Yoghurt is health kick for Apple

Where do you go if you want the inside scoop on Steve Jobs's health? Try the reclusive Apple CEO's favourite yoghurt store. When Apple said Jobs wasn't giving his traditional keynote speech at this week's Macworld expo, Valley speculation about the billionaire's health reached fever pitch. He's a cancer survivor, after all, and he's grown alarmingly thin in the past few years. Was he too sick to speak?

Apple made things worse by refusing to comment, and there were rumours of Job's imminent demise. Things culminated last Tuesday with a report on tech blog Gismodo that Jobs was "rapidly declining", which sent Apple's stock down 3.4%.

Jobs is legendarily private, but locally he's well known for frequenting a yoghurt store (yoghurt is all the rage in the Valley) called Fraiche in Palo Alto. Prolific blogger Robert Scoble remembered this while in the store on the day the Gizmodo report came out and he simply asked the staff if Steve had been in lately. Jobs had, it turned out, and had looked to be in great health. Scoble reported this live to his 40,000 or so followers on Twitter, and his scoop instantly became a major tech news story. By the end of the day Apple's stock had pretty much recovered.

This week we learned that Jobs does have a health issue, what he termed a "hormone imbalance" in an open letter to the Mac community, but he's basically fine.

So did Jobs cancel his appearance because he was unwell, or not? It could have just been that he didn't have much to say. What is certain is as Jobs remains the force behind Apple's success, his health will be a concern to investors. And Fraiche might do well to install a webcam.

* Palo Alto police are reporting an increase in bike theft, but we're not talking your kid's fifty quid Raleigh here. These bikes are worth between $1000 (£667) and $10,000, say the cops. That's a measure both of the recession and how seriously Valley people take cycling. Thieves can expect good pickings. Even at several grand a pop, a fancy Italian racer is cheaper than a new car and it's an executive toy that keeps you fit while you show it off.

* Breasts were (sort-of) bared outside the Facebook HQ last week to protest at the company removing photos of nursing mothers from its social networking site. While only a dozen mothers made it to the protest in person, some 150,000 people have joined them online. But so far, Facebook hasn't budged.