Some readers take issue with Yield Software's claim that it can automate much of the manual work associated with search engine optimization. Is Yield blowing smoke? Or are SEO experts who make a living on consulting worried about their business prospects?

Motorola scored Fergie to rep its handsets. Samsung bonded with Beyonce to pitch its products. Who does that leave for Nokia, Sony Ericcson, and the rest of the mobile phone manufacturers? Let's contemplate which pop stars are most likely to sell their souls for mobile phone makers.

Motorola let loose a slew of new handsets today. Most are entry-level models for overseas markets, though two of the pleb-o-phones are headed for U.S. shores. But the real zinger is the gold-plated RAZR2, which will only be available outside the U.S. No blinged out phone for the country that invented it? What gives, Moto?

Apple is near release of a toolset that would allow third-party developers to develop native applications for the iPhone, according to reports on Apple blogs. However, PC and Mac users accustomed to downloading any ol' app they can find on the Internet will be in for an unpleasant surprise with their iPhones -- they'll only be able to download and run apps that are sanctioned by Apple, and only through iTunes.

Every so often I bump into yet another example of Linux being used in creative ways.  Here's a new one: an ASUSTek motherboard, the P5E3, which ships with a built-in Linux variant called Splashtop.

Ever wonder if 3G access is a battery hog? Well, according to Wirelessinfo.com, users can extend the battery life of the new 3G Nokia N95 (the real 3G N95, not the one that doesn't run on 3G) by downshifting to EDGE.

Earlier a group of hackers split off from the now infamous iPhone Dev Team. Not to be outdone, the Dev Team today announced a publicly available hack for iPhone update 1.1.1. Will the iPhone hacking controversy every end?

If you covet processing power like I do, then we're both looking forward to a great fourth quarter, when AMD unleashes its first desktop quad-core processors, called Phenom, and Intel--already a player in that arena--counterpunches with its first 45-nm Penryn parts.

Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik is not known for avoiding conflicts that threaten his company. So how much longer will it be before he unleashes his legal team to defend against Microsoft's patent accusations in the same way he railed against SCO Group's copyright claims?

Newly liberated from the for-fee "TimesSelect" straitjacket, Thomas Friedman today reminds us why he never met a generalization he couldn't inflate into a 700-word column. The New York Times gasbag has toured four (4!) U.S. college campuses and concluded that the undergrads, while admirable in many ways, are "too quiet, too online, for [their] own good."

In the center of GwenStefani.com is an RSS-injected calendar of the pop star's concert tour, which fans can copy to their own Web pages. The startup behind these viral marketing widgets thinks your company can rally its own fan base in the same way.

Giving the mobile Web browser competition a shot in the arm, Mozilla's Mike Schroepfer said in a blog post that Mozilla has big plans for the mobile Web. Yes, a mobile version of Firefox is in the works, and should be ready next year.

The hue and cry over iPhone bricking is deafening. That's why the following findings from a survey of readers might come as a surprise: very few individuals have modified their iPhones in ways that should have voided their warranties; also, very few of those individuals have actually been bricked. Further, Apple's policies were fairly well understood.

Author/blogger Nick Carr's recent post claiming it's twilight time for the CIO role is somewhat overstated but still quite insightful. I'd put it this way: by mid-2008, CIOs who've failed to embrace change as a competitive advantage and failed to make revenue growth and customer loyalty their top priorities will be fired. And that will be a good thing for the profession.

A sect of hackers has split from the iPhone Dev Team and claims that AnySIM and iUnlock both had critical flaws that led to the bricking of hacked iPhones during the update to 1.1.1. They place the blame on poorly written hacks by the iPhone Dev Team and have splintered off into their own "elite" team. Fight! Fight! Fight!

How many of you out there use Google's Reader RSS client to compile your feeds? I use it on my desktop, where it works just fine. Using the mobile version, however, is not so satisfying.

There's a very fundamental shift taking place in the world, Rob Carter told the assembled technology managers at SIMposium 2007: The rising tide of network access is lifting the boats of opportunity.

Opera sang about some new technology today that it is working on with technology partners to improve video seen on mobile phones. Not TV or movie content, but better video that is embedded in Web sites, such as YouTube. What's interesting is that the technology has nothing to do with wireless networks.

Microsoft is reported to be looking to acquire Garmin, the navigation system company. Makes sense to me, at least technology-wise.

OutProtect is launching new a product that aims to stop Salesforce.com users from stealing contact databases and other critical data.

If Windows Vista is so terrible, how come there's someone in the open-source community who wants to copy it? That's the case with the latest Linux distro, a Vista look-alike called Vixta.

There's an argument currently raging about whether or not a PC should even ship with an operating system of any kind preloaded.  Would the lack of a preloaded OS, be it Windows or Linux or what-have-you, level the OS playing field that much more?

It isn't about Internet refrigerators; it's about facilitating the home health care of the aging population through digital technology.

Since it's my obligation to pass on every CIO joke that I hear, I must report one from SIMposium 2007 here in Memphis. It was told by a (former) CIO, to a room full of CIOs, which just goes to show that CIOs can, too, laugh at themselves, despite what anybody says.

Billed by its maker, Raytheon, as "a revolutionary, less-than-lethal directed energy application," the new Silent Guardian brings Flash Gordon-style ray-gun technology to today's wars of insurgency. And best of all: it leaves no marks.

You hear words like "consolidation" and "mature" so often about business software, you'd think all anyone's doing is dividing up a stagnant pool of maintenance revenue among an ever-smaller group of software vendors. News around Business Objects and SAS today reflects something a lot more interesting: IT teams scrambling to provide clearer, faster insights from exploding volumes of data.

The software industry is consolidating, we're told, because that's what mature industries do. But it's also what many mature customers demand.

The new Wi-Fi detecting T-shirt from ThinkGeek may help you find a Wi-Fi hotspot, but I think Dr. Love would give it a serious thumbs down. At least for anyone over the age of 12.

It's always been my impression that, appearances to the contrary, Linux aficionados are no different than the rest of us. So I wasn't surprised when I saw a post on the Ubuntu Women forum, from a guy, who's wondering if there are "any good places online to meet like-minded free software women." (The "free," of course, refers to the software.)

Many of our readers wrote in over the weekend to inform me that my post from Friday, "Apple iPhone Update 1.1.1 Has Been Hacked," was not completely accurate. The hack at the time only allowed access to file directories on the iPhone, and did not completely open the new upgrade. Well, the hack of 1.1.1 appears to be closer to completion today.

Seeing through the trees to the forest, New York Times reporter Miguel Helft, who published a feature on Google's mobile strategy this morning, says on his accompanying blog that "sources I talked to with knowledge of the project say Google is not building a phone." This is the conclusion I've reached previously here and here.

According to 9to5mac, Apple is tapping T-Mobile's Sidekick developers to help it create and distribute third-party applications for the iPhone through the iTunes Music Store.

That's truer now than it ever has been, says Jim Carroll, noted futurist and big thinker. And if your upper management doesn't get it, maybe you should look for another job.

Major news outlets typically make little mention of Linux.  Today, though, The New York Times weighed in one of the state of Linux with an article that is, blessedly, not a total hatchet job.

With their technical mastery and business savvy as a given, IT execs represent a unique group of highly motivated individuals. Check out these CIO profiles and compare their professional challenges and personal goals with your own, and with those of your corporate colleagues.

This was a rare week when a new rumor about the long-awaited gPhone from Google arriving ANY MOMENT NOW did not emerge. If I had a nickel for every time a blogger has announced that the prospective device has been "confirmed," I'd have a lotta nickels. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say: It ain't happening.

California resident Timothy Smith on Friday filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the iPhone maker violated the state's antitrust law. The suit was filed on behalf of Smith by Damian Fernandez, the attorney who's been seeking plaintiffs for a class-action case against Apple over iPhone bricking.

Faster than a speeding bullet, a pair of hackers who go by the names of "dinopio" and "Edgan" appear to have successfully hacked an iPhone with the 1.1.1 software and firmware upgrade. When is Apple going to give up?

If you haven't had enough iPhone-mania this week, get ready for some more. The latest iPhone rumor claims that Apple will unlock the iPhone when its new OS, Leopard, ships. Why would Apple suddenly open the iPhone now?

InformationWeek has been taking a look at Apple in the business market. While Apple has always been big in certain verticals -- publishing and education, to name two -- it's been weak in corporate IT as a whole. No matter what the Apple fans claim, this week's fiasco with bricked iPhones proves that Apple still isn't ready for the business market.

Amid the furor over you-know-what this week, some genuine news that's actually pretty cool occurred. Symbian and ARM announced that future Symbian devices will support multiple CPU cores. (I don't know about you, but I am still waiting for quantum processors to take over the universe.) In the meantime, Symbian smartphones will get a serious boost in performance come 2010.

The bloom may be off the iPhone for you, like it is for me -- it was pricey, then it was suspiciously cheaper, it was locked, it was unlocked, it was bricked, whatever. But along comes a guy with ANOTHER Apple phone that's just plain coolness -- he's making calls on his Newton. His what?

While software piracy is a problem that should be taken seriously, it seems that many companies have placed the burden of dealing with anti-piracy inconveniences on the individual user -- sort of like handcuffing the guy who forgot to pay for a lollipop while ignoring the safecracker in the back of the store.

What should have been another glorious moment in the sun for Apple is quickly turning into a blemish that won't go away. Rather than bask in the victory of the iPhone, Apple appears to have undermined itself by bricking modified iPhones. Is this the beginning of the end?

Cooperation between the CIO and the CPO is a recipe for a successful privacy initiative, says Michelle Dennedy, chief privacy officer at Sun Microsystems. Lack of cooperation is a recipe for... well, you know.

The lawyer behind the case in which a New York City woman is suing Apple and AT&T; for $1 million over its $200 iPhone price cut has got another legal move up her sleeve. It could potentially elevate the litigation from a curiosity that's been derided throughout the blogosphere (like here, where it's called "the moronic lawsuit of the day") into a serious action complete with an antitrust allegation.

Many Over The Air readers do not seem to understand what is at stake in the debate over Apple and the iPhone bricks. This isn't an argument about contracts and Terms of Service. This isn't a debate about personal responsibility. This is about consumers' rights and, specifically, consumers' rights to control their own computing devices.

If I sprinkle my conversations with references to Second Life or YouTube or User Generated Content (UGC, to those in the know), then I can roll with the big boys. So Digg this and Del.icio.us that. Facebook my Engadget you TechCruncher! Fark my Valleywag. As we approach the Web 2.0 Summit in less than two weeks, knowing these useful signs of overload will be extremely useful.

Welcome to an action-packed edition of Take 5, a regular feature where we at Over The Air ask an industry insider five questions about their company and the mobile business market as a whole. This week we focus on the gPhone. Our guest is Scott Rockfeld, group marketing manager at Microsoft.

I have wondered in this space before whether FCC chairman Kevin Martin has the, uhh, intestinal fortitude to pull off what will undoubtedly be seen as the defining task of his career: seeing through the auction of valuable 700-MHz spectrum so that it benefits consumers, breeds competition in the carrier-dominated U.S. wireless industry, and brings in many billions to the U.S. Treasury. Judging from events of the last month, the answer seems to be "Nope."

Consolidation has turned the CIO into a fixed-cost expense. But there are tools that can provide the right kind of information to turn the CIO back into an innovation asset, says a software CEO.

Did you ever think you would read the word 'brick' so many times in one week? Not only is it a noun (this brick used to be an iPhone), but it is also a verb (he bricked his iPhone), and adjective (that bricked iPhone doesn't work). It also happens to be a town (yo, shout out to New Jersey). It has yet to become a curse word (Brick you!).

My first computer (back in 1983) was a Compaq Portable, a 28-pound DOS machine with two 5.25-inch floppy drives and a 9-inch display. I was delighted with my new purchase -- until I found the small sticker on the back of the machine that said if I opened it (to, say, add memory), I would void the warranty. Say what?

Earlier today my colleague Alex Wolfe blogged that the number of complaints for the software updates on the iPhone were beginning to lighten. Now, however, it looks as though software update 1.1.1 is breaking the Bluetooth headset indicator on the iPhone for many users.

The number of Web surfers using Macs increased to 6.6% in September, a 40% increase over August. At Lifehacker, which is reporting those results, they have a far higher percentage of readers -- 14% -- using Macs. Your peers who visit InformationWeek.com from a Mac fall between 7% and 14%, and their numbers are growing.