Stories by Mike Elgan

It's an election year, so you're going to hear a lot about the "culture wars." You know: The endless battle between conservative and progressive values.

The Federal Communications Commission cleared Google of wrongdoing in the so-called "WiSpy" case. It was the right decision.

The Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone is one of the biggest phone launches ever.

Facebook will soon foist its new <a href="http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline">Timeline</a> feature on users as part of its plan to update its interface.

"Quantified self" gadgets were surprisingly hot at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) -- if journalists covering the event are to be believed.

In the future, widely distributed consumer technology will enable your family and friends to be right there with you during the holidays, even if they're on the other side of the world.

Comedian Louis CK recently produced an "HBO special"-style show, but with a difference: HBO wasn't involved -- and neither was any other network.

I finally understand Google's überstrategy for dominating the future of online everything.

A scandal erupted this week around the discovery of secret software running on most smartphone handsets in the U.S. that tracks and logs personal activity on the phones.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates said in 2004 that <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3426367.stm">the problem of spam would be solved within two years</a>. It seemed unlikely at the time, and in fact 2006 came and went without so much as a dip in the crushing load of unwanted email advertising.

Last week, I <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220426/Elgan_How_to_automate_Google_">told you</a> about a great new service called <a href="http://ifttt.com/">"If This Then That"</a> (IFTTT), which lets you automate things online. I also gave instructions on how to post on <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9136345/Google_Update">Google+</a> via email.

Google+ is different things to different people. For some, it's a gallery for displaying artwork or photography. For others, it's a powerful way to promote my -- I mean their -- columns, books and blog posts. For most, it's a wordy <a href="http://twitter.com/">Twitter</a> replacement where posts are often followed by the highest quality conversations anywhere.

A few years ago, the Pentagon launched a program to create a fully functional HAL 9000 -- the intelligent software robot depicted in the 1968 sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Intel this week promised a smartphone based on its Atom processor will hit the market in the first quarter of 2012, while Google announced plans to make future Android releases work on Intel's mobile chips.

Google's only big blunder in the creation of its otherwise excellent Google+ social network has been a flawed policy on what users are allowed to call themselves. Everybody hates the policy. Even Google hates it.