Notes from the field: Robert X. Cringely, this time, is feeding the hand that bites him. As in, you, readers, who flood his inbox with mail of both the love and hate varities. “Sometimes happy, sometimes not, almost always interesting.” Topics for this post include Apple’s ‘alpha in beta clothing’ Safari browser, the invasiveness of Google’s Street View, and online scams. The moral of this story: “Anybody who buys anything they found via spam has got to be a little loony in the tunes.” And perhaps the proof is ample as to why Google ranked dead last on a survey of Internet companies’ privacy policies. Wireless: Apple’s iPhone is seeing some new competition today. Sony, for one, is unwrapping half a dozen phones, including a 9GB Walkman mobile phone. Hoping to best both Apple and Sony, a U.K.-based startup says it will offer a flat-rate service that makes tunes, jams, symphonies and what-have-you available on Java and music-enabled devices. Their collective timing could not be better as already the iPhone disappoints mobile developers. The news beat: Microsoft and Linspire sign a Linux agreement that protects Linspire’s customers from patent claims Microsoft might wage. Cisco and and IBM say that beginning next month, they’ll sell a network management package for large enterprises, based on software from both companies. And Azul doubles the capacity of its Vega 2 computing appliance for network-attached processing. Software Development