Chimes at midnight for new gadget

It seems that technology is not, after all, turning us into a race of socially inadequate hermits.

Not satisfied with having to get close to the people they want to Taser, coppers are looking at new long-range shocking gear. What could possibly go wrong?

A small start-up has picked on the might of number two book king Barnes and Noble claiming that the bookseller misappropriated trade secrets in creating the Nook e-reader.

Creative Labs has debuted a prototype e-reader at its annual general conference.

Opinion: I've never had a mobile phone as good as the iPhone. It's also the best MP3 player I've owned. Still, I wonder occasionally how long it will be before I toss it aside for a newer, more satisfying cellphone. After all, it's only the latest in a long line of handheld devices I've recycled since my Motorola flip phone in 1993.

Verizon appears to have given up any hope that it will ever get an iPhone contract from Apple. Its latest campaign for the new Motorola Droid is packed chock-full of attacks on Apple.

Plastic Logic is to launch its e-reader at CES in January, promising a feather-light device with the largest screen in the industry.

A round of applause is in order for Microsoft support folks for apparently recovering the data feared lost in a bizarre and as-yet-unexplained server failure that threatened an unknown number of users with loss of their data stored in The Cloud.

Ben Kurtz had a problem. His pudgy thumbs made typing on an iPhone a misery. He reckons that the developers of the iPhone actually hate people with broad, round thumbs.