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Last week was one of the busiest of the year. California, where I live, was mostly in flames, and that had me thinking about what we need to do to prepare for a catastrophic event. One of the most liked features in the new Leopard operating system from Apple -- coincidentally -- is Time Machine, which could be a life saver. Let's also talk about how that launch is doing. Finally, Microsoft's small investment in Facebook had some folks going wacky as to what that company was actually worth. While great for headlines, it was incredibly overinflated.

Last week was busy: Microsoft supposedly threatened open source with patent infringement, and it supposedly said Linux was dead. If that didn't piss off enough people, Engadget falsely reported delays for Leopard and the iPhone, trashing Apple's stock, and if there was anyone in tech not pissed off at that point, Google's brand beat them to a pulp at the Brand Impact Awards, and HP's stunning financial results made those using market conditions as an excuse for poor performance look stupid.

Last week, there was a showcase of the HP/AMD/DreamWorks collaboration, Intel's big mobile coming out party, and the launch of the Halo 3 Beta. I have to write this before the H3 beta event, so that's the one thing I won't talk about. I'm also going to shift from Mother's Day and dads and grads gifts to the product of the week. This week, it's an HDMI switch, which is incredibly handy if you have a new TV and HDMI peripheral -- like an Xbox Elite or PS3 or high-definition disc player -- and a spouse who wants it "simple."

Observers of recent legislative action in Sacramento should be forgiven for thinking they have been transported back to 2002, when policy makers were pushing government mandated software standards and micromanagement of cell phone companies. Five years later, in 2007, the same bad policies are being recycled -- with one saving grace. Back in 2002, open source zealots tried to convince California legislators to pass the "Digital Software Security Act," which would have forced state agencies to use open source software exclusively.

Looking back at last week, I had a lot to choose from, but the two things that I thought were the most interesting were Sony's dropping the PSP price to a very attractive $169, and the resignation of PC World's editor in chief over a throwaway Apple piece. The first item got me thinking about why the PSP hasn't been a bigger hit, and the second really got me thinking about what is happening with technology coverage, particularly with the large publications, and how they have been contributing to their own demise.

A mind map combines both the power of a picture with the suggestion of words. You may have seen mind maps, but you may not have known the name for them. Sometimes they look like clusters of bubbles; other times, like elaborate tree structures. Because mind mapping has been connected with business brainstorming, much of the early software for creating the diagrams carried a relatively heavy price tag. However, with the arrival of Web-based applications and open source software, it's now easy to take the practice for a spin without dispersing a cent.

Nearly two years after I adopted a Web-based Gmail account for personal e-mail, the software I ditched, Mozilla's Thunderbird, is trying to lure me back. The latest version of the free software has the two Gmail features I like most: The ability to add multiple descriptive tags to messages and to "star" the important ones. Thunderbird 2 is an improvement over its predecessor; however, Thunderbird is no Gmail. Although I had long found Web mail clunky and less versatile than software residing on the computer desktop, Google changed all that.

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Last week, a couple of big events took place. Right after the SEC let Apple off the hook for stock option problems, several ex-Apple employees ratted out Steve Jobs. In addition, while much of the news surrounding Windows Vista has been anything but good, the product came through -- along with Office 2007 -- allowing Microsoft to blow the roof off its financial numbers, surprising pretty much everyone. That suggests that Vista is ready for you -- but when should you buy?

As Red Hat and its JBoss unit ramp up their SOA (service-oriented architectures) offerings and capabilities, they are re-emerging as a powerful mischief-maker to the established commercial vendors -- this time on the subject of data lifecycle in the age of SOA. However, there soon could be much more mischief from Raleigh, N.C. Red Hat has announced a series of SOA-focused bundles of open source products and associated services, as well as the acquisition of enterprise information integration vendor MetaMatrix for an undisclosed fee.

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