Check out our WWDC 2009 Full-Coverage special feature for more WWDC news.

First up, BoomTown’s anticipation of pistol-packin’ Carol Bartz’s first earnings appearance paid off when Bartz dropped the F-bomb, live and uncensored during Yahoo’s (YHOO) earnings call. And in a very rare occurrence–actually the company’s first-ever year-over-year quarterly sales drop–Microsoft (MSFT) glumly laid out the facts of the recession’s toll on its business. On the musical chairs front, with Chris DeWolfe stepping down as CEO of News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, word surfaced that Facebook alum Owen Van Natta would be stepping into the position. The news was confirmed on Friday. BoomTown has all the details, including the press release.

In the ongoing ballad of the newspaper industry, the honor of winning five Pulitzer Prizes at the New York Times (NYT) was offset by news that ad sales are down 27 percent at the paper. In further bad tidings, the newspaper industry is unlikely to get a bailout from Washington. No big takeaways from Apple’s (AAPL) earnings call–Steve’s fine and the company is still not at all interested in developing a netbook. MediaMemo has all the details in a liveblog of the call. MM also notes that Netflix (NFLX) is probably one of the only businesses to benefit from the recession so far since folks are far more likely to rent DVDs than venture out to the local multiplex during these hard times.

In Personal Technology this week, Walt Mossberg discusses the many new OS and system developments coming down the pike that should inform new computer buyers in the near future. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt lays out the details for syncing to an iPhone on MobileMe. And in the Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret explores the new Nintendo DSi. Compared with earlier iterations of the DS line, as well as on its own merits, it wins some well-deserved praise.

More next week. And RIP, Bea Arthur.

BoomTown got the ball rolling by making a visit to Twitter HQ bearing pies. During a video tour of the premises, Biz Stone discussed rock stars and booze, and spilled the secret of the strange green deer. Later, co-founders Stone and Evan Williams were customarily nonspecific in a conversation about their revenue plans, and BoomTown was a little bit horrified to have become one of Ashton Kutcher’s million-plus followers–maybe even the one that put him over the top in his race with CNN to hit the seven-figure mark. Still on the celebrity tip (but off the Twitter one), BoomTown took a moment to appreciate the self-deprecatory stylings of Lindsay Lohan’s eHarmony spoof and to embed the video on AllThingsD.com. Finally, was there anyone this week who missed Susan Boyle’s virtually instant stardom on “Britain’s Got Talent” via Google’s (GOOG) YouTube? BT took a look at the journey the story has taken from television to Internet, back to television and back to Internet again.

Back to Twitter, MediaMemo took a look at its amazing growth as a service and as a phenomenon–the “hockey stick,” as one early investor describes the company’s trajectory so far. MM also looked at a study from the USC neuroscience group that says despite all the hype–or maybe even because of it–the human brain just isn’t built to digest information at Twitter’s pace. In the world of cable this week, just as folks were wondering whether Congress will stop the cable companies from charging by the byte, Time Warner Cable (TWX), one of the key players in the drama, backed away from its plans to do so. MediaMemo followed that story as well.

In this week’s Personal Technology column, Walt Mossberg took a look at the latest version of Apple’s (AAPL) MobileMe, and while he found it to be a big improvement over the product launch from last summer, it’s not without limitations. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answered questions from readers about displaying emergency contact numbers on a locked cellphone and the security of running Windows software on the Mac. And in Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret took a look at Gwabbit, a program built to mine emails for contact info.

More next week.

Also making the rounds today are reports claiming iPhone 3.0 will support on-board video editing. Seems there are some resources in the latest beta of the OS suggesting that video capture and manipulation will figure large in the next device–things like “UIMovie Scrubber Editing Right,” “UIMovieScrubberMaskLeft” and whatnot. Now, while these resources could be pointing to something else entirely, it seems plausible that they are referencing some sort of video tool (iMovie Mobile? iMovie Light? iMoviePhone?)–particularly when considered with the MobileMe “Publish Video” feature also found concealed in the 3.0 beta. That said, no mention of video editing was made during Apple’s recent iPhone 3.0 event. Perhaps Apple (AAPL) hopes to keep it under wraps until the device’s official debut. Or perhaps there’s nothing to keep under wraps in the first place.

There are some customers which we chose not to serve. We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that. But we can continue to deliver greater and greater value to those customers that we choose to serve. And there’s a lot of them. We’ve seen great success by focusing on certain segments of the market and not trying to be everything to everybody. So I think you can expect us to stick with that winning strategy and continue to try to add more and more value to those products in those customer bases we choose to serve.”

– Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Oct. 2008

Perhaps Macworld Expo 2009 will have its “one more thing” after all.

In a note to clients this morning, Ezra Gottheil of Technology Business Research speculates that Apple (AAPL) will indeed launch a new product category at Macworld in early January. A netbook designed to leverage Apple’s design prowess and its online delivery system as well. “[The device] will provide Web access, email, media playing, and essential applications at a single low price,” Gottheil writes. “Computer beginners will be able to start using it quickly and easily. Users will have fewer questions, problems, conflicts and security breaches, as the device will be less intimidating than both PCs and Macs. As with the iPhone, iTunes and the App Store will offer an array of content, applications and games. As with the iPhone, the software can be rebuilt from the App Store. With an optional online backup service, the entire device can be restored…. Because all applications are delivered through the iTunes App Store, Apple will maintain sustained relationships with users, making it easier to upsell and cross-sell to existing customers. TBR believes Apple will make online services like MobileMe increasingly attractive to all customers, but purchasers of the new Apple device may find its simplicity especially appealing.”

Now, I know Gottheil’s the guy who said “Apple doesn’t need Jobs anymore”–blasphemy! But the scenario he lays out above makes quite a bit of sense, doesn’t it?

If such a device is indeed uncrated at Macworld, Gottheil expects it will arrive at market around midyear at prices beginning at $599–$99 more than the $500 computer Apple CEO Steve Jobs claims the company doesn’t know how to make….

But that’s all behind us now. In fact, it’s like it never even happened. Because Apple (AAPL), without really notifying MobileMe subscribers, has upgraded the service, apparently resolving many of the issues that had plagued it. “Apple is always working to improve MobileMe,” the company said in an article posted surreptitiously to its support site. “Since MobileMe is primarily a server-side, or ‘cloud’-based, service, the MobileMe team can make improvements and push updates to MobileMe without any action being required of MobileMe customers. Since server-side updates are a bit more innocuous than a standard software update to Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, it’s easy not to notice that updates are occurring. Usually the only hint of these updates is that things just ‘work better.’”

Or, rather, they work as they were originally intended to.

After being plugged in for somewhere between 5 to 10 minutes I heard a sizzling sound. I looked down on the iPod just in time to see it explode open and start shooting sparks and spewing smoke. I managed to unhook the iPod from my computer’s USB port immediately. I noticed that a small fire had started on the table I had the laptop and the iPod sitting on, and I managed to extinguish those flames quickly before any apparent damage could be done to my laptop. Unlike in other cases, I’ve read about, my iPod continued to spew smoke and spit sparks while throwing out some kind of sooty substance from the inside of the iPod for several minutes after removing the cable from the computer.”

– A Consumerist reader recounts his experiences with Apple’s iPod Flamo

What an ugly week for Apple. Voice and data reception issues plaguing iPhone 3G, MobileMe still not up to company standards and now reports of sparking iPod Nanos. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) is investigating a possible battery defect in Apple’s older iPod Nano music players after receiving reports of minor fires caused by overheating devices. “There have been multiple cases of overheating and fire damage, in particular during recharging, so please use caution,” METI said in a statement on its Web site.

METI is working with Apple Japan to diagnose the problem, which is said to affect only Nanos sold in Japan between Sept. 2005 and Sept. 2006, although there have been reports of similar incidents in the states.

Another tough break for Apple (AAPL), which just can’t seem to shake this negative news cycle.

UPDATE: Apple just issued the following statement:

Apple today responded to statements reported by Japan’s METI regarding batteries in the first-generation iPod nanos. Apple has determined that in very rare cases, batteries in first-generation iPod nanos sold between Sept. 2005 and Dec. 2006 can overheat, causing failure and deformation of the iPod nano. Apple has received very few reports of such incidents (less than 0.001 percent of first-generation iPod nano units), which have been traced back to a single battery supplier. There have been no reports of serious injuries or property damage, and no reports of incidents for any other iPod nano model.

Any first-generation iPod nano customers who have experienced their battery overheating should contact AppleCare for a replacement. Any other customers who have concerns about their first-generation iPod nano battery should also contact AppleCare.

“We haven’t seen anything like this before, where a company scores 10 points over its nearest rival,” said ACSI head Claes Fornell. “It’s almost an aligning of the stars. There was a question mark last year about Apple, that maybe it had taken its eye off the ball by concentrating on the iPhone, but now, the iPhone and iPod and Mac are nicely aligned.”

Of course, ACSI scores don’t yet reflect the the pair of black eyes Apple’s (AAPL) suffered in the past few months courtesy of the iPhone 3G and MobileMe. And they will undoubtedly weigh heavily on the company’s next ranking. Said Fornell, “Apple will be very difficult to catch, but I don’t think that these results, where there’s a 10-point difference, will hold.”

So, how about “here’s another free extension to your MobileMe subscription–now let’s forget this ever happened”?

In yet another attempt to make amends with dismayed MobileMe subscribers, Apple (AAPL) is granting them a free 60-day service extension. And that’s on top of the free 30-day extension it offered in July.

In an e-mail to MobileMe subscribers announcing the extension, a humbled Apple acknowledged that the Web services suite still doesn’t live up to Apple standards. “We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make,” the email reads. “… We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around.”

With that in mind, Jobs has tasked Eddy Cue, formerly Apple’s vice president of iTunes, with bringing MobileMe up to Apple’s standards. Cue will now oversee not just iTunes and MobileMe, but Apple’s newly opened App Store, as well.

Mmm. Not exactly. After nearly two weeks of technical problems, it’s become clear that Apple (AAPL) has not gotten MobileMe right–not yet anyway. With tough, negative reviews piling up and outages continuing to plague the service, MobileMe is quickly turning into a rare and very public black eye for Apple, one that’s apparent in the apologies posted to the MobileMe status update page, and now the inevtiable MobileMe parody site: FailMe.

A caustic take on Apple’s sub-par cloud computing service, FailMe (failmeismorelikeit.com) sums up MobileMe’s performance to date in a single annoyed Web page: “The Simple Way to Keep Everything in Fail.”

Spread the word about FailMe.
You can tell the world how much you appreciate FailMe’s consistent underperformance and passed deadlines with a custom FailMe icon for iChat. Just drag the icon above and drop it onto iChat. So easy, even we can get it to work.”

Ouch.