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To recap: Google (of "don't be evil" fame) brought its business to China several years ago and immediately ran afoul of privacy and human-rights advocates for kowtowing to the censorship demands of the regime there. And recently, Google announced that China had unleashed a dramatic electronic attack on the company and wanted to pull the plug on its search engine which, totally coincidentally, had been losing share badly on a regular basis there. Privacy and human-rights advocates immediately praised Google for growing a pair (as if), then turned their attention to Microsoft and other companies that refused to leave China.

First there was Microsoft "Surface," a multi-touch, multi-user tabletop computer that's controlled by users' hands.

Now, there's "Pictionaire," a collaboration between researchers from Microsoft and from the University of California at Berkeley, that aims to take that touch metaphor even further.

However, Microsoft does not plan on incorporating the experimental technology into an actual product.

Pictionaire is the name of a new type of collaborative worktable that uses overhead cameras to digitize images of items placed on the tabletop, allowing users to work together using the system's multi-touch features.

With a boost from the release of Windows 7, Microsoft on Thursday said that its quarterly revenue topped $19 billion as the company sold a record number of copies of its operating system.

The software maker said it earned $6.66 billion, or 74 cents per share, on revenue of $19.02 billion for the three-month period that ended December 31. Those results included revenue deferred from the prior quarter, as the company was preparing for Windows 7 and offering free upgrades to those who bought Windows Vista-based computers. Excluding the deferred revenue, Microsoft said it had revenue of $17.31 billion, and diluted earnings per share would have totaled 60 cents per share.

If it was a practical joke, Microsoft officials aren't laughing.

A man who claimed to have worked for Microsoft until mid-January posted on his blog in early December a list of upcoming, unannounced products and his guesses on when they will ship.

On that list is Windows 8, which the former employee -- Chris Green -- pegs as being "released to manufacturing" (RTM) on or around July 1, 2011. Green's list also predicts Office 2012 is targeted to RTM in July 2012, and Windows Server 2012 as going to RTM in July 2012.

While many people have jobs at Microsoft that aim to avoid disasters, Gisli Olafsson's job is getting through them.

As a full-time disaster management specialist for the software maker, Olafsson works with the United Nations and other agencies to prepare before devastation hits and also to coordinate efforts once it does. Olafsson has been sent across the globe to deal with the aftermath of earthquakes and hurricanes, offering help in rebuilding the infrastructure that nature has wiped away.

But, that's only part of the reason Olafsson so often finds himself on the scene of natural calamities. A native of Iceland, Olafsson also volunteers as part of that country's national search and rescue team.

Bill Gates returned to "The Daily Show" on Monday night, trading barbs with Jon Stewart while highlighting his philanthropic work. Gates, who last appeared on the show three years ago to tout the launch of Windows Vista, showed up this time to coincide with the release of his annual foundation letter (also the subject of this CNET interview I did with Gates). On the Daily Show, Gates caught Stewart up on recent history, pointing out that it has been 18 months since he left Microsoft's full-time employ.

While Microsoft has needed all the help it could hire in Washington, D.C., after its antitrust debacle many years ago, Google is quickly catching up to it as a tech power to be reckoned with in the nation's capital.

According to the most recent public reports filed by Google with the Senate on its lobbying spending there, the search giant has significantly increased its outlay in 2009 from the previous two years.

In 2007--as you can see from the table below--Google spent a total of $1.52 million, which rose to $2.84 million in 2008. And the 2009 total? Just over $4 million, according to the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database.

The ground-level conference room in Building 25 doesn't look much different than many others in buildings across Microsoft's sprawling campus.

It has a window, though most of the view is obscured by a large bush. It has the usual array of outlets and Ethernet jacks, screens, and projectors. During earthquakes and floods, hurricanes and tsunamis, though, this room is ground zero for Microsoft's emergency response effort.

Even then though, it can be hard to tell that somewhere halfway around the world, disaster has struck. That's because Microsoft's disaster team is a virtual one, with much of the action taking place online. Even those working together in Redmond are often glued to their laptops, rather than communicating with nearby colleagues.

Microsoft's long and winding road toward regaining lost ground in the cell phone business will reach an important milestone in Barcelona next month.

At the annual Mobile World Congress event, Microsoft will at long last show off Windows Mobile 7--its oft-delayed major revamp of the decade-old Windows CE code base that has been at the core of its mobile operating system since the days of challenging the Palm Pilot.

Sources told CNET that Microsoft is still planning to finalize the code for Windows Mobile 7 by summer in order to have the new software on devices that ship before the end of the year.

Bill Gates has been providing millions of dollars to fund academic research in energy and climate, some of which touches on geoengineering, or manipulating Earth's natural systems to counteract global warming.

Citing atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira, Science Magazine's online blog on Tuesday reported that Gates has put at least $4.5 million of his own money over the last three years into university research.

Caldeira, who is an advocate for research in geoengineering, serves as an adviser in how the money should be dispensed. Caldeira also works for Intellectual Ventures, an investment and intellectual property licensing company founded by Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer at Microsoft. Myhrvold and Gates have funded a company called TerraPower, which is trying to develop a breakthrough in nuclear power.