* When was the last time you checked out LinkedIn's "Answers" page? Yesterday we noticed that IDG executive VP Colin Crawford was asking members to point him to web sites optimized for Apple's iPhone. Crawford may have had several reasons for posting his inquiry. In any case, for those who wear a bizdev hat, a well-phrased query on LinkedIn can make due diligence a bit easier.

Reporters seem to like it LinkedIn's Answers page, too. Blogger Sramana Mitra used it this month to get fresh outsourcing ideas for a Forbes.com column she was planning. Freelance writer David Strom got 23 responses to a LinkedIn inquiry about GPS-based products and services.

You can listen to David and Paul Gillin discuss their use of LinkedIn and Facebook in this recent Tech PR War Stories podcast (which always makes for fine listening).

* A VC friend says he's raising his next fund from investors in Europe and the Middle East rather than here in the U.S. "Lots of economic craziness is causing high-risk dollars to stay on the sidelines," he reports. Why EMEA? Because if and when the U.S. dollar ever recovers, EMEA investors will make fat profits purely on the currency, even if our friend's portfolio companies lope along at break-even.

[IDG and Atomic PR, LinkedIn's PR agency, are paid subscribers to SWMS.]

A year after having resigned his post on ethical grounds, PC World editor-in-chief Harry McCracken today resigned again -- this time for good, he says.

Fur flew last week at the "blogger showdown" hosted by Fortune Magazine as part of its annual Brainstorm Conference, which runs through tomorrow in Half Moon Bay, CA.