In my continuing quest to find, paraphrasing a bit from Lord of the Rings, "one device to rule them all," I've gone through so many different phones, "smart" phones and other devices like them that I've pretty much lost track of how many, which ones and when I used them all....

After trying so many different devices, I finally settled on the Blackberry 8700g as the one that most completely satisfied my needs for an all-in-one phone, contact, calendar and email tool I could take with me instead of having to lug a computer everywhere or a separate PDA and phone. The Blackberry had many things going for it: decent interface, speedy response, best-of-class email handling and it was even a pretty good phone too -- something that several of my other previous choices (which shall remain nameless) failed to be.

But as good as the Blackberry was, it was soon eclipsed by a shiny new device: the iPhone.....

So, aware that I might be suffering a bit from the "grass is greener" effect, I decided to put both devices to the test to determine, once and for all, which one would be best able to do what I wanted it to do in the way I wanted it done.

After a hot and torrid few months, Steve Wozniak's love affair with the iPhone is waning.

"To tell you the truth I was really disappointed when the iPhone was introduced ... half the phones in the AT&T store at the time were 3G phones," Wozniak said at a press conference, according to a Sydney Morning Herald report. "I was shocked because Apple is bringing the full internet [to mobiles] - full web pages with pictures and everything - and it's not 3G and I knew that would be a speed detriment."

It's a far cry from his earlier comments. The Apple co-founder waited in line with everyone else to buy "a whole bunch" of iPhones, and recently raved that the iPhone will revolutionize cell phones and the way we communicate.

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at Mac World back in January 2007, he told the Apple faithful that his portable status symbol was backed by 200 patents. And the Apple faithful cheered. But that hasn't prevented an onslaught of iPhone-happy lawsuits.

After all, this is America.

Other patent holders have already sued Steve Jobs and company over the iPhone's touch screen, its virtual keyboard, and its so-called visual voicemail. And now an inventor named Romek Figa has gone after the handheld's caller ID feature, insisting it infringes a patent he bagged back in 1990.

According to reports, Apple will not regulate any free iPhone applications which will be developed with the iPhone SDK, set to be announced Thursday. They will, however, keep a tight grip of commercial iPhone applications.

Question: Which newly-elected chief executive is a recently-converted fanatical fan of the Apple iPhone?

Answer: Dmitri Medvedev, Russian President Vladimir Putin's hand-picked successor who was elected last night in a race that was virtually uncontested. An article in the Washington Post today about the new Russian President-elect describes the popular Apple gadget as his "latest passion."

What makes the use of the iPhone by Medvedev slighty curious is that the iPhone is not legally available on the Russian market. But that has not stopped thousands of them from being sold in Russia and Ukraine.....

In my eight months of iPhone ownership, I've discovered that anything besides casual use (even when connected to Wifi) is less than optimal and heavy Wifi use sucks the juice from the battery at an alarming rate. Sometimes when waiting or bored, I'll break it out and surf sites, but pinching-n-zooming gets old real fast. The tradeoff for having the internet-in-my-pocket with my phone (and always available) is gazing at it through a tiny screen and for now, I'm more than willing to make that compromise with this delightful device.

When Apple introduced the Macbook Air, I thought that finally, here was the perfect computing device for both my bride and I to augment our main computing boxes (she a 24" iMac, me a Mac Pro with Apple 23" display). Especially her, someone who travels globally and where every ounce she packs matters, is someone I thought would leap at this device. For me, someone who strongly desires a "more portable, portable" that is a step-up from the iPhone, chances were good I'd be buying one....

John Markoff of the New York Times had this post today called Reading Steve Jobs. In it, he reads the tea leaves as it's clear he has a sense that an "iPad" (or some such tablet-type form factor) is in the offing.

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