Careers: One reader writes in to ask Bob Lewis an ostensibly simple question about tips he might have to help managers avoid becoming a barrier to communication instead of a promoter of it. “The way to avoid this problem is for upper management to stop causing trouble. It’s easy to say but hard to achieve,” Lewis asserts in this Advice Line post. A more realistic answer, though, is that managers should be brutally honest with themselves. “It’s something every employee should do on a regular basis, in fact.”The news beat: Palm grows into the ultramobile realm with Foleo, a Linux-based PC that syncs with a smartphone and carries a full keyboard, 10-inch screen. Yahoo CTO Farzad Nazem resigns after working at the company since 1996 and serving as CTO for the past decade. Rival Google, meanwhile, touts Google Gears, an open source developer tool that the company claims will solve the problem of using a Web application offline. And a security researcher says don’t trust toolbars for Firefox because many, including those from AOL, Google and Yahoo, do not use secure connections to update themselves. Hardware: It would seem that the Sun Ultra 40 M2 coupled with a 3Ware 9650SE SATA RAID controller is a match made in heaven, Paul Venezia writes. After running the pair for a few months now, he writes, “If history is any indicator, reliability isn’t an issue with 3Ware cards. I’ll be posting more on this power duo as time and events warrant, but for right now, I’m a very happy guy.” Careers