I've been speaking to two smart young technology companies based 5000 miles apart. Both are seeking to transform the way we communicate and both have learned the same lessons. Go global as quickly as possible - and head West if you want funding.
First Huddle, a London-based technology firm offering businesses collaborative workspaces in the cloud. Err what? Let me explain. Huddle - which I first wrote about in 2009 - is software that is now used by hundreds of organisations big and small to share information, pool content and even hold virtual meetings from any computer.
The decline of HP is beginning to look like a slow-motion car crash, much like what's been happening at Nokia and RIM.
Today's radical surgery, with the loss of 27,000 jobs worldwide, is meant to put this American computing icon back on track. But as well as the anxiety for many of the firm's UK workers, there is also a serious question mark over the future of a major British technology success story, Autonomy.
"The last time I spoke in the UK," said Google's chairman Eric Schmidt, "it went better than I ever imagined." Mr Schmidt was referring to his speech at Edinburgh's Television Festival last year in which he called - among other things - for a revolution in the way computer science is taught in schools.
And he's right - his few sentences seemed to have an extraordinary effect. The computer and games industries renewed their calls for ICT teaching in schools to be revamped, the movement to promote the teaching of coding took heart, and eventually the Education Secretary Michael Gove, quoting the Google boss's remarks, announced that he was scrapping the ICT curriculum in English schools.
Here's my report explaining the technology behind the live broadcasting of the torch relay. Some 8,000 runners are carrying the torch over a total distance of 8,000 miles, and communities across the UK are already coming out on the streets in large numbers to join in the fun.
But broadcasting every minute of the event live on the web involves quite a major technological challenge. The pictures are beamed back not via satellite but over the 3G mobile phone network - and with the torch making its way through parts of the country where 3G coverage is patchy, some clever tricks have to be employed to make sure the screen doesn't go black. And, in an experiment which could point the way forward for live broadcasting of moving events, an unmanned aerial vehicle - or UAV - is on standby to beam pictures back from especially remote areas.
So... what happened there? On Friday, after an all-night hackathon at Facebook's Menlo Park campus, Mark Zuckerberg pressed a button to mark the start of trading in his company's shares. Because that button had been "hacked" by some of his very smart engineers, his Facebook status was updated to "listed a company on Nasdaq".
Then after a hiatus as Nasdaq's systems struggled to cope - perhaps they need to hire some of those smart engineers - the share price began to soar from its already vertiginous $38 to $42. Then it began to sag, and by the time trading ended, it was just a fraction above the starting price, apparently only kept there by the efforts of the underwriters. Predictions of a first day "pop" had been confounded.
It was in 2004 that a Harvard student called Mark Zuckerberg started a social networking site in his college bedroom.
Eight years on, more than 900 million people use Facebook and its young founder - who still wears a hoodie to work - has convinced investors that his company is the most valuable technology business ever to have offered itself to investors.
Wouldn't it be great if you could leave your wallet at home and pay for everything with your mobile phone? Well, OK, not everybody is in love with the idea of the cashless society, but the march of mobile money seems unstoppable right now. Or does it? As an enthusiast early adopter of anything which might make life simpler, I've been trying out these new ways of paying - and I'm on the verge of chucking it in.
My frustration came to a head after I was sent £1 last week by someone using the Barclays Pingit system. Actually not just someone, but the man I consider the guru of digital money, Dave Birch, a consultant who writes about the subject and advises many of the leading players.
Rory has been watching the technology scene like a hawk for the last 15 years.
From the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s to the rise of Google and Facebook, from the Psion organiser to the iPad, he's covered all the big gadget and business stories, and interviewed just about everyone who's played a part in the story of the web.
Dot.Rory, his previous blog, was named among the Top 100 blogs by the Sunday Times
He aims to look at the impact of the internet and digital technology on our lives and businesses. Rory has been described as "the non-geek's geek", and freely admits that he came late to technology - but he aims to explain its significance to anyone with an interest in the subject.
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