to move on some kind of financial rescue plan, it's time to decide how to rapidly reshape Detroit's Big 3 to make hybrid, electric, and fuel-cell vehicles. Here's my five-point plan.

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Never before has a crisis unleashed so much raw data -- and so little interpretation -- than what we saw as the deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, unfolded. Amid the real-time video feeds (kudos to CNN International), cell phone pictures, and tweets, we were able to keep abreast of what seemed to be happening, and where it was going down, all the while not really knowing those other key, canonical components of journalistic information gathering -- namely, who or why.

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AMD's just-launched, rearchitected Opteron -- code-named 'Shanghai' -- is the centerpiece of the company's compelling case that now's the time for businesses to upgrade their servers, notwithstanding the current economic squeeze. Check out my video with Randy Allen, senior VP of AMD's Computing Solutions Group, to hear his arguments about Shanghai's performance, virtualization abilities, and energy savings.

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If that headline doesn't grab you, I don't know what will. And it should, because, depressing as the past few weeks have been, it's hard to tell whether the economic glass is empty or half-full. On the plus side, in a new report, Swiss securities giant UBS predicts tech sales could be down as little as 6% in 2009, and a rebound could begin as early as late Q1. At the same time, the BreakingViews financial site warns that a bunch of tech companies are going to have difficulties refinancing their debt. My assessment of the two competing data points finds that, in the IT sector anyway, there's cause for optimism. Read on for my argument.

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It's always dangerous to discuss politics or religion, so of course I'm going to tackle both today: the politics of a GM bailout and whether that comports with the faith we have in free-market capitalism. I say, yes, we can rescue the American automobile industry and still live with ourselves, economically speaking, in the morning.

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Here's the thought that hit me last night, checking out the tabletop gadget displays at the Consumer Electronics Show's New York press preview: Where are all the laptops? And why don't I care that there are so few? The answer is obvious -- unless you covet a new MacBook, you're not crossing your fingers in hopes of finding a shiny new notebook computer under the tree. Smartphones, netbooks, and digital SLRs, definitely. But laptops? Yawn!

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The reason your 401(k)s are underwater -- melted like an ice cream cone on the sidewalk, is how the pseudonymous Stanley Bing puts it -- is because the financial analysts who were managing your nut have been trained all wrong. All those business schools have been pushing out MBAs trained erroneously (insanely!) in risk analysis, which paradoxically is really risky. Oh, now you tell us! Well, that's what Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of "The Black Swan," is indeed saying. Tell it, Nassim.

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I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing (well, actually I am), but the FCC's approval of the use of "white space" broadcast spectrum for Wi-Fi is the kind of move which could only happen in an age when computers have apparently wiped out the collective technical consciousness of the entire radio and television era. Yep, I'm talking the vast potential for interference amongst the coming unlicensed services.

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Sometimes in our rush to embrace the latest and greatest, us early adopters forget that it's not about cutting-edginess, it's about utility. As in, can normal people accomplish tasks they couldn't otherwise do if they were working with, say, index cards? That's why Box.net is so valuable. It's a way to share massive files without having to fumble with ftp. To learn more, check out the short video I shot with Box.net's Jim Herbold.

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The latest outtake from my InformationWeek cover story, "Is The Smartphone Your Next Computer?" offers up an extended version of my interview with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center CIO Dan Drawbaugh, who discusses how handhelds are increasingly being woven in the day to day operations of the health-care powerhouse. Read on for Dan's interesting and valuable perspective.

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Intel's new Nehalem (aka Core i7) processors are causing a stir, on the heels of the rave "first look" review on ChannelWeb. The chips are significant because they mark the introduction of an all-new microarchitecture, and, boy, are they powerful.

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I just installed the prebeta build of Windows 7 on my ultimate quad-core PC and boy, am I impressed. Sure, when my son took a look at the screen, he said: "That's Vista." But isn't that the point? It looks to me like Microsoft is getting ready to shed its tainted Vista brand and replace it with a lean, mean, good-looking operating system which works. Call it sheer marketing brilliance.

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Ever since my InformationWeek cover story, "Is The Smartphone Your Next Computer?," I've been getting pinged by people telling me their tales of going "laptopless." (Can I use that word in a family blog?) Steve Rubel, the popular MicroPersuasion blogger and public-relations executive at Edelman Digital, spoke with me for the story and told me why he's tilting away from the notebook and relying increasingly on his iPhone. Here's our full interview.

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Want to know who's downloading what for their HTC G1 Android phones? Medialets, a company which hooks iPhone and Android apps into mobile advertising, has an early look at the most popular Google phone applications. Here's the data.

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I know this is nit-picky, especially when there are so many other important things to focus on -- like faster boot times and files searches that take less than a leap year. But here's what I want to know: Isn't "Windows 7" a gross misnomer as the name of Vista's successor? If we're not gonna use a year as the numerical designation in the new operating system's name, then aren't we at least up to nine or 10? (Or maybe 12?)

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You could call it denial, you could say some people are irrationally trying to wish the bad stock market away. But here's another side I saw this week, during a swing through Silicon Valley where I met with 10 pretty together tech companies: There's some serious -- albeit cautious -- optimism out there that now is precisely the time customers will realize they should invest in technologies which will make their businesses more efficient.

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Does writing software have to be an uncomfortable duel between the people driving the spec, who never seem to get what they want when the code comes back, and developers who lament the ambiguous instructions they've been given? Not if you can see what your app is going to look like first. That’s the idea behind iRise and its business visualization software. Check out my video chat with Emmet Keeffe, CEO of iRise, who explains it all.

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What happens when an online auction site tries to get all store-like, and a non-bricks-and-mortar buying destination starts buying into bidding? Apparently, you get Amazon pumped up into a one-stop shop for everything you need, while eBay ends up tilting toward irrelevance. Let me explain.

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Got half an hour to slog through an interesting video? Then the online version of my 2008 InformationWeek 500 panel, entitled "Get to the Point," is for you! Aviva CIO Toby Redshaw and noted analyst Rob Enderle debate a bunch of hot tech topics and -- get this -- they don't always agree.

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Want to hear some good news about General Motors in these troubled economic times? For one thing, it's a thought leader in enterprise mobility. GM CIO Ralph Szygenda talked to me for the InformationWeek cover story, "Is The Smartphone Your Next Computer?" "Our senior executives are demanding more capabilities on their smartphones," he says in the piece. Here's an expanded dive into his thoughts.

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No, it's not a movie about nothing -- it's the story of the intermittent windshield wiper! Who knew that Hollywood would bite on the very American theme of the lone inventor screwed by the big, bad corporation. In this flick, Greg Kinnear plays Robert Kearns, who invented the drizzle-defying wiper, but had to fight Ford and Chrysler for decades for credit and payment for his invention.

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How does one react to the moving target which is Congress's $700-billion bailout plan -- passed Wednesday night by the Senate, now coming before the House of Representatives? Now that the window for quick government action to ease the credit crunch is stretching out, possibly ad infinitum, computer businesses everywhere are going to have to hunker down to ride this thing out. It ain't gonna be easy.

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Live on my Flip camera, I captured Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin as they wowed the crowd at Tuesday's New York City intro of T-Mobile's G1 Android phone. Well, it was mostly Sergey who wowed the crowd, playing Paul to Larry's Ringo, though it was actually Larry who made the most forward-looking comment.

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Here's all you need to know about the ready-for-primetime-ness of the new T-Mobile Google phone. When I finally twisted my teenage daughter's arm to look at the pictures I posted of Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, at the Tuesday morning launch press conference, what she said was: "Why are they holding a Sidekick?"

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I'm liveblogging from the Google, T-Mobile press conference in New York. See my photos from the event, including a shot of two special guests.

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Quality sucks! Makes you want to read further, doesn't it? Not so much my original lede, which was: In an online world where the Twitter limit is 140 characters, brevity isn't just the soul of wit, it's the currency through which quality is transacted. So does this dichotomy between the inflammatory new and longwinded old spotlight exactly what's going on here? Yes; the definition of what constitutes successful Web 2.0 work has changed. Here's how and why.

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Forget the hotly hyped Google Chrome browser, what I want to know is, is the long-awaited Google Phone on the verge of release? Some reports say the GPhone is supposed to debut Sept. 23, via T-Mobile. The interesting dynamic here -- far more than the phone itself (if that's possible) -- is that what we have here is a product unveiling which will instantly outpace the iPhone and put Apple on the backburner, forcing Steve Jobs to play catch-up. Big time.

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I just got back from my staycation, which is the holiday destination to debark at when you're not going anywhere. (I was watching my son, in the stretch between camp and back-to-school.) The week turned out to be a bit more active than I'd expected, though, and it morphed into -- here's the new word I've coined -- a workcation. You know: time off, but BlackBerry close at hand.

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