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It has become the PowerPoint slide seen around the world -- or at least the World Wide Web, and specifically those websites and blogs that pay close attention to technology and the smartphone market. A Microsoft presentation at the ReMIX trade show in France this week boasted a slide showing that tech market research firm IDC predicts 30 million Windows Phone 7 devices sold worldwide by the end of 2011...

Thanks to advances in computer-generated technology, the images simply jump out at you from the TV screen, as all good commercials should: massive sheets of orange fabric covering up the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles and unfolding down the sides of buildings on the Las Vegas Strip, dropping from the top of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, being unfurled by shiny happy people all along an East Coast beach. The late British singer-songwriter Nick Drake's "From the Morning" lulls you into accepting all this as just another day in the U.S. right before the voice-over announcer brings us to the point with the (ahem) blanket statement: "AT&T covers 97 percent of all Americans."

You might think that someone at Microsoft is a big fan of Dr. Seuss; naming the new Windows Phones the "Kin One" and "Kin Two" certainly conjures up images of critters that would assist the Cat in the Hat in wreaking havoc on Sally and her brother's house. But it's really Kin as in kinship; people joined by common ancestry (as Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines it), or in a more tech-savvy sense, younger users joined by the common desire to share every bit of information they come in contact with via their smartphones...

Try Googling the phrase, "Is Facebook losing members over privacy?" You'll see seven of the top eight search results answering in the affirmative, as various headline writers take advantage of recent controversies regarding the world's biggest social network and its customers' profile data ...

The location-based service company Glympse has its headquarters in Redmond, Wash. You certainly don't need the company's iPhone app -- which lets people track their friends' locations on smartphones in real-time on maps or satellite imagery -- to know that. But it may seem lately as if Glympse has been all over the media map, courtesy of its recent move to integrate its service with the world's largest social network, Facebook...

Was it only four years ago that the anti-Facebook crowd was backlashing against the concept of the News Feed? Time sure flies when you're accusing the world's biggest social network of invading its users' privacy ...

F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives. Would he have changed his mind if The Great Gatsby had received the 3-D IMAX treatment -- with Jay Gatsby as an alien bootlegger and Nick Carraway as avenging Ivy League superhero? ...

Please don't get the wrong idea about this column; I have nothing against crowdsourcing. Some of my best friends belong to crowds. I also have nothing against the concept of a "free, Web-based, collaborative multilingual encyclopedia project," as Wikipedia defines itself. And while journalists, students and others doing research should know by now to consider the wide variety -- and quality -- of sources that go into most Wikipedia listings, I'll admit that there is some value within the information that's presented; it can steer you in the right direction to validation. On the most trivial level, it can mean hours of time-wasting fun to skip around the listings and check out what's been written about a favorite movie/rock band/pro athlete/geometric equation...

In the technology industry, imitation has always been the sincerest form of flattery -- if not a successful business model for certain companies. It's even more so in the nascent smartphone segment, so no one seems to be particularly surprised that Verizon Wireless and Google have plans to make an Android-based tablet computer to take on Apple's iPad...

Turn on an Android OS phone, and that little yellow robot pops up all over the touchscreen like R2D2 on bionic steroids. A mini-chorus line of them shows up first, then just one robot decides to play hide and seek with you; there he is peeking out from the left side of the screen. Now he's upside down, waving at you with a tiny cyber-arm ...

The "Like" button that's part of Facebook's new Open Graph platform depicts a miniature "thumbs up" hand gesture, and it provides a quick, easy way for those visiting certain websites to indicate they approve of the content and want to place it on their FB profiles. And like thousands of Roger Ebert wannabes giving a positive review of the new platform, businesses large and small seem to be willing to jump aboard this new sharing paradigm, despite privacy concerns raised by a growing number of critics -- the most recent voice being that of U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)

After a tumultuous couple of weeks for Facebook that have included the introduction of Open Graph, threats of lawmaker scrutiny, complaints from consumer groups and embarrassing bugs in its software, members of the social networking site may be wondering whether it's time to ask the musical question: Should I stay or should I go? ...

Christine Maddela, the weekend anchor at WKRN-TV in Nashville, joined Twitter on July 1, 2009. It took her all of three days to discover the microblogging service's potential impact on journalism ...

A new attempt to offer regulations for Internet privacy may be a so-called discussion draft, but so far the discussion has been anything but promising for Virginia Congressman Rick Boucher, a man who cosponsored the 2005 Consumer Privacy Protection Act ...

Where's the fault in making "share" the default setting on Facebook? After all, people who have read 10 years' worth of scary headlines about email viruses, Internet scams featuring Nigerian princes and phishing websites seem eager to give up their likes, dislikes, kids' names, embarrassing photos and vital statistics to an audience of a half-billion on the world's largest social network...

How do you allow consumers to modify the software that's on their desktop computers -- to be able to take parts of Windows, iTunes and Photoshop and put them on the same screen -- without having the entire legal departments of Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and other companies knocking on their doors? ...

"Here in Windows-land, we love us some multi-touch," wrote Ben Rudolph on the Windows Team Blog as he reviews the new Toshiba Satellite M505 laptop. Rudolph is giving the machine two thumbs up for how well it shows off the touchscreen capabilities in the Windows 7 operating system. ...

Can you still support the First Amendment, the blogging community and all that is holy in journalism, and still think that what Gizmodo did re: the lost iPhone was kind of sleazy? Is Gizmodo's crime one of an ethical/moral nature, or one that is worthy of a police raid by elite members of SWAT -- Seeking Whatever Apple Targets? ...

The branding gurus at various tech companies are certainly gamblers at heart; they're always rolling the dice when they choose names for their products. Tech reporters and bloggers clap their hands together in gleeful anticipation when they hear about a forthcoming iPad, ThinkPad, Zune, Vista or Wii -- especially if said products end up sucking royally. They can imagine how much fun they would have with headlines like "ThinkPad? StinkPad!," "Goodnight Zune," "Vista's Lack of Vision," etc...

It's one of the world's most popular manufacturers of phones. It has a globally recognized brand. It's ready to show off the latest enhancements to its smartphone operating system. And as far as anyone can tell, it hasn't lost a prototype phone in a Silicon Valley bar and seen it torn apart on a technology blog ...