Content is supposed to be king. But in the world of electronic devices, Apple seems to be placing the crown on its own head, apparently believing that its iPad and iPhone are more important to customers than the books, movies, and music they store on them.

In the world according to Apple, content is just a bunch of digital bits, easily copied, nothing special.

Some people are using landline connections and dial-up modems to call ISPs in other countries and get onto the Internet. Still others are using satellite connections.

Mesh networking is an old idea. Oddly enough, the low-cost XO Laptop built by the 'One Laptop Per Child' organization - the so-called $100 laptop - was designed with built-in mesh networking. The idea with the XO machine was that many kids using those laptops would be out in rural areas without reliable Internet access.

The chance to interact with big shots is drawing scads of aspiring entrepreneurs to Quora, along with venture capitalists and other Valley players.

With the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, and iMac, Apple is the most powerful tech company in the world. It's also the No. 1 music retailer in the U.S. and among the top sellers of online movies, too.

The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player. Nor were the iPhone and iPad the first in their categories. The real reason for the success of these devices - the true unsung hero at Apple - is the iTunes software and iTunes Store. Because Apple provided them, it wasn't just selling hardware.

In the 2010 holiday quarter, Apple reported $26.7 billion in revenue, up 70 percent from a year before. That means it's nearly as big as IBM, which did $29 billion in the same quarter.

Apple is very, very good at almost everything it does, and that includes corporate communications.

Apple is on fire, delivering smash hits across its entire product line. It's hard to think of another company that has ever been on such a roll.

Early on, Android phones were pitched as kind of ersatz iPhones, devices that could do most of what an iPhone did - but were available on carriers other than AT&T, a relatively horrible network that was the biggest source of complaints about Apple's transformative device.

Android phones are sold by dozens of hardware makers, the biggest being Samsung, Motorola, and HTC. There are lots of different form factors. Slider phones. Phones with keyboards. Big screens, small screens, midsize screens.

I used to be a pretty hard-core iPhone fan. But over time, I grew more and more frustrated with the lousy service on AT&T. My iPhone simply could not reliably make and hold a phone call. Not just in New York and San Francisco, where I spend a lot of time, and where AT&T's service has been notoriously bad for years.

For the most part, cookies aren't dangerous. They were created so advertisers could get a better idea of who you are and what you're interested in, so they could send you ads you're more likely to find relevant.

'Do not track' probably won't spell doom for online advertisers. But it will put the burden on them to explain to consumers what targeted advertising is and why it's good for them. They'll have to come out of the shadows; they'll have to be honest with people. What a radical concept. I'm all for it.

PayPal, which was founded in 1998, may be the closest thing to a global currency that has ever been created. Based in San Jose, California, the company operates in 190 markets, sending and receiving payments in 24 currencies on behalf of 90 million active members.

What needs to change is the nature of advertising itself. That business hasn't really evolved since the days of Don Draper.

There's no special technological wizardry involved in what Groupon does.

One way Groupon hopes to gain an edge is by using software to learn about its members so it can deliver more relevant offers: my wife will get the manicure-pedicure deal, but I'll get an offer on fly-fishing lessons. The key now is execution - delivering great customer service and keeping everybody happy on both sides of the transactions.

Since the beginning of the internet era, it has been pretty widely accepted that when you join an online service, whatever data you put into it belongs to you.

Google views Facebook as a threat to its business and has been trying to launch a social-networking service to compete with it.

Remember the early days of the Net, when everything was going to be open and free, and we were all going to share information in a techno-utopia? That was great until people realized that their user data could be turned into gold. Now there are billions at stake, and nobody is playing nice anymore.

Can anyone create an enduring business on the Web, where it's easy to build new companies, and when survival depends on the whims of fickle users? The big lesson of 'Digg' may be simply this: if someone offers you a ridiculous amount of money for a company that wasn't that hard to build, don't think twice. Take the money and run.

Social gaming is not something Zuckerberg could have imagined back when he was creating Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. The change began in May 2007, when Facebook announced it would let outside developers create applications that run on top of Facebook.

Nobody ever imagined how quickly the Android mobile-phone platform would take off - not even Andy Rubin, the Silicon Valley engineer who created it.

Android is the kind of runaway smash hit that techies spend their careers dreaming about.

In addition to making Android available for free, Google also lets phone makers change the code and customize it so that an Android phone made by, say, Samsung has a different user interface than an Android phone from Motorola.

I often wonder what the world would be like if more companies were like Apple.

Fixing mistakes is one thing. Apple's bigger strength has been its ability to keep improving hit products.

The iPod Touch is basically an iPhone with the phone part taken out, which is fine - since making calls is the one thing that the iPhone doesn't actually do very well.

Carrier networks were originally built for connecting phone calls. Now they're getting swamped with bandwidth-hogging data applications. Keeping up will require huge investments. Who's going to pay for that?

Net-neutrality proponents howled when Comcast started throttling traffic from BitTorrent, a bandwidth-hogging program people use to swap video files. The Federal Communications Commission sided with the open-Internet folks, ruling that Comcast could not selectively choke off traffic.

The correct strategy in heads-up poker is based on identifying and acting upon your opponent's strengths and weaknesses.

Playing chess can make you a better poker player because it forces you to think several moves ahead. That kind of intense mental exercise develops a deeper level of thinking than is typically encountered when playing poker.

Bluffing is most effective when done sporadically; bluff too often, and you'll blow your credibility.

The value of small pocket pairs comes from the possibility of flopping three of kind and winning a sizable pot. To that extent, playing this type of hand is a low risk/high reward proposition.

Beginning players are predictable and rarely bluff. They tend to focus only on their own hand and simply hope to catch the one card they need to improve.

Chess is a great training ground for poker players because it's a math-based game, much like backgammon is.

Whatever game suits you best, learn to play both Limit and No Limit Texas Hold'em. Your overall game will definitely improve.

Some golf instructors get overly technical and teach the mechanics of the ideal swing. That approach didn't work for me. So, I found a pro that didn't insist that I learn Tiger's swing. He accepted my physical limitations and improved my game by focusing on the minimal golf skills that I have.

Rarely is it correct to play a hyper-aggressive style of poker. But there are certain situations where a seemingly reckless approach will actually be the most profitable strategy to employ, like at the Main Event at the World Series of Poker.

I dropped out of school to play poker, and at 21, I moved from Toronto to try my luck as a pro in Vegas. I ate the typical meat-heavy diet of most poker players in the '90s: burgers and steak, along with French fries, mash, and a bucket-load of wine, beer, and vodka. There was nothing fresh in my diet, and I felt terrible.

As a general rule, the more precious the chips you'd consider betting, the more you should lean toward playing it safe. Check it down; cautious play is usually the recipe for long-term success in poker.

Soft playing destroys the integrity of the game of poker, and it's wrong - flat out wrong.

In tournaments, players typically raise when they enter the pot. In cash games, though, players are more likely to limp in before the flop. That's because cash games are usually deeper-stacked, meaning that players will have a higher ratio of chips in relation to the blinds than they would in a tournament.

You don't need a Ph.D. in mathematics to be a successful poker player.

When it came to healthy eating, my parents did their best to set me on the right path. At school, my friends ate McDonalds at lunchtime, but I had a packed lunch that my mother made for me. I hated it at the time, but looking back, I'm glad.

I became vegan in 2006 when I started taking healthy eating seriously.

I try not to push veganism specifically. If I'm asked for my advice, I say just eat healthy.

Hyper-aggressive poker works best in deep-stack tournaments.