When Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) co-founder Jerry Yang returned to the CEO role this past summer, he gave investors and watching employees a "100-day review" speech that basically gave Yang time to study, assess and form solutions on getting the internet behemoth back on track for higher growth levels and ensuring it wasn't losing ad revenue to the competition.

Well, that 100 days is now nearly over with, and even the few acquisitions (BlueLithium and Zimbra) that Yahoo! has made recently have not quenched the irrational desire of analysts who aren't satisfied until immediate results happen. This is, of course, so unrealistic it's laughable. Any analyst should know drastic changes take time to work, aside from massive layoffs that can immediately affect a company's finances. This is not the case with Yahoo!, which is trying desperately to keep up with competitor Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) in the space for online advertising.

Although Yang has professed that nothing within the company is a "sacred cow," industry watchers may be already impatient in waiting for the company to somehow reinvent its business to capture more growth that Google appears to be hauling in by the truckload at the moment. Nothing so far looks like the "radical surgery" that many pundits probably thought would happen, and with Google set to deliver Q3 results this Thursday, the pressure cooker may become even more intense soon.

Free music downloads, sweet! Digital music newcomer SpiralFrog went live yesterday, giving away tunes to all us Thifty McLintpockets, sticking it to iTunes, asking only that we show a little love to its sponsors. Are we back in the Napster shopping-spree days of 2000, ready to grind our employers' networks to a standstill?

Not quite. The tragically titled SpiralFrog -- run by the private Mohen Inc., whose interests appear to be solely this venture -- bills itself as "the market-driven solution to illicit pirate file-sharing sites." It claims to be gunning not so much for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s iTunes or Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN)'s forthcoming MP3 site, but instead challenging amorphous peer-to-peer MP3 networks like LimeWire and Soulseek, priding itself on being free of viruses, spyware and other nasties.

Not that this is a bad idea -- it's actually a very good, very natural idea. No need to point out that well before websites gave away content for a smattering of mortgage lenders' ads, radio, network television, magazines and newspapers were all available freely or at least affordably as advertisers footed the bills. So why couldn't music downloads work as well?

MAJOR PAPERS:

• The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) highlighted the struggles of Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV), a company that is dealing with the competition catching up to them in a tough competitive environment. CEO Gary Kelly said, "The threat to our future is real."
• Citigroup Incorporated (NYSE: C) is expected to pay $700M for Automated Trading Desk, an electronic trading firm, reported the Wall Street Journal.
• News Corporation (NYSE: NWS) and Dow Jones and Company Inc (NYSE: DJ) have reached a preliminary understanding for a way to safeguard the editorial independence of the Wall Street Journal and the other Dow Jones publications, which had been the key road block to a deal, reported the Wall Street Journal.
• Walter Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal technology guru, spent two weeks testing Apple Inc's (NASDAQ: AAPL) new iPhone, and said it was "a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer."

OTHER PAPERS:

• Also regarding the iPhone, according to Newsweek, Steve Jobs said of the high expectations for the iPhone, "I think we're going to blow away the expectations."
• The New York Post has learned that Nordstrom Inc (NYSE: JWN) has apparently reached a deal to sell its Faconnable chain to a Lebanese private equity firm.

Hansen Natural Corporation (NASDAQ: HANS), after sneaking out a disappointing earnings report last night which caused the stock to drop when it opened this morning, disclosed today that it completed an internal stock option review. Since the review found "no evidence raising concerns" of internal misconduct, the stock naturally bounced right back to its sky-high levels -- the stock is actually up almost 2% today, despite a 3 cent earnings miss.

It looks like Hansen's stock is still riding high on a Monster Energy drink buzz, but with earnings results like last night's, how long can it last?

Oh, iPhone, how I desire you. While I was distantly intrigued when first I heard rumors of the iPhone's future launch last fall, I have had to have this phone since seeing photos over the internet in January. The iPhone is everything: mobile phone, e-mail device, internet browser, iPod, movie viewer, photo sorter. The iPhone is beautiful. The iPhone employs a touch screen and has virtually no buttons. The iPhone makes me drool.

But let's get into the nitty-gritty:

What is it? The iPhone is a mobile phone that, like any good smartphone, does everything you could possibly need done while mobile, and does it with a touch screen instead of buttons (score two cool points, and one usefulness point). While no one but the hand models in the TV ads know exactly how easy to use this will end up being, let's recall that Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) does have a reputation for being more user-friendly than anyone else. Hence its ever-rocketing stock price. The iPhone does e-mail via IMAP, the only really sensible protocol for a smartphone to use (score one usefulness point); it plays music and movies (score two cool points), it takes photos (score one each on usefulness and coolness), it browses the internet.

How much? The iPhone is advertised at $499 for 4GB of storage, and $599 for 8GB, with a two-year AT&T (NYSE: T) mobile phone contract. Although it's certainly possible there might be larger discounts at launch (or thereafter), we'll stick with the base price of $499.

When Palm Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) announced its new Foleo (with a little horizontal line over the "e") at the D conference last week, we all let out a collective, huh? It's not that the Foleo isn't cool -- it is, a little -- or useful -- a bit. But the Foleo, which will be available sometime this summer, has way to many huh moments.

Here's a rundown:

What is it? The Foleo is, essentially, a laptop extension for your Palm Treo. It's based on open-source Linux software (score one cool point), and as such, software is easy to build for it, and it will operate much faster than your actual laptop. Instead of opening and waiting for the usual several minutes of start-up-and-warm-up-and-log-in, the thing just turns on, instantly, and presto! e-mail. (Score another cool point, and a usefulness point.) It's small, it has a keyboard and a couple of ports (headphone jack, USB port, etc), but doesn't require plugging into your Treo (score one usefulness point).

How much? The Foleo is $599 with a $100 mail-in rebate, which (let's be honest) most consumers won't jump through the hoops necessary to reclaim. $599. You also must have a Treo already, ranging from $49 to $699 depending on the version and service plan you sign up for at time of purchase, for a total of at least $649.

Walter Mossberg is one of the most widely read technology writers of our time. He writes for the Wall Street Journal and his column, Personal Technology, is the flagship of WSJ's Thursday Marketplace section. I have a developing respect for Mr. Mossberg since first encountering his work. He tends to write in a manner that suits my perspective, that being "the view from the trenches." He believes that technological developments in the consumer products realm are bordering on useless if you need to take a night class to understand them. I tend to agree with him.

If you have the time, and journalistic excellence tinted with technology interests or inspires you, then I have a link here which might be the best reading you'll do this month. This article by Ken Auletta is from The New Yorker and is titled "Critical Mass: Everyone Listens to Walter Mossberg." The article poses as a profile of Walter Mossberg, but I promise that it holds significantly more than that for you. It's really just a passing glimpse as far as revealing the deeper character of Mr. Mossberg, but as a condensed examination of the pre-consumer technology world it imparts a solid perspective on where technology writing has been and where it is headed.

Would-be tech bloggers and consumer product reviewers owe it to themselves to read Ken Auletta's article. Technology buffs, geeks, and gadget-heads of all types will find it worthwhile also. It's clean, easy reading with enough color to pull you through to the end. When I myself finished reading it, I then felt, and still do feel, more than a little bit humbled.

After blogging about the launch of Blockbuster Inc.'s (NYSE: BBI) Total Access program in November, I was contacted and asked if I would like to try the program in exchange for writing a review about it. I was given a free one-year subscription of the service in exchange for promising to review the service honestly. Now that I have given full disclosure, here are a number of my thoughts on the Blockbuster Total Access program:

• The program is an obvious improvement. The online service operates exactly the same way as it previously did, but now a rental can be returned directly to the store for a new movie. I found this came in convenient more than once - when I was in the mood to watch a specific movie that was not in my queue or when I had not realized a movie I wanted to see had just come out on DVD. Since the service costs the same as Netflix, Inc (NASDAQ: NFLX), the added functionality is essentially a free upgrade.
• I found the online movie store well stocked and the movies arrived quickly. My queue, which has around 30 movies in it, says that all of them are available immediately, and I have never had to wait more than two days to receive the next movie in my queue.
• The only drawback I noticed was from the information I was given when starting the program - the movie database at Blockbuster is slightly smaller than at Netflix (60,000+ to 65,000+). That being said, I did not have any trouble finding any movies, even older movies (Dirty Harry), foreign movies (Ran), animated movies (Appleseed) or indie movies (Paradise Now).

Starbucks (SBUX) has begun a series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration and appreciation of coffee. I've just listened to the first one so that you don't have to! Using podcasts (and blogging) as tools to educate your consumer base is nothing new, and Starbucks actually does very little of it. This series is tied in with the company's 35th anniversary, and will run weekly this month. Yep -- that "fad" company from Seattle is, in a couple incarnations anyway, thirty-five years old.

They've run a short "promocast" of this series, that Frank Barnako of MarketWatch listened to and described as "lukewarm." So I ignored that and dove right into the full-length premiere today. Well, full-length turns out to be only twelve minutes long, so I don't know how much time I'll be saving you here. Say, nine minutes, if you read fairly fast, but every little bit helps ...