A Great Wall visit by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a suicide-bomb attack in Kabul, flooding in Brisbane, and more.

This newly-constructed estate in Rye, N.Y., is the fictional home of a main character in FX’s upcoming drama series “Lights Out.”

There are many ways to describe the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, such as: vast, tiring, over the top, technophilic, illuminating, geeky, and productive. One more to add to the list is "social." Now that this year's gadget fest has wrapped, it's time to follow up on last year's roundup and check out the social side of CES 2011.

Flexible nav demo:

Benjamin De Cock is at it again with an awesome navigation bar that makes use of flexible CSS box layouts and some WebKit animations.

How to address a British noble can be a daunting task for mere commoners.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky personified Russia's new class of tycoons in the 1990s who converted ambition and contacts into vast wealth as the Soviet economy lurched toward capitalism. But then he challenged the Kremlin and, and lost.

A new type of reverse mortgage is attracting the attention of affluent borrowers eager to extract cash from their homes. But they need to be aware of the tradeoffs.

No Mario Kart. No Beatles. No Halo. Here are the titles that existed under the surface of the hype but still delivered hours of fresh action for gaming pro and rookie alike.

With the right tools and a healthy dose of discipline, it's easy to achieve clean, organized Zen.

A mysterious art exhibition and a few imaginative women's collections for spring cast denim in a whole new light.

Samsung Electronics disclosed a weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings forecast, strengthening the view that the economic slowdown in Europe took a toll on demand for consumer electronics.

SLM Corp. appointed Finance Chief Jack Remondi to the newly created post of president and chief operating officer. The college-loan company also disclosed that its chief lending officer is stepping down.

lukees:

The Android 3.0 Preview looks fine. I reallllly don’t like the navigation icons at the bottom left of the screen.

Now that the oohing and ahhing is over concerning Facebook raising a cool $450 million from Goldman Sachs (and, just for fun, another $50 million from long-time investor Digital Sky Technologies), the rumination has begun. And much of it has had to do not with the business of Facebook itself, but with whether there's something somehow nefarious about the social network's decision not to go public, at least at this time.

The end-of-year holidays offer a perennial reminder that no matter how hard you try, you can never escape your family. My own family often inspires columns here, sometimes directly as in 2005's "Google vs. Grandmom," and sometimes through more convoluted paths. They don't always get credit here, nor do they necessarily seek it, but each of my relatives has his or her own approach to social media. Meet the extended Berkowitz family:

After writing 44 Social Media Insider columns this year, this 320th contribution to MediaPost offers a good time to reflect on what happened in 2010. Several themes emerged, with mobile social media standing out among all the rest. Here's the year in review.

As we head into the Christmas holiday, it's time for wish lists. Here's a theme-based one for people in social media: If Santa were to give you the gift of a perfect social network, what features would it contain? (And, yes, Virginia, this exercise assumes that Facebook -- for all of its world dominance -- still isn't perfect.)

For nine days, I was silent. The world heard not a tweet, not a Facebook post, not an email from me. This is the story of one man who went to four South American countries with nothing but an iPhone, two digital cameras, a Kindle, and a couple suitcases, and survived without social media in even the darkest of times, like when I really could have used restaurant recommendations.

Did you hear the one about the retired real-estate agent? He became a comedian—and has never been happier

And the winner is Mark Zuckerberg, in a walk! Of course, I'm talking about the naming of our beloved Facebook founder (after all, without him, many of us would not have found our business calling) as TIME's Person of the Year. And it really was a walk. Zuckerberg was apparently up against Hamid Karzai, Julian Assange, the Chilean Miners and the Tea Party, none of which have had the global impact this year of Zuckerberg, whose invention now has over 500 million members.