Tim Cook. Photo: Apple Inc.

Now that Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt has resigned from Apple's (AAPL) board of directors — something that actually happened last Friday, according to Apple's form 8-K filing with the SEC — who will replace him?

Names of potential nominees have already started to pour in. Tim Cook — who ran Apple during both of Steve Jobs' medical leaves — would be our first choice, and he's the leading vote getter in 9to5Mac's reader poll (with 674 of 1,994 votes as of Tuesday morning).

Meanwhile, the newly revived Fake Steve Jobs spent Monday pretending to take calls from an even wider (and a lot funnier) field of candidates, from Henry Louis Gates (looking pretty silly on a Martha's Vineyard trike) to former Apple hardware chief and current Palm (PALM) CEO Jon Rubinstein (pictured with a Pre).

Below the fold: our handcapping some of the more serious the names we've seen so far.

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Stewart Brand, futurist, who first said, "Information wants to be free."

Futurist Stewart Brand was the first to say "Information wants to be free." He also said it "wants to  be expensive."

By Richard Siklos, editor at large

Rarely a day goes by in media and tech business circles without somebody crying "Information wants to be free!" as a justification for distributing or copying someone else's content — and as an explanation for why so many traditional information purveyors are in peril.

So I thought I'd ring the man who coined the phrase: Silicon Valley futurist Stewart Brand. This year, after all, marks the 25th anniversary of the event where the words were first uttered — the first Hackers Conference, which Brand helped organize, in 1984. According to a transcript of the event, Brand first said "Information wants to be free" in response to a point made by Apple co-founder (and recent Dancing With the Stars contestant) Steve Wozniak. Wozniak told the 125 programmers gathered in Sausalito, Calif., that it was a shame companies wouldn't give engineers the rights to products they developed if the company decided not to market them. Brand followed up by saying, "On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. More

"The good news is it held my attention throughout," said judge Len Goodman, who pronounced the performance, overall, "a disaster."

"It was like a Teletubby going mad at a Gay Pride parade," was Bruno Tonioli's snarky assessment.

The third judge was kinder. "Steve, I think you are what this competition is all about," said Carrie Ann Inaba. "You make us want to cheer for you."

That Steve, of course, was Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer (AAPL), making his first — and probably his last — foray into competitive ballroom dancing, doing a cha-cha to "You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet" with a wide showman's grin and pink feathered boa.

He may not have wowed the judges — in fact he came in last on Monday night's edition of ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" — but the audience seemed to appreciate the incongruity of it all. He could still make it to the second round if he garners enough votes from his fans online. To cast your ballot, go here (login required).

Woz is said to have come to practice sessions on his comical Segway, but he clearly took them seriously. One is not born knowing how to do knee spins like that.

"He does 100% at every rehearsal," said his dance partner, Russian ballerina Karina Smirnoff. And what special qualities did she think Woz brought to the dance floor? "You know," she said, "he's honestly the nicest man alive."

And one of the bravest.

Below the fold, until the network gods remove it: the YouTube video of Woz and Karina's cha-cha. More