Microsoft bigwig Bill Gates got hipchecked off the top perch as the richest man in the world by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, on Forbes annual list of the world’s Richie Richs.

Often in the No. 1 spot, Gates actually got shoved off in 2008 by investor Warren Buffett (now No. 3), with whom he is good friends.

Gates returned to the top rank in 2009 and now Slim–a telecom and more tycoon–has surpassed Gates’ net worth of $53 billion slightly with a $53.5 billion kitty.

While Twitter remains generally blocked in China, that hasn’t stopped tech-savvy Chinese from putting the microblog platform to creative uses.

This week, influential blogger Lian Yue started publishing a novel on Twitter, believed to be the first time a Chinese-language novel is released on the popular service.

Want to buy Pink Floyd’s “Time” on iTunes but don’t want to pay for all of “Dark Side of the Moon”? You’ll want to make that purchase soon.

The $100 million lawsuit pop-tart Lindsay Lohan filed against E-Trade Financial Corp. this week over a 30-second Super Bowl spot from its agency Grey, New York, appears to have been a crowdsourced effort by friends and random fans of Ms. Lohan on Twitter.

Start-ups that offer users big discounts via socially-charged local group-buying services are getting a lot of attention these days, especially from venture firms.

Today, it’s Washington, D.C.-based LivingSocial, which just announced a $25 million Series B round, led by U.S. Venture Partners.

In other words: Pricey VC deals to allow start-up to offer price cuts to consumers.

In need of an image makeover after an aggressive acquisition spree, Hewlett-Packard is launching its first corporate advertising campaign in more than five years.

The company, which consumers know primarily for its printers, says it is seeking to recast itself as a broader technology concern with a campaign featuring, among others, rapper Dr. Dre and stand-up comedian Rhys Darby, star of the HBO series “Flight of the Conchords.”

Jimmy Wales’s Wikipedia relies almost entirely on free contributions from users to create a mammoth Web encyclopedia. What if an enterprising/lazy blogger used the same technique to interview Wales?

The recently unveiled secret agreement that Apple makes iPhone developers sign supports what many have suspected all along: Apple is trying to control the universe.

I must confess that until recently I had no idea what Twitter was.