In the wake of Facebook's billion-dollar Instagram buyout, video-sharing apps are jostling to become the next big thing.

Ever since Facebook announced its $1 billion acquisition of the company behind the popular photo-sharing app Instagram last month, the question on every nerd's lips has been: What will be the next big thing in mobile apps?

Political advertisers are going to flock to FB this year

There’s certainly money in politics, and Facebook knows it. The company, now under pressure to to justify its enormous $104 billion IPO, is trying to hire someone to maximize political advertising sales during the 2012 election season in the U.S.

My interface... myself?

New Scientist’s Jim Giles calls attention to this freaky fact: that in the future--the rather near future--our interfaces with our gadgets may be our own bodies. “Left your phone at home again?” he writes. “A solution is at hand: make sure it is with you at all times by having it implanted in your arm.” That's certainly a way of having a solution at hand, so to speak.

Combating canine complaints with a cloud-connected collar.

Soon, your dog will be in the cloud.

Research suggests social networks remedy the isolation of modern life.

In 2009, the Pew Internet Trust published a survey worth resurfacing for what it says about the significance of Facebook. The study was inspired by earlier research that "argued that since 1985 Americans have become more socially isolated, the size of their discussion networks has declined, and the diversity of those people with whom they discuss important matters has decreased."

A U.S. Commerce Department anti-dumping decision could help some U.S. companies and hurt others.

The United States Commerce Department concluded today that Chinese solar panel manufacturers are dumping solar panels in the U.S., and is penalizing them by imposing a 30 percent tariff on 62 solar manufacturers in China and a general 250 percent tariff on other solar panel manufacturers in China. That’s on top of a small tariff of 2.9 to 4.73 percent it announced earlier this year.

A look back at the moments that have shaped Facebook's success.

In a deadly flu outbreak, shutting airports should reduce the spread of the disease. But networks scientists have discovered a better approach that's just as effective.

One of the nightmare scenarios for modern society is the possibility of a global flu pandemic like the 1918 Spanish influenza which infected about a quarter of the global population and killed as many as 130 million of them. 

Delphi says its diesel-like engine runs cleanly on gasoline.

Delphi, a major parts supplier to automakers, is developing an engine technology that could improve the fuel economy of gas-powered cars by 50 percent, potentially rivaling the performance of hybrid vehicles while costing less. A test engine based on the technology is similar in some ways to a highly efficient diesel engine, but runs on gasoline.

Yes, of course, but things got out of hand. A quarter of executives admit to having slept with a smart phone.

Consultant Deborah Lovich could be accomplishing the management feat of the mobile era. She's convinced hundreds of agile-thumbed, on-at-all-hours colleagues to put down their smart phones and stop working or checking e-mail all evening long.

Genomic method is more sensitive than other techniques looking for lingering cells post-chemotherapy.

GenomeWeb Daily News reports that DNA sequencing is able to track cancerous blood cells in leukemia patients even when currently used methods cannot. The findings, published on May 16 in the journal Science Translational Medicine, suggest that high-throughput sequencing could improve the diagnosis and post-treatment monitoring of leukemia. The sequencing-based method is more sensitive than one of the two typical methods of detecting the malignant cells (flow cytometry) and cheaper and faster than the other (quantitative real-time PCR).

"It would be really interesting if Facebook launched a credit card. In fact, it would be terrifying."

Farhad Manjoo has pointed out that for Facebook to maintain its share price, it needs to figure out how to increase its revenue by a factor of ten. Going from $5 per user per year in advertising revenue to $50 per user per year is about as likely as Facebook going from 1 billion users to 10 billion, which I suppose is the other way the company could increase revenue proportionally, even if it requires an alternate Earth's worth of additional human beings.

It's the first study to show that brain chips can assist paralyzed people to perform complex real-world tasks.

A paralyzed patient equipped with an implanted brain chip has been able to use a robotic arm to reach for and pick up a bottle of coffee, bring it close enough to her face so she could drink from a straw, and then place the bottle back on the table.

Need to wipe that hard drive fast?

Think of it as a paper shredder for the digital age.

Proof-of-principle experiment shows how humanoid robots can co-operate on a large scale by copying the behavior of social insects and bacterial colonies.

In recent years, various companies and labs have developed impressive humanoid robots that walk, shuffle and even run. Some even dance in groups of up to 20, performing sophisticated choreographed routines. 

Running the world's largest social network will be a technical and financial challenge as it grows.

Facebook is the gateway to the Internet for a growing number of people. They message rather than e-mail; discover news and music through friends, rather than through conventional news or search sites; and use their Facebook ID to access outside websites and applications.

A startup blends activity tracking with online incentives in hopes of getting kids into shape.

Malica Astin, 11, never paid much attention to how much physical activity she got. But one day she played basketball while wearing a small activity tracker called a Zamzee on her waist. Later, she plugged it into a computer's USB port and uploaded the data captured by the device's accelerometers. Unlike a FitBit, a popular pedometer geared to adults, Malica's Zamzee didn't tell her how many steps she took or calories she burned. Instead, it gave her points for the movements she made.

We’ve seen medical uses of the iPhone, and we’ve seen electronic noses (and tongues). Now, how about combining the two?

Digital scuttlebutt about the next iPhone.

Like any good tech blog, Hello World likes to indulge itself in a bit of rumor mongering now and then. The past few weeks have led to a flurry of speculation about the next-gen iPhone, and who am I to ignore it?

At its electric-car factory in Silicon Valley, Tesla obsesses over details like making its own high-tech tools.

Photographs by John Stocklin