Apple's iCloud has emerged from the shadows, providing wireless backup and syncing for your apps, songs, documents, books, photos, videos, calendars and contacts. Best of all, it's free. Here's a few of iCloud's more notable features. [Gizmodo]

Apple has turned a routine refresh of Steve Jobs' obituary into an occasion for a full blown media war, asking Jobs' associates to stonewall the Associated Press and allowing it to be known that they are "furious" about commonplace journalism.

The Telegraph reports on a teenager in China who allegedly sold his own kidney to afford an iPad 2 and iPhone. He told reporters that he had found an advertisement online that offered 20,000 yuan ($3000 US) for a kidney. So he made the journey to the city of Chenzhou in Hunan Province where, he says, a hospital cut him open, plucked out the organ, and paid him for his time.

Apple-y thoughts apparently inhabit the same part of the brain of Apple fanatics as religious thoughts do in religious folks. Scientists using MRI scanners to see what parts of the brain "lit up" as volunteers viewed Apple imagery found that radical fanboyism is close to a religion in the minds of the afflicted.

When you're in a hole, stop digging. Apple, with its enviable PR, shouldn't need to learn that lesson, but apparently it does—if only to prevent the sort of inaccurate, overreaching Congressional testimony Bud Tribble delivered Tuesday.

Envious of Prince William and Harry's iPads, Queen Elizabeth has reportedly ordered up one of the tablet computers for herself, hoping the iPad will "keep her entertained on the long trips she has to make."

It may have been a hearing on privacy, but that didn't prevent Apple and its CEO Steve Jobs from getting a very public flogging today on Capitol Hill. Al Franken is apparently immune to Jobs' reality distortion field.

One need only look to the iPad 2 feeding frenzies currently gripping China for evidence that Apple is the hottest brand on the planet. And now it's official: Research company Millward Brown puts Apple at the top of their annual 100 global brand power list, knocking Google off the throne its held for four years running. The iPad has helped Apple grow 84%, to an estimated worth of $153 billion.

A "near-riot" broke out in the crowd at a Beijing Apple store on Saturday, a day after the iPad 2 went on sale, sending four to the hospital and smashing a glass door.

Huzzah! Apple fixed the iPhone's location tracking, even as it insists the iPhone has no location tracking. An iPhone software update reduces the log of your movements from "indefinite" to "one week" and keeps it off your computer. [Mashable]

To refute intense criticism that iPhones track their owners' every move, Apple today announced that "the iPhone is not logging your location," just what Wi-Fi stations you're near. Too bad Apple already admitted there's no difference.

Senator Al Franken (D-MN) has stepped up his pressure on Apple CEO Steve Jobs, announcing on Monday that he will hold hearings on the recent revelation that Apple iPhones and iPads are secretly tracking and storing their users' locations.

Back in 1994, while the hosts of The Today Show were still grappling with the concept of the internet, a Knight Ridder think tank put together an amazingly prescient presentation on the tablet-y future of news consumption.

Sen. Al Franken and Rep. Ed Markey sent Apple letters asking why the iPhone continuously records owners' movements and stores them indefinitely. Maybe Apple, silent on the issue, will tell them why the iPhone has this creepy feature. [Ars Technica]

When it comes to technology today, there is barely any distance between outrageous privacy violation and cool new feature. When news broke yesterday that Apple has been secretly spying on iPhone users, many people immediately broadcasted the illicit data to everyone.

Luckily everyone has until Monday, April 18—rather than the customary April 15th—to file their taxes. Sure, many people (especially freelancers) are going to be cutting a giant check to Uncle Sam. But lots of people will be getting money back from the government. Here are some of the things you can buy with your newfound riches.

Apple employees have recorded a video for the "It Gets Better" campaign to prevent gay teen suicide. Conspicuously missing is COO Tim Cook, perhaps Apple's most inspiring gay success story, but it's still a touching collection of stories from the company rank and file. (With a lot more choking up, for whatever reason, than in Google's version.)

Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs is coming out early next year, indicating Isaacson's interviews with the Apple CEO and his family are close to completion. It's a testament to former Time Inc. CEO Isaacson's interpersonal skills that he's managed to pry into Jobs' life for more than a year now without alienating the notoriously feisty and secretive Apple founder.

In light of our current nuclear panic, the frenzy over cell phone radiation seems like a quaint relic of an innocent past. But it's still an issue, and software company Tawkon has been trying to release an app that measures your iPhone's radiation levels for months. After failing to get approval in Apple's App Store, Tawkon's CEO Gil Friedlander sent Steve Jobs an email at his sjobs@apple.com address asking for his blessing.

Here are two things you could do with your iPhone last week that you might not be able to next week: learn about how to fake-"cure" yourself from being gay, and avoid DUI checkpoints. It's outrage time in the App store!