Daniel Lyons

The company needs to open up.

In the world of tech-gadget journalism, this score represents the Holy Grail—a next-generation Apple iPhone discovered in a bar, presumably left there by a careless employee. The photos of the phone are splattered all over the home page of tech-gadget blog Gizmodo today. If they're real, the folks at Apple, a place known for its crazy secrecy and security measures, must be freaking out.

Twitter turns on its partners.

The Seattle startup Intellectual Ventures is using computers to eradicate malaria—one mosquito at a time. Plus: eight more cutting-edge companies to watch.

Maybe you thought it was nuts the way some folks in the media—myself included—went nuts over Apple's iPad. But guess what? Today Apple announced a new version of the operating-system software that runs on the iPad and the iPhone. To any sane person this was not a life-changing event. For one thing, the operating system is pretty geeky stuff. For another, this operating system won't even arrive until this summer.

Windows 7 is a smash hit.

Why Apple's cofounder wants two iPads.

The iPad will change the way you use computers, read books, and watch TV—as long as you're willing to do it the Steve Jobs way.

The serious business of pretend products.

Nearly two decades after the debut of the World Wide Web, why are the games still stuck on broadcast television?

  Cell phones keep getting smaller and smaller—and now they're starting to disappear altogether, as the workings of a mobile phone can be contained in the guts of a wristwatch.

Google recently introduced a new service that adds social-networking features to its popular Gmail system. The service is called Buzz, and within hours of its release, people were howling about privacy issues—because, in its original form, Buzz showed everyone the list of people you e-mail most frequently.

On the Web, privacy has its price.

R. Galbraith / Reuters-LandovGoogle co-founder Sergey Brin at the unveiling of Google BuzzGod bless those hard-working techies in Silicon Valley for inventing this constant stream of things that serve mostly to make me feel guilty because I don't want to use them even though everyone else says they're the greatest thing ever.

I like to imagine that it happened this way: One day the computer guys in Silicon Valley looked over at the mobile-phone industry and realized those carriers have figured out the ultimate racket.

How Silicon Valley conquered the carriers.

Why Apple's tablet isn't the second coming—yet.

How do you address global hunger, epidemics, and poverty? According to Bill Gates, it takes R&D, software, and plenty of money.

To many in Silicon Valley, the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who "get it," and those who don't. The people who get it are the ones who understand that the Internet is the biggest thing that has ever happened in the history of the human race, a wave so huge and so powerful that the only way to cope with it is to jump on and hope to make money building a new world once the tsunami has laid waste to the old one.Those who don't get it are the ones who try to fight the Internet...

Why Google's stand is a public-relations win and a solid blow to Beijing's policy of censorship.

Everybody's talking about the new tablet computer Apple is expected to unveil this month. Some say it will save newspapers by giving them a new platform where they can charge for subscriptions.

Will you be able to live without the company's tablet computer? That depends.

Since founding Amazon in 1994, he has revolutionized retailing. Now he's out to transform how we read.

Cable TV pictures an Internet future.

At this point I can't figure out if Google is (a) just trying to do something, anything, to deflect all the criticism it's getting about being responsible for the death of newspapers; or (b) actually playing a sadistic practical joke on newspapers, dreaming up ever more ridiculous ideas just to see if the newspaper guys will keep jumping through the hoops.

   I have way too many computers—it's a sickness—but the one I use most is my 15-inch MacBook Pro. No, it's not some wafer-thin little lightweight machine.

The tech giants duke it out—again.

Marc Benioff is the founder and CEO of Salesforce.com, a $1 billion (revenues) software company that sells software that helps salespeople manage their accounts.

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab are betting $3.5 billion in taxpayer money on a tiny pellet that could produce an endless supply of safe, clean energy. For some, that's hard to swallow.

Apple is innovating like its old self once again. But can the company avoid repeating the mistakes that forced it to play catch-up in the '90s?