By Dean Takahashi, San Jose Mercury News, Calif. Oct. 4--Send us your failures. I don't mean the wimpy start-ups that sputter and die before they get off the ground. I mean the big successes that turn into big craters.

By Janet Kornblum Traffic cameras zoom in enough to capture your dangling cigarette. Crime cameras "see" in the dark. Satellite images show whether your car is in the driveway. Most Americans realize ubiquitous monitoring is the price of living in a high-tech world.

Perhaps no one knows precisely why Bill Gates chose June 15 to announce to the world that he would give up his day-to-day involvement at Microsoft (MSFT) over the next two years [see BusinessWeek.com, 6/16/06, "Bill Gates's Long Goodbye"]. Or at least no one other than Gates and his wife Melinda.

By Michelle Quinn, San Jose Mercury News, Calif. Jun. 11--For more than 20 years, Paul Saffo has been Silicon Valley's resident prophet, a tarot card reader of sorts who makes forecasts about technology and business.

By Nahal Toosi Associated Press NEW YORK -- In the year 2009, on the 25th of April, a man named Greg is supposed to get an e-mail. It will remind him that he is his own best friend and worst enemy, that he once dated a woman named Michelle, and that he planned to major in computer science.