From Silicon Alley Insider, Sept. 25, 2008:

Update: For LIVE coverage of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion's Q2 earnings release and analysis, click here.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion posts Q2 earnings this afternoon. Join us for LIVE coverage and analysis, beginning at 4 p.m. ET, including a live blog of their conference call, beginning at 5 p.m. RIM's look ahead will be the most important: With several new models launching this quarter, investors will be paying more attention to Q3 guidance than Q2 results.

RIM has forces working for it and against it: On one hand, it's selling its gadgets into a rapidly expanding smartphone market, where it's the top U.S. player. On the other hand, the economy is wobbly, Wall Street is dissolving, rival Apple (AAPL) has stolen a lot of recent attention with its new iPhone 3G, and the U.S. launch of RIM's latest, the 3G BlackBerry Bold, has been delayed until next month.

A marketing push behind the Bold at AT&T, the forthcoming Pearl Flip at T-Mobile, and the touchscreen Storm at Verizon Wireless should help RIM out in the November quarter. The company needs to guide around 3 million net subscriber additions and 7 million device shipments for Q3 or its stock will get clobbered. Anything above 3.5 million net sub adds and 8 million shipments would be upside.

Key Metrics:

Q2 Revenue: $2.60 billion consensus
Q2 EPS: $0.87 consensus
Q2 Net Sub. Adds: 2.6 million (RBC, AmTech), 2.7 million (Citi)
Q2 Device Shipments: 6.1 million (AmTech, Citi), 6.3 million (RBC)
Q3 Revenue: $2.95 billion consensus
Q3 EPS: $0.98 consensus
Q3 Net Sub. Adds: 2.9 million (Citi), 3+ million (RBC), 3.3 million (AmTech)
Q3 Device Shipments: 6.9 million (Citi), 7.4 million-7.5 million (RBC), 7.8 million (AmTech)

See Also:
Survey Says: BlackBerry To Keep Dominating Microsoft, Apple For Corporate Mobile Email
Say Hello To The $520 BlackBerry And The $600 iPhone

Stocks tumbled Monday - along with the dollar and Treasuries - as the impact of forced covering by shorts faded and traders worried the government's bailout plan might not resolve the credit crunch and would add greatly to the U.S. deficit.

Sentiment was further depressed by reports policymakers in Europe and Japan declined to join the U.S. government's bailout plan - or take similar action in local markets.

The Dow fell nearly 373 points, or 3.%, while the S&P lost 3.8% and the Nasdaq shed 4.2%, with selling concentrated in (you guessed it) financials like Bank of America, Wachovia, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan. Big-cap tech names Intel, Cisco and EMC were notable losers as well, more-than offsetting Microsoft's gain after the software giant upped its dividend and announced a $40 billion share buyback authorization.

The dollar suffered its worst single-day decline vs. the euro since January 2001, propelling gold back above $900 per ounce while crude futures soared 17% to nearly $121 per barrel, to their single-biggest gain ever.

"The big jump in gold and weakening in the dollar probably are indicative of fears that the trillion-dollar bailout now working its way though Congress will ultimately be monetized by the Fed" via an increase in the money supply, writes Michael Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners.

Oil was also boosted by the expiration of the October futures contract and corresponding roll into November amid speculation several big hedge funds who were short oil into expiration scrambling to buy. In addition, oil got a boost from reports of a big drop in production at PEMEX's Cantarell field.

Whatever the reason for oil's rise, its ascent is the most obvious example of how the government's actions have unleashed the law of unintended consequences.

Before heading to Korea, many people told me I'd be amazed by the quality and ubiquity of the technology I'd find. As you'll see in the accompanying video, Seoul more-than lived up to the hype.

From the biggest cities to the smallest hamlets, Korean society has been wired for the digital age. Koreans enjoy high-speed mobile data networking, and local giants Samsung and LG provide a gamut of devices designed to take advantage -- from cell phones with video conferencing to GPS that doubles as TV, and much much more.

The flip side of all this innovation is a high level of government involvement and support for the industry, issues President Lee addressed in our exclusive interview.

This protectionism helps explain why Nokia has a big production facility in Korea but doesn't sell many phones there. And why Apple is planning to bring the 3G iPhone to hundreds of smaller nations, but not tech-saturated Korea.

This is the second in a series of pieces on life in Korea. Click here for the first piece, on Korea's "cram school" culture, and stay tuned for upcoming pieces, including: 

• Korea's videogame-room craze: Why the trend is way beyond Xbox 
• An interview with citizen journalism trailblazer Oh Yeon-Ho, also the founder of OhmyNews.

From All Things Digital, Aug. 29, 2008:

If you’re the owner of an iPhone 3G and you haven’t already updated to the iPhone 2.0.2 firmware, do so today–for your sake and that of all iPhone 3G owners.

Why?

Well, according to sources at AT&T (T), the reception problems that have plagued the device won’t be resolved until you do. iPhone’s running 2.0 or 2.0.1 firmware mistakenly demand too much power from 3G networks. And when they do this en masse, they can cause the network to refuse new requests for 3G bandwidth. That in turn causes the reception issues we’ve been hearing about since the device first arrived at market in July. And those issues will persist as long as handsets running iPhone 2.0 and 2.0.1 continue to strain the 3G networks.

That’s the story, anyway. And it does sound plausible. Although, you’ve got to wonder why this issue is specific to the iPhone. Presumably, there’s a multitude of other 3G devices out in the world requesting a 3G signal from the same networks the Apple (AAPL) iPhone is overwhelming. Why aren’t they suffering similar problems?

From Silicon Alley Insider, Aug. 29, 2008:

Microsoft is paying $486 million for Greenfield Online, which runs an Internet survey businesss and Ciao, a European comparison shopping engine. Redmond plans on immediately selling off the survey business to an unnamed buyer. From one of two releases Microsoft put out to explain the deal:

Ciao is a comprehensive source for intelligent shopping on the web, combining consumer reviews and ratings from a multimillion-user-strong online community with up-to-date price information from thousands of online merchants. It currently has more than 26.5 million unique visitors per month (source: comScore Inc, May 2008) across seven countries, who so far have generated more than 5 million product reviews.

The acquisition signals a further milestone investment for Microsoft in Europe and will see Microsoft increase its European commercial search capabilities as part of its intent to make Microsoft Live Search the premier destination for consumers looking to research and purchase goods and services online, as well as enable merchants to drive greater online sales.

Greenfield had already agreed to sell itself for about 13% less than Microsoft's price to private equity powerhouse Quadrangle; it will have to pay Quadrangle a $5 million breakup fee to wriggle out of the deal.

From Silicon Alley Insider, August 18, 2008:

Will new gadgets be able to use airspace between digital TV channels -- "white spaces," or "wi-fi on steroids," as Google has dubbed it -- for Internet access? We'll know more next month, when the FCC is expected to report its latest test results.

That's when we'll find out if gadgets submitted by companies like Philips Electronics pass the FCC's muster. These aren't gizmos designed for consumer use. Instead, the FCC is just looking to test the technology that will automatically detect which frequencies of wireless spectrum are being used by TV stations, wireless microphones, etc., so that a potential Internet device would steer clear of them.

And while "FCC engineers aren't talking about their conclusions" so far, the gadgets aren't exactly flying through their evaluations.

As consumers start to understand the ramifications of ISPs monkeying with their Web access, a blog-driven grassroots movement has turned Net Neutrality into a populist issue. Most major democratic Senate candidates have come out in support, and Barack Obama has assured voters it's something he'll actively pursue. That's one of the reasons techies have supported him.

Former Google executive and angel investor Chris Sacca notes the pro-Net Neutrality rhetoric is even starting to cross the aisle, as seen with this month's bi-partisan FCC decision that Comcast was unfairly routing traffic to customers. In the second part of our interview on Net Neutrality, Sacca and I discuss where the Net Neutrality battle lines are being drawn, and what voters can expect after November.

For the first part of my discussion with Sacca, click here.