Best of the blogs: News that Apple sold its millionth iPhone sparked Ephraim Schwartz to wonder: Was the iPhone price cut and rebate part of an ingenious marketing plan? “They are giving back $100 on every iPhone sold that means they are losing $100 million dollars. That has to be more than chump change even for Apple,” he writes in this Reality Check post. “Well, things are not always as they seem.” Columnist’s corner: A look back at the best of Off The Record, our anonymous blog penned by readers — and one of our most popular. These favorites include, among others, “The ghost in the mainframe,” and “How many techs does it take to turn on a computer?” And, a call to action: Tell us your real-world IT tale or horror story and, if we publish it, we’ll send a payment of $50 along with a slick new t-shirt. The news beat: Adobe and BEA band together to inject rich Internet applications with SOA and Web 2.0 capabilities by bundling Adobe’s Flex Builder 2 with BEA’s Workshop Studio. A California group requests a five-year extension of Microsoft antitrust judgment, the middleware portions of the ruling specifically, because Microsoft still retains a huge lead in the OS and browser realms. With a new point release, Sun is accommodating Linux in Solaris via its Containers functionality. And Fujitsu guards corporate PCs with a new version of its Palm Secure log-in. Careers: Bob Lewis offers Government by the numbers 3,1,3,4 in response to a reader inquiring for some advice about making the switch from private enterprise to a county organization. “What you probably need to adjust are your expectations,” Lewis explains. “That isn’t because you now work for a government entity. It’s because you work for a different entity.” Technology Industry