Stories by: Brennon Slattery

eReaders are about to get hotter, faster and cheaper. Freescale Semiconductor -- makers of the guts behind Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader -- announced it has created a chip that will rock the eReader world. The forthcoming i.MX508 processor will double eReader speed, support large color screens, improve battery life and lower the retail cost by about US$30.

Now it's finally March -- here comes the iPad. To prep for the big reveal, developers are scurrying to build and announce new apps and accessories for Apple's tablet computer. With so much shouting in a crowded room, it's easy to get lost in the buzz. Here are a few key aspects that may make a sizable splash.

Cryptome is back online. The site, which leaked a document summarizing Microsoft's dealings with law enforcement agencies, was shuttered by its service provider, Network Solutions, after Microsoft filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint. Microsoft has since withdrawn the complaint and Network Solutions has pushed Cryptome live.

Are you sitting down? I have some horrible news for you. YouTube has removed the original "Rickrolling" video from its site due to a terms-of-use violation. Though there are other avenues in which to get a Rick Astley "Never Gonna Give You Up" fix, the original, the one that captured the nation's attention, the video that spurned over 30 million hits, is dead.

It's almost hard to believe, but MySpace used to be the most popular social networking site in the world.

Steve Jobs is notoriously private, but that's slated to change. Jobs will work with biographer Walter Isaacson to publish an in-depth examination of the Apple founder's life, according to reports. But given Jobs' history of skirting issues and scoffing at previous biographies, will this official biography be a comprehensive tell-all, or a fluff piece from a marketing machine?

Before the iPad, publishers hadn't much incentive to produce digital textbooks on portable devices. Think about scrolling through your chemistry tome on a Kindle, making clunky annotations on a bland black-and-white screen -- it just isn't as conducive to learning as four-color images and the ability to doodle in the margins. So when software developer ScrollMotion was tapped to create iPad-friendly versions of textbooks, surely students, educators and publishers uttered a collective cheer for the future of digital education. But is the iPad going to make a difference in the world of higher education? Here are five reasons why it won't.

Now that the mania of Apple's iPad (such a bad name) announcement has begun to calm and people are checking bank accounts instead of RSS feeds for more information, big-name critics are pulling out their swords and taking swings at Apple's latest creation. The overall reaction has been, in a word, underwhelming. What was hotly anticipated has mostly turned into cold soup. So what happened and what is being said?

If you think spam attacks were bad in 2009, just wait until 2010 gets going.

Amazon has unveiled a new royalty plan that will allow book publishers and authors to make more money off of e-books sold for the Kindle e-reader.