Wendy Kinney has her feet solidly on the ground, but she spends a lot of her time in "the cloud." When Kinney, who is the executive director of PowerCore, which is a business-referral network, needs to set up a meeting, she doesn't pick up the phone or send an e-mail.

Do me a favor and hide this article from my wife. It's the holiday season, and that means she'll soon drag me along on her annual descent into that pit of despair known as our local mall to enact the time-honored tradition of millions of couples: She'll gleefully embark on a marathon of browsing and buying, and I'll trail miserably behind her, wondering whether I should fake a heart attack to make it all stop.

I love Facebook. I also hate it. And sometimes I'm indifferent, but not often. As the big IPO day looms closer, lots of folks are taking a second look at this thing that started out as kind of a goofy diversion for college kids and has grown into the beast with 900 million heads.

Nearly everyone on the Internet knows about Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos. Savvy geeks might even recognize Internet pioneers like Vint Cerf and Marc Andreessen. But among the most powerful people on the Net are individuals whose names are unknown to the teeming masses on the InterWebs.

Use these 10 handy apps to shop, save, eat and more. And best of all, they're free.

It's a typical evening at Chez Tynan-Wood. I come home to find my wife curled up in an overstuffed chair with a glass of pinot grigio and her tablet PC, shopping, managing our online calendars or playing solitaire. I hear the burble of YouTube from my 14-year-old son's laptop.

Spock, a search engine for finding people, mixes search with social-networking tools like personal profiles and tagging. But you don't have to join to have a profile on Spock. In fact, you may be shocked to see what your profile says about you. For example: Mike X.

How ideas from biology-evolution, immune systems and forensics-will keep your PC safe from hackers By Dan Tynan Posted 10.01.2006 at 2:00 am by Pixelgarden.com Pixelgarden.com What do you think happens when you connect your computer to the Internet? In less than an hour, it may not be yours anymore.

"All in all a very useful book. " - John Bryant, BJHC&IM, December 05

They want the hippest, hottest tech stuff on the market. You don't want to buy something that will seem outdated (or worse, just lame) in a month. Solution? Choose from these awesome options that earned two thumbs-up in our hands-on tests.

Google admits it knowingly gathered sensitive data from unprotected Wi-Fi networks with Street View and did nothing to stop it. The FCC fine: Pocket change

Flame wars, leakage, nasty Polish texting -- six more tales of dirty duty in IT

Uber frat boy turned best-selling author Tucker Max caused a kerfuffle in the blogosphere last week after he offered $500,000 to Planned Parenthood if they agreed to name one of their clinics after him. The 36-year-old Max, successful author of ribald chronicles featuring drunken sexual conquests and female humiliation, does not exactly occupy the top slot on NOW's list of Most Cuddly Male Feminists.

What you say and do on social media can be used against you in a court of law. Don't believe it? You may soon find yourself wearing an attractive orange jump suit or living out of a suitcase in a residential motel.

Dan Tynan likes paying $4 a gallon for gas as much as the next person. Which is to say, not one damned bit. So when the kind folks at GM offered to loan him a 2011 Chevy Volt, he leapt at the chance.