Best of the blogs: Not just hot among IT and geeks, virtualization is gaining the attention of investment-types as well. “Venture capital firms have recognized the trend and can see where [it’s] going,” David Marshall writes in Venture capitalists can’t get enough of virtualization — thanks goodness! In this past week we’ve seen tech companies CiRBA, Pano Logic, VirtenSys and Virtual Iron garner investment rounds. “Hopefully, VC firms continue to fund new and innovative solutions in the virtualization space.” The news beat: A Croatian student created vLite, a free utility that condenses Windows Vista from 15GB to 1.4GB, rendering a seriously stripped-down version of the OS. Micron and Intel break the speed barrier of traditional flash memory with a new architecture that boosts data transfer rates and cuts bottlenecks. A decline in the price of NAND flash memory, meanwhile, is prompting innovation such that customers can expect greater capacity in SD cards, USB flash sticks and internal storage. And Yahoo chairman Terry Semel steps down from the board, six months after turning over the CEO post. Careers: The new owner and CEO of Tribune Co., Sam Zell, has made the bold move of telling all 20,000 employees that he is having IT remove content filters. “That means no more use of Web filtering and monitoring, e-mail tracking and so on as ways to make sure employees aren’t wasting time on the job,” Bob Lewis writes in Zell and the art of employee management. “Zell plans to lead the Tribune based on the radical notion that he has talented employees who are also, coincidentally, grown-ups. He’s going to run the company based on that assumption.” Tech’s bottom line: Can Apple sustain it’s iPhone success? Bill Snyder asks. Of course, it’s important to remember that there is more to the company than phones, iPods and iTunes, particularly as Wall Street comes knocking and asking about those lost 2 million iPhones that were purchased but whose owners never subscribed to AT&T’s service. “The iPhone is part of a new world order in which more than one player has a major impact on the outcome. Neither fact is going to change, and Apple will continue to reap the rewards — and the penalties. Software Development