Forget about the “Tablet Wars.” That’s yesterday’s news.

The same thing goes for the long-predicted “Death of the PC.”

You see, the mainstream media has unleashed a torrent of technology predictions for 2012. They’re all a mile wide and an inch deep. No one seems to get the big picture.

The single most important computing trend that will unfold this year is getting almost no buzz. And yet …

This is the year when the technology sector will enter a whole new dimension. It’s called 3D computing. More…

Whether you are an investor, business owner or self-employed consultant, there are many benefits to working for yourself. One major upside involves tax advantages.

The two biggest things you’ll need to concern yourself with are expenses – both operating and capital.

Operating, or business, expenses are the costs of conducting a trade or business, and they are usually tax deductible. For example, the costs of renting an office, going on business trips and paying employees are all deductible expenses. More…

(An Opinion piece from WEALTH magazine)

We need to listen carefully to what this movement is saying. In many cases, the activists have heroically stood to decry injustices that affect most of us. Let’s take a closer look:

First, Occupy points out that some large corporations end up paying no taxes. All the loopholes and incentives make it possible, and that really is a travesty worth protesting. It’s not so much a problem with the corporations if they are avoiding these taxes legally. It is a government problem, and we all should be pushing for fair tax laws. More…

Despite being worth a reported $350 million, media and fashion mogul Russell Simmons resists labeling himself a money man. Instead, he prefers the embellishment “business yogi.”

“A business yogi is someone who upholds humanity in all of his or her business dealings,” Simmons told WEALTH magazine in an exclusive interview in his Seventh Avenue office in New York. “Someone who puts the betterment of the human condition before making a profit.”

Known for his role in launching Def Jam Records and catapulting the musical careers of hip-hop artists the Beastie Boys, Run DMC, 50 Cent and Jay-Z, Simmons began his entrepreneurial career with a Jewish punk rocker named Rick Rubin in 1984. More…

Cyber warfare is growing rapidly, and spending on network security is following pace. Worldwide spending on network and data-security technology will rise to more than $10 billion by 2016 from about $6 billion last year, according to a market-outlook report by technology-forecaster ABI Research.

Another recent study, by Forrester Research Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR), found that the share of business information-technology budgets devoted to security nearly doubled from 7 percent in 2007 to an estimated 14 percent last year. More…

Giving performance reviews is one of the more thankless tasks of management. Even when you’re able to reward a stellar employee—and don’t most workers consider themselves wonderful?—many think they deserve more than you can pay them.

If you work for yourself, you may never have to formally review anyone’s job performance. But chances are that someone will ask you for your feedback. And even if you supervise no employees now, someday you might. So it’s a good idea to consider how to properly review someone’s performance.

More…

To say Apple Inc. won’t be the same company without Steve Jobs is an understatement.

Jobs helped Apple’s share price climb to $373—a 9,020%-gain since 1997 when he was named interim CEO. Earlier this year, Apple’s market capitalization grew to $337.17 billion and it briefly displaced Exxon Mobil Corp as the most valuable U.S. company.

All this from a college dropout who quit his first job to backpack around India. More…

I remember back in the late 1990s and early 2000s when Borders outperformed Barnes & Noble (B&N) on sales per square foot on a per-store basis. Now, B&N is doing fine, while Borders is tottering on the edge of bankruptcy. What in the world happened over the past decade?

Borders canceled Thursday’s (July 21, 2011) auction to keep a smaller but still significant retail concern going. (It’s hard to have an auction when there are no bidders.) That means the 399 stores on the “short list” for a leaner and meaner Borders will be liquidated. Landlords and other creditors protested plans to save the company and are now protesting the plan to close the company’s doors, so there may be some death throes—but sadly, it looks like the end is here.

Company President Mike Edwards said “We were all working hard towards a different outcome, but the headwinds we have been facing for quite some time, including the rapidly changing book industry, eReader revolution, and turbulent economy, have brought us to where we are now.”

If B&N is doing great—or at least holding its own in the same turbulent conditions—what happened to Borders?

More…

In just the past few years, collaboration has evolved from a competitive advantage to a necessity.

We consumers are demanding more certainty when we buy something. Social media-driven technology, combined with increased expectations about certainty, has begun to monetize trust.

Tying these two thoughts together, your ability to collaborate affects how much others trust you. Your “trust rating” will become a new form of currency in the collaborative world of the future, More…

Are you thinking about owning a business? In most cases, I believe that buying an existing business—with real customers, a revenue stream, employees, name recognition and policies and procedures already in place—is a much better proposition than starting one from scratch.

Here’s why:

1. Start-up risk: Experts say that 80 percent of all new businesses fail. While a good portion of these might be multilevel marketing businesses that people just give up on after a few months, the reality is that a start-up usually has little to no immediate cash flow and is often immediately crunched for working capital right off the bat. More…