Google Sync for iPhone Debuts, But Be Careful -- Google has released Google Sync for the iPhone, along with a number of other mobile phone platforms. If you rely entirely on Google Calendar and Gmail, it might be worth checking out, but beware, since it deletes all your existing contacts and calendar information during setup. We'll stick with other syncing solutions for a while, thank you very much. (Posted 2009-02-09)

How to Break Strong Encryption -- The xkcd Web comic has an excellent two-panel strip that lays out just how bad guys would go about getting through strong encryption if they really wanted to. Hint: it's cheap, easy, and doesn't involve distributed computing. (Posted 2009-02-07)

Gmail's Task List Comes to the iPhone -- Gmail Labs's Task List feature, released this past December, has come to the iPhone. The new mobile version available at gmail.com/tasks is very similar to the original, enabling users to add and delete tasks, and manage several lists. Unfortunately, also like the original, there's still no syncing with Google Calendar (and thus with iCal). (Posted 2009-02-04)