In a one-hour MacVoices podcast interview, TidBITS contributing editor Matt Neuburg gives examples of why small interface tweaks and behind-the-scenes improvements give user good reason to upgrade to Snow Leopard.

We're familiar with Apple's and Microsoft's latest competing ad campaigns, and this New York Times article provides a look at the competition from the advertising standpoint. Especially interesting is the section in the middle about how Apple's iconic "Think Different" and "Switchers" campaigns came about.

The Chinese carrier will sell a version of the iPhone without Wi-Fi, as previously rumored, the Wall Street Journal reports. The China Unicom will apparently pay Apple full price, with no revenue sharing. Estimates put 1.5 million iPhones in use in China currently.

Apple has posted a KnowledgeBase article that explains which software packages (and versions) the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard installer places in an Incompatible Software folder. The note also details how Snow Leopard will prevent incompatible software from launching to prevent disappointment.

The xkcd Web comic has a hilarious (and all too apt) comic that charts the process experts use to solve computer problems of all flavors. With regard to Adam's recent "Post-Literate" article, note the importance of "related words" in the flowchart.

Sony ended the suspense, and said it would release in December a $399 electronic book reader that could download books, magazines, and newspapers over AT&T's cellular data network, much like Amazon's Kindle hardware does over Sprint's network. Sony's model, The Daily Reader, will have a 7-inch touch-sensitive screen, and will also work with libraries for ebook borrowing.

BusinessWeek tackles the media feast surrounding reports of exploding iPhones in Europe. Apple is currently investigating several instances of reportedly overheating or exploding iPhones in France and Britain; though given the amount of attention the matter has received, one would think the number of cases was much higher than that. With only 15 heat-related complaints about iPods to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (out of over 200 million iPods sold since 2001) there's no need to start shopping for a Kevlar-lined case.

Mobile phones with integrated digital cameras have been around for a while, but it's the combination of a camera and always-on Internet access that is boosting the iPhone's ranking as the top digital camera used on the photo sharing site Flickr.

Sure, it won't see the light of day for over a year, but Microsoft's forthcoming Outlook for Mac will be a big deal for everyone using Entourage now, and for everyone using Microsoft Office in multi-platform organizations. Adam and Your Mac Life host Shawn King discuss what's known and what's likely, and debunk the FUD theory others have suggested to explain the early announcement.

Christopher Breen at Macworld ventures into the often-confusing morass of video encoding options available in HandBrake. If you know what you're doing, you can improve the output of video you throw at it (such as DVDs), but it's not easy to grasp the myriad of options.

Need advice on trimming your home and small-office telecom fees? TidBITS editor Glenn Fleishman contributed a set of advice to Macworld's feature on cutting all kinds of tech costs. VoIP has matured enough to replace landlines for many people, reducing the cost of reaching out.

At MacObserver, our friend and colleague Ted Landau explains the intricacies of iPhone OS 3.0's automatic hotspot login feature and how to control how it rejoins such networks.

In the latest twist with the tr.im URL shortening service, the company that owns it - The Nambu Network - will move it to a community-run system, with the firm's CEO personally making up any shortfall from donations to cover expenses. The underlying software will be released under an open-source license.

TomTom's turn-by-turn navigation app costs $100 and comes with maps of the United States and Canada. It requires an iPhone 3G or 3GS. There's no monthly subscription fee, and add-on map packs for other countries are available. A promised car-attachment kit with a better GPS chip is still not yet out or priced.

Silly, but potentially useful. This Guy Kawasaki-inspired clock application intentionally runs somewhere between 0 and 15 minutes fast, so you can't try to cut things too close. Oops, gotta go!