Stories by: Network World staff

Apple today reported record quarterly revenues and profits to start its 2012 fiscal year. The results reflect strong demand for the new iPhone 4S and the iPad.

Silicon Valley-based airline Virgin America named one its jets after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. But the jet isn't named "Steve Jobs."

Anonymous had a busy year in 2011 pushing its hacker-activist agenda on companies around the Web, to the point where just the sound of the hacker group's name can send shivers down the spine of many a CIO.

The sheer number of cloud players - or companies that claim to be cloud players -- is staggering. By some estimates there are more than 2,000 software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies alone. At this early point in the cloud revolution, there are certainly front runners, but the field is wide open.

Network World's own Indiana Shaw goes through more than just the temple of doom to find gifts suitable for you or other techies on your list. Just like his more famous archeologist cousin who digs up ancient artifacts and treasures from around the globe, Indiana Shaw scours the globe and the Internet to dig up the greatest technology treasures.

From the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center:

They say that a man's home is his castle – we figure that if you're going to have a castle, it needs to be filled up with some really cool, high-tech stuff. If you're working at a home office or just want to boost that home network in order to get a better connected home entertainment system up and running, the following products are great gift ideas:

In the category of portable entertainment, what once was filled with different portable music players has been replaced instead by accessories that go along with the iPod, iPhone or other smartphone device that can play music. Listening to music is no longer dedicated to a single device, but part of a comprehensive device. Instead, our portable entertainment category features a variety of cool earphones and speaker systems that you can take along with you when you travel or go running.

Remember when cell phones were as big as a brick and required a separate shoulder pack to keep the battery up and running? Yeah, so do we. But we also remember the birth of the smartphone, and since then, they’ve gotten smarter and smarter. With dozens of choices out there now (several iPhone models and carriers, along with multitudes of Android devices), we figure that your gift recipient already has a smartphone. So we’re focusing on some products that can enhance their smartphone, whether it’s a nice case, charging device, Bluetooth headset or other cool accessory. Here’s what we liked this year:

We’ve always had a category covering the world of computers in our Cool Yule Tools holiday gift guide. But then computers gave way to notebooks (so we combined the category), and then tablets have entered the scene. With the arrival and success of the iPad and other tablets, many have said that “the PC is dead”, and we’ll admit, our choices of cool computers are fewer than in years past. But there are still some nice systems out there, here are a bunch of desktops, notebooks, and yes, tablets, that we think would make for some good gifts: